<![CDATA[The Argument: The Argument Podcast]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/s/the-argument-podcasthttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!p1MA!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49b12937-b084-464d-b383-270d8cb6eb19_1280x1280.pngThe Argument: The Argument Podcasthttps://www.theargumentmag.com/s/the-argument-podcastSubstackSun, 28 Jun 2026 01:42:49 GMT<![CDATA[Top 5 reasons to hate Joe Biden ]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/top-5-reasons-to-hate-joe-bidenhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/top-5-reasons-to-hate-joe-bidenThu, 25 Jun 2026 09:30:47 GMT
Biden’s campaign promised continuity from the Obama years, but his presidency represented a clean break from them. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Bidens are in the news again, and they are busy desperately trying to salvage their legacy while lashing out at those they deem disloyal.

This time, the former president is featured in New York Magazine as he struggles to raise funds for his presidential library, while Jill is busy promoting her new memoir, View from the East Wing. Hunter joined Candace Owens’ podcast and is all over Twitter writing AI-generated election analysis while correcting a user for creating an AI-generated image of him smoking a meth pipe instead of a crack pipe. And the broader Biden cinematic universe is still clamoring to tell its story, including recent books from Kamala Harris and Karine Jean-Pierre.

So, since Matt and I can’t seem to escape Sleepy Joe, we decided to rank the worst parts of his presidency and see what can be learned from it. Here are my rankings, which differ from Matt’s in a few key ways:

1. It’s the economy

I am a woman of the people, so my number one problem with Sleepy Joe was his failure to adequately tackle inflation — which was downstream from his apparent contempt for the people who actually understand economics. Much of the administration was a revolt against economists, wonks, and the white-paper style of governance that defined the Obama years.

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Tariffs, energy, housing… all areas he could have taken more of an interest in. But, as is a theme in my beef with Biden, he didn’t seem all that interested in major parts of economic and domestic policy.

Additionally, people with private-sector experience were treated as inherently suspect. I understand not wanting the SEC run by hedge fund managers, but Biden took it further. He leaned on Warrenite bureaucrats who seemed hostile to the idea of letting private-sector people in at all.

None of this was helped by the fact that Biden was barely engaged with his own domestic agenda. He wasn’t the one in the room hashing out the details of the Inflation Reduction Act or playing hardball with Joe Manchin. It’s the kind of disinterest you’d expect from a president too old and self-absorbed to get bogged down in the minutiae of actually governing.

And when he did engage, even amid record inflation, it was to stay loyal to the labor and green groups whose agendas often pushed prices higher.

2. Running again

Joe Biden’s administration actively concealed his decline from the American public, and that is why Donald Trump, a man anathema to liberalism, is president. Remember when it took a movie star donor who had no elected responsibility to the public to reveal that something was seriously wrong with the sitting president running for reelection?

Worse still, Biden got his allies to tie themselves in knots and embarrass themselves on cable news as they tried to convince voters that he was still up to the job — all because he couldn’t recognize (or acknowledge) that he was not fit to run again.

3. Israel

You can’t talk about Biden’s downfall without getting into a heated argument about Israel. Matt is more defensive of Biden here, claiming he successfully worked to prevent the very war with Iran that Trump and Netanyahu have since carried out. I think that Biden was far too permissive of Israel’s destructive actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

Plenty on the far left have sadly turned a blind eye to the terrorism of Hamas, but Democrats have been too lenient when it comes to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians for decades, and Biden’s decision to bear hug Netanyahu was a moral and strategic error.

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4. Immigration

The Biden administration avoided taking charge of immigration resettlement and ceded authority to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Biden was not that personally interested in any major macroeconomic issue, which clearly affected his administration’s ability to attack the border security problem effectively.

5. Kamala

Full disclosure: I worked for Kamala Harris in South Carolina in 2019, and I left politics shortly afterward. So I come to this with some history.

In 2020, we were at a moment when people badly wanted to elevate a nonwhite candidate, and especially a Black woman, to higher office. When you look around the halls of power and notice they’re dominated by the same few groups, the impulse to correct that is the right one.

But deciding that the solution is to find any Black woman at all to elevate is obviously stupid. It’s insulting to Black women, and to Black people in general, to suggest that the way you serve a community with real concerns about inflation, schools, and crime is to hand power to someone who simply happens to share some of their characteristics.

The Democratic base didn’t want Kamala at the top of the ticket in 2020, and there should have been an open primary in 2024 to find out whether that had changed. Instead, she was handed the nomination in a coronation, and we never got to test it.

Matt points out that this identity-based philosophy was integral to the Biden administration. From his Supreme Court pick to cabinet secretaries to Merrick Garland as U.S. attorney general, Biden was seemingly obsessed with optics rather than putting together a formidable administration.

We get into all of it on this week’s episode.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

*In a couple of weeks, we’ll be reviewing Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, so grab a copy and read along!

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, photo by Justin Sullivan/Staff via Getty)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE (YouTube)

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

Corrections:

  • Around 19:00, Matt says that the Biden White House leaked to Politico that it pushed for Karine Jean-Pierre to take a job at EMILY’s List and leave her job as press secretary, but it was The New York Post that broke this story

  • Around 21:00, Jerusalem says that in Trump’s second term, “there’s a gay cabinet member for the first time,” referring to Scott Bessent. That distinction actually goes to either Richard Grenell, Trump’s acting director of national intelligence appointed in 2020, or Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, depending on whether you consider Senate confirmation a relevant qualifier.

  • Around 25:00, Matt says that Biden “immediately fires his campaign manager after winning the primary.” The leadership shake-up actually happened mid-primary, while Bernie Sanders was still in the race.

Show notes:

  • Ben Terris article about Bidens getting back in public eye: New York Magazine article

  • “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” short story by Ursula K. Le Guin referenced by Matt. The story features a utopian society whose happiness and prosperity are contingent upon the suffering of a single innocent child. Goodreads page, Full story

  • George Clooney op-ed sounding the alarm on Biden being too old to be the 2024 Democratic nominee: The New York Times article

  • Jay Kelly, film starring George Clooney about a famous actor’s relationship with his manager: IMDb page, Netflix streaming

  • Ezra Klein February 2024 audio essay calling for Democrats to find a nominee other than Biden: The New York Times article

  • Podcasts Matt referenced in which he argued against choosing Kamala Harris as Biden’s running mate: The Weeds episode, The Weeds episode

  • “Karine Jean-Pierre is not a #Girlboss,” article by Jerusalem criticizing Jean-Pierre’s selection and job performance: The Argument article

  • Reporting indicating the Biden administration avoided taking action on migrant resettling because it didn’t want to “own the issue”: CBS News article

  • “America needs clearer goals on migration,” article by Matt criticizing the Biden administration’s lack of strategy on migrants: Slow Boring article

  • Research indicating that the American Rescue Plan and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) together raised inflation by about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco letter

  • Biden executive order to create a government-wide antitrust crackdown: White House fact sheet

  • Peer Review: “Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates,” by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann: NBER working paper

  • “The New Divide in American Marriage,” Jerusalem’s podcast episode interviewing Benjamin Goldman about the paper: The Atlantic podcast

  • “Yelling at ambitious young women won’t boost marriage,” article by Matt arguing the decline in marriage rates is not being led by highly educated women: Slow Boring article

  • “Boy moms and Nazi POWs: How ‘The Feminine Mystique’ changed feminism,” podcast episode about Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique: The Argument podcast

  • Love After Lockup, reality show referenced by Jerusalem about couples that begin with one partner in prison: IMDb page

  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famous book about urban planning by Jane Jacobs that will be the subject of an upcoming episode: Goodreads page, Amazon page

Transcript

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]]><![CDATA[We watched the internet’s dating advice so you don’t have to]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-watched-the-internets-dating-advicehttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-watched-the-internets-dating-adviceThu, 18 Jun 2026 09:31:20 GMT
Mr. Darcy never had influencers teaching him how to neg Elizabeth Bennet. (Photo by United Archives/Contributor)

I hate dating advice on the internet.

The form is inherently reductive and requires the person giving said advice to speak in generalized, sensational terms. Men are aggressive, women are anxious. Use these tips to dominate any woman. Spot the red flags in the guy you’re dating before it’s too late.

I originally resisted doing an episode on this topic, but my co-host, Matt Yglesias, convinced me that, as good liberals, it’s our job to check in every so often and make sure the kids are all right. The optimistic version of the genre comes from people like Noah Smith, who recently made the case that, contrary to what the incels would have you believe, there are a lot of average women out there interested in average guys — a view Matt and I largely agree with.

So I made an anonymous YouTube account, set the gender to male, and watched what got served up. Unsurprisingly, I did not get “here are some polite questions you could ask a woman at a bar.” Instead, it was a lot of “women want money and power, and they need you to dominate the conversation.”

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Matt watched self-improvement tips from Andrew Tate, an accused rapist and all-around horrible person. He also came across Dan Bilzerian, a far-right antisemite, advising his viewers to wait at least five minutes before texting a woman back in order to make her anxious and self-conscious.

The female-focused content has its own reductive and skewed worldview. Much of it is a strange kind of anti-dating advice, where women teach others how to make sure a man won’t embarrass them. You need to constantly scan for red flags but also be careful not to be a shrew.

The premise is that dating is a minefield, and your job is to avoid the landmines.

Matt is more sympathetic to getting dating advice online. He thinks there’s real demand among young men for words of wisdom that feel honest and politically incorrect. He’s less worried about the rules on texting a girl than about these videos acting as a gateway to conspiracy theories on the Elders of Zion.

But, whether it comes from the right or the left, flattening people into stereotypes is not only gross but just bad advice. Curiosity about the specific person in front of you is the kind of thing relationships are built on, after all.

My deeper objection is that none of this is oriented toward long-term happiness. Building a real relationship requires risk. It means forgiving early mistakes, sticking by someone when you don’t have perfect information, and seeing if there’s a genuine connection.

If Mr. Darcy had a manosphere influencer yapping in his ear after Elizabeth Bennet’s first rejection, he would have just moved on. There is no Pemberley, no second proposal, no happily ever after.

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The advice telling you to neg that girl at the bar might get her to go out with you. But when you’ve gone on a pile of dates with women who can’t give you what you want long term, what was the point?

Because internet dating advice is made by people who don’t know you and don’t care about you, it’s almost certainly not worth putting much stock in. Instead, if you want my advice, take notes from the successful couples in your life and seek out help from people who know you well and genuinely care about your well-being and happiness.

Matt and I get into all of it on this week’s episode.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, photo by Stringer via Getty)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

Subscribe now

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE (YouTube)

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

Show notes:

Transcript

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]]><![CDATA[How NIMBYs hijacked the climate movement]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-nimbys-hijacked-the-climate-movementhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-nimbys-hijacked-the-climate-movementThu, 11 Jun 2026 09:30:51 GMT
Vineyard Wind, which supplies enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts, spent nearly three years in federal environmental review. (Photo by Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

I expected to hate Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring — Carson is often name-checked as a precursor to modern degrowth environmentalism (including by degrowthers themselves). But Silent Spring wasn’t some 400-page diatribe against progress and growth; it was a thorough, dense, and methodical explanation of the harms of various pesticides and herbicides. And it was very persuasive. (And boring!)

In all likelihood, most environmentalists and anti-environmentalists haven’t read the book. What they remember is what the book came to symbolize, in large part due to the public opposition:

When Carson published her book in 1962, the backlash was fierce. Chemical industry groups claimed Carson wanted to send America back to the Dark Ages, with predictions of famine and insect swarms. They wrote books attacking her credibility, spread rumors she was a communist, and suggested that a mere lady biologist had no business second-guessing the manly chemists.

“It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used,” Carson wrote. Her case was that DDT was increasingly harmful to humans and wildlife and decreasingly harmful to mosquitoes. She believed we could use biological controls, targeted application, and other tested solutions that would more effectively solve the problem. That’s pretty much the whole book.

In the end, Carson prevailed over the lobbyists, and DDT was banned, thanks in large part to the fact that she was thorough in her research and advocated for a measured and science-based approach to solving natural issues, rather than an ideological agenda.

I don’t want to oversell it. There are parts of the book that reveal Carson’s underlying Romantic and tech-negative tendencies, most notably the opening chapter, a “fable” that imagines a mythical perfect town with tons of beautiful wildlife and happy farms and travelers who come to fish. The town is destroyed by an “evil spell” that rid the town of birds and made farm life untenable, and the once-verdant countryside is now “lined with browned and withered vegetation.”

It’s telling that this town has no industry (outside of farming, which at the time was under 9% of the population) and therefore no clear way of sustaining human life. This type of Romantic fairy tale (dystopia?) of a place unspoiled by human activity is a recurring one in the degrowth-environmental imagination.

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I came up through the climate movement — interning at the Climate Action Campaign and the Center for American Progress’ Energy & Environment team. Climate change is, to me, a genuine threat to human flourishing. But over a decade later, I’m struck by how much energy in the green movement has been focused on efforts like banning natural gas, blocking denser housing, and counterproductive protest strategies instead of engaging in more objectively effective policies.

The roots of this mismatch are worth understanding. The large-scale environmental movement was fueled by suburbanites who were fundamentally anti-growth. When wealthy people moved to the suburbs in the postwar era, they resented that newer developments kept eating into the green space and seclusion they had been promised.

On our newest podcast episode, Matt Yglesias summed up this mentality based on his own observations from living part-time in Maine: “I’m here to be near the forest. I cut down trees for my house. But you can’t cut down trees for your house because I’m trying to be close to the trees.”

When the movement’s base lives in sprawling suburbs and defines environmental protection as keeping things the way they are, the focus becomes less “protect the environment” and more “degrowth.” That explains why building denser housing, rather than single-family homes with big lawns, is seen as the enemy instead of the solution.

The effects of these positions are felt globally, mostly by poor people in the developing world. The people holding them mostly live in pleasant suburbs.

The real lesson of Carson’s book isn’t in its version of the good life but in its implicit argument for how to be persuasive. Carson is methodical and sober-minded. In the face of increasingly hysterical and sexist attacks, she remained poised and focused on her goals: eliminating DDT and spreading awareness of the negative externalities of various chemical spraying practices.

And she won! The U.S. banned DDT for farming in 1972, the Stockholm Convention put it on its original list of “dirty dozen” pollutants to be eliminated, and global use has collapsed to 369 metric tons in 2023, with just three countries still spraying it.

We get into all of it on this week’s episode of The Argument.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE (YouTube)

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe now

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Show notes:

Transcript

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]]><![CDATA[Do we need to build God to cure cancer?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/do-we-need-to-build-god-to-cure-cancerhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/do-we-need-to-build-god-to-cure-cancerThu, 04 Jun 2026 09:31:13 GMT
AI could help promote early cancer screenings, like mammograms, and make them more accurate. But that's not what everyone means by "curing cancer.” (Photo by Michael Hanschke/picture alliance via Getty Images)

We’ve had to put up with a lot when it comes to AI: From taking people’s clothes off on Twitter to helping kids cheat on tests to producing fruit dramas we can’t help but watch (just me?). But if AI could cure cancer, the holy grail of biotech, would it all be worth it? And would an AI that was powerful enough to cure cancer be an AI we would even want to live alongside?

Now, the bar for a normal business being net positive isn’t “provides a major medical breakthrough.” As staff writer Kelsey Piper recently explained at The Argument’s San Francisco debate: “I see a billboard. It’s like ‘Here’s cloud infrastructure balancing.’ Is cloud infrastructure balancing going to cure cancer? No, but it’s good… The world is good because of lots of things that are small and make something a little bit better.”

Sure, but AI companies carry very different risks from other types of businesses. I’m less convinced than Kelsey by the arguments for potential human extinction, but even if we limit ourselves to potential destabilizations to labor markets, educational institutions, and the very core of what it means to be human, AI has greater risks than any other technology.

All major technological breakthroughs are disruptive, but what makes them worth it is they improve living standards. If the risk of AI is truly as great as its creators believe, then the potential rewards better be worth it.

After reporting on AI’s scientific capabilities, I found myself becoming cautiously optimistic on the ability of AI to help scientists make major step changes in addressing cancer. AI excels at pattern matching, and that’s one of the main ingredients to diagnosing, treating, and ultimately curing cancer.

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For example: The five-year survival rate for localized breast cancer is nearly 100%. However, if the cancer metastasizes, it’s around 33%. If AI made us better at catching many types of cancer early, we would already be well on our way to curing it, at least in the way viewed by epidemiologists.

What it means to “cure cancer” isn’t totally straightforward. Does it mean the possibility of remission is eliminated? That the five-year survival rate for cancer survivors is indistinguishable from the non-cancer-having population?

When Google’s Demis Hassabis says AlphaFold will one day cure cancer, he’s referring to AI tools that can speed up protein prediction and drug discovery. AlphaFold doesn’t work like the typical LLMs or promise a magic cancer-curing pill, but it could allow us to gradually develop therapeutics.

OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, meanwhile, shared a story about a man who treated his dog’s cancer, claiming it was cured with a personalized vaccine developed with assistance from ChatGPT. ChatGPT didn’t actually make the drug or cure the dog, but it was able to help the dog’s owner find the right people, machines, and techniques to treat his pet and extend its life.

And when Anthropic’s Dario Amodei talks about curing cancer, he’s relying on recursive self-improvement: a model that trains a better model until you have something so capable it solves everything.

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When I talked with Kelsey about all this, I was surprised to find that for all her optimism (pessimism?) about AI’s transformational impact, she was skeptical about its application in cancer research. Her bottom-line argument is that while LLMs are good at verifiable tasks, the goal of “curing cancer” is full of unverifiable ones.

So, we decided to debate it live at our first event in San Francisco, where a crowd full of experts could help us figure it out. Listen to us — and them — discuss.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, photo by Mariah Miranda Photography)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe now

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Corrections:

  • Around 13:00, Kelsey says “something like 25% of adults are up on all of their recommended cancer screenings.” This is inverted; researchers found that in 2021, around 25% of adults were not up to date with breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening recommendations, according to the 2021 National Health Interview Survey.

  • Around 22:00, Jerusalem says the survival rate for breast cancer that has metastasized is around 38%. The figure is closer to 31% to 33%.

  • Around 48:00, Jerusalem says X “stopped letting” users create deepfakes and other nonconsensual images through Grok. But an NBC News investigation revealed it is still happening, despite the company’s pledge to stop.

Show notes:

Transcript:

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]]><![CDATA[Why is crime falling everywhere?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-is-crime-falling-everywherehttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-is-crime-falling-everywhereThu, 28 May 2026 09:31:31 GMT
Crime is even lower now than the pre-pandemic trajectory would expect. (Photo by Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images)

A frustrating fact about the politics of crime is that everyone freaks out when crime goes up, but the reaction when crime goes down is much more muted. In related news, we’re about to have the lowest homicide year since the 19th century.

It’s remarkable, given how dire things looked in 2020, and a far cry from Trump’s 2022 declaration that “the blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes.”

It’s not just that crime has fallen from pandemic-era highs; it’s that it’s lower than the pre-2020 crime spike trajectory would suggest. That raises the question: What happened?

My view is that this is all downstream of two things: one obvious, one less so. The obvious one is that COVID-19 had a bunch of criminogenic factors, like:

  1. shifting police deployment and activity to limit COVID exposure.

  2. cutting potentially violent young people off from school and work while concentrating them in close proximity with people they have disputes with.

The less obvious explanation is the Great Cop Vibe Shift. Despite all the mayors and governors touting their various (and varied) crime-fighting policies, largely what happened is that we live in a country where the willingness of police to arrest criminals, track down leads, and issue traffic violations plays an incredibly significant role in crime trends.

Police forces across the country essentially went on an informal work-to-rule strike — not actually walking off the job, but just doing the bare minimum — to protest the disrespect they were receiving from the politicians and citizens they’re supposed to serve. In San Francisco, police officers mostly just stopped doing any citations when the pandemic hit (reasonable) and then did barely any until roughly January 2024.

No matter how you feel about the police, the fact that they can and do retreat from their duties in such a manner reveals a catastrophic failure of democratic accountability. Whether you think the 2020 protests and anti-police attitudes were justified or not, police officers should be under the control of democratically elected officials. In practice, they are not.

Years ago, I wrote about the Ferguson effect — the phenomenon whereby protests against police reduce officer morale and therefore effort (thus yielding higher crime), which is often used to berate advocates for protesting. While I think this development carries lessons for anti-police advocates, it’s rarely wielded in favor of reforming police unions and increasing mayoral control of police policy and practices in general.

On today’s episode of The Argument, I discuss this all with my co-host Matt Yglesias, who, true to form, has a more pessimistic view of police reform advocates.

Yet, the ultimate version of reform would mean addressing the problem with police unions. Currently, we have a system where, not only do these unions bargain on wages and benefits, they also shield cops who have no business remaining on the force. It’s bad enough when teachers’ unions do this; it’s worse when the employee gets to carry a gun to work. University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley and former senior White House official Robert Gordon both argued for merit-based reforms to public unions.

We talk about that and much more on this week’s episode of The Argument.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, image by Ira L. Black via Getty)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

Subscribe now

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Corrections:

  • Around 21:00, Matt describes a situation in which a D.C. cop was “chasing a kid on a bicycle” when the kid was hit by a car. Matt says he thinks the kid had a gun. However, in the case of Karon Hylton-Brown, the 20-year-old was riding a moped, not a bike, and there is no evidence he had a gun.

  • Around 35:00, Matt says the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed the Democratic candidate for president from 1996 to 2008. While the organization did endorse Bill Clinton in 1996, it endorsed George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004, as well as John McCain in 2008. Instead, the National Association of Police Organizations endorsed Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama.

  • Around 49:00, Matt says all Landmark Theatres locations sell alcohol. Most do, but not all.

Show notes:

Transcript:

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]]><![CDATA[Why Democrats and Republicans want you to pay $50,000 for a car]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-democrats-and-republicans-wanthttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-democrats-and-republicans-wantThu, 21 May 2026 09:31:27 GMT
The BYD Seagull, which has a range of around 250 miles and can charge from 30% to 80% in 30 minutes, would start at around $10,000 — if U.S. customers were allowed to buy it. (Photo by Tang Ke/VCG via Getty Images)

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” used to be the gripe about how technological progress moved away from advancements in the physical world to “advancements” in the digital world.

But now we sort of do have flying, well, jumping cars. And more than that, we have cars that are unbelievably technologically advanced. The problem is they’re made in China, and both Republicans and Democrats have decided to collude so that I can’t buy them.

And worse than not being able to buy cool electric jumping cars that can add 250 miles of charge in five minutes flat, I’m also barred from buying cheap advanced cars.

A new car now costs nearly $50,000 on average. I could buy five new Chinese EVs for that price, though I’d settle for just one.

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It’s rare for one of my private purchasing decisions to be the subject of so much political and policy discourse, but that’s tariffs for you: Everything from wedding dresses to coffee and televisions has been affected by taxes on foreign imports.

To be fair, I recognize that there are valid concerns about America’s (and our allies’) dwindling capacity to build batteries. But… blocking consumers from buying EVs doesn’t magically produce a domestic battery industry.

The protectionist case was supposed to be about buying time for American manufacturers to catch up. That hasn’t happened. Ford and SK announced an $11.4 billion battery joint venture, took a $9.6 billion government loan, and then dissolved the whole thing when EV demand fell short of projections. These companies are not making the decades-long capital commitments that would make them competitive with China’s BYD.

My co-host, Matt Yglesias, doesn’t care much about my personal car troubles (he has a plug-in hybrid) and is more sympathetic to tariffs on Chinese EVs. He points to Apple’s shift toward manufacturing in India as a positive example. He also brings up President Reagan’s restrictions on Japanese car imports, which didn’t do much for the Big Three but did successfully pressure Japanese automakers to open factories in the U.S.

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Transportation is the second-largest household expense in America. Blocking cheaper, often better technology from entering the market imposes real costs on real people, disproportionately on the working-class people politicians in both parties claim to be fighting for.

The frustrating thing is that a more targeted approach is available. Subsidies, tax breaks, and friendshoring can build the domestic battery industry we need. The Inflation Reduction Act’s 45X production tax credits1 — which rewarded companies for actually manufacturing batteries rather than just announcing factory deals — are closer to the right idea. We could also remove environmental blockers and mine rare earths domestically or encourage mining in friendly nations. And you can still let me buy a cheap, cool car!

After all, the best industrial policy has always focused on export discipline — that is, the idea that the infant industries you’re nursing should be forced to compete against existing giants. Otherwise, you could spend decades forcing Americans to pay high prices to help domestic manufacturers make a bad product.

We get into all of it — the failure of Trump’s tariff regime, what serious industrial policy might actually look like, and how the climate activists are once again missing the mark — on this week’s episode of The Argument.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS via Getty)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

Subscribe now

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

Time stamps:

  • 0:00-The BYD car that can jump over potholes

  • 4:07-Climate activists miss the mark

  • 11:46-Setting the stage for war with China

  • 20:13-Protecting nonunion electric vehicles

  • 27:50-Let Jerusalem buy a cheap Chinese EV

  • 35:13-Matt Yglesias’ trade solutions

  • 41:20-Comparing today to 1980s Japan auto policy

  • 46:10-Peer review: The effects of school phone bans

Corrections:

  • Around 03:25, Jerusalem says we have a 130% tariff rate against China. This was the rate at one point, before the Trump administration lowered it to 10% in November 2025.

  • Around 12:21, Matt says Graham Allison titled his book The Thucydides Trap. This was actually the name of an earlier essay by Allison. His book was titled Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

  • Around 18:17, Jerusalem says BYD has a battery that can charge to 90% in five minutes. Their claim is actually that it can add 400 km of range with five minutes of charging. EV Powered reports it can charge from 10% to 70% in five minutes.

  • Around 36:25, Jerusalem says, “I don’t think it’s great that 90% of the world’s rare earths that go into lithium-ion batteries are coming from China.” Around 90% of rare earth mineral refining does come from China, but these materials are typically used in the motors of EVs, not the lithium-ion batteries.

  • Around 42:24, Matt ambiguously says “they” bought Rockefeller Center in New York after he was discussing Sony. It was actually Mitsubishi that bought Rockefeller Center.

Show notes:

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]]><![CDATA[Did Joe Biden really kill Spirit Airlines?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/did-joe-biden-really-kill-spirithttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/did-joe-biden-really-kill-spiritThu, 14 May 2026 09:31:05 GMT
Spirit Airlines gradually, then suddenly, went out of business on May 2 after 34 years of service. The ultimate shutdown was so last-minute that the airline cancelled flights that had already been sold. (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images)

Spirit Airlines is dead, and the right, true to form, is blaming Joe Biden.

The immediate cause of Spirit’s demise is pretty clear: The war with Iran spiked jet fuel costs, and the already-battered airline couldn’t absorb the hit to its bottom line. Last I checked, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars with Iran.

Spirit also had some other problems — a Pratt & Whitney engine recall that grounded a huge share of its fleet, legacy carriers copying its unbundled-fare model and capturing some of its customer base, a failed strategic pivot toward premium offerings…

If Spirit Airlines merged with JetBlue would it still be around? Maybe. Or maybe the expanded JetBlue would be bankrupt, too.

The Biden Department of Justice argued successfully against the JetBlue-Spirit merger on the grounds that we needed to preserve Spirit as an independent, ultra-low-cost carrier disciplining legacy fares. And while the right’s shrill attempts at deflecting from Trump’s death spiral of a presidency are unpersuasive, I do find the deflections of the anti-merger crowd to be a bit “The lady doth protest too much.”

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Matt Yglesias has been bugging me for a while about how the airline deregulation discourse is a “skeleton key” for understanding what the modern “anti-monopoly” movement is really about. I had sort of brushed him off because it was very much giving conspiracy theory.

Common conspiracy theorist meme originating from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 4, Episode 10 ("Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack"), FX, 2008.

But when he proposed we talk about it for this week’s episode of The Argument, I also fell down the rabbit hole.

As Matt says of the Biden administration’s antitrust intervention: “It’s not that they caused Spirit to go bankrupt … it just calls into question what they were trying to accomplish here.”

Anti-monopoly implies a focus on competition, so much of what this crowd does sounds like that’s the focus. The Open Markets Institute, the American Economic Liberties Project? These sound like organizations focused on increasing competition and free enterprise. But that’s just not what’s going on.

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Take airlines: The single biggest unlock for lowering prices for consumers and raising competition is allowing foreign airlines to compete against domestic airlines. But, as far as I can tell, not a single one of these organizations is focused on making that happen.

As proof, many European countries similarly deregulated their airline industries a decade or two after the U.S. and allowed much more competition than the U.S., including making them accessible to foreign ownership and foreign carriers. As a result, the top four airline groups now control just 40% of the market. (In the U.S., without this competition, the top four control 74%.)

And, importantly, the pre-airline-deregulation decades that the anti-merger crowd yearns for were straightforwardly anti-competitive. The Civil Aeronautics Board regulated basically everything about air travel, and it wasn’t trying to pave the way forward for new airlines to compete against existing ones for the purpose of lowering consumer prices; it was actively making it difficult for new entrants to join the market in order to artificially keep prices up.

Flights in the previous era cost travelers 20% to 100% more than they would have in a competitive market.

And all of that is justified by the idea that airlines are such a weird market that, if allowed to go unregulated, it will lead to something called “destructive competition.”

We talk about that and more on this week’s episode of The Argument.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

(Illustration by The Argument, image by Justin Sullivan via Getty)

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

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Time stamps:

0:00-Spirit Airlines is dead

7:07-The blocked JetBlue merger

14:54-1960s airline nostalgia

21:12-Matt’s tinfoil hat theory

26:29-Pre-Carter airline monopolies

35:26-The dawn of deregulation

47:17-Anti-monopolists want less competition

54:19-America’s protectionist policies

58:22-Peer review: Marriage and gender-coded purchases

Corrections:

  • At 0:55:00, Jerusalem says the EU began creating its single aviation market starting in 1992 and going through 1997. While the full package of legislation did take effect in 1997, the first legislative package was passed in 1987.

  • At 0:55:24, Jerusalem says that the five largest European aircraft control 45% of the European market while the four largest U.S. aircraft control 80% of the U.S. market. Those figures were accurate, but slightly more recent analysis shows the markets have shifted somewhat. A 2018 analysis showed the four largest European airlines controlled 40% of the EU market, while a 2025 analysis showed the four largest U.S. airlines controlled 74% of the U.S. market.

Show Notes:

  • Coverage of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas travel, being closed since Feb. 28: Brookings article, CBS News article

  • Coverage of jet fuel composing 20% to 30% of airlines’ costs: OpenAirlines article, Seeking Alpha article, IATA article

  • Coverage of Spirit attempting Chapter 11 bankruptcies to save itself before shutting down under Chapter seven: Law.com article, OAG article, Las Vegas Sun article

  • Coverage of Spirit blaming rising fuel costs in bankruptcy filing: AirlineGeeks article, Time article

  • Podcast hosted by conservative comedians Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau that blamed Spirit’s failure on the Biden administration’s decision to block Spirit and JetBlue’s merger: BlazeTV podcast episode

  • Coverage of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy blaming Spirit’s failure on the Biden administration’s decision to block Spirit and JetBlue’s merger: Fox News article, ABC7 article

  • Coverage of JetBlue losing money: Reuters article, Quartz article, The New York Times article

  • Coverage of Pratt & Whitney’s recall of its geared turbofan engine, which impacted more Spirit aircraft than all other airlines combined: Simple Flying article, FlightGlobal article

  • Coverage of Spirit receiving over $150 million in compensation from Pratt & Whitney due to recall: Aerospace Global News article

  • Coverage of a Reagan-era judge blocking JetBlue’s merger with Spirit Airlines after President Biden’s DOJ sued to stop it: AP article, CNBC article

  • Coverage of Spirit boosting premium offerings after its merger was blocked: Reuters article, Upgraded Points article, Spirit Airlines release

  • Coverage of Delta president grudgingly introducing Basic Economy fares to compete with Spirit, even though “People don’t really want the product when they see exactly what it is.”: Conde Nast Traveler article, CNBC article, AJC article

  • Photos shown depicting 1960s and 1970s air travel: Getty image, Getty image

  • Coverage of plans at low-cost European airlines, including Ryanair, to offer short flights with small, vertical, stool-like seats that resemble leaning more than sitting. Prices for these flights could be as low as five Euros: EuroWeekly News article, Thrillist article

  • Coverage of 1978 airline deregulation changes, initially under Jimmy Carter: Journal of Transport Geography article, Air and Space Museum article, EBSCO article

  • Coverage of Trump Shuttle’s operations and failure: The Washington Post article, AeroTime article

  • “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” article by Lina Khan on Amazon’s e-commerce domination: The Yale Law Journal article

  • “Terminal Sickness,” article by Phillip Longman and Lina Khan attacking airline deregulation: Washington Monthly article

  • “Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It,” book by Ganesh Sitaraman arguing that airline deregulation was a mistake: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • “The Anti-Bigness Ideology,” article by Matt Bruenig about why bigness isn’t a huge concern for his socialist ideology: Mattbruenig.com article

  • Federal Aviation Report of 1935, which defended the lack of competition created by strict airline regulations, saying “To allow half a dozen air lines to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence where there is enough traffic to support one really first-class service and one alone would be a piece of folly.”: Govinfo page

  • Article profiling former Sec. Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s conversion to the anti-monopoly cause: Politico article

  • “How Airline Markets Work… or Do They? Regulatory Reform in the Airline Industry,” paper by Severin Borenstein and Nancy L. Rose arguing that the price volatility in airlines can be explained by normal macroeconomic conditions: NBER chapter

  • Abundance, book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • “Airline Deregulation, Revisited,” essay by former Justice Stephen Breyer expressing regret about the effect airline deregulation had on workers: Bloomberg Businessweek article

  • History of the United Fruit Company’s actions in Latin America: Harvard Review of Latin America article, Retrospect Journal article, The World article

  • “Why airlines are always going bankrupt,” article by David Oks about competition in the airline industry: David Oks article

  • “We Fly Congress: Market Actions as Corporate Political Activity in the U.S. Airline Industry,” Temple University study showing airlines increase flights to districts where members of Congressional transportation committees live: Organization Science article

  • “The Secret to Reindustrializing America Is Not Tax Cuts and Tariffs. It’s Regulated Competition,” 2025 article by Phillip Longman, cited by Matt: Washington Monthly article

  • Red Plenty, book by Francis Spufford about communist abundance: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • 49 USC § 40102(a)(15), U.S. law that states domestic airlines must have 75% of voting stock and a majority of equity owned by U.S. citizens: GovInfo U.S. code

  • Fact sheet on EU air transport rules to form a single aviation market, which began in 1987 and were implemented through 1997: EU fact sheet

  • 2015 analysis showing the five largest European airlines (Ryanaid, EasyJet, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and IAG) control 45% of the European market: European Commission page

  • Slightly more recent analysis (2018) showing that the four largest European airlines (Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and IAG) control 40% of the European market: Global Finance article

  • 2025 analysis showing the four largest U.S. airlines (United, American, Delta, and Southwest) control about 74% of the U.S. market: Spherical Insights analysis

  • “Do Airlines in Chapter 11 harm their rivals?: Bankruptcy and pricing behavior in U.S. airline markets,” paper by Severin Borenstein and Nancy Rose showing that bankruptcies can cause prices to dip briefly: NBER working paper

  • Peer review: “Gender-Specific Economic Shocks and Household Bargaining Power,” paper by Rania Gihleb, Osea Giuntella, and Dor Morag: NBER working paper

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]]><![CDATA[Boy moms and Nazi POWs: How "The Feminine Mystique" changed feminism]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/boy-moms-and-nazi-pows-how-the-femininehttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/boy-moms-and-nazi-pows-how-the-feminineThu, 07 May 2026 10:30:38 GMT“We’re taking The Argument to San Francisco! On May 13, Kelsey Piper and Jerusalem Demsas are debating a question that feels unavoidable right now: Is AI actually changing how science gets done, or are we in the middle of a very expensive illusion? Jerusalem is bullish; Kelsey is skeptical.

And you won’t just be watching. You’ll get to join in on the argument, too.

Join us May 13 at The Chapel from 7 to 10 p.m. Come argue with us! RSVP here.

Betty Friedan thought Korean POWs were dying in captivity because their mothers were housewives. She thought boy moms were making their sons gay. She wrote a whole chapter comparing suburban kitchens to concentration camps — in 1963, while America was still processing what concentration camps actually were.

The Feminine Mystique is one of those important books that everyone “knows” but no one has actually read. Fair enough; until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t either.

For today’s episode of The Argument podcast, Matthew Yglesias and I read the book that kicked off second-wave feminism.

Stripped of its most… bizarre elements, Friedan’s core argument — that women in postwar America were depressed, and society’s conventional prescription was to “housewife harder” — is one of the most successful arguments of the 20th century.

Friedan blamed women’s magazines, Freudian psychoanalysts, and university curricula for suppressing women’s aspirations. Instead, she said women should strive for a career — but not just any career. To Friedan, the only people who are truly fulfilled are those who live the life of the mind, are college-educated, and have a specific set of middle-class values.

In short, she was the original #girlboss.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Argument. Libbing out.

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

Time stamps:

0:00 - Introduction to The Feminine Mystique

9:02 - Psychotherapy, Mad Men, and Marxist origins

20:02 - The true drivers of social change

30:52 - Famous books with massive effects

35:07 - The most insane parts of The Feminine Mystique

47:33 - The female happiness paradox

51:34 - Rating the book’s success

56:54 - Peer Review: Health benefits of WWII-era sugar rationing

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

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Show notes:

  • The Feminine Mystique, 1963 book by Betty Friedan that serves as the main focus of this episode: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Articles critiquing The Feminine Mystique for centering white upper class women:

  • Information on Betty Friedan founding the National Organization for Women (NOW): NOW page

  • “Shoot the messenger,” article by Jerusalem Demsas about how the people who drive the discourse forward often disproportionately center their own experiences: The Argument article

  • Information on Radcliffe College presidents: Harvard page

  • A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, book by Stephanie Coontz that details some of the impacts created by The Feminine Mystique, which contains the quote (referenced by Jerusalem), “Books don’t become best sellers because they are ahead of their time”: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • “Books as Bombs,” article by Louis Menand about the impact of The Feminine Mystique: The New Yorker article

  • Silent Spring, book by Rachel Carson often credited with kicking off much of the environmentalist movement: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Unsafe at Any Speed, book by Ralph Nader that led to many consumer protection regulations: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities, book by Jane Jacobs that critiqued 20th-century urban planning and large-scale renewal projects: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Capital in the Twenty-First Century, book by Thomas Piketty that proposed several novel economic policies to advance income compression: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • The Anxious Generation, book by Jonathan Haidt that contains arguments against helicopter parenting: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, book by Lily Geismer about how NIMBY activism in the Boston suburbs was developed by highly educated women who didn’t have full-time careers outside the home: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Explanation of the section of morning Jewish prayers in which traditional Jewish men praise God who, among other things, “has not made me a woman.” The Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform movements have opted to substitute that language with alternatives: My Jewish Learning article

  • Coverage of the campaign against mandatory retirement ages and other discriminatory practices for stewardesses: The New York Times archive, ACLU commentary, PBS article

  • “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers about why self-reported happiness among women has gone down even as their material well-being and rights have empirically increased: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy article

  • “Karine Jean-Pierre is not a #GirlBoss,” article by Jerusalem Demsas: The Argument article

  • “In defense of the ‘girlboss’,” article by Matt Yglesias: Slow Boring article

  • Peer Review: “Early-Life Sugar Restrictions Reduce Genetic Disparities in Adult Adiposity,” article by Tadeja Gracner, Claire Boone, Patrick Turley, and Paul Gertler using data from U.K. sugar rationing in World War II to show the effect lack of sugar had on individuals with high genetic risk for obesity: NBER working paper

  • Coverage of people getting “excommunicated” from psych fields for contradicting Freud: Freud Museum London article, Janet Malcolm book

(Illustration by The Argument, image by Harold M. Lambert via Getty)

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]]><![CDATA[Should we end asylum?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/should-we-end-asylumhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/should-we-end-asylumThu, 30 Apr 2026 10:02:40 GMT“We’re taking The Argument to San Francisco! On May 13, Kelsey Piper and I are debating a question that feels unavoidable right now: Is AI actually changing how science gets done, or are we in the middle of a very expensive illusion? I’m bullish; she’s skeptical.

And you won’t just be watching. You’ll get to join in on the argument, too.

Join us May 13 at The Chapel from 7 to 10 p.m. Come argue with us! RSVP here.

Matthew Yglesias wants to end asylum.

Asylum is a broadly reactive and procedural mechanism that takes control over who gets to enter the U.S. (and how many of them) out of the hands of politicians and the people who elected them. On a new episode of The Argument, Matt argues that the post-WWII asylum framework is not just politically untenable but practically unworkable.

I, true to form, disagree.

Let’s not kid ourselves, asylum is a huge political and policy problem for liberals. Anyone who takes seriously democratic legitimacy, economic growth, and basic human rights can’t pretend the backlash to Trump will fix the politics of immigration.

But I think giving up on asylum actually undersells the difficulty of the problem. People want to come to the U.S., and most Americans are open to legal, orderly immigration when they believe the system is working for them, not for foreigners. How do we produce that system?

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“Immigration policy should be designed to maximize the national interest, and the proceduralism and reactiveness of asylum does not fit into that very well,” Matt argues.

He’s right about the first part, dead wrong about the last.

Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

Subscribe now

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

Subscribe now

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Corrections:

  • At 0:17:13, Jerusalem says 2024 U.S. asylum grant rates for “Afghans, Syrians, Cameroonians, Eritreans, and Venezuelans” were at or above 75%. TRAC data shows this was true for Afghans (88.4%) and Eritreans (85.3%), but slightly higher than the rates for Cameroonians (74.4%), Syrians (68.9%), and Venezuelans (64.5%).

  • At 0:17:59, Matt says “I’m sure people who want to move there [the Dominican Republic] from here [the U.S.] have good reasons for it. He means people who want to move from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.

  • At 0:43:00, Jerusalem said the hiring rate in March 2022 was 7.4%, which was actually the job opening rate. The hiring rate was 4.4%.

  • At 0:45:00, Matt says Trump has expanded “H-1A visa programs,” when he means H-2A.

  • At 0:50:06, Jerusalem says that “I think a series of extremely specific and narrow programs is actually incentivizing this gaming the system rather than incentivizing it.” She means those programs incentivize gaming the system rather than addressing it.

Show notes:

  • Border Act of 2024, sponsored by Sens. Chris Murphy, James Lankford, and Kyrsten Sinema, which would have set aside funding for immigration judges and asylum officers in an effort to get processing down to 90 days: Congressional Record, Sen. Murphy page, GovTrack bill text

  • Manhattan Institute study arguing that around $1 billion a year for new judges and asylum officers would solve the asylum crisis: Manhattan Institute report

  • ICE budget document showing an $11.3 billion budget in 2026 (not counting extra funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill): DHS file (PDF)

  • One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, book by Matthew Yglesias making the case for rapidly increasing the U.S. population through immigration, in an effort to reframe the conversation in a more patriotic way: Goodreads page, Amazon page

  • Report showing 84% of Americans support resettling Afghans who helped troops during the war to resettle in the U.S.: With Honor PAC report

  • Polling showing 78% of Americans supported admitting up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees from the war in 2022: Gallup report

  • Polling showing 66% of Americans supported admitting Kosovar refugees in 1999: Gallup report

  • “Europeans’ support for refugees of varying background is stable over time,” study by Kirk Bansak, Jens Hainmueller, and Dominik Hangartner showing general support for admitting asylum seekers in 15 European countries: Nature article

  • “Why America is so much better than Europe at immigration,” article co-written by Alexander Kustov and Kelsey Piper about the differences between U.S. and European approaches to immigration: The Argument article

  • In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular, book by Alexander Kustov examining immigration issues through a strict framework of self-interest: Columbia University Press page, Amazon page

  • Report showing that U.S. asylum seekers from five countries had grant rates at less than 20%: Dominican Republic at 11%, Mexico at 16.6%, Colombia at 19.3%, Ecuador at 19.7%, and Brazil at 19.7%: TRAC report

  • Coverage of Bush-era emphasis on border security: Bush White House archived page, CBS News article

  • “Democrats can’t hide from immigration forever,” 2025 article by Matt Yglesias that described the CHNV immigration parole program as having reduced irregular migration and border chaos: Slow Boring article

  • Article cited by Matt about Nigerian migrants in the U.K. being coached on how to appear gay in order to get asylum: BBC article

  • Coverage of Venezuela hitting 10,000,000% inflation: CNBC article

  • Coverage showing over 70% of Venezuelans are still in their country: UNHCR page, N-IUSSP article

  • Coverage showing around 70% of Syrians stayed in the country even through the war: MSF release

  • Coverage showing over 90% of Sudan’s population remains in the country despite famine, civil war, and internal displacement: International Organization for Migration article, Al Jazeera article

  • “How Deterrence Policies Create Border Chaos,” 2023 article by Jerusalem Demsas arguing that deterrence policies in immigration don’t work: The Atlantic article

  • Chart showing nearly half as many U.S. job openings in 2026 as in 2022: FRED data

  • Chart showing U.S. hiring rate at 3.1% in February 2026 and 4.4% in March 2022: FRED data

  • Quinnipiac poll showing Biden hitting 33% approval in January 2022: The Hill article

  • Coverage of Trump expanding the H-2A visa program for guest agricultural workers: Newsweek article, Time article

  • Coverage of Biden-era labor regulations, which made it more difficult to get an au pair, among other things: The Washington Post article, The Wall Street Journal article, Cato Institute commentary

  • Coverage of Australia having a higher share of foreign-born residents than the U.S. does: McCrindle Research article

  • Coverage of Australia letting in more immigrants, relative to the existing population, than the U.S. does: NPR article, Cato Institute article

  • Coverage of the creation of the CBP One app, which made it possible to set up an appointment with an asylum officer ahead of time: Los Angeles Times article, CBS News article

  • Peer Review: “Germs in the Family: The Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Intra-Household Disease Spread,” by N. Meltem Daysal, Hui Ding, Maya Rossin-Slater, and Hannes Schwandt, showing younger siblings have much higher rates of hospitalization due to respiratory conditions contracted from older siblings: NBER working paper (PDF)

  • Study showing that households with at least two children have an illness at least 50% of the time: Clinical Infectious Diseases article

  • Studies showing that, on average, younger siblings…

  • Studies showing that, on average, winter birth dates are…

  • Next week’s reading: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan: Goodreads page, Amazon page

(Illustration by The Argument, image by David Dee Delgado/Stringer via Getty)

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]]><![CDATA[Can America still be a force for good?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/can-america-still-be-a-force-forhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/can-america-still-be-a-force-forThu, 23 Apr 2026 10:00:57 GMTAfter World War II, the American government made a critical political error most people have never heard of: It sided with Ethiopia in its bid to control Eritrea, a former Italian colony that sought independence.

While the United States was preaching the right to self-determination, it also decided it needed to make some practical choices. Ethiopia was a strategic ally in the burgeoning Cold War, and Ethiopia wanted Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline.

What followed was a brutal, decades-long oppression campaign against the Eritreans by the ruling Ethiopian government.

For all of you realpolitik heads out there, this didn’t even work out great for the U.S.’ strategic interests: Ethiopia ended up siding with the USSR anyway.

It’s easy for someone to look at this period of history and conclude that American liberal hypocrisy was a big failure. America could be a force for good, but only when it was convenient.

My podcast cohost Matt Yglesias makes a version of this argument. He thinks the push to frame foreign policy in idealistic terms tends to obscure more than it clarifies. It stops people from doing proper cost-benefit analysis and can justify bloody interventions.

The transcript will be after the paywall in this post for paying subscribers.

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He points to the NATO bombing campaign in Libya as an example. “It’s not super clear how helpful that was. It cost billions of dollars. And, like, the whole time, nobody was saying, ‘maybe we should try to develop a malaria vaccine.’”

That’s all well and good, but the purpose of having high standards, even if you often fail to meet them, is that hopefully you try to hold yourself to them sometimes.

During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted the contradiction between America’s stated liberal ideals of freedom and equality on the international stage and the reality of Jim Crow at home. This painful truth became impossible to ignore domestically, and it helped create the conditions for the Civil Rights Movement.

What would the world look like without liberal hypocrisy, anyway? Well, we’re kind of living it.

While Trump’s typical off-the-cuff and offensive rhetoric has been charitably read as “telling it like it is” by his supporters, it also emboldens his most nefarious instincts. What we’re left with is the president’s gross justifications for military action — like capturing the president of Venezuela for the oil and attacking Iran before it could supposedly attack us. Any stated desire for peace and prosperity in these regions is offered like an afterthought.

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

For an ad-free version and full transcript, subscribe at TheArgumentMag.com.

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Show notes:

(Illustration by The Argument, image by XNY/Star Max via Getty)

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]]><![CDATA[Destroy the internet to save it?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/destroy-the-internet-to-save-ithttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/destroy-the-internet-to-save-itThu, 16 Apr 2026 10:03:03 GMTPeople tend to defend online anonymity by pointing to the long tradition of anonymous speech in American democracy.

But modern anonymity is an entirely new beast.

When Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote the essays that would become The Federalist Papers, they weren’t anonymous in the modern sense. That is, friends of Hamilton and Madiso…

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]]><![CDATA[Should race matter in college admissions?]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/should-race-matter-in-college-admissionshttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/should-race-matter-in-college-admissionsThu, 09 Apr 2026 09:01:45 GMTWhen the Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at colleges and universities in 2023, finding that Harvard and the University of North Carolina practiced race-based discrimination against Asian American students, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

The case, decided along ideological lines, caused a stir among progressives.

But was this discrimination the inevitable consequence of affirmative action policies? Or did it simply give cover to people with genuinely racist beliefs?

“The core problem with affirmative action — how it was being practiced, particularly at Harvard — is that they were just being racist to Asians … What was happening was not just like, ‘Oh, we’re all well-meaning people trying to improve [society].’ These people had racist views about Asian Americans,” declared Jerusalem Demsas in The Argument’s premiere podcast episode.

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In this heated conversation, Matthew Yglesias and Jerusalem tackled affirmative action, an increasingly unpopular policy. And the Harvard case sits at the heart of the debate.

“In a basic way,” lamented Matt, “it is not a good idea to be slotting people into racial and ethnic categories and judging them on that basis. It’s not fair to people, and it’s not healthy for society.”

WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

New episodes post every Thursday.

You can find The Argument on Substack, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading:

“Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges” by Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, and John N. Friedman

“Breaking Systemic Barriers: Being Black in the Aquatic Sciences and Related Fields” by Lauren Pharr

“Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities” by Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, Michael Liu, and Anupam B. Jena

Corrections:

  • At 0:05:36, Matt says “LSAT flunk rates” when he means “bar exam flunk rates.”

  • At 0:07:06, Jerusalem says “data from Sander’s” when she means “data from Sander’s critics.”

  • At 0:18:46, Jerusalem says Raj Chetty’s data shows that attending an elite school “doubles” the likelihood of reaching the top income quintile when she means “increases by 50%.”

Show notes:

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]]><![CDATA[Matthew Yglesias vs. Jerusalem Demsas: The Trailer]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/matthew-yglesias-vs-jerusalem-demsashttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/matthew-yglesias-vs-jerusalem-demsasThu, 02 Apr 2026 15:01:54 GMTHas affirmative action gone too far? Should we abolish internet anonymity? Is liberal hypocrisy worth defending?

Welcome to The Argument, a weekly podcast from yours truly and Matthew Yglesias.

Matt and I have been on many podcasts together, back in the days of The Weeds where we first libbed out about zoning reform, to when I interviewed him at The Atlantic for Good on Paper, and just last year when we talked about liberalism here at The Argument.

We have a lot in common—particularly when it comes to housing and economic policy—but that makes it all the more interesting how much we tend to disagree.

So instead of a Crossfire-style debate show where two people who have no overlapping interests yell at each other and make you feel bad about the world, we’re doing something different.

The Argument is a show where two friends, well, argue about politics, policy, and whatever else is on their minds.

It’s a debate show for people who want to get into the weeds and are turned off by screaming matches and softball interviews where everyone just agrees with each other. Each week, one host argues a distinctive point of view — armed with facts and research, not just pundit bluster — and then Matt and I hash it out.

New episodes post every Thursday, starting April 9.

WATCH THE TRAILER ON YOUTUBE HERE

You can find The Argument on Substack, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

]]><![CDATA[The Science of Attraction with Paul Eastwick]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-science-of-attraction-with-paulhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-science-of-attraction-with-paulMon, 23 Feb 2026 14:03:12 GMTAre men naturally promiscuous and drawn to younger women? Are women obsessed with tall, older, rich men? Dating discourse is littered with pop evolutionary psychology that makes broad claims about how men and women are under a thin veneer of scientific credibility. But how much of it is backed by real science?

In this episode of The Argument, host Jerusa…

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]]><![CDATA[An economist's case for second chances]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/an-economists-case-for-second-chanceshttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/an-economists-case-for-second-chancesTue, 17 Feb 2026 10:02:16 GMTEconomists love to say there are no free lunches.

Jennifer Doleac thinks criminal justice is one of the rare places where that’s wrong.

In this episode, Jerusalem Demsas, host and editor of The Argument talks with Doleac, economist and author of The Science of Second Chances, about what happens when you treat crime policy like an empirical problem instea…

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]]><![CDATA[Ross Douthat on the end of conservatism]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/ross-douthat-on-the-end-of-conservatismhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/ross-douthat-on-the-end-of-conservatismMon, 09 Feb 2026 10:02:35 GMTTrump didn’t just reshape the GOP—he may have ended what we used to call “the conservative movement.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat joins host Jerusalem Demsas to map the new right: the collapse of fusionism, the rise of nationalism, and a media ecosystem where influencers matter more than institutions.

Then they argue about what liberalism can an…

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]]><![CDATA[The politics of the opioid epidemic]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-politics-of-the-opioid-epidemichttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-politics-of-the-opioid-epidemicMon, 02 Feb 2026 14:03:08 GMTOver less than 25 years, the opioid epidemic killed over 800,000 Americans. These deaths and the resulting economic and political ramifications were unequally distributed across the country. Some places were ravaged, others barely noticed what was happening.

In this episode, host Jerusalem Demsas is joined by economist Carolina Arteaga to unpack new rese…

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]]><![CDATA[A political theorist argues that children have no rights]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/a-political-theorist-argues-thathttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/a-political-theorist-argues-thatMon, 26 Jan 2026 15:01:11 GMTChildren are a problem for liberalism, one you can see in everything from school-board wars to fights over indoctrination. If all individuals are free and equal, endowed with rights by their Creator, then does that include children? Kids are fully human, yes, but they’re also dependent, impulsive, and not yet capable of adult autonomy. So when do rights…

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]]><![CDATA[Why NIMBYs hate housing]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-nimbys-hate-housinghttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-nimbys-hate-housingMon, 19 Jan 2026 10:02:19 GMTNIMBYism is usually explained as selfishness: homeowners protecting property values, or neighbors who just hate change. But a growing body of research suggests something simpler and harder to argue with: aesthetics.

What if people oppose new housing not only because of who might move in or what it might do to traffic, but because the building just looks …

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]]><![CDATA[What went wrong with modern liberalism? (w/ Matthew Yglesias)]]>https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/what-went-wrong-with-modern-liberalismhttps://www.theargumentmag.com/p/what-went-wrong-with-modern-liberalismMon, 12 Jan 2026 10:00:45 GMTIf we want to address racism, should we talk more about race – or less?

Matthew Yglesias argues liberals undermined their own principles when politics shifted from judging people as individuals to sorting them into moral categories based on group identity. We debate “the fox in liberalism’s henhouse,” collective blame, and why “accurate” generalizations …

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