The Fight for Roe

Alyssa Pointer / Reuters Abortion-rights supporters gathered and marched in cities across America following the leak of a draft majority opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which suggests that the court intends to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that...

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Reckoning With Lynching in Liberal America

Under a large white tent on a warm Sunday in early autumn, a group of residents in Montgomery County, Maryland, gathered at Welsh Park in the town of Rockville. A crescendo of gospel hymns hung above the crowd before falling gently over us like a warm bedsheet. A small group of children squealed from a playground in the distance. We were there to remember...

Feb 2022

The Betrayal

I. The EndIt took four presidencies for America to finish abandoning Afghanistan. George W. Bush’s attention wandered off soon after American Special Forces rode horseback through the northern mountains and the first schoolgirls gathered in freezing classrooms. Barack Obama, after studying the problem for months, poured in troops and pulled them out...

Jan 2022

Tracking Cougars to Figure Out Where to Build a Bridge

Stephanie Keith / Reuters Highways that cut through wild areas present a daunting barrier for local wildlife. In Washington State, the Olympic Cougar Project—a partnership between a coalition of Native American tribes and the Washington State Department of Transportation—is studying...

Jan 2022

The Next Disaster Coming to the Great Plains

GARDEN CITY, Kan.—A century after the Dust Bowl, another environmental catastrophe is coming to the High Plains of western Kansas. The signs are subtle but unequivocal: dry riverbeds, fields of sand, the sound of irrigation motors straining to pump from dwindling aquifers.“We face a fundamental choice,” Connie Owen, the director of the Kansas Water...

Dec 2021

Biden Won Big With a Bad Hand

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is taking heat for sinking, at least for the moment, the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act. But before pointing fingers, Democrats should use those fingers to count votes.The past may cast some light on the politics of narrow majorities. Republicans had a bad election in 2000. They lost two seats in the...

Dec 2021

How Do Democrats Recover From This?

Every Democratic activist, strategist, and lawmaker in America has spent at least a brief moment this fall staring at the ceiling in desperation, probably thinking to him- or herself: Something’s gotta give.Democrats were already facing an inconvenient truth going into next year’s elections: The incumbent president’s party usually gets smoked in the...

Dec 2021

The Skeleton of Trump’s Border Wall Is Rusting in the Desert

Tens of thousands of heavy steel slats, once destined to become part of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, are slowly rusting in the open air throughout the southwestern borderlands. The bollards—18- or 33-foot-long hollow posts, most of them reinforced with concrete and rebar—are worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars. The Department...

Dec 2021

What Joe Manchin’s ‘No’ Means for Biden’s Agenda

The Build Back Better Act is dead. Long live the Build Back Better Act?With a few short sentences on Fox News, Senator Joe Manchin today dashed the dreams of Democrats by coming out firmly against President Joe Biden’s signature legislative proposal. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said of the $1.75 trillion bill...

Dec 2021

The Aftermath of the Devastating Tornado Outbreak in Kentucky

Scott Olson / Getty Late on December 11, multiple tornadoes touched down in a line that raged across several Midwest states, leaving a trail of widespread destruction and causing at least 80 deaths. Some of the heaviest damage took place in a number of small communities in Kentucky,...

Dec 2021