If you’re confused about the current state of the economy and where it’s headed, you’re not alone. The United States is experiencing inflation at the highest rate since the 1980s, and most Americans generally feel as bad about the economy as they did during the Great Recession of 2008. At the same time, unemployment is low and wages are rising. On today’s episode of “The Argument,” host Jane Coaston consults two economics reporters to break down these conflicting trends in the economy and to ask...
May 18, 2022•27 min
May is chock-full of primary elections, and they are starting to provide a picture of how deep the G.O.P. is entrenched in Trumpism. J.D. Vance, the 37-year-old venture capitalist and author of the acclaimed memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio — with the endorsement of Donald Trump. The rise of Vance paints a telling portrait of how the G.O.P. is evolving in its appeal to its conservative base. Vance eagerly sought Trump’s endorsement and praise. Does it mean that...
May 11, 2022•33 min
It was a historic twist in an already historic case: A draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision overturning two landmark rulings — Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — leaked to Politico, which published the 98-page document on Monday night. Chief Justice John Roberts said that the draft opinion was authentic but that “it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” Even with that caveat, it seems to be a sign of where thing...
May 04, 2022•29 min
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, states barring transgender athletes from participating in sports and censoring school curriculums around queer and gender identity — a wave of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation is spreading across the country, sustained in large part by the political right. According to the Human Rights Campaign , this year alone, more than 300 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills have been introduced in state legislatures. Why has this issue become the focus of the Republican Party? And how is the wa...
Apr 27, 2022•39 min
From Amazon and Starbucks to large media companies, unionization has become a siren call for workers — white- and blue-collar — fighting for rights and fair wages. But in 2022, after two years of a pandemic, how have our ideas about unions changed? And are Democrats, the so-called party of the unions, still allies in the fight for workers’ rights? On today’s episode of “The Argument,” Jane Coaston asks two leading labor voices in America to debate the current role of unions, how the watershed vo...
Apr 20, 2022•29 min
President Biden has described the world as being in a “battle between democracy and autocracy.” And Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent victory in Hungary, especially, has marked it as a country in pursuit of what Orban calls an “illiberal democracy.” So what has happened to liberalism, and why is it so deeply challenged today? On today’s episode of “The Argument,” Jane Coaston brings the Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp and the Times Opinion columnist Bret Stephens together to debate wh...
Apr 13, 2022•43 min
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its sixth week. Atrocities committed by Russian troops have reached new levels; in Bucha, recent photos show dead, unarmed civilians lining the streets. The harrowing scenes have prompted NATO leaders to consider taking new measures against Russia, namely to equip Ukraine with more weapons and impose more sanctions on Russia. But will those measures be enough? With President Biden now calling the atrocities “war crimes” and Prime Minister Mateusz Moraw...
Apr 06, 2022•37 min
Technology defines nearly every facet of our modern world. It almost feels that to exist today in the Western world, one has no choice but to engage in it. As a result, Big Tech holds an incredible amount of power — power that continues to play a role in the Russia-Ukraine war. As the war has intensified, tech companies have been forced to take a side. It’s become what the Times reporters Adam Satariano and Sheera Frenkel described as a “defining geopolitical moment for some of the world’s bigge...
Mar 30, 2022•28 min
How should America respond to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? This week, Jane Coaston sought out perspectives of a particular group on this complex question: conservatives. The group has long been divided on foreign policy and, more recently, over Putin and Russia. Could loyalty to Donald Trump lead some Republicans to support Putin? In today’s episode, these questions are tested by two conservative writers — and their answers are far from aligned. Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior wri...
Mar 23, 2022•45 min
This week, an antiwar protester interrupted a Moscow broadcast with a sign in Russian reading: “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here.” With the Russian government promoting propaganda on news channels and most recently passing a law to punish people spreading “false information” about the Ukraine invasion, it’s been hard to distill what is actually going on in both Russia and Ukraine right now. The confusion has resulted in what Masha Gessen recently described a...
Mar 16, 2022•35 min
We’re headed into the third year of pandemic life, and one thing is clear: We’re all exhausted from Covid. Virus caseloads are waning across the country, masks are coming off, people are traveling more, and office workers have new return dates. Does that mean the pandemic is over? Maybe. And maybe not. On Feb. 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its guidelines on mask wearing and social distancing, saying that 70 percent of Americans no longer need to heed those recommenda...
Mar 09, 2022•39 min
It’s been a week since Russia invaded Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled Ukraine and Russia continues to target major Ukrainian cities with powerful weapons. And amidst the chaos of war – President Biden held his first State of the Union address. Yara Bayoumy, the world and national security editor for Times Opinion, and the columnists Thomas Friedman and Ross Douthat joined Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a Times Opinion podcast host, to discuss what could happen next. Listen to Jane's i...
Mar 03, 2022•28 min
In the days since Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine, its citizens have taken up arms to defend their borders and their right to self-determination. Where is the rest of the world in all of this? To help understand the current situation and how we got here, Jane Coaston talks with Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was the director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council from 2018 to 2020. Vindman was also a key witness at Dona...
Mar 02, 2022•36 min
An American flag, football, the national anthem, “Make America Great Again” — all of these can be symbols of American patriotism, but to whom? In 2022, the notion of being a patriot is complex to say the least, and in a divided nation one might ask: Who gets to be called a patriot, and what does patriotism really mean in America? This week, Jane and her guests dig into how each of them feels about patriotism and how our two dominant political parties use the idea to their own ends. Ben Rhodes, f...
Feb 23, 2022•37 min
The U.S. State Department recently ordered all nonemergency diplomats and embassy employees to leave Ukraine, signaling that its personnel believe a Russian invasion of Ukraine may be imminent. Such a move by Russia would be the most consequential invasion in Europe since World War II. If Russia acts, what is America’s responsibility to Ukraine? Two of Jane’s Opinion colleagues, Bret Stephens and Farah Stockman, join her to tackle that question today. Both Bret and Farah have reported on foreign...
Feb 15, 2022•37 min
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases, one involving Harvard and the other the University of North Carolina, that could reshape college admissions. Both schools are being accused of race-based discrimination in their admission practices. In the coming year, the court will examine whether it’s lawful for college admissions offices to consider a student’s race. These cases and others have brought into focus the role affirmative action plays in higher education, and whether it helps or imp...
Feb 09, 2022•45 min
With the midterm elections just nine months away, the Democrats face some hefty existential questions that need answers: Who are they in this post- and possibly pre-Trump era of American politics? Are they simply the anti-Trump party? Or are they the party of progress? Who are the voters they need to turn out in November? Should they excite the base by building a coalition united against white supremacy, or should they moderate their message to win over Republican-defectors? This week on “The Ar...
Feb 02, 2022•44 min
A year into the Biden administration, most of us can agree on one thing: The United States remains a deeply divided nation, with polarizing opinions on all sides. But what about the voices from the middle, the independents? Swing voters are arguably one of the most consequential groups for the midterm elections, so we wanted to hear from them about how they view President Biden’s first year and the current state of American democracy. So this month the veteran G.O.P pollster Frank Luntz convened...
Jan 26, 2022•33 min
2022 is a big year for supporters of Supreme Court reform. Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that gave women nationwide the right to have abortions, might be overturned, and the debate around changing the way we structure the bench — in particular, packing the court — is getting only more heated. The past decade has brought a shift in the makeup of the court — from Brett Kavanaugh, appointed despite sexual assault allegations, to Merrick Garland, blocked from confirmation, and Amy Coney Barrett, ru...
Jan 19, 2022•42 min
There’s a divide in the Republican Party between those who believe the ‘Big Lie’ — that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump — and those who don’t. But which side is ultimately the future of the party? That’s the question Jane Coaston poses to Charlie Sykes, a founder and editor at large of The Bulwark, and Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. Sykes and Lowry discuss what the G.O.P. has learned from Donald Trump’s tenure as president and what Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial v...
Jan 12, 2022•37 min
Just how much trouble is American democracy in? When we look to 2024, it’s easy to focus on the doomsday scenario: an election where legitimate results get thrown out. But our democracy has been eroding for years — and we’ve never been an equal democracy for everyone in the first place. Host Jane Coaston discusses the state of the U.S. democracy and whether Jan. 6 was a turning point with Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Corey Robin, a political scientist at Brooklyn College. ...
Jan 05, 2022•44 min
As the days left in 2021 dwindle, you may feel that annual tug to judge this calendar year as cruelly as possible. After all, it was yet another year lived in a pandemic, on a warming planet, with teetering democracies and aspirational autocrats (tune in next week for that debate). But is it actually true? Did the world really get worse in 2021? For this Very NYT Opinion New Year’s Eve* episode of “The Argument,” Jane Coaston called upon podcast listeners and Opinion voices like the columnists M...
Dec 29, 2021•35 min
Last month, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges related to the shooting of two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisc. Before, during and after the trial, journalists and pundits broke down the most sensational moments on the stand, and many tried to discern what Rittenhouse’s not-guilty decision meant about the country at large. People were eager to draw direct connections between the arguments used in court and the inequities that are seen in the country on a daily b...
Dec 22, 2021•26 min
With the midterms just months away and the 2024 presidential race around the corner, the press is gearing up to cover more deeply polarizing election cycles. And how it should do that is an equally polarizing question. The media’s role in preserving — and reporting on — our democratic institutions is up for discussion. Last week, the New York Times Opinion columnist Ross Douthat pushed back on media critics like the N.Y.U. associate professor Jay Rosen. Jay asserts that the press should strive t...
Dec 15, 2021•33 min
A group of scholars and journalists announced last month that they were founding the University of Austin on the belief that free speech is being stifled on college campuses across America. “The reality is that many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized,” wrote Pano Kanelos, the inaugural president, in the initial statement. But the news was followed by intense scrutiny and backlash on so...
Dec 08, 2021•41 min
Facebook, Meta — whatever you want to call it, the tech titan has drawn a lot of ire, and not just from privacy advocates and people fighting misinformation. Antitrust regulators are sharpening their knives, too. Forty-eight attorneys general want to slice the Big Tech giant into less-powerful pieces. They’ve joined a parallel lawsuit with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to challenge what the agency alleges to be a monopoly engaging in illegal acquisitions. And overseas, Britain’s competition ...
Dec 01, 2021•40 min
It’s holiday time again, and this year feels different. Unlike the shelter-in-place aesthetic of 2020’s holiday celebrations, many people are now vaccinated and hoping to take part in the sort of family and friend events that are more reminiscent of the prepandemic time. With that warmth and community, we all may find ourselves in another seasonal tradition: getting into an argument with people over the dinner table. Maybe it’s a longstanding rivalry with a cousin, or a nosy aunt asking about yo...
Nov 24, 2021•38 min
Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, and understanding their representation in culture, politics and society is getting increasingly complex. In the New York City mayoral election this month, the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, won 44 percent of the vote in precincts where more than half of the residents are Asian, a rate higher than for any other racial group tracked. This came as a surprise, given the popular belief that Asian Americans, particularly t...
Nov 17, 2021•38 min
It’s no wonder so many people feel helpless about averting climate catastrophe. This is the era of dire warnings from many scientists and increasing natural disasters, record-breaking temperatures and rising tides. Fossil-fuel executives testify before Congress while politicians waver on whether they’ll support urgently needed changes to make American infrastructure sustainable. Thousands of youth activists at the Glasgow climate talks this week demonstrated for action from world leaders whose w...
Nov 10, 2021•41 min
On Nov. 7, most of us will fall back an hour and restart the decades-old discussion of why we shift time twice a year. A quick reminder: In spring, we “spring forward” to Daylight Time, giving us daylight well into the evening. But this Sunday, we’ll be back to Standard Time. Which is nice for bright mornings. But it means it’s dark before dinner. The clock change is cumbersome and confusing, and only about 70 countries in the world follow it. Even in the United States there’s no cohesion around...
Nov 03, 2021•35 min
