November 21, 2024
Abortion as a Non-issue: The Post-prohibition Precedent
To say that the Kamala Harris campaign bet heavily on the issue of abortion rights tilting the election is understatement. Recall that she pledged to end the Senate filibuster rule specifically to pass a national right to abortion. “We should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need…
March 6, 2024
Caitlin Clark and Civil Society
When Larry Bird won his first National Basketball Association championship with the Boston Celtics in 1982, he made one of the best locker room interview comments ever. Between puffs of a victory cigar, he said, “This one’s for Terre Haute.” He was literally referring to the Indiana city which had supported his Indiana State college team—but…
September 8, 2023
Is Vote Dilution Necessarily Bad?
There really is no obvious way to defend the congressional district map drawn by the Alabama state legislature—and struck down by a federal court for unconstitutionally diluting the African-American vote in that state. More than 25 percent of Alabama’s population is black, yet only one of its seven members of Congress is. At the same…
August 14, 2023
Tracking Plans to Make Pandemic Benefit Expansions Permanent
In 2008, former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel famously said what has come to be known as Rahm’s rule: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” It’s clear that…
August 14, 2023
The Narcissism of Small Diffidences
Catherine, a mother living in the New York City suburbs, has a son who flunked out of college. Her story is one of the cautionary tales offered up in Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It. Catherine left the workforce to raise her two children. The…