Category: Politics

Fauci on What COVID Could Look Like One Year From Now

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It was bad enough that the Omicron variant shattered hopes of a normal holiday season, or at least what passes for normal in year two of the pandemic. Now it feels like we’re fated to live with COVID-19 in perpetuity, forever worried that when one variant fades, another will quickly take its place, that we’ll never, once and for all, throw out our face masks. Anthony Fauci is more upbeat. No, we won’t wipe out the coronavirus, but we will reach a point where it’s tamed, he told me in…

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What Joe Manchin’s ‘No’ Means for Biden’s Agenda

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The Build Back Better Act is dead. Long live the Build Back Better Act? With a few short sentences on Fox News, Senator Joe Manchin today dashed the dreams of Democrats by coming out firmly against President Joe Biden’s signature legislative proposal. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said of the $ 1.75 trillion bill that the House passed last month. His opposition after months of negotiations adds to a hellish winter that followed a brutal autumn for Biden, who is presiding over yet another resurgence…

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Why America Can’t Test Like Europe

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Except for maybe pasta and work-life balance, no topic makes liberal Americans wish they were European more than health care. So when President Joe Biden announced a plan earlier this month mandating that private insurers reimburse people for rapid coronavirus tests that they take at home, some commentators cried out that his plan was not enough. The new rule won’t help everyone, and getting reimbursement will still take legwork, critics crowed—and plus, the Europeans have a better solution! One of the biggest holes in Biden’s new plan is that it…

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The Coronavirus Turned a Rural County Into a Battleground for Millionaires

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Joni Reynolds often wonders how things in Gunnison County got so out of hand. How did she, the top health official of a sparsely populated county deep in the Rocky Mountains, end up the target of national fury, and frightened enough to sleep with a gun on her nightstand? Joni and her husband, Dennis, moved to Gunnison in 2015 to be closer to nature: the smooth waters of the Blue Mesa Reservoir; the craggy, snow-capped peaks of the Rockies; and the yellow aspens dotting the landscape in autumn. The 61-year-old…

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Why Mitch McConnell Caved Again

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For the second time this fall, the Senate’s proud king of obstruction is caving to the Democrats. Two months ago today, Mitch McConnell sent President Joe Biden a letter containing a warning so important that he repeated it three times in five paragraphs. The Senate Republican leader vowed that he would “not be a party to any future effort” to help Democrats lift the debt ceiling—a necessary step that Congress must take to avoid an economically damaging default. The two-page missive was the closest that the famously taciturn McConnell gets…

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The Republican Congresswoman Taking on Lauren Boebert

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In a world where elected Republicans were not terrified of the most extreme elements of their base, the response to Representative Lauren Boebert’s open Islamophobia would have been swift public condemnation. We do not live in that world. Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Republicans, has not denounced Boebert’s comments comparing Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to a suicide bomber. He knows that scolding her could anger the base, divide his caucus, and threaten his dream of someday being crowned speaker of the House. Other congressional Republicans recognize this…

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