Backbencher
Timothy Noah, Thomas E. RicksPolitics, economics, domestic policy, and a smattering of culture.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Only free issues | Publishes | Daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 684 | Founded | 6 years ago | Last Issue | 7 days ago |
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timothynoah.substack.comLatest Issues
Hey Jeff Bezos: Labor Unions Are Part Of Your Beloved Free Market
Teamsters picket an Amazon warehouse in Norwood, Mass., in 2023. Photo courtesy of the Teamsters.
In February 2025 Jeff Bezos announced a new policy for the Washington Post editorial page:
Thanks for reading Backbencher! Subscribe f...
A Midterm Survey of Donald Trump’s Body Parts
Cavity Sam of Milton Bradley’s battery-operated board game Operation (1964).
Fifteen years ago, armed with a Book of Political Lists published in 1998 by George magazine, I calculated that five American presidents possessed a body ma...
DOGE Profiteers
Blockers is the third volume of Michael Lewis’s trilogy about the besieged civil service in the age of Trump, the first two being The Fifth Risk (2018) and The Premonition (2021). Or maybe this is a tetralogy, with the third volume being Wh...
Of Lethal Injections, Public Executions, and the Securities and Exchange Commission
Madame Defarge in the Ronald Coleman version of “A Tale of Two Cities” (1935).
In the summer of 1979 I was a 21 year-old intern at the Nation. In that capacity I wrote a piece arguing against lethal injection. Capitol punishment, whi...
Make-Believe Job Creation
Sparrow’s Point in happier times. Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
President Donald Trump will today announce that a defense contractor, Anduril Industries, will invest $3.7 billion to build a shipyard on the forme...
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Authors
The writers behind this newsletter.
Backbencher jefe; New Republic staff writer; author, "The Great Divergence." Former Politico, Slate, Wall Street Journal, US News, Washington Monthly, etc.
Thomas E. Ricks is a former military correspondent for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of 11 books, most recently "Big Money, Small Town," a novel about the oligarchy squashing a small community in the Maine woods.
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