Gabrielle Gurley
Gabrielle Gurley is The American Prospect’s deputy editor. Her email is ggurley@prospect.org.
Recent Articles
Boston’s Transportation Crisis: A Q&A with Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu
After recent subway derailments, Wu has taken up the banner that state political leaders have dropped, sounding the alarm that Massachusetts officials must develop comprehensive solutions to the beleaguered transit system before it’s too late.
Jun 26, 2019
screen_shot_2017-07-19_at_4.28.52_pm.png N ew York City responded to its “summer of hell” with congestion pricing that will steer hundreds of millions of dollars to the city’s subways. Washington’s Metro launched a mammoth capital repair program after a spate of electrical fires, and its member jurisdictions, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, ceased endless dithering to agree on new annual funding contributions . These crises forced municipal and state leaders to swap out the toxic incrementalism that passed for action with real strategies to solve mobility crises that affect millions of people, riders and drivers alike. And then there’s Boston. The Homeric ineptitude of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the country’s fifth-largest transit system, is the stuff of legend. Financial crises and service-shuttering snowstorms have led to important management reforms. But abysmal service, especially the daily delays and...
Collins Is the Maine Event in 2020
Susan Collins remains favored to recapture her Senate seat. But she will have her work cut out for her—if she decides to run.
Jun 19, 2019
As she travels around Maine gauging her re-election prospects, Susan Collins is bound to face some very angry women still seething about her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime Supreme Court appointment. The Kavanaugh hearings lit a fire under many of her constituents, one that has been smoldering at least since 2016. It’s now jumped her last political firebreak, her reputation as a reasonable Republican. With the repercussions of Donald Trump’s victory made plain by that single vote, the unprecedented outpouring of political engagement in Maine in 2018 produced a Democratic trifecta and put Collins’s seat in play. With the path to a possible Democratic Senate majority winding through Maine, candidates who have been biding their time are jumping into what promises to be a volatile race to knock off Collins. This stands in contrast to other Senate races, where Democrats have failed to secure top-tier opponents and lost some possible challengers to the...
Maine Exhales
Democrats are ascendant in the Pine Tree State. Attorney General Janet Mills became Maine’s first woman governor, and the party took control of the state Senate and increased its House majority. As Mainers breathe easier and state officials begin to clean up the mess left behind by former governor Paul LePage and his cabal, can Maine provide a beacon for the rest of America?
Jun 12, 2019
This article is a preview of the Summer 2019 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . Liesha Petrovich kept tropical-fish antibiotics on hand just in case. You could get them online and they were much cheaper than the prescription medicines her family might need but couldn’t afford. Two years ago, she stumbled walking and broke her foot. A black-belt karate teacher who co-owns a dojo with her husband in the western Maine town of Norway, Petrovich had broken her foot once before and she decided to power through: Her daughter turned 18 shortly before the injury, leaving her and her husband without the Medicaid coverage that the family had relied on since the older of her two children was born. So instead of racking up thousands of dollars in emergency room bills, she ordered a walking cast from Amazon. But her worries multiplied as the kids neared age 21, the cutoff for their own Medicaid coverage. Her daughter was addicted to opioids, had ended up in rehab, and...
The Rose Garden Infrastructure Massacre
Trump is all about his own drama, even when presented with a chance to build projects that can save Americans’ lives.
May 24, 2019
Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hung a huge banner outside its Lafayette Square headquarters directly facing the White House, listing the names of three Republican presidents and their infrastructure accomplishments—past and, the Chamber hoped, future. It was Infrastructure Week, which the Chamber, the AFL-CIO, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and others use every year to stress the importance of infrastructure to their fellow Americans. Eisenhower got a nod for the interstate highway system; Reagan kudos for raising the gas tax that fuels the Highway Trust Fund, the lockbox for highway and mass transit dollars. Donald Trump was on the list, too. But his inclusion had a troll-like “your name here” quality—reminding him that he had a “historic opportunity” to come up with a 21st-century infrastructure program. Of course, this diverse and bipartisan coalition had every reason to be concerned: On Wednesday, the president showed how well...
The Great American Infrastructure Farce
The latest episode of Infrastructure Week was brought to you by the number two trillion.
May 03, 2019
The national news media echo chamber duly produced the same headline from Tuesday’s White House infrastructure meeting with President Trump: a $2 trillion infrastructure “agreement” touted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer during a weirdly sanguine follow-up news conference, punctuated with vague platitudes and phantom bipartisanship. The $2 trillion is merely a number that gained traction after a St. Patrick’s Day confab between Trump and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the House Ways and Means chairman. Agreeing on a number, however, does not necessarily portend a solid plan to repair structurally deficient bridges, extend broadband internet, or replace the lead pipes that still bring water to millions of American homes. Nor does the $2 trillion number deliver a host of cutting-edge 21st-century projects. Trump is sold on $2 trillion, apparently because he thinks it sounds better than lower figures, according to a source...
