The Case Against Biden: Joe Biden's Politics of Panic
The former vice president has a long history of reckless responses to the menaces du jour.
November 2020
The Case Against Trump: Donald Trump Is an Enemy of Freedom
When it comes to limiting the size and scope of government and protecting individual liberties, America's 45th president has been actively malign.
Features
Political Ignorance Is Bliss
Could paying less attention to politics be better for you, your relationships, and society?
Debt Reckoning
After years of federal fiscal recklessness, is Washington's bill finally coming due?
Interview
'This Building Has Caused More Problems Than It Solved'
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on schooling during COVID-19, the future of higher ed, and why her cabinet department probably shouldn't exist at all
Topics
Belarus Rises Up
Citizens packed the streets to demand that President Alexander Lukashenko step down.
The Federal Death Penalty Returns
State-level executions have been on the decline since 2000, but the federal government recently got back in the business of executing prisoners.
Trump's Student Visa Disaster
There are 1.2 million foreign students in the United States, and ICE keeps leaving them in the lurch, threatening to kick them out (and then rescinding that guidance).
Meat Bills Are on the Menu in Congress
America's meat supply has been hammered by COVID-19 outbreaks at many of the nation's largest meat processing plants, but Congress can solve this by reducing onerous regulations.
Rapid Home COVID-19 Tests Are the Best Path to a New Normal. They're Illegal.
Delivering rapid at-home testing kits to 330 million Americans is "something we can actually do at warp speed."
A Plague of Pandemic Restrictions Builds Herd Immunity to Arbitrary Rules
Expect widespread cynicism toward official dictates to linger after the virus is history.
Be Patient: We Might Not Know Who Won the Election Right Away
Mail-in ballots typically take days or sometimes weeks to be counted, so don't expect results on Election Night this year.
Welcome to the New World Civilization
Even as specific states or regions rise and fade in prominence, their inhabitants continue to enjoy the benefits of their civilization's cumulative experience and knowledge.
Is the Senate Filibuster a 'Jim Crow Relic'?
The filibuster is not inherently a tool of oppression simply because segregationist politicians in the 1950s and '60s found it useful.
PPParty Time!
Turns out some of the federal government's PPP loans ended up going to people who didn't need them quite as badly.
Shrooms Are on the D.C. Ballot
The reformers who canvassed for signatures for the initiative say they're optimistic it will pass despite objections from Congress, which controls D.C. spending.
This Judge Is Wrong About Economic Liberty and the Constitution
Perhaps Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht ought to read more history, starting with the speeches of the late Rep. John Bingham.
The Feds Invade Portland
The Trump administration deployed more than 100 federal law enforcement officers to Portland to quell weeks of unrest. The administration claimed it was simply protecting a federal courthouse.
Culture
The Games Must Go On
COVID-19 upended the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, and MLB. How the professional sports leagues responded offers a glimpse into our future.
Books
Salvaging Secession
The Founders understood union as a strategic necessity, not a moral imperative.
The Long, Dark History of Family Separations
How politicians used the drug war and the welfare state to break up black and Native American families
The Weird Beauty of Suburbia
How can a place that we're intimately familiar with—more than half of America lives in the suburbs—be so unknowable?
Reviews
Guns and Control
San Francisco writer Guy Smith finds little evidence that the availability of firearms explains differences in suicide and homicide rates.
Prison by Any Other Name
State involvement in people's lives—even "for their own good"—ends up becoming a backdoor way of policing and control.
Perry Mason
Whether the state is merely incompetent or actively corrupt, the show suggests the burdens of its failures fall primarily on the poor and the vulnerable.
Welfare for the Rich
The book details how the wealthy use the power of the state to snatch your money for their farms, stadiums, banks, real estate developments, and more.
Apocalypse Never
The book argues that rising prosperity and increasing technological prowess will ameliorate or reverse most deleterious environmental trends.
Welcome to Chechnya
The documentary follows the harrowing efforts of activists running what is essentially a modern underground railroad to help at-risk gay citizens flee the country.
ETC.
The New York Times' Jia Lynn Yang on the Ebb and Flow of Immigration
From the founding up until 1882, U.S. immigration policy was quite open. In her new book, Yang details how that changed over time.
Brickbats: November 2020
News of politicians, police, and bureaucrats behaving badly from around the world
