Marc Reisner’s 1986 book demonstrates how a hypertrophic judiciary combines with America’s deadlocked legislature to make vast swaths of Western water policy dependent on 19th-century legal norms.
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Republicans Scramble for Health Care Ideas as Obamacare Deadline Looms
Next week, massive premium increases get locked in. The GOP has shown no interest in stopping it, or preventing any other increases in health care costs.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Trump’s Obamacare Plan Is Still Not Great
The Republican plan to more than double premiums is gone, but the insurance will get worse, and the poor will pay more.
Posted inLaw and Justice
The Right-Wing Legal Movement Made Trump a King
John Roberts turned the presidency into a kingship, and the first president to govern under this ruling has compressed a solid millennium or two of monarchical misrule into a mere ten months.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement
The GOP is too wedded to free markets and scornful of the welfare state to ever make anything in health care work.
Posted inLaw and Justice
How on Earth Are We Just Now Hearing About Trump’s ‘Hours’ With an Epstein Victim?
The recent release of more emails is only the latest in about 10,000 stories implicating Donald Trump in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses. What were the Justice Department and congressional Democrats doing with the information all this time?
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
OpenAI Is Maneuvering for a Government Bailout
For artificial intelligence to ever pencil out, some truly enormous revenue streams will be required. And if you need trillions of dollars for data centers forever, there’s only one entity to turn to: Uncle Sam.
Posted inPolitics
Chuck Schumer Is Not Fit to Lead the Democratic Party
The Senate leader doesn’t just betray his own party, he’s also terrible at leading it. In Trump’s second term, facing a full-on authoritarian attack on America’s democracy and constitutional structure, Schumer is simply incapable of mounting a determined resistance.
Posted inPolitics
America’s Dumbest Billionaires Fail to Stop Zohran Mamdani
It’s encouraging on many levels: New York City didn’t submit to a campaign of flagrant bigotry from disgraced two-time loser Andrew Cuomo, and Americans, particularly young ones, can still be politically inspired by a good candidate with a good message.
Posted inPolitics
The Republican Plot to Turn Pennsylvania Into Hungary
Judicial retention elections are normally pretty sleepy, but the Pennsylvania Republican Party, led by right-wing megadonor Jeff Yass, who is also the richest person in the state, is conducting an all-out effort to get rid of three Democrats on the state Supreme Court.