We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink
The slap fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has highlighted the absurdity of keeping so much of our space program and satellite internet infrastructure in the hands of a single oligarch.
271 Articles by: Ben Burgis
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Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
The Right Has Embraced the Cancel Culture It Claimed to Hate
NYU’s decision to withhold Logan Rozos’s degree for denouncing genocide in Gaza in his graduation speech is the latest example of right-wing cancel culture. After criticizing it on the Left, conservatives have learned to rally “woke” mobs of their own.
Birthright Citizenship and Legal Equality Are Worth Defending
J. D. Vance has attacked birthright citizenship and equality before the law by claiming that “America is not an idea.” But the realization of these ideals has been America’s greatest achievement.
The Call to Execute Luigi Mangione Is Indefensible
Donald Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi’s call for Luigi Mangione to receive the death penalty is a dangerous political intervention in support of the indefensible.
Democrats Have Learned Absolutely Nothing From Defeat
Rather than focusing on the actual harms Republicans are inflicting on the American working class, Democrats are using the Signal group chat leak to obsess over violations of norms and protocols. This strategy is doomed to fail.
Donald Trump in Palestine
The US president ran as an antiwar candidate. Now he wants to use American muscle to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.
Free Speech Means Free Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is a cut-and-dry free speech issue that makes two things clear. First, the Right was always disingenuous when it claimed to care about free speech. Second, the Left should never have ceded the issue.
Trump Tramples Free Speech to Shut Down Palestine Protests
Donald Trump and his allies are claiming to restore “free speech” in America even as they yank federal funding from Columbia University to punish student protesters. They were never serious about defending free speech.
In Responding to Trump’s Speech, Democrats Tacked Right
Donald Trump’s speech last night sounded like a deranged remix of Ronald Reagan. Instead of slamming him where it hurts, Democrats responded by claiming Reagan’s poisonous legacy for themselves.
Jeff Bezos Is Scared to Have an Open Debate on Economics
By banning perspectives critical of the status quo, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is turning a major news outlet into a mouthpiece for market fundamentalists. If the ideas he champions are so defensible, why is he squeamish about debate?
Musk and His Rich Friends Are Looting the Federal Government
DOGE’s slashing and burning has nothing to do with “efficiency” and everything to do with further enriching Elon Musk and his fellow plutocrats.
“Antiwar” Trump Wants the US to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza
Donald Trump and his allies have often promoted him as antiwar. Yesterday Trump said that he wants the US to “own” Gaza and kick out all its inhabitants — which, in addition to being ethnic cleansing, would require more war to accomplish.
RFK Jr Is Wrong. Health Care Is a Human Right.
In his confirmation hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr told Bernie Sanders that he opposes health care as a human right. His reasoning reveals how libertarian talking points are being used to defend a cruel and irrational health care system.
Trump’s First Moves: Toward More War, Nothing for Workers
Donald Trump’s first executive orders should dispel any fantasy of him as either a noninterventionist or an economic populist.
Biden’s Bleak Presidency Was Always Going to End in Trump
Joe Biden came into office promising to be the next FDR. Instead, his presidency of empty gestures and moral failures has given us something far more dangerous: a reinvigorated Donald Trump armed with a popular mandate and a drive for retribution.
Capitalist Housing Markets Make Natural Disasters Worse
From price gouging to risky developing to insurance dysfunction, the dynamics of private housing markets are making the Los Angeles fire disaster considerably worse. We don’t need to prioritize real estate profits over people’s housing needs.
The Los Angeles Fires Didn’t Have to Be This Bad
From budgetary neglect to climate inaction to private monopolies, political choices have fanned the flames of California’s devastating fires.
How Capitalism Undermines Freedom
In his refutation of the famous libertarian arguments of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, socialist thinker G. A. Cohen showed the absurdity of thinking that we had to accept an unequal society in order to preserve liberty.
Elon Musk Is Inaugurating a New Era of Billionaire Rule
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, just used his political influence to shut down a bipartisan deal to keep the government open. It’s obscene — but it’s just one example of the ways billionaires dominate American democracy.
No, Brian Thompson Wasn’t a “Working-Class Hero”
Commentators like the New York Times’ Bret Stephens have called slain CEO Brian Thompson a “working-class hero.” You don’t have to condone murder to see through that ridiculous claim about a man who was at the helm of a legalized extortion racket.