Society

Earlier this week, which is to say Sunday night, the New York Times dropped a bombshell, an almost-October-surprise just a couple days too early: President Trump’s taxes. Long a white whale of political journalism, the documents obtained by the Times showed that, among other things, Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016,…

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand, and it’s very clear that the Federal Communications Commission under Donald Trump doesn’t want to understand its failure to make affordable broadband available to all Americans. During a pandemic when Americans are forced to work, learn, and get their health care online, the FCC’s refusal to accurately…

But Weissmann finds himself disillusioned almost immediately—a moment he recounts in the book’s opening chapter as he reads Barr’s “summary” of the full Mueller report, frantically searching the attorney general’s letter on a Sunday afternoon for the scorching material that he knows is inside the report. “I could not fathom that our work over the…

I’ve got a new phrase for you, if you’d like to leave people aghast this spooky season: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in flayed human skin. These grisliest of tomes are the subject of Megan Rosenbloom’s (non-anthropodermic) book Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human…

Not so long ago, the US tech industry was the global leader not only in imagining a better tomorrow but actually building it. It brought people closer together, broke down old power structures, and empowered individuals to understand the world in entirely new ways. But in time, the titans of the industry—Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft,…

The Czech incident made it clear to Zaidenberg that his fears were justified. Israel was in the process of locking down, and he knew he would soon have a lot of time on his hands. He also knew his cybersecurity skills could help prevent attacks like the one in the Czech Republic. After all, he…

The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden kicks off Tuesday, September 29, from Cleveland. With only 36 days until Election Day, it’s the first chance to see the two nominees square off on a range of issues. The timing is auspicious: In the past few days, Trump nominated conservative judge Amy Coney…

That could not be more different than the current situation with Covid-19—which, if trends don’t change, will be the third-leading cause of death in the US by the end of the year, behind only heart disease and cancer. Though the federal government is putting effort behind vaccine development with Operation Warp Speed, there is still…

We’ve known it since the early days of the pandemic: To stop the spread of Covid-19, we need more and better testing. But with the crisis marching toward what could be a very dark winter, this old and sensible idea has lately been recast as a fantasy solution. If our Covid tests were only cheap…

With the specter of 2016 Russian meddling still looming, and a global pandemic ravaging the United States, the 2020 election season has been particularly fraught. Now with less than six weeks to go until Election Day, US intelligence officials have gotten more vocal about the potential threats they’re watching most closely. Much of that remains…