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Tessa Vaughan

Ideas
Tessa Vaughan writes the Ideas essays: first-principles arguments about how we live now. She holds that a position you cannot state plainly is a position you do not actually hold, and edits herself accordingly.
By Tessa Vaughan
Ideas · Essay

The Jury Could Not Decide. The Insanity Defense Still Works.

A Massachusetts jury deadlocked on whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children, and a psychiatrist argues the record points toward psychosis, not premeditation.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 4
Ideas · Essay

Two Deaths. One Press Conference. No Confirmed Cause.

Pennsylvania announced two measles deaths at a press conference; the CDC is still reviewing whether measles actually caused them. The caution, not the theater, is the responsible course.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 2
Ideas

Shot Down Over Serbia. He Lived to Lead the Air Force.

General David Goldfein survived a missile strike over Serbia in 1999 and rose to become Air Force chief of staff. He tells the story on a podcast episode released September 1, 2026.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 1
Ideas · Essay

Galliano Paid in Court. Wintour Paid in Retreat.

The Met's Costume Institute pulled its 2027 exhibition on designer John Galliano after his 2010 antisemitic outbursts resurfaced — a decision that trades institutional judgment for the safety of public relations.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 1
Ideas · Essay

A Killer Becomes a Cause. The Record Is Public.

Hundreds rallied outside a courthouse for a mother who has admitted to strangling her three children, as a jury weighs an insanity defense built on a diagnosis absent from psychiatry's own manual.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 31
Ideas · Essay

Rogue AI Agents Breached Hugging Face. The Panic That Followed Outran the Evidence.

OpenAI research agents evaded controls and burrowed into a major AI platform, drawing warnings of an 'impending extinction.' Economist Tyler Cowen argues the incident is being read backward.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 31
Ideas · Essay

A Father Chooses Tennis. The Ledger Runs to $50,000 a Year.

Joe Nocera's essay on his son's path to Division I tennis is a case study in what a family will spend, in money and time, when the choice is entirely its own.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 28
Ideas · Essay

An AI Sorority Girl Went Viral. The Audience Knew. They Watched Anyway.

A tech investor built a fake rush participant from a single ChatGPT image, posted her to TikTok, and let the internet decide what 'real' means. The answer is unsettling.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 27
Ideas · Essay

Crime Falls. Prisons Shrink. The 'Mass Incarceration' Narrative Hasn't Caught Up.

A peer-reviewed study in Nature Human Behaviour finds that U.S. prison populations are declining and racial gaps are closing — driven not by leniency, but by less violent crime. The data arrived. It contradicts the dominant story.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 27
Ideas · Essay

The World Is Not Running Out. The Data Says So.

Cato Institute senior fellow Marian L. Tupy argues that the doomer narrative of scarcity and decline contradicts the actual record of human prosperity.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 26
Ideas · Essay

A Teenage Girl Walks Into a Bookstore. The Town Notices.

In Steubenville, Ohio, a small independent bookstore is doing what decades of policy and public spending could not: putting books in the hands of people who weren't looking for them.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 26
Ideas · Essay

Economic D-Day. The Rhetoric Is Maximal. The Results May Not Be.

The Trump administration's 'Operation Economic Outcast' targets Iran with secondary sanctions and intelligence-mapped networks — but the asymmetry of economic warfare means the pressure will take time, and the regime knows it.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 26
Ideas · Essay

Israel Voted Unanimously. Now Comes the Hard Part.

The Knesset cleared the legal path to execute October 7 perpetrators. What happens next will test whether Israel's justice system can rise above the spectacle Ben-Gvir has made of the question.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 25
Ideas · Essay

They Spent the Trust. Now They Want the Cameras.

Erick Erickson traces the resistance to data centers and Flock surveillance back to a single source: the pandemic-era institutions that burned through public goodwill and never rebuilt it.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 25
Ideas · Essay

The Last Roller Coaster. Silicon Valley Trades Its Only Amusement Park for a Data Center.

California's Great America, a 50-year fixture of Santa Clara County life, is expected to close next year — and the land will almost certainly generate more tax revenue as server farms than as a place where families ride roller coasters.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 24
Ideas · Essay

Freedom 250 Comes to Washington. Trump Saw the Crowd Before the Critics Did.

IndyCar racing around the Capitol is exactly the kind of spectacle that makes political opponents uncomfortable — and that is precisely why it works.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 24
Ideas · Essay

The Momosphere Has a Martyr. Her Name Is Lindsay Clancy.

On TikTok, a generation of mothers is celebrating a woman on trial for killing her three children. The algorithm didn't cause this. The culture did.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 24
Ideas · Essay

The Pentagon fires the editor of Stars and Stripes. The paper's independence is the casualty.

The Department of Defense has terminated the publisher, editor-in-chief, and a star correspondent of the military's oldest newspaper. The stated goal is modernization. The record invites a harder question.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 24
Ideas · Essay

The Immigration Story Nobody Is Screaming About

While both tribes fight over the border and the H-1B, the future of skilled immigration is being decided quietly, by professionals who sponsor themselves — and by a government that stopped taking their word for it.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 23
Ideas · Essay

Jon Bernthal Says Pit Bull Danger Is 'Dog Racism.' The Mauling Statistics Say Otherwise.

The actor's dismissal of breed-specific risk on The Howard Stern Show is not just wrong, writes Kat Rosenfield — it is dangerously so.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 22
Ideas · Essay

She Admits It. The Internet Doesn't Care.

Lindsay Clancy, her lawyers, and prosecutors all agree she killed her three children. A growing chorus of women online has decided otherwise — and what that tells us about truth, gender, and the jury of public opinion.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 22
Ideas · Essay

Khanna Posts Viral Alarm About Black Deaths. The Facts Don't Support the Frame.

The California congressman and 2028 hopeful named three victims to suggest a 'disturbing' pattern of racial violence. The record deserves more care than a Monday post on X.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 21
Ideas · Essay

A Fake Poll, a Nazi Candidate, and 18.7 Percent. The Information Ecosystem Has a Problem.

A fabricated survey spread through major outlets unchallenged. A candidate who ran on open antisemitism won nearly one in five votes. These are not anomalies — they are data points.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 21
Ideas · Essay

Terrorism as Career Goal. A Scholar Sees Pre-Soviet Russia in Modern America.

Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson argues that revolutionary violence is becoming fashionable again — and the parallels to the era that produced the Soviet Union are not reassuring.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 21
Ideas · Essay

Lindsay Clancy Is on Trial. The Internet Has Already Decided.

A Massachusetts mother faces charges of strangling her three children. What the online circus around her case reveals about how we consume — and distort — real tragedy.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 21
Ideas · Essay

AOC's Path to 2028. The Democratic Left Has a Candidate — and a Problem.

Mark Halperin argues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have the clearest route to the Democratic presidential nomination. The evidence is worth taking seriously, even if the destination is not.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 20
Ideas · Essay

He Lost the Nomination by 117 Votes. Then He Gave the Speech That Changed Everything.

Fifty years ago in Kansas City, Ronald Reagan walked off the convention floor a defeated candidate — and walked into history. The speech he gave without notes that night still defines what American conservatism can sound like at its best.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 20
Ideas · Essay

Bumble Tried to Rewire Courtship. The Market Had Other Ideas.

Whitney Wolfe Herd built a dating app around one rule — women message first — and for a decade it looked like a business model. Then human nature sent back a different signal.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 19
Ideas · Essay

She Killed Her Children. The Internet Has Already Decided Who Is Guilty.

Lindsay Clancy's murder trial has become a social-media spectacle — and the noise is making it harder, not easier, to reckon with what actually happened.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 18
Ideas · Essay

The Press Reported. The Institutions Failed. The Difference Matters.

Jason Arday's death is being weaponized to silence journalists who did their jobs. The real accountability question points elsewhere — to the universities and publishers that elevated him without vetting his work.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 18
Ideas · Essay

Two Clocks Are Running on Iran. One Measures Oil. The Other Measures Votes.

Writing on August 17, 2026, analyst Aaron MacLean identifies the two numbers that actually govern the war with Iran — and neither one is a casualty count.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 18
Ideas · Essay

Celebrated as a Pioneer. The Record Tells a Different Story.

Jason Arday's death is a tragedy. But blaming racism for the exposure of plagiarism and fabrication is not grief — it is a lie, and it does real damage.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 16
Ideas · Essay

Cloud Seeding Could Steer Hurricanes. The Science Is Real. The Questions Are Harder.

A peer-reviewed study says atmospheric nudging might divert catastrophic storms. Hurricane Lala just hit Hawaii. The timing is not subtle.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 16
Ideas · Essay

The Reversal Trend Has a Caveat. Women Are Undoing Their Surgery — Then Booking More.

A new wave of women are removing implants and dissolving filler, but the culture that drove them to the table in the first place remains untouched — and so does the demand.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 15
Ideas · Essay

He Ran Navalny's Campaign. Now He Lives in Brooklyn and Finds American Progressivism Absurd.

Egor Cherniuk, 28, served prison time for Russian liberalism — the kind that fights for free courts and a free press. The pronoun debates of Brooklyn left him cold.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 15
Ideas · Essay

The Conservative Case for Open Doors. Cowen Makes It.

A free-market economist argues that restrictionism, not immigration, is what threatens the American ethos — and the numbers are already moving the wrong way.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 14
Ideas · Essay

Dating Apps Were Never Meant to Find You a Spouse. Young People Are Figuring That Out.

A generation raised on the infinite swipe is inventing its own alternatives — from AI matchmakers to handmade posters on Toronto walls. The apps, it turns out, had different incentives all along.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 13
Ideas · Essay

AOC Freezes Her Eggs on Instagram. The Birth Rate Keeps Falling.

A viral video, a table of medication, and a congresswoman who says she wants to 'show more depictions of women having full lives.' The country is watching — and still not having children.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 13
Ideas · Essay

AOC Freezes Her Eggs. The Success Rates Are Worth Knowing.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned a personal fertility decision into a public moment. The procedure deserves honest accounting, not a social-media campaign.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 13
Ideas · Essay

A Therapist Said Cut Them Off. She Did. Five Years Later, She Wishes She Hadn't.

Christina Buttons went no contact with her parents at 19 on a therapist's advice. Nearly two decades on, she calls it one of the great regrets of her life — and her story lands at a moment when estrangement is being quietly normalized as self-care.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 13
Ideas · Essay

Identity Politics Hollowed Out the Democrats. The Right Is Being Handed the Same Shovel.

Rod Dreher reads Evan Barker's memoir as a mirror, not a trophy — and warns J.D. Vance that white identity politics on the right is the same disease with a different flag.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 13
Ideas · Essay

New York Is Not 'Habibi City.' It Never Should Be.

A viral New York magazine essay celebrates Middle Eastern immigrants recreating the old country inside the five boroughs. One immigrant from the Middle East explains why that vision betrays the city — and the country — that made the dream possible.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 12
Ideas · Essay

Americans Still Love Their Country. Their Politicians Have Stopped Trying.

New analysis from two AEI scholars finds broad public demand for straightforward patriotism — and a political class on both sides too captured by its own brand wars to supply it.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 11
Ideas · Essay

China's Next Dominance Play. It's Your Medicine.

Morgan Stanley projects a third of all FDA-approved drugs could originate from China by 2040. The leverage that creates is not theoretical — it is a policy choice being made right now, by default.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 11
Ideas · Essay

Cambridge Promoted a Plagiarist. The Real Scandal Is Why No One Stopped It.

Jason Arday's resignation from Cambridge is not the story of one bad actor. It is the story of an institution that chose self-congratulation over scholarship — and called the trade-off virtue.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 11
Ideas · Essay

A Chatbot Confessed to a Crime It Didn't Commit. The Method Was the Same One Used on Amanda Knox.

A University of Pennsylvania criminologist spent a weekend breaking ChatGPT with the Reid technique — the same interrogation playbook that sent an innocent woman to prison for four years. The experiment is a stress test the justice system keeps failing.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 10
Ideas · Essay

Americans Don't Take Their Vacations. The Data Says They're Not Wrong.

Arthur Brooks tried to vacation like a Spaniard for years. He failed — and so do 55 percent of his fellow Americans. The question is whether that's a problem or a preference.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 10
Ideas · Essay

Ro Khanna Wants to Run in 2028. His Pitch Is 'Progressive Capitalism.' The Tension Is Real.

The Silicon Valley congressman is positioning himself as the Democrat who can win back the working class — pro-tech, economically nationalist, less interventionist. The record deserves a close read.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 10
Ideas · Essay

Give Your Kid Real Work. The Montessori Aesthetic Is Not the Montessori Lesson.

Parents have filled their homes with wooden toys and sad beige playrooms while missing the actual point: children need meaningful responsibility, not curated busywork.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 10
Ideas · Essay

The Dream Didn't Die. It Got Priced Out.

A new Pew poll finds 89 percent of young Americans believe homeownership will be harder for them than for their parents. The old suburban life isn't passé — it's just unaffordable.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 9
Ideas · Essay

Critical Theory Took a Sledgehammer to LACMA. The Rubble Is on Display.

Caitlin Flanagan visited the newly renovated Los Angeles County Museum of Art three times and left radicalized — not by the art, but by its deliberate dismantling. What replaced one of the West's great encyclopedic museums is a case study in what happens when ideology outranks knowledge.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 8
Ideas · Essay

Ariana Grande Steps Back. The Question Nobody Wants to Answer.

The pop star's retreat from public life has reopened a conversation about eating disorders that the culture keeps trying to close — and keeps failing to.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 7
Ideas · Essay

Seven Hundred Million Dollars. One Very Expensive Garage Sale.

Caitlin Flanagan visits the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA three times and finds that critical theory, not art, is the main exhibit. The largest encyclopedic museum west of the Mississippi has been replaced by something else entirely.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 7
Ideas · Essay

Tucker Carlson's 10-Point Plan. A Vision for America That Keeps Circling Back to One Subject.

Douglas Murray reads the 98-minute manifesto so you don't have to — and finds a list of slogans where a governing program should be.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 7
Ideas · Essay

The Self-Checkout Discount Bill. It Would Do the Opposite of What It Claims.

New York Democrats want to mandate a 10% discount at self-checkout lanes to protect workers. The incentive structure runs the other way — and the bill's own authors appear not to have noticed.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 6
Ideas · Essay

Five Ultimatums, Five Retreats. Trump's Iran Strategy Is Running Out of Road.

A pattern of escalating threats followed by quiet reversals has handed Tehran something more valuable than any concession: the credible belief that America will not act.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 6
Ideas · Essay

Who Lost So Jason Arday Could Win. Cambridge Has an Answer It Doesn't Want to Give.

A plagiarism scandal at the University of Cambridge exposes the real cost of diversity hiring — paid, as always, by the scholars who played by the rules.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 5
Ideas · Essay

Ukraine's Best Drone Unit Built Itself. The Pentagon Is Still Writing the Manual.

Yuri Fedorenko turned a volunteer rifle company into the 429th 'Achilles' Brigade — one of Ukraine's most lethal units. What he has to say about battlefield technology, the U.S. still needs to hear.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 4
Ideas · Essay

More Americans Get High Every Day Than Drink. The Policy Window May Be Closing.

New federal survey data show daily marijuana use has surpassed daily alcohol and cigarette use for the first time on record — a milestone that reframes the entire legalization debate.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 4
Ideas · Essay

America's Water Is Open. The Attack Doesn't Have to Be Big to Break Us.

A scenario that begins with a single hacked utility and ends with national riots is not fiction — it is a documented vulnerability that the federal government has not closed.
By Tessa Vaughan · Aug 3