National
Conflicted Interests: Corporate Prosecution and the Endowment
On the morning of April 25th, Steven Donziger drove to a halfway house in Manhattan to finalize his release papers. Upon his arrival, corrections employees used heavy-duty scissors to cut off the bulky plastic tracking anklet from his blue-jean clad…
In the Sacklers’ Backyard: The Future of Connecticut’s Opioid Epidemic Response
Liz Fitzgerald had been waiting for this. It was March 10th, 2022, and she suddenly found herself speaking before the family that had upended her life and robbed her of two children. Fitzgerald has lost two sons to opioid addiction….
Heating Up: Miami’s Tech Renaissance Takes Off
Delian Asparouhov was an unlikely origin for an unlikely movement. An MIT dropout, he’s worked for a little over three years at the venture capital firm Founders Fund, led by Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois—two deities of the tech world….
The Price of Dissent: National Security Whistleblower Prosecutions in the Obama Administration
John Kiriakou bends over the webcam. He wears a black sweater that matches the top of his salt-and-pepper hair and the outline of his wide glasses. His manner is affable, but he speaks with the intensity that one might expect of a man who would risk imprisonment to leak state secrets to the press.
Polarized Courts: The Myth of Fairness in Judicial Elections
Although justices technically run as nonpartisans in the Wisconsin elections, the last two decades have seen an intense politicization of the state’s high court that threatens their independence.
A Red State Goes Green: Nebraska’s Utilities Plan to Decarbonize
In 2019, as the U.S. experienced its wettest spring on record, the Mississippi River and its tributaries overran their banks. One million acres of farmland flooded — an area the size of Rhode Island. In Nebraska alone, the unprecedented rainfall killed three residents, drowned thousands of cows and pigs, and caused over $1 billion in property damage.
Balancing Act: Big Oil’s Future Amid the Climate Crisis
After purchasing $750 million in equity of energy giant Shell, Daniel Loeb demanded something radical: He wanted his investment dismembered. Loeb, CEO of the hedge fund Third Point LLC, penned a passionate Third Quarter letter to his investors wherein he outlined the competing interests within Shell. To Loeb, Shell’s simultaneous commitments to fossil fuels production and renewable energy sources have resulted in “an incoherent, conflicting set of strategies attempting to appease multiple interests but satisfying none.” Loeb’s solution? Balkanize Shell into multiple companies, each with a narrow focus.
Gerrymandering Today, Unpacked
The argument posited by some Republicans that all gerrymandering is bad — and particularly when it is done by Democrats who claim to oppose it — has transformed the debate over redistricting. No longer just a fight over which neighborhoods are broken up by a new map, the fight over gerrymandering has become another chapter in the war between Democrats and Republicans over the need for reforms to America’s democracy.