Politics

United States International Human Rights Climate Change

Losing No Time

In his first hundred days President Biden has been bold, decisive, and willing to take risks in his foreign policy judgments, but his early mistakes on Iran and Taiwan may have dangerous consequences.

May 27, 2021 issue

Rachel Nolan

‘I’ve Lost Everything to the Beast’

Formed in Los Angeles by refugees fleeing US-backed violence in El Salvador, MS-13 has wreaked havoc in Central America.

May 13, 2021 issue

Thomas Rogers

Welcome to Germany

Since Angela Merkel admitted 1.2 million refugees in 2015 and 2016, the dire predictions about their impact on the country have not materialized.

April 29, 2021 issue

Robert Kuttner

Dividends of a Just Economy

What is keeping the government from acting on behalf of its citizens?

April 29, 2021 issue

Howard W. French

Can America Remain Preeminent?

The global influence of the US is threatened by the potentially chaotic unraveling of a political, security, and economic architecture that has structured the world for the past seventy or so years.

April 29, 2021 issue

Ursula Lindsey

Me Too in Egypt & Morocco

In both countries, burgeoning movements to hold men accountable for sexual violence have led to new waves of repression.

April 8, 2021 issue

Darryl Pinckney

A Gift for the Long Game

Obama’s memoir of his first term is a story of aiming high and settling for what he could get.

March 25, 2021 issue

Caroline Fraser

The Stench of American Neglect

In her new book, the activist Catherine Coleman Flowers chronicles her efforts to expose criminally deficient sanitation in her home county of Lowndes, Alabama and around the US.

February 25, 2021 issue

The Latest

Mark Gevisser

Crossing the ‘Pink Line’

“Globally, the new battleground is over so-called gender ideology. This is defining the next human rights frontier.”

May 8, 2021

Ariel Dorfman

A Taxonomy of Tyrants

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen delineates what the last century’s macho dictators have had in common.

May 27, 2021 issue

Willa Glickman

The Future of Fracking

New technology has allowed access to more oil and gas in the US than ever expected. Will we be able to turn away from this dangerous windfall before it’s too late?

May 5, 2021

Alice Driver

Their Lives on the Line

The meatpacking industry lobbied Trump to declare its workers “essential,” to keep up production in the pandemic. Unless they got sick—then they were expendable.

April 27, 2021

Yardena Schwartz

Irreconcilable Hebron

The West Bank city has become ground zero of a century-long conflict—not in spite of its sacred history, but because of it.

April 21, 2021

Helen Epstein

Steeltown in the Rearview

The images Stephen Shore took in 1977 of scenes from the Rust Belt captured the start of a slow-rolling social catastrophe.

April 19, 2021

Makenna Goodman

Whose ‘Good Life’?

As back-to-the-land pioneers, Scott and Helen Nearing were gurus of a social movement enjoying renewed interest. But it’s an equivocal legacy.

April 17, 2021

Tamsin Shaw

Flacking for Facebook

How perfect that a failed Liberal Democrat should be leading the PR effort to persuade us that liberal democracy is safe with the social media giant.

April 13, 2021

Howard W. French

A Dispatch from Our Correspondent

“The US must learn to discover the sense of purpose that comes from achieving things of virtue, things that have an objective social need.”

April 10, 2021

Ankush Khardori

Who Will Answer for This Cruelty?

Trump officials who enforced the family separation policy have so far had a pass. This can’t be a repeat of the failed accountability over Bush-era torture.

April 9, 2021