Before the Next Crisis

Joelene Pynnonen Independent Review of Books
This study of the Covid-19 pandemic looks for ways that public health officials and political figures can lessen the negative impacts of similar events in the future.

Shutdown Deal Kills Food Safety Rules

Freddy Brewster and Luke Goldstein The Lever
After lobbyists spent big on the Trump administration and Democratic defectors, the government funding bill cut food-contamination rules and limited ultraprocessed-food research.

Teaching at Trump’s Version of Columbia

Helen Benedict LA Progressive
The university at large has sold out our students. But there are hundreds of faculty on this campus dedicated to the right of our students to learn, debate, protest, research, and report without fear.

There Is No Cease-Fire in the West Bank

Mairav Zonszein The New York Times
The United Nations reported that this October — peak olive harvest season in the West Bank — saw the highest number of settler attacks in the area since it began documenting them in 2006. Over 260 attacks were recorded, an average of eight per day.

Bugonia Is Yorgos Lanthimos at His Best

Eileen Jones Jacobin
In Bugonia, Emma Stone plays a kidnapped pharmaceutical CEO trying to convince her deranged abductors that she’s not a sinister alien in disguise. As a portrait of our political impasse, it’s a shocking, wild ride with an ending you won’t see coming.

Democrats Caved in the Shutdown Fight. Unions Let Them.

Eric Blanc Jacobin
The government shutdown was a test showing where progressive forces are strong and where they’re weak. The results are in after last night’s Democratic capitulation to the GOP: most top union leaders are failing to meet the moment.