The unprecedented criminal trial of a former and possibly future president may have ended in the press with a bang. But in the polls, Donald Trump’s criminal conviction of 34 counts related to hush money payments has landed with a thud. Despite a media-constructed narrative that President Joe Biden was on the cusp of a […]
Great live performances reveal things in music that hide within the recorded version: You aren’t washing dishes at a concert. In those reality-stopping moments when the art being created in front of you is compelling enough, you’ll forget you even possess a smartphone. Now that it’s music festival season, as a resident of Brooklyn, the […]
The June 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has only increased the intensity surrounding the abortion debate. The ruling did not create a life-affirming culture overnight. But this was not the goal. Righting a legal and moral wrong was necessary. The abortion question is now in the hands of state […]
Everyone knows that Johannes Gutenberg, he of the Gutenberg Bible, invented the movable-type printing press, suddenly making the mass production of books possible and, therefore, books themselves affordable for nearly all. But hardly anyone thinks about all the technological developments and all the stages of human inventiveness that made possible those 180-odd copies of the […]
NBA Hall of Fame center Bill Walton, who died of colon cancer last month, was the best player in the world at his peak. As described in David Halberstam’s book The Breaks of the Game, a merely somewhat healthy Walton led the Portland Trail Blazers to an NBA championship in 1977, defeating fellow former all-everything […]
F. Scott Fitzgerald told us that the very rich are different from you and me. The main character of Teddy Wayne’s sixth novel, who gains admittance to a rarefied realm of the super-wealthy near Cape Cod, is acutely aware of how far he stands apart from those sitting pretty. But instead of keeping his distance, […]
When Naomi Goldberg began working for the Movement Advancement Project, same-sex couples were unable to legally marry in more than half of states — including her home state of California — and LGBTQ Americans were barred from serving openly in the military. Now the nonprofit think tank’s executive director, Goldberg is fighting to protect LGBTQ rights secured...
The education industry is bracing for potential job cuts and reduced raises as a major batch of coronavirus pandemic funding is set to dry up. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grants, which will end in September, have been used to assist students with the mental health and test score problems that came...
The race to become next Senate Republican leader is heating up as GOP senators are divided over how to counter Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) messaging offensive on women’s reproductive rights, a top issue in the 2024 election. The debate over floor strategy has become an opportunity for the GOP senators running to replace...
President Biden lost more than half a million voters to the “uncommitted” movement in this year’s Democratic primaries, an effort that has netted 30 delegates across five states that has underscored frustration within his own party over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. With this week marking the last Democratic primaries in U.S. states for...