Damon Linker
The Week
Philadelphia, PA, United States
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Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Damon:
6 peaceful homes beside lakes
It doesn’t hurt to look! → Read More
3 explosive political consequences of overturning Roe
The decision may have an effect on a handful of close races, but overall, there will be little change. That's because, although lots of voters may now assume overturning Roe will produce a nationwide abortion ban, they'll soon learn it will in fact merely return the issue to state legislatures — meaning that nothing at all will change in the states where most Democratic and pro-choice women live… → Read More
7 cartoons about Putin's invasion of Ukraine
Artists take on the long-feared incursion, echoes of Russia's past, and more → Read More
7 scathing cartoons about Republicans' defense of Russia
Artists take on Trump's relationship with Putin, Tucker Carlson's role, and more → Read More
6 glamorous New York City apartments
It doesn't hurt to look! → Read More
6 regal Tudor-style homes
It doesn't hurt to look! → Read More
What's really at stake in the Joe Rogan kerfuffle
There's something odd about the protest against Spotify's mega-podcaster Joe Rogan. It started when folk-rocker Neil Young issued an ultimatum: Rogan shouldn't be spreading skepticism about vaccines, so either he goes or I do. When Spotify refused to break its multimillion-dollar deal with Rogan, Young made good on his threat, pulling his music from the streaming platform. Then singer-songwriter… → Read More
A libertarian tragedy in Indianapolis
The political struggle over the libertarian soul takes a grim and telling turn → Read More
Biden-Hogan 2024?
This appears to be a week for wildly implausible political punditry. First, Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein proposed in The Wall Street Journal that Hillary Clinton mount a comeback by challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024. Then, in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman held out the prospect of Biden dropping Kamala Harris and choosing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (Wy.) as his… → Read More
How should the U.S. respond to the coming Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Before this week, I'd never heard of Dmitri Alperovitch or Silverado Policy Accelerator, the nonprofit think tank for which he is co-founder and chair. But Alperovitch is on my radar now, thanks to a viral tweet thread about Russia's intentions in Ukraine that is at once smart, highly informed, and chilling. Alperovitch's core assertion is simple: The Kremlin has already "made a decision to… → Read More
Biden's big Omicron gamble
President Biden walked a fine line between sounding urgent and reassuring, concerned and confident, worried and resolute in remarks delivered at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. He downplayed the danger of the Omicron variant for Americans who've gotten vaccinated against COVID-19 and received booster shots. But he also warned of dire consequences for those who have resisted vaccination and… → Read More
Journalists can't save American democracy
Ever since Donald Trump's shocking victory in the 2016 presidential race, a debate has been raging among mainstream journalists over the media's role in paving the way for the demagogue's win. With Trump sounding very much like he intends to make another run for the White House in 2024 and polls indicating he will easily win his party's nomination if he does, this argument has surged to life… → Read More
The government is shockingly bad at counting stuff
Political scientists like to talk about and measure "state capacity" — a government's ability to accomplish policy goals. But before a government can set goals and succeed or fail in achieving them, it must know what's actually happening in the country. Judged by that rudimentary measure, we're falling far short of where we should be. The truth is, the government is shockingly bad at counting… → Read More
Murder rates are spiking in medium-sized cities. Where's the outcry?
This past weekend, with still more than a month to go in 2021, Philadelphia surpassed 500 homicides in a single year, a grim record set in 1990. Just a few days later, the number of murders has already climbed to 506. You may have heard that talk about a national crime wave is overblown. This is true. Not all crime is surging. It's mostly violent crime, and especially homicide, the most violent… → Read More
Family, politics, and the spirit of classical liberalism
During the Trump administration, it seemed every Thanksgiving was an occasion for media outlets to run fretful stories by progressives about what to do when a "racist uncle" at the holiday dinner table vocally supported the 45th president. When those essays ended on a militant note, either advocating refusal to attend or pronouncing an imperative to confront and denounce the offending relative,… → Read More
Fox News was toxic long before Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 movie
Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, center-right pundits and co-founders of The Dispatch, have been getting some good press for quitting their longstanding gigs as talking heads on Fox News. The occasion of their protest is Patriot Purge, a revisionist and conspiracy-laden documentary about the Jan. 6 insurrection spearheaded by primetime Fox host Tucker Carlson. Hayes and Goldberg had hoped the… → Read More
The chaos on Canada's west coast is a preview of climate change woes to come
World leaders have just returned home from COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, eager to talk about the progress they made in devising strategies to combat climate change. Right on time, events on the west coast of Canada have given us a glimpse of our perilous environmental future. This past June, British Columbia was sitting under a highly irregular "heat dome" that… → Read More
The outdated thinking confusing our talk about autocracy
This week's best long read is undeniably Anne Applebaum's cover story from the December issue of The Atlantic, "The Bad Guys Are Winning." Applebaum is an accomplished historian of Soviet totalitarianism, and she lives in Poland, so her frequent writings on the subject of threats to democracy carry weight. Unlike many U.S.-based journalists on this beat, she knows the languages and political… → Read More
Republicans' divisions could be their midterm strength
News that the central committee of the Wyoming Republican Party narrowly voted (31-29) this weekend to stop recognizing Rep. Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP is hardly surprising. This is the second time her state party has rebuked her, and there have been similar moves by the Republican caucus in Congress. Cheney has loudly and repeatedly denounced former President Donald Trump's incitement of… → Read More
The muddle at the middle of the 1619 Project
An unresolved contradiction still plagues the controversial history as it releases in book form → Read More