Eighty years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered one of the most absurd lines in a presidential inaugural address, assuring the war-weary nation that “the great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.” In fact, history has no sides or direction, and societies can both improve and decay. With mismanagement […]

Many historians date the (Second) Red Scare to 75 years ago this year. On Feb. 9, 1950, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy made his first anti-communist speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, now often known as the “Enemies From Within” speech. Days before, on Jan. 26, Rep. Richard M. Nixon had reported to the House on “The […]

Few TV offerings are trickier than what screenwriters call a “puzzle box” in its second season. Free of the inaugural run’s expository constraints, such a program can map exciting new territory but risks losing sight of its native shores. Characters once consigned to the background can step forward, but whether audiences will like them is […]

If the word “union” conjures up an image of a man in a hard hat reporting for duty to an assembly line, your understanding of how organized labor has evolved over the past 50 years is a little out of date. The typical union worker today, according to the latest report from the Bureau of […]

The Democratic Party and its allies in news media and the executive branch of the federal government are celebrating the White House Office of Management and Budget rescinding a memorandum intended to align federal spending with President Donald Trump’s executive orders. But the celebrations are likely to prove short-lived. Trump’s effort to halt federal spending […]

President Trump is continuing to shake things up in his first 100 days and Fox News has learned that he has told high ranking FBI officials to resign or lose their jobs.

A watchdog has challenged the Trump Justice Department's decision to erase the government's main database of Jan. 6 defendants from the web, saying it amounted to an illegal destruction of an official record.

The classics are having a moment. Not that they’ve ever fallen fully out of favor. But like any enduring cultural staple (Shakespeare, beards, long hairstyles) their fortunes wax and wane. Right now, they’re rising. Christopher Nolan announced that his next film, the follow-up to the blockbuster Oscar-winner Oppenheimer, will be an adaptation of the Odyssey. […]

When you get older, your life naturally splits into separate social compartments. You have your family compartment and your work compartment. Your friends are segmented into separate categories: old friends, college friends, and forgot-how-we-became-friends friends. That sort of thing.  Most of us keep all of these social silos in separate group text chats. That’s the […]

For my entire conscious life, being a fan of the team known sequentially as the Redskins, the Washington Football Team, or the Commanders was cosmic punishment. Being a supporter of this team meant meditating on what communal sin or inner flaw one’s investment of time and emotion was paying for. Each failed season raised the […]