Listen to an audio version of this story below: Madison, Wisconsin. A blustery Friday evening. A few thousand supporters of Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders are gathered in James Madison Park, along the shores of Lake Mendota. Though it’s April, it’s cold as hell. A group of Bern …
Read More »WTF Is Happening at the NRA, Explained
Chaos broke out at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis last week. The gun group’s figurehead president, Oliver North, backed by its longtime PR firm Ackerman McQueen, allegedly tried to oust the NRA’s powerful CEO, Wayne LaPierre. But LaPierre hit back — forcing North to step down, while winning unanimous …
Read More »Will the Masses Finally See Fox News for What It Is?
Less than one week after New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer published a thoroughly reported exposé about Fox News, its former president resigned suddenly from his top White House job. Bill Shine, President Trump’s communications chief and his deputy chief of staff, will reportedly now put his energy and time …
Read More »The Government's Trillion-Dollar Student Loan Office Is a Train Wreck
WASHINGTON — The raw numbers are staggering: 45 million Americans owe $1.56 trillion in student loan debt, more than all of the credit card or auto-loan debt combined. The bulk of that student debt, more than $1.1 trillion, is in the hands of Uncle Sam. Specifically, a little-known office within …
Read More »Howard Schultz: America's New Banality Supervillain
Scientists may someday find the edge of the universe, but there is no end to the delusional self-regard of America’s one-percenters, as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz proved this week. Sunday night on 60 Minutes, Schultz announced he was considering a run for president as an independent. The Twitter reaction …
Read More »Why We Need Mexico
People say the American mall is dying — but if so, someone forgot to tell La Plaza Mall. La Plaza is the largest shopping center in McAllen, Texas, a mid-size city on the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s the sort of establishment you’d find in any city or suburb — Foot Locker, …
Read More »Yes, Bernie Should Run
It had the vibe of a campaign event, even if it wasn’t one. A few hundred of America’s highest-profile liberal politicians, academics and journalists, many of them old friends — a “progressive Bar Mitzvah,” as one friend jokingly put it — met on a crisp Thursday night in late November …
Read More »When ICE Comes to Town
A lma woke before 6 a.m. She dressed quickly, roused her four children and packed a lunch. It was a chilly spring morning, a Thursday. Light bloomed across the low green hills of east Tennessee as she drove past tomato fields and cow pastures and old cemetery plots until she …
Read More »The Health Department's Christian Crusade
It was dusk on a Friday in March 2017, and the women’s health clinic in San Antonio was mostly deserted, except for a nurse finishing some end-of-the-week paperwork, when the phone rang. The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Dr. Meyerstein with the Office of …
Read More »The Latest on the Fight Inside the Capitol to Protect Robert Mueller
Last weekend, President Trump fired off a series of angry tweets labeling the ongoing independent investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia as a “Witch Hunt” while shifting the blame onto his former political opponent, Hillary Clinton. Those tweets have reverberated through the Capitol in the days since. “I thought …
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