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Gabrielle Gurley

Gabrielle Gurley is The American Prospect’s deputy editor. Her Twitter is @gurleygg, and her email is ggurley@prospect.org.

Recent Articles

Trump’s Crash Course in the African American Experience

The Congressional Black Caucus got back to basics when they met with the president. But what they may get out of the encounter remains murky.

Gabrielle GurleyMar 31, 2017
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik Members of the Congressional Black Caucus hold their report, "We Have a Lot to Lose," after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House. T he Congressional Black Caucus leadership team did not go to the White House to talk about urban carnage or April Ryan. Instead, over the course of more than a half-hour with the 45th president of the United States, they laid out the full spectrum of issues facing Africans Americans and what he could do about them—if he wanted to get past posturing. To get Trump to focus like a laser, they reminded him of his time campaign trail speaking to adoring throngs of white people in small places with few black faces. He used to boast that Democratic candidates courted the black vote only to turn their backs on African Americans until the next election: Why not vote for him? “What do you have to lose?" he famously asked. So the CBC presented Trump with a new report , “We Have a Lot to Lose.” The CBC regularly sends an agenda...

The Perils of P3s

A new Economic Policy Institute report finds that public-private partnerships are “economic snake oil.” Exhibit A is North Carolina’s Interstate 77 project.

Gabrielle GurleyMar 24, 2017
Stockr/Shutterstock
Stockr/Shutterstock T he next big thing in American infrastructure investment is public-private partnerships. Although private companies have long played a key role in designing and constructing public projects, federal and state officials increasingly view the private sector as the dollars-and-cents answer to digging out of the rubble of failing highways, bridges, and transit. Both President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan tout them as one way to reduce the use of public monies in their as-yet-to-be-detailed infrastructure dreamscapes. Public-private partnerships may indeed provide the dollars that fearful politicians are unable to pry from the pockets of their tax-averse constituents. But P3s, as they are known in the infrastructure sector, are more complex than they appear to people who just want to get where they’re going. In a new Economic Policy Institute report, “ No Free Bridge ,” researcher Hunter Blair shows just why these partnerships are far from a “eureka” moment...

Taking a Scalpel to Medicaid

Republican claims of their bill's great flexibility for the states are a sham cover for disabling cuts.

Gabrielle Gurley | March 20, 2017

DOD and EPA Go Mano a Mano on Climate Change

While Scott Pruitt dithers over whether humans have caused climate change, James Mattis underlines it as a threat to national security.

Gabrielle GurleyMar 17, 2017
Chris Kleponis/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Chris Kleponis/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images Secretary of Defense James Mattis speaks to members of the military before President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017. A wkward is one way to describe having two men with polar opposite views on an issue advise the president of the United States. Secretary of Defense James Mattis views climate change as a national security threat; Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt asserts that human activity is not a primary contributor to a warming planet. One man has expressed concerns about how his department and the country will meet the threat; the other appears poised to virtually erase the agency tasked with ameliorating its effects. In this science-phobic administration, climate change is a nuisance to be ignored. But President Trump, a climate change denier, and his EPA chief, a fossil fuels proponent, may have met their match in Mattis and the Pentagon. In 1970, Richard Nixon...

Mayors See Right Through the American Health Care Act

The Republicans’ bill is not exactly a “beautiful picture” for cities.

Gabrielle GurleyMar 10, 2017
(Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
(Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite) House Speaker Paul Ryan makes his case on March 9 for the GOP's repeal-and-replace plan for the Affordable Care Act. I t’s difficult to underestimate the relief provided by the Affordable Care Act to American cities and their mayors. Mayors, after all, hear about local health issues from everyone—from first responders and uninsured constituents to doctors and hospital executives. As the mayors see it, Obamacare has reduced the numbers of uninsured people using hospital emergency rooms, provided the benefits of 21st-century medicine to people who never had access to it, and created thousands of jobs in metropolitan regions. Unlike Republican members of Congress, mayors do not have luxury of fighting ideological cage matches with politicians of different persuasions until they can cudgel them into submission with an ill-advised, hastily crafted bill to replace reforms pulled together by a Democratic African American president. If Obamacare had been...

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