David Scharfenberg

Boston

Reporter at The Boston Globe

Staff writer for the Boston Globe Ideas section

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Articles

Trump's tariffs may not last, but protectionism will

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

It’s enough to make you wonder: How long can this tariff thing last? On Wednesday, Trump pulled back on some of his most punitive levies. And it’s not hard to imagine the next president — Democrat or Republican — making a hard pivot to free trade. One of the most important developments in American politics over the last decade — easy to forget amid all the outrage over Trump’s trade war — is the bipartisan turn to protectionism.
Trans girls playing girls’ sports? How about a more radical idea: Abolish the gender divide in athletics altogether. - The Boston Globe

2 months ago | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

The WNBA’s Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have become household names. And college phenom Paige Bueckers looks like she could be next. For millions of women and girls in America, it’s been a joy. For some, it’s felt like a liberation. But in their punchy new book “Open Play,” the academics Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford argue that women’s sports are something else entirely: a cage. They get the appeal. They’re fans themselves.
With COVID, Fauci and other scientists let us down

Mar 9, 2025 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

And if public health officials made some mistakes — you might be convinced, by this point, that they kept schools closed too long — you’re willing to cut them some slack. People like infectious disease chief Anthony Fauci were doing the best they could with the information they had. They were following the science. And we got to the other side in better shape than we might have.
The trap of thinking of Trump as the devil

Feb 4, 2025 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

There was the petty withdrawal of federal security protection from three former Trump administration officials facing credible death threats from Iran — the president effectively inviting murder.
Why you’ll never convince your Trumpy cousin that he’s wrong - The Boston Globe

Nov 27, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

His hometown of Maceo, Ky., he writes, was “100 percent white.” His mother attended an evangelical church. And as a kid, he recalls, he’d listen along as conservative talk radio king Rush Limbaugh mocked the “welfare moochers who sponged off hardworking Americans” — never doubting that his family was among the hardworking, even as they relied on food stamps and the government-issued cheese that arrived at the doorstep wrapped in tinfoil.
Scared of another Trump term? Here’s how it could work out better than you think. - The Boston Globe

Nov 8, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

Something transformational, even? Let’s imagine what that might look like. People support Donald Trump for all sorts of reasons. But a common thread is disgust for political elites. Millions of Americans believe — with some justification — that Democrats and Republicans sold out working people when they pushed through free trade deals like NAFTA, accelerating the pace of globalization and hollowing out factory towns in the Midwest and South. There was real devastation. Real anger.
Voters should choose Dylan Fernandes for state Senate - The Boston Globe

Nov 1, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

If you really want to vote for someone like Mathew Muratore this election season, knock yourself out. The five-term Republican state representative, running to represent parts of Plymouth and Barnstable counties in the state Senate, is a Charlie Baker-style moderate. And he’d probably do just fine in the upper chamber. But please don’t buy the argument at the core of his campaign — that he’ll bring balance to a Democratic-dominated, and often frustratingly opaque, state Legislature.
Do animals understand death? - The Boston Globe

Oct 9, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

To many people, including some scientists, Tahlequah’s journey looked a lot like parental grief.
How Democrats or Republicans could win sizable majorities

Oct 4, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

But where most of us see intractable division, a small but growing group of partisans and commentators see something else: political malpractice. In this view, there is nothing inevitable about our bitter deadlock.
The radical ideology at the heart of the anti-Israel protests - The Boston Globe

Aug 22, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | David Scharfenberg

Most who saw the phrase “settler colonialism” scrawled on a protest sign or tossed into a social media post probably didn’t grasp its full meaning. Like a lot of ideas bandied about in academia, it is malleable — pushed in one direction in this journal and another in that. The Gaza Solidarity Encampment by the Occidental College Students for Justice in Palestine, on April 29.