The Consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death for American Democracy

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing and a trailblazer for women’s rights in the law, died on Friday at the age of 87. According to NPR, Ginsburg dictated a deathbed statement to her granddaughter earlier this month, one acknowledging what everyone had long known—that her death would send a destabilizing jolt through...

4h

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Failure of Democratic Politics

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the pioneering lawyer, judge, and Supreme Court justice, died on Friday at the age of 87. Nominated to the Court by Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg’s legacy stretches back six decades. One of the most profound and consequential legal minds in American history, Ginsburg played a pivotal role in advancing women’s rights, serving as...

6h

Jared Kushner’s Psychopathic Incompetence

The Jared Kushner Phenomenon—how this unpleasant and widely loathed man, the perpetual son, became so important to the Trump administration—would be very interesting if it weren’t so deadly. It would be funny, too, that he is so massively incompetent, so out of his depth that you can barely see the top of his unconvincing comb-over, if he weren’t one...

14h

I’m Living Under the Weight of Nearly Four Months of Back Rent

I left a job as a secretary at a local Pasadena church in January in order to start working independently as an interpretive translator. My timing wasn’t the greatest. By March, everything shut down. The few clients that I had, because they were schools and churches, closed down right away. I was scheduled to take the judicial interpreter test on March...

14h

Barack Obama’s Memoir Is Set to Be the Biggest Book This Year

Book publishers have had a chaotic year. There have been protests and walkouts over Woody Allen’s memoir and the industry’s lack of diversity—unprecedented activism in an industry with little history of mobilization. One Big Five publisher, Simon & Schuster, is up for sale; two have new CEOs. And then there is the ongoing fallout from Covid-19,...

22h

The Generation That Was Exhausted

Everyone hates millennials. To Baby Boomers, millennials are lazy, entitled, spoiled, narcissistic, simultaneously stuck in our parents’ basements and wielding enough economic clout to “kill” entire industries—from diamonds, paper napkins, and bar soap to department stores, golf, and Applebee’s. To Generation Z, millennials are wine-guzzling solipsists,...

22h

What Trump Taught America About the Bible

Five years ago this week, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign hit a snag. The second Republican primary debate had not gone well, and he was taking so much flak for failing to correct an Islamophobic supporter at a rally in New Hampshire that he canceled an event in South Carolina scheduled for the next day. In just 72 hours, he seemed to go from dominant...

22h

The Psychological Perks of Joining a Revolution

Workdays in fiction aren’t like real workdays at all. Office novels will never adequately capture the deadening experience of exchanging your time for money, of watching your hours, like elastic bands, stretch out to the snapping point. They tend to lack the minute experiences that lend offices their particular flavor: hundreds of closed-lip smiles,...

22h

The Cult of Presidential “Leadership”

We live in an anxious society almost pathologically obsessed with leadership. Self-help books package its secrets for frustrated middle managers. Websites offer listicles of tips for how to make leaders of your children. (“Teach them to be winners,” suggests Inc.com. “Surround them with leaders,” offers Lifehack.org, threateningly.) Universities offer...

22h

Bill Barr’s Titanic Lack of Self-Awareness

On Wednesday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that Attorney General Bill Barr instructed federal prosecutors last week to pursue harsher charges against alleged rioters. Among his reported suggestions was sedition, an archaic and extraordinary offense that implies the defendants were trying to overthrow the federal...

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