Rafi Schwartz

Bio

Rafi Schwartz is a contributing writer to Mic, where he focuses on politics, protest movements, and the weirder parts of the internet's underbelly. He was previously a senior writer with Splinter News, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine. His work has appeared in GOOD, Rolling Stone, The Forward, and elsewhere. He is a co-owner of Discourse Blog, where he frequently complains about food and politics, and sends a weekly newsletter with whatever is on his mind that day. Rafi currently lives in the Twin Cities, where he does not bike, run, or take part in any team sports. He does have a variety of interests, hobbies, and passions, however. You can ask him about them at @TheJewishDream on Twitter, if you'd like. Or not. When in doubt, he'll have the soup.
Vaccines are good. Threatening to evict someone over them is not
By Rafi Schwartz
There aren't many upsides to our long, and still ongoing, global pandemic. But if there is something that could be considered a positive development throughout all this, it's been COVID's ability to lay bare in blunt, unambiguous terms, the…
Insurrection enthusiast and acid trip 'Batman' villain Roger Stone got served court papers on live radio
By Rafi Schwartz
Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online. There's a degree of futility in asking — no, pleading — with longtime Trump confidant, convicted criminal, and shamelessly unapologetic…
The U.K.'s biggest asshole is crossing the pond to join the goblin army at Fox News
By Rafi Schwartz
I don't know if there's a special place in hell for Piers Morgan, arguably the biggest asshole in the whole of the United Kingdom, but there's certainly one for him here in the United States. And, as trumpeted by Rupert Murdoch's ubiquitous News…
Sure looks like Madison Cawthorn illegally snuck a tactical knife into a school
By Rafi Schwartz
What can you say about North Carolina Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn? That he's a habitual fabricator? An apparent bigot? An armed seditionist? Yes to all of the above. But now it seems we can add a new, ghoulish entry into his ignominious…
I never want Tucker Carlson to stop talking about Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's enormous balls
By Rafi Schwartz
Sometimes, if you're very very patient, and very very lucky, you might experience the rare opiate pleasure of stumbling upon a news story that you never, ever, want to end — a story which, despite the rapid-fire pace of the 24-hour news cycle and…
The big takeaway from the California recall debacle is that some pundits should shut up forever
By Rafi Schwartz
After months filled with speculative hand-wringing, deeply embarrassing moments of ass-showing, and at least one Kodiak bear, California voters went to the polls on Tuesday, handing incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom a decisive victory, bringing to a close…
Of course Amy Coney Barrett claimed SCOTUS isn't partisan
By Rafi Schwartz
If you've spent more than 15 minutes online in the past year, you've probably seen it: a picture (or, if you're fancy, sometimes a full gif!) of comedian Tim Robinson, dressed in a full-body hot dog costume, insisting that "we're all trying to find…
Rudy Giuliani used his 9/11 speech to insult generals and do a Queen Elizabeth impression
By Rafi Schwartz
"There's only three things he [Rudy Giuliani] needs to make a sentence," then-Vice President Joe Biden famously joked way back in those halcyon days of 2007. "A noun and a verb and 9/11." That may have been true for a time, but if the former New…
Live from New York: Revisiting the totally bonkers era of post-9/11 'SNL'
By Rafi Schwartz
It's hard to capture the overwhelming sense of dread, confusion, and grief that permeated every moment that followed the shared national trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. So much of what we take for granted now was born that day: the 24-hour news cycle, the…
Trump thinks Robert E. Lee would have been great in Afghanistan
By Rafi Schwartz
Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online. It's been a while since we've had a good ol' fashioned bonkers-go-nuts Trump moment. And while I don't miss the gnawing dread that came…
Biden just fired Kellyanne Conway and other Trump holdovers from their cushy military gigs
By Rafi Schwartz
Being the president of the United States has all sorts of perks: nice house, fancy jet plane, personalized M&Ms, and the ability to dole out all sorts of favors for your pals, just because you're in a generous giving mood. And surely that's what was…
Watch Virginia's infamous Robert E. Lee statue finally come down
By Rafi Schwartz
Before a cheering crowd of onlookers and revelers, a crew of Richmond, Virginia, officials on Wednesday sawed apart and then systematically removed a massive statue of Robert E. Lee in what was once the epicenter of the Confederacy for which he…
Portland cops may have successfully temper-tantrumed their way out of mandatory vaccinations
By Rafi Schwartz
Police in Portland, Oregon, may soon find themselves exempt from a statewide order mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for all public health officials thanks in no small part to a threatened mass revolt by the city's police union. According to Oregon…
Ted Cruz, you dunce, you Eddie Munster-looking nincompoop, it's time to log off
By Rafi Schwartz
Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online. Let's get one thing clear right off the bat: Texas senator and sedition enthusiast Ted Cruz is very bad at being very online. He tries,…
This isn't a preview of cataclysmic climate change. It's the actual show
By Rafi Schwartz
At least 14 people are dead and scores more hurt, stranded, and desperate in the Tri-State region after the remnants of Hurricane Ida thrashed the mid-Atlantic on Wednesday night, bringing the floods and devastation Ida unleashed in Louisiana…
Smell sulfur? It's because Trump's Miami resort is hosting a party of the damned
By Rafi Schwartz
"Hell," Sartre famously wrote, "is other people." And even though he coined the phrase almost 80 years ago, I like to think he somehow had the upcoming "AmpFest" in mind when he did. Because if there is a hell, then it's definitely at former…
Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently thinks she can just "shut down" telecom companies
By Rafi Schwartz
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene occupies a weird liminal space within the conservative political power matrix. As a lone representative for the minority party who's been stripped of her House committee seats, Greene's parliamentary…
A woman demanded a doctor treat her husband's COVID with horse dewormer. A judge backed her up
By Rafi Schwartz
First it was sunlight and bleach. Then came hydroxychloroquine. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic surges to new, deadly heights across the country, a sizable portion of the population has decided that a common barnyard deworming agent is the real…
Someone tell Mississippi's governor that heaven isn't a consolation prize for COVID
By Rafi Schwartz
It's become almost a glib cliche to describe members of the conservative power structure in this country as belonging to a "death cult" each time a Republican lawmaker or influencer steps gleefully aside to allow the ongoing pandemic to kill people…
The conservative Supreme Court just sentenced tens of thousands of people to homelessness
By Rafi Schwartz
The heavily conservative-skewed Supreme Court on Thursday turned down the Biden administration's request to extend an eviction moratorium put in place to ensure people remain housed during our still-ongoing global pandemic. All three of the court's…