Month: July 2019

Following the Independence Day break, the political world is digesting three bits of positive economic news for the Trump Administration. On July 1st, the current economic expansion became the longest since the federal government started collecting comprehensive economic statistics—a run of ten years and one month. Early last week, the stock market hit a new…

Ari Aster is a writer and director of cult movies—his two features, “Hereditary,” from 2018, and “Midsommar,” which opened last week, are both grotesque and gory dramas about cults. “Hereditary” showed a family’s destruction by an ancient curse, which turned a young suburban man into a mystical cult’s unwilling king. “Midsommar” is the story of…

Of course, it was Megan Rapinoe who scored the game-winning goal in the United States’ 2–0 victory over the Netherlands, in the final of the World Cup. And of course she did it in the way that she did: taking a penalty kick in the sixty-first minute, with all the attention and pressure of the…

Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments regarding the Trump Administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, Noel Francisco, the Solicitor General, warned the Justices that a ruling against the government would open the door to “any group in the country to knock off any question on the census if…

The unwritten brand promise of professional tennis is that, for its largest events, it alone among sports brings together men and women at the same venue, at the same time, to play the same game. Does it do enough, as a business, to reinforce this value proposition? It does not. In too many of its…

Did I rob the bank? Sure. But what about the bank? Banks commit white-collar crimes all the time—in this case, the crime of having money that I wanted. So that’s on them. It’s called entrapment, and there is a movie with that title where Catherine Zeta-Jones walks through lasers. Incidentally, she does that to commit…

In the best of all possible worlds, you’re reading this while vacationing in some exotic or faraway locale. If you’re not, we’ve got the next best thing: a collection of pieces that explore the simple pleasures of summer travel. In “My Repertoire,” Calvin Trillin describes his culinary adventures in Nova Scotia. In “Dickens in Eden,”…

Of course, it was Megan Rapinoe who scored the game-winning goal in the United States’ 2–0 victory over the Netherlands, in the final of the World Cup. And of course she did it in the way that she did: taking a penalty kick in the sixty-first minute, with all the attention and pressure of the…

Arriving early at the Mall for Donald Trump’s “Salute to America” event on Independence Day, I saw no tanks. But I did see, everywhere, the face of John F. Kennedy, Jr.—on hand fans, on signs, and, in one instance, as a cutout fixed to the back of a chair. The chair belonged to a dark…

Donald Trump’s Fourth of July address was most remarkable for the things it did not contain. Immediately afterward, commentators noted that Trump didn’t use the opportunity to attack the Democratic Party, to issue explicit campaign slogans, or, it would appear, make any impromptu additions (with the possible exception of the claim that American troops commandeered…