Michael Lewis
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29 December 2017
28 December 2017
27 December 2017
26 December 2017
25 December 2017
Orrin Hatch just made the Republican agenda startlingly clear
We can afford a trillion dollars in deficit-financed tax cuts. But "we don't have any money" for children's health care.
Dylan Scott
Dylan Scott
22 December 2017
21 December 2017
20 December 2017
19 December 2017
Dr. Strangelove Was a Documentary
Daniel Ellsberg’s new memoir would be an urgent warning about the monumental danger of nuclear weapons—even if Trump weren’t president.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
18 December 2017
15 December 2017
14 December 2017
Peggy Noonan’s Willful Blindness
Her latest column suggests that harassment is a product of the sexual revolution. She can’t possibly believe that.
Rebecca Onion
Rebecca Onion
13 December 2017
The case for normalizing impeachment
The Constitution's framers considered a few variants of the impeachment power. An early proposal would have restricted it to acts of "treason and bribery" only. That was rejected for being too narrow. A subsequent proposal would have expanded it to acts of "maladministration" as well. That was rejected for being too broad. "High crimes and misdemeanors" was the compromise, but it was never clearly defined.
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
12 December 2017
11 December 2017
Why Evangelicals Stick with Donald Trump & Roy Moore
White evangelicals get their religion from their politics, not their politics from their religion.
Stuart Rothenberg
Stuart Rothenberg
Worst Secretary of State Ever?
Rex Tillerson’s nonsensical explanations for hamstringing his own department only made things worse.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
08 December 2017
07 December 2017
06 December 2017
05 December 2017
04 December 2017
How Trump walked into Putin’s web
The inside story of how a former British spy was hired to investigate Russia’s influence on Trump – and uncovered explosive evidence that Moscow had been cultivating Trump for years.
Luke Harding
Luke Harding
30 November 2017
29 November 2017
Trigger Warning
A congressional hearing underlines the dangers posed by an unstable president with unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
28 November 2017
27 November 2017
24 November 2017
23 November 2017
22 November 2017
21 November 2017
20 November 2017
17 November 2017
16 November 2017
15 November 2017
14 November 2017
13 November 2017
Lost Cause
Lee wasn't the only Southerner—or the only Virginian—forced to choose between "his state" and "his country." Facing war, George Henry Thomas, one of Lee's subordinates, had to make the same choice. He chose Union. As did David Farragut, a native of Tennessee. As did Winfield Scott, another Virginian. The United States of 1860 was a different place, and Americans understood their relationship to the country in different ways. But in showing us other men in similar straits who took the opposite path, history doesn't exonerate Lee; it condemns him.
Jamele Bouie
Jamele Bouie
09 November 2017
08 November 2017
06 November 2017
03 November 2017
02 November 2017
01 November 2017
30 October 2017
Certifiable Nonsense
Trump’s speech on the Iran deal might be his most dishonest, and also his most damaging.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
27 October 2017
26 October 2017
25 October 2017
24 October 2017
23 October 2017
20 October 2017
19 October 2017
18 October 2017
A Watershed Moment
Las Vegas should entirely change the way we think about preventing mass shootings.
That doesn’t mean you have to ban guns. You can keep the pro-gun talking points. You just have to honor them by agreeing that when they’re violated—when firearms become too fast and powerful to reconcile with freedom, public safety, and good guys fighting back—gun laws can be used to restore those principles. No sensible advocate of the Second Amendment wants to live in a country where people can’t defend themselves or safely assemble.
William Saletan
That doesn’t mean you have to ban guns. You can keep the pro-gun talking points. You just have to honor them by agreeing that when they’re violated—when firearms become too fast and powerful to reconcile with freedom, public safety, and good guys fighting back—gun laws can be used to restore those principles. No sensible advocate of the Second Amendment wants to live in a country where people can’t defend themselves or safely assemble.
William Saletan
17 October 2017
16 October 2017
13 October 2017
12 October 2017
11 October 2017
10 October 2017
09 October 2017
06 October 2017
05 October 2017
04 October 2017
03 October 2017
29 September 2017
28 September 2017
The margin of stupid
Whatever the cause, it seems like you can get 20 to 25 percent of Americans to say any ridiculous thing imaginable.
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
27 September 2017
26 September 2017
25 September 2017
22 September 2017
Mark Lilla Is Getting Identity Politics All Wrong
Appealing to voters' tribal instincts is a time-honored American tradition. Because it works.
Joshua Zeitz
Joshua Zeitz
21 September 2017
20 September 2017
19 September 2017
It’s Time to Talk to North Korea
"The complaint about the U.N. Security Council’s new sanctions against North Korea is that they aren’t strict enough to force Kim Jong-un to dismantle his nuclear program. But here’s the thing: Nothing is going to force him to do that.
"Kim follows the news. He saw what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi when they gave up their nuclear programs, whether through force or conciliation: They were invaded or overthrown anyway."
Fred Kaplan
"Kim follows the news. He saw what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi when they gave up their nuclear programs, whether through force or conciliation: They were invaded or overthrown anyway."
Fred Kaplan
18 September 2017
15 September 2017
The First White President
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates
14 September 2017
13 September 2017
12 September 2017
11 September 2017
08 September 2017
07 September 2017
06 September 2017
05 September 2017
04 September 2017
01 September 2017
31 August 2017
30 August 2017
29 August 2017
28 August 2017
25 August 2017
24 August 2017
Businesses Are Finally Realizing That Trump Causes “Uncertainty”
And there's simply no evidence that "uncertainty" about the path of policy in Washington, however you define it, hampered business investments, hiring, and especially market performance in the period between 2009 and 2016. Because "uncertainty" doesn't really mean uncertainty—it's just code used by supply-siders and right-wingers. What they really didn't like was the fact that a guy named Obama was sitting in the White House, poised to raise their taxes. (Readers, he did. And the economy and S&P 500 survived.)
Daniel Gross
Daniel Gross
23 August 2017
22 August 2017
21 August 2017
18 August 2017
17 August 2017
16 August 2017
15 August 2017
14 August 2017
11 August 2017
Bosses want capitalism for themselves and feudalism for their workers
It's a reminder that economics isn't just about supply and demand. It's also about who has the power to make demands. Which actually has more to do with government policies than market forces. Things like how high the minimum wage is, how easy it is to form a union, and, yes, how tough noncompete laws are all affect the balance of power between capital and labor independent of the unemployment rate. So does the welfare state itself. Indeed, businesses have historically been opposed to Social Security, Medicare and, more recently, Obamacare not only because those programs cost them money, but also control over their workers. When the government helps people be able to afford to retire, companies can't afford to hire quite as many of them — not if they want to maintain their profit margins. That's because workers have more bargaining power when there aren't as many of them actually looking for, well, work.
The same kind of logic, by the way, applies to stimulus spending. As economist Michal Kalecki argued back in 1943, a government that hires unemployed people is a government that doesn't have to give business what it wants to get them to hire unemployed people. The more the government does, then, the less sway businesses have over the economy and everyone in it.
Matt O'Brien
The same kind of logic, by the way, applies to stimulus spending. As economist Michal Kalecki argued back in 1943, a government that hires unemployed people is a government that doesn't have to give business what it wants to get them to hire unemployed people. The more the government does, then, the less sway businesses have over the economy and everyone in it.
Matt O'Brien
10 August 2017
I’d Like to Report a Scam Against the Elderly
That Fox has ended up gulling a president is a programming accident. When the late Roger Ailes conceived Fox News two decades ago, he hoped to create shows that attracted—is there a polite way to put this?—an older demographic that seeks news that reinforces its prejudices and rarely challenges them. And he succeeded. It was only by chance that Ailes ended up creating a network that appealed to this particular flighty, low-attention-span 71-year-old.
The Ailes demographic wants to be told that the world is going to hell, a message that harmonizes with the declining status and health many of them experience. The Ailes demographic wants simple and reductionist viewpoints on America’s cultural and policy dilemmas—from crime to immigration to taxes to war and trade. The Ailes demographic seeks the restoration of the social mores it remembers from its youth, and if the past can’t be restored, it wants modern mores castigated. And it wants to be frightened and outraged. Fox almost never disappoints them.
Jack Shafer
The Ailes demographic wants to be told that the world is going to hell, a message that harmonizes with the declining status and health many of them experience. The Ailes demographic wants simple and reductionist viewpoints on America’s cultural and policy dilemmas—from crime to immigration to taxes to war and trade. The Ailes demographic seeks the restoration of the social mores it remembers from its youth, and if the past can’t be restored, it wants modern mores castigated. And it wants to be frightened and outraged. Fox almost never disappoints them.
Jack Shafer
09 August 2017
08 August 2017
Unpresidential Command
Trump is ordering service members to support the Republican agenda. That is terrifying.
Phillip Carter
Phillip Carter
07 August 2017
How to Take Down Kim Jong Un
Stop saying there are no good options on North Korea. Here’s how we can end the threat once and for all—without firing a shot.
Tom Malinowski
Tom Malinowski
03 August 2017
Yes, Trump Could Pardon Himself. Then All Hell Would Break Loose
It’s never been tried. Here’s how it could blow up his presidency, or blow up the system.
Richard Primus
Richard Primus
02 August 2017
01 August 2017
31 July 2017
28 July 2017
27 July 2017
26 July 2017
25 July 2017
Don Trump Jr.’s Emails Are the Smoking Gun
The people closest to Trump intended to collude with Russia and had the blithe sense of corrupt impunity to spell out that intention in an email chain. They unapologetically sided with a hostile foreign power against their fellow citizens. The biggest question now is whether Republicans in Congress will do the same.
Michelle Goldberg
Michelle Goldberg
24 July 2017
This Town Melts Down
A veteran political reporter takes stock of how Washington has – and hasn’t – changed in the time of Trump.
20 July 2017
19 July 2017
The Republican health bill is stuck in a valley of incoherence
A sitting US senator celebrating Americans' freedom to not be able to afford health insurance sounds like a socialist satire of American values.
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
14 July 2017
12 July 2017
11 July 2017
10 July 2017
07 July 2017
05 July 2017
03 July 2017
Trevor Noah on the Philando Castile verdict: the NRA should “be losing their goddamn minds”
"'How does a black person not get shot in America? Because if you think about it, the bar is always moving. The goalposts are always shifting. There's always a different thing that explains why a person got shot ... at some point you realize, there's no real answer.'"
"'It's interesting how the people who define themselves by one fundamental American right — the right to bear arms — show that once race is involved, the only right that they believe in is the right to remain silent.'"
30 June 2017
29 June 2017
Watergate Fueled Conspiracy Theories, Too
Both today and back in the 1970s, defenders of the president wove wacky tales to explain away wrongdoing. And the myths just kept going.
David Greenberg
David Greenberg
28 June 2017
26 June 2017
23 June 2017
22 June 2017
21 June 2017
This profile of Trump's budget director has an unintentionally revealing anecdote
Mulvaney was a US representative for South Carolina for nearly six years before being appointed to the Trump administration and calls himself a “policy wonk and government junkie.” Just not a jobs data junkie, perhaps.
Tara Golshan
Tara Golshan
We’re Not Even In Kansas Anymore
But what we’re getting instead is a raw exercise of political power: the GOP is trying to take away health care from millions and hand the savings to the wealthy simply because it can, without even a fig leaf of intellectual justification.
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
20 June 2017
A tweet from Trump’s legal team shows he doesn’t understand what being president is about
Trump, in short, ran the public company as if it were for his private benefit. And his legal team seems to think it’s okay for him to run the American government in the same way.
Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias
Watching the Detectives
As the Waldorf Astoria transforms into posh condos, there’s one luxury amenity it’s unlikely to get back: its intrepid in-house sleuths.
Katrina Gulliver
Katrina Gulliver
19 June 2017
15 June 2017
Trump Can Commit All the High Crimes He Wants. Republicans Aren’t Going to Impeach Him.
The conservative movement takeover of the Republican Party began in the 1960s and took decades to complete. Conservatives still have not lost their sense of being an insurgent movement that might at any moment be betrayed by the party Establishment. Conservatives think of their role as quasi-independent, but they also imagine it as focusing exclusively on enforcing fealty to their doctrine by politicians who might otherwise be inclined to wander. The scenario they are built to fight against is the Republican president who colludes with Democrats, not one who colludes with foreign dictators. If the president is fighting against the opposition party, they assume he is acting correctly. Conservative organs like National Review originally viewed Richard Nixon with hostility, and — perverse as it may sound — came to his defense because of Watergate.
14 June 2017
09 June 2017
08 June 2017
07 June 2017
Paying Inmates Minimum Wages Helps the Working Class
Prisoners are farmed out for pennies an hour to private industry, undercutting compensation for everyone else. That should end.
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
05 June 2017
01 June 2017
31 May 2017
25 May 2017
Why Staying Put Was McMaster’s Most Patriotic Act
The National Security adviser was called a hypocrite for defending Trump’s handling of classified intelligence. But critics misread his book and his motives.
Mark Perry
Mark Perry
22 May 2017
17 May 2017
Will Trump Be the First to Politicize the FBI?
Shortlist names like Kelly Ayotte and John Cornyn sound like ideal Washington department heads—until you realize why the FBI has never had a political leader.
Garrett M. Graff
Garrett M. Graff
11 May 2017
10 May 2017
09 May 2017
03 May 2017
02 May 2017
01 May 2017
If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth
The ultimate irony of today’s era of nostalgia politics, after all, is that the era people are nostalgic for was itself an era of incredibly rapid change. The “good old days” were a time when new industries were rising, the population was growing fast, and the built environment shifted rapidly in the direction of suburbanization. The country didn’t dig out of the trials of the Depression and World War II by “bringing back” the economic conditions that prevailed during the McKinley administration. Instead, a country that embraced new ideas built new communities populated by people who moved to new places to work in new fields.
Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias
28 April 2017
What if America Voted Like France?
Our history would be surprisingly different if America’s elections worked like Sunday’s French vote—or like Britain’s.
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Greenfield
27 April 2017
26 April 2017
25 April 2017
21 April 2017
How to fix the Supreme Court
I don't blame Republicans for blocking Garland. Nor do I blame Democrats for filibustering Gorsuch.
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
20 April 2017
19 April 2017
70 days in, Donald Trump’s presidency is flailing
The outcomes we're seeing look like what you'd expect from an inexperienced, unfocused president who's more interested in tweeting out cable news commentary than learning about the government he runs and the policies he wants to change.
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
14 April 2017
13 April 2017
11 April 2017
10 April 2017
07 April 2017
05 April 2017
04 April 2017
30 March 2017
Judicial originalism as myth
The first condition required to justify constitutional 'originalism' in anything resembling an intellectually honest manner is that any constitution that may be interpreted this way have a sunset provision. In other words, successive generations must not be bound to the strict interpretation of a document in which they had no voice in creating. -ed.
29 March 2017
28 March 2017
'He’s Going to Be an Enabler'
As White House counsel, Don McGahn's job is to keep Donald Trump in line. But he shares his boss' hard-charging reputation.
27 March 2017
24 March 2017
Who Told Flynn to Call Russia?
Let’s stop focusing on the resignation, and start focusing on the real issue here: The mystery of Trump’s Russia ties.
Daniel Benjamin
Daniel Benjamin
23 March 2017
22 March 2017
21 March 2017
20 March 2017
How American Politics Went Insane
It happened gradually—and until the U.S. figures out how to treat the problem, it will only get worse
16 March 2017
Checks? Never Heard of Them. Balances? Forget About It.
Donald Trump’s unnerving belief that the judiciary’s purpose is to stay out of his way.
15 March 2017
14 March 2017
The Last Time the U.S. Invaded Mexico
In the early 1900s, Woodrow Wilson was plagued by our Southern neighbor’s “bad hombres.” Trying to interfere got him nowhere.
Joshua Zeitz
Dashed Expectations Power White Anger
So this is a possible explanation for why white Americans were angrier at banks and large companies than their minority counterparts. Their extrapolative expectations were more optimistic to start with. Having known nothing but enrichment for three straight decades, they suddenly found that this wasn’t just the way the world worked -- that in fact, wealth doesn’t just build itself for most people in most time periods.