Call the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Net-Zero Bluff
This week marked a kind of coming out party for the Biden-era fossil fuel industry. At CERAWeek, the industry’s annual energy conference, its top brass talked about how eagerly they’re participating in...
View ArticleDoes Biden Want Less War or Just War With More Rules?
A clandestine airstrike here, a little diplomacy there, a wink and a nudge to America’s favorite Saudi failson dictator, and some paeans to democratic accountability at home—President Joe Biden’s...
View ArticleDavid Brooks and the Endless Grift of the Conservative Commentariat
How do you get rich? Writing last month in the preferred mode of his late career—the hastily written commencement address—David Brooks let his readers in on one weird trick that will help them enter...
View ArticleInside a Long, Messy Year of Reopening Schools
Last month in Chicago, after months of heated negotiations, the teachers union and Chicago Public Schools emerged with one of the most detailed school reopening agreements in the nation. Brad Marianno,...
View ArticleThe Gen X Culture Warriors Who Never Grew Up
Other than the joys and sorrows of leaving New York City (or staying there), no recent topic has launched more exasperating essays than “cancel culture.” When Glenn Greenwald departed The Intercept...
View ArticleThe Outlaw Chemists Who Deserve a Cut of the Psychedelic Gold Rush
On November 6, 2000, Kansas Highway Patrolmen pulled over a rented Buick LeSabre on what seemed like a routine traffic stop. That was until the driver, 58-year-old William Leonard Pickard, bolted from...
View ArticleThe John Birch Society Never Left
The Republican Party is facing what many observers are describing as a William F. Buckley moment—a make-or-break opportunity to purge the racists and conspiracy theorists who are rapidly gaining...
View ArticleThe Great Blind Spot in Hurricane Preparedness
Hurricane season is creeping its way deeper into spring. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering officially moving up the start...
View ArticleThe Sad Implosion of Google’s Ethical A.I.
In December, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fired Timnit Gebru, a celebrated artificial intelligence researcher and one of the most accomplished members of her field. Gebru, one of the few Black...
View ArticleAre We Ready for the Return of Mass Tourism?
It took a global pandemic for many of us to realize that we live in what Italian journalist and social theorist Marco D’Eramo calls the “Age of Tourism.” As he writes in his new book, The World in a...
View ArticleA Trial Can’t Bring Justice for George Floyd
On Sunday, the day before the opening of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd, protesters gathered around the county court building, in...
View ArticleWhy Do Americans Have So Few Rights?
In 1991, Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon came out with Rights Talk, a warning that Americans had embraced a divisive understanding of rights that would lead the country into greater and greater...
View ArticleHow Big Money Is Dividing American Catholicism
“This is what they have done,” Robert Busch writes with weary outrage as he forwards me a photograph of a group of nuns, one of them wearing a “Stop the Steal” button, cheerfully joining President...
View ArticleEnduring Lessons for Humanity After a Year of Birding, Hiking, Gardening, and...
July 12, 2020, is the day Flynn Murray became a birder. That’s when the 31-year-old Brooklynite left her dog at home, grabbed her binoculars, and made it her sole mission to immerse herself in the...
View ArticleRepublicans Aren’t Even Trying to Fight the Democrats’ Covid Relief Bill
Do Fox News viewers even know about the American Rescue Act, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that passed the Senate? They might not. The network, like most right-wing media, has largely ignored the...
View ArticleJoe Manchin Decides Whether Biden’s Agenda Lives or Dies
In a series of interviews that aired this past weekend, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin offered progressives a glimmer of hope about the future of the Democratic legislative agenda. “There should be...
View ArticleThe Fossil Fuel Fight Isn’t Just in Congress—It’s in Your Kitchen
The fight over American fossil fuel dependency is upon us. Earlier this week, Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana put a hold on the full-chamber confirmation vote for President Biden’s pick for...
View ArticleGraham Greene Against the World
The last novelist who acted like he might save the world may have been Graham Greene. He belonged to a generation of writers who might not always share the same political opinions but who supported...
View ArticleInsurrectionist in Chief
In February’s Senate trial to impeach and convict Donald Trump for the crime of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, the modern GOP had one last shot at rescuing its long-battered...
View ArticleThis Is What the Beginning of a Climate-Labor Alliance Looks Like
Tuesday night, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act passed the House by 225–205 votes. If it passes the Senate and becomes law, it will peel back over half a century of anti-union policies,...
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