Op-Ed

November 18, 2021 – Today, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt granted clemency to Julius Jones, a Black man who was scheduled to be executed by the state this afternoon for a murder conviction that is riddled with doubt. While Gov. Stitt halted Mr. Jones’ execution, he did so by commuting Mr. Jones’s sentence to life without […]

November 15, 2021 – On Monday Moscow Standard Time, the International Space Station (ISS) Flight Control team was notified of indications of a satellite breakup that may create sufficient debris to pose a conjunction threat to the station. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson released the following statement about the incident: “Earlier today, due to the debris […]

November 15, 2021 – Following the conclusion of COP26 in Glasgow, The Elders express their deep disappointment that world leaders have not yet had the courage to head off the worst impacts of the climate crisis.  The Elders call on the UN Secretary-General to take a direct lead in maintaining relentless pressure on the worst-performing states, until they do their part to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Such leadership should draw on his admirable new […]

This morning, oral arguments start for our lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to prematurely strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections in the contiguous United States. The legal hearing is happening today in federal district court in Oakland, California—but the results of our lawsuit could have far-ranging implications for wolves. The […]

There are many ways in which the United States is not one country. I’m not referring to red states versus blue states, or racial or ethnic divisions. What I mean is that the United States, where countless corrupt billionaires and dictators have stashed their loot, is not a single tax haven, but many separate tax […]

Washington, DC, November 9, 2021 – Politico previews a National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) polling memo that promises that Republicans will once again run hard on immigration in the 2022 midterms. Nativism, along with stoking fears over Critical Race Theory and “defund the police,” represent the GOP’s latest incarnation of the “Southern Strategy. For more […]

WASHINGTON — On Friday, the House of Representatives passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (or “IIJA”), a $1.2-trillion deal that the Senate passed in August. The bill touches on a wide range of spending projects and infrastructure-policy priorities, including more than $40 billion for broadband deployment and $14.2 billion for broadband-affordability measures. That affordability […]

It was called “Striketober.” While politicians in Washington bickered over infrastructure, jobs, and the social safety net, unionized workers across the heartland went on strike to get their fair share directly. At one point in October, over 90,000 unionized workers issued strike authorizations — including 10,000 John Deere United Auto Workers (UAW) members, 37,000 nurses […]

November 3, 2021 – Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.” Today, America has not one, but six guests in our national home babbling about […]

November 3, 2021 – Every American deserves a voice in our elections, but all but one Senate Republican revealed again today that they prefer to pick and choose who can vote and who cannot in order to gain partisan advantage. Today’s Senate vote was more than eight years in the making after the Supreme Court […]

November 2, 2021 – EPI director of research Josh Bivens took to Twitter to refute critics’ most recent claim that the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) is only “fully paid for” due to accounting gimmicks. The claim, Bivens stresses, is “bad economics,” adding that BBBA is indeed fully paid for. Read the full Twitter thread here.  […]

November 1, 2021 – President Biden hoped to go to the international climate summit in Glasgow with momentum behind him. He wanted to reestablish US credibility with concrete progress on climate change. Instead, the ability of the US to take action on climate change is shrouded in doubt.  Biden  suffered an embarrassing defeat at the […]

November 1, 2021 – Dear Prime Minister Johnson, I want to thank you and to thank COP President Alok Sharma for your hospitality, your leadership, and your tireless efforts in the preparation of this COP. Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, The six years since the Paris Climate Agreement have been the six hottest […]

Washington, DC, October 28, 2021 – Yesterday, the Biden administration issued the third in a series of memoranda updating and improving civil immigration enforcement guidelines. The new agency-wide guidance, entitled Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas, sets policy with respect to ICE and CBP enforcement actions in or near areas what previously […]

October 19, 2021 – Excuse me but I have to vent. Three House Democrats and one Democratic senator are now blocking a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Medicare is such a big purchaser of drugs that it has the bargaining leverage to cut drug prices for everyone — if allowed to do so. […]

The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their names can live on in granite forever. At […]

October 7, 2021 – A long time ago, in another galaxy far far away . . . Dear Galactic Governance Collaborative, Those of us who colonized Planet X now find ourselves in dangerous straits. We request urgent assistance due to escalating environmental instability.  You’re thinking  it’s not easy to screw up an entire planet. You’re […]

October 8, 2021 – The U.S. added just 194,000 jobs in September, down from the 366,000 added in August and far below the million-plus in July (before the Delta variant took hold). This is being described in the media as a disappointment or a problem, but a closer look reveals something quite different.  We’re still […]

In a political system beset by many stupid and destructive institutions, the statutory limit on federal debt might be the worst. The debt limit: Measures no coherent economic value. The measure of debt it targets is not inflation-adjusted, would perversely make the debt situation look worse if there was a reform to Social Security that closed that program’s long-run actuarial imbalance, […]

Months of bad-faith efforts to overturn the results of 2020’s democratically-held election by hunting for nonexistent discrepancies in Maricopa County, Arizona, have finally come to an end, The Arizona Republic reports. The report proves what we have known all along: there was no widespread voter fraud, Donald Trump lost the election, and Joe Biden won […]