Within 48 hours of my last post on the phasing out of pandemic relief programs, the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 ruling striking down the CDC’s eviction moratorium. As millions of Americans faced renewed risks from eviction, the story was easily buried on the back pages of major newspapers. On…

A welfare state has to be built on something sturdier than pandemic time — As the Delta variant surges throughout the United States, more than 3.5 million people living in this country face the prospect of eviction. And with last week’s shadow-docket action by the Supreme Court, the CDC’s eviction moratorium is no longer in force. …

[Note to the reader: this post is appearing after a few months ‘hiatus’, by which I mean following and writing about the politics of American federalism. …

How to make state politics invisible — Where political conflict is obscure, crises make celebrities. And in the American states — where politics is invariably (and tragically) obscure — crises make governors (in)famous. But for the Little Rock Nine, who would still recall the name of Orval Faubus? Without Katrina, the name of Kathleen Blanco might well…

The document was eighteen pages long, bearing all of the hallmarks of management consultancy: clean sans-serif fonts, wide margins, and above all, an irreducible vagueness. In it, the White House suggested that states should proceed to re-open their economies after meeting a series of “gating criteria.” A “downward trajectory of…

Fiscal plague, information dust, piled over everyone, everyone of us. Stephen Malkmus, “Solid Silk” I’m writing this after a walk along the Milwaukee River in dying pink sunlight. An election will be held on Tuesday in which thousands of people in this city will be crammed into only five polling…