At the height of American central authority, a botched response has revealed itself amidst the coronavirus pandemic. The lacking federal response contrasts action states, corporations and the public have taken to band together to “flatten the curve” and save lives. In a hyper-nationalized media environment it can be easy to mistake subnational action as a mere contingency to federal inaction. The states are the heart of American democracy. Contrary to the country’s domestic detractors, federalism is not the holdover relic from the union’s founding, nor ought it be an exclusively conservative value especially in our current moment. Federalism today is…

One of the distinct features of the Trump presidency is its collision with long-held pretenses, particularly when it comes to the executive’s influence over job creation and the national economy. A telling example was on display last month when Trump visited Austin to tour the re-opening of an Apple manufacturing plant with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Afterward, Trump took to Twitter to claim personal credit for the plant, attributing it to his campaign to return jobs to the United States.

“Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America. Today…

Since 1981, and counting through to January 2021, Republicans will have held the United States Senate for two years longer while Democrats will have enjoyed longer and larger majorities. Democrats will also have been the only party to not once, but twice, earn filibuster-proof supermajorities since Senate rules were revised in 1975. Yet, there’s a perception among some progressives that despite having dominated the chamber nine years ago, Democrats have the deck stacked against them.

The line adopted by mainstream outlets in near unison has been that Republicans have a “structural advantage” in the Senate. Critics posit that since ostensibly…

Discord between Americans is already competently being sown by national media outlets across racial, gender and class lines. Belonging to one or another either places one on the right or wrong side of history. Another dividing line has become age. A New York Times article published recently claims the beginning of a generational conflict, but that exists to no discernibly greater extent than the past.

The article represents an approach to invoking generational differences and centers around “Ok boomer”, a retort members of Generation-Z and millennials have deployed against baby boomers who have derided younger generations. One person is selling…

There’s a special arrogance that comes with founding, for the first time in human history, a nation based on the premise that for thousands of years civilization had it wrong about the polity’s relationship with authority. What we today conceive of as rights were all but non-sequiturs to a time where nobody even knew they could proclaim the right to rights that limited authority. In smaller words, nobody knew how this shit was going to turn out. …

Is the concentration of people in a handful of states a new phenomenon that’s attributed to mass urbanization over the course of the last few decades? Easily accessible U.S. Census data says it’s been around for a while.

As you’ll see in the chart below, since practically the founding of the country, two-thirds of the country has lived in 30 percent of the states and about half have lived in 20 percent of the states. Though this distribution isn’t as extreme as the 80–20 Pareto principle, it is yet another example of an organic occurrence.

Currently, I’m researching the historical…

Bloomberg published a story Thursday going into a little bit more detail about the sorts of middle class tax hikes would be required to fund the Medicare-for-all plan Bernie Sanders’ has been touting since his last presidential run. Those middle-class tax hikes would be in addition to tax hikes on the wealthy and an increase of the payroll tax from 15 percent to 45 percent.

Though Sanders has not explicitly called for a payroll tax hike, it’s nearly impossible to see how Medicare-for-all finds funding apart from tripling the income and corporate tax rate for virtually every tax bracket.

The…

One of the things that will be different about this Democratic primary is its coverage in a national news environment that is more fragmented, more polarized, more driven by identity politics, more to blame than the president for the nation’s division — and ultimately less reflective of the public than it was three years ago. There’s no candidacy that may better highlight the rift between the media’s portrayal of the electorate and the actual electorate than that of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Last week, the former vice president’s announcement to unseat Donald Trump squarely focused on American values, quoting that…