Lights, camera, and...Seth Rogen! The comedy veteran does it all in this new series, writing, directing, and starring in a Hollywood send-up about the idealistic new head of a flagging studio. Determined to make great movies in an age when the medium is fading, he’s besieged on all sides, by numbers-obsessed corporate types, self-absorbed actors, and egotistical directors. Catherine O’Hara, Kathryn Hahn, and Ike Barinholtz co-star. Wednesday, March 26, Apple TV+.

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

The Democrats have a new idea to rally around, and it might just do the party some good, said Henry Grabar in Slate. With their new instant best-seller, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have handed the Democrats “a potent political manifesto” that can be boiled down to the single word the authors use as their book title. These two influential journalists argue that Dems should be the party of abundance, creating a government that promotes, rather than hinders, the development of housing, clean-energy solutions, medical innovations, life-enriching AI, and more. Of course, talking about creating a more productive government at a moment when President Trump is tearing government down is “like discussing how you’d like to redecorate your house while your neighbors strip the copper wiring from your walls.” Even so, this book is certain to influence many Democratic leaders, because “its optimism is compelling, even joyous.” 

The abundance movement began a few years ago with one problem foremost in mind, said Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker. Many of America’s big cities have become unaffordable because so little new housing has been built since well-intentioned progressive laws passed in the 1970s put huge hurdles in the way. Klein and Thompson ground their argument in a critique of the obstacles to beneficial building projects— and applaud Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro for plowing past such obstacles in 2023 to get a collapsed section of an interstate highway rebuilt in just 12 days. But “much of the second half of Klein and Thompson’s book focuses on supercharging American science, and here the authors edge toward a more ideologically nebulous futurism.” They imagine Americans of 2050 enjoying a shortened work week, refrigerators stocked with lab-grown meats, and medications that combat aging. But doesn’t the GOP have the same vision, except with government sidelined and equity a non-issue? 

“Klein and Thompson are certainly on to something important,” said Julian E. Zelizer in The New Republic. Sure, their argument is weakened by “notable oversights,” including that their ideas about cutting red tape “could easily provide more fuel for radical conservative efforts to dismantle entire programs without regard for the consequences.” But defenders of government need to do more to make it effective, and one way is for elected officials to be more abundance-minded, removing barriers to the provision of things the society needs and promoting innovation through smart public investment. Unfortunately, “as a political tract, Abundance is less persuasive.” After all, voters cast their ballots largely on the basis of the stories they embrace. “For Democrats to win back power, institutional reform can only be part of the solution.”

The Wyoming senator who spoke his mind

Alan Simpson had an irreverent streak and a way with a quip. “We have two political parties in this country: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party,” the three-term Wyoming GOP senator liked to say. “I belong to the Stupid Party.” He likened pushing a 1986 immigration bill through Congress to “giving dry birth to a porcupine,” and said entitlements had turned the U.S. into “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” The towering conservative—he stood 6-foot-7—ticked off plenty of people. But he also won respect for his lack of pretense, his ability to forge bipartisan alliances, and his willingness to buck party orthodoxy. A fiscal conservative who called environmentalists “bug-eyed zealots,” he was also an early backer of same-sex marriage and a defender of abortion rights. Being a Senate maverick was “a real roller-coaster ride,” he said in 2018. “Humor is what really saved my ass.” 

He grew up in Cody, Wyo., where his father served as state governor and U.S. senator, said The New York Times. “A hell-raiser as a teenager,” young Simpson shot up mailboxes, set fires, and got arrested for punching a police officer. Let off with probation, he turned his life around, serving in the Army and earning a law degree from the University of Wyoming. After a stint as Cody city attorney, he entered politics, serving 13 years in the state legislature before moving to the Senate in 1978. There, Simpson brought “his signature candor to epic legislative battles,” said CNN.com. His peak achievement was the 1986 immigration bill, which increased funding for border enforcement and gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants who’d lived and paid taxes in the U.S. since 1982. Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, it gave millions a path to citizenship. 

Declining to run for a fourth term—“the old fire in the belly is out,” he said—Simpson practiced law and taught at Harvard, said The Washington Post. Still, he “returned to the national stage as a leading deficit hawk” in 2010, when he co-chaired a bipartisan deficit-reduction group for President Barack Obama. The panel’s proposed package of tax hikes and spending cuts won plaudits but stalled in Congress due to “bitter pills” like a gasoline tax. It was a stinging disappointment, yet in a 2018 eulogy of former President George H.W. Bush, Simpson showed that his barbed humor remained intact. “Those who travel the high road of humility in Washington, D.C.,” he said, “are not bothered by heavy traffic.”