How Illinois Became an Abortion-Rights Haven

On a recent Friday night, Janeen Lee sat at her round dining-room table on Chicago’s South Side, scanned her laptop, and chose a name from a short list. Lee is a volunteer for the Chicago Abortion Fund, which, since its founding, in 1985, has helped low-income people pay for abortions. She reached a woman, about…

By JohnValbyNation July 23, 2019 0

The Audio App That’s Transforming Erotica

Not long ago, my co-worker Josh Rothman and I each listened to several hours of audio erotica—a broad swath of podcasts and such—as research for a proposed story about “sexy self-care.” Erotic podcasts, like many genres of podcast, have been booming in recent years, and, in theory, it was a fun story idea. Josh likes…

By JohnValbyNation July 22, 2019 0

Conservative Nationalism Is Trumpism for Intellectuals

Click:personalized dog cake topper On the final night of this past week’s National Conservatism Conference, Senator Josh Hawley—a graduate of Stanford and Yale and a former instructor at an English private school—warned the attendees gathered in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Washington, D.C., about the threat of élite cosmopolitanism. “The politics of those…

By JohnValbyNation July 22, 2019 0

Between the Moon and Woodstock

Anyone old enough to remember the moon landing, fifty years ago today, is also old enough to remember what was said about the moon landing while it was happening. At the time—the very height of the Vietnam War, when the establishment that had sent up the rocket faced a kind of daily full-court-press rebellion, from…

By JohnValbyNation July 21, 2019 0

Why Mark Sanford Might Challenge Donald Trump

In 2009, Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican, was probably the best-known governor in America. Sanford, who served in the House of Representatives before winning the governorship, was in his second term when his staff couldn’t reach him or determine his whereabouts for several days. Sanford had said that he would be hiking the Appalachian…

By JohnValbyNation July 21, 2019 0

There Is Nothing Strategic About Trump’s Racism

White House reporters have been looking into the circumstances surrounding Donald Trump’s hateful tweetstorm from last weekend, which targeted four Democratic congresswomen, and their findings are clear: “This wasn’t a planned strike, according to one person familiar with the matter,” the Wall Street Journal’s Michael C. Bender reported. “The President posted his message a few…

By JohnValbyNation July 21, 2019 0