Politics

United States International Human Rights Climate Change Election 2020

‘Be Ready to Fight’

Trumpism is driven by cruelty and domination even as its rhetoric claims grievance and victimization. The attack on the Capitol showed that Donald Trump’s army of millions will not just melt away when he leaves office.

February 11, 2021 issue

Diane Ravitch

The Dark History of School Choice

How an argument for segregated schools became a rallying cry for privatizing public education.

January 14, 2021 issue

Jackson Lears

Orthodoxy of the Elites

In Anne Applebaum’s book, democracy, free markets, and meritocracy all get the aerial view.

January 14, 2021 issue

Michael Tomasky

What Did the Democrats Win?

The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable.

December 17, 2020 issue

Fintan O’Toole

Democracy’s Afterlife

Trump, the GOP, and the rise of zombie politics.

December 3, 2020 issue

A migrant child looking through the US-Mexico border fence, Tijuana, November 2018

Francisco Cantú

The Lie of American Asylum

Three new books offer searing portraits of the people affected by family separations and the criminalization of asylum in the Trump era.

November 5, 2020 issue

Fintan O’Toole

William Barr: Enabler in Chief

The attorney general exemplifies the growing influence of right-wing Catholicism under Trump.

November 5, 2020 issue

Matt Seaton

What’s Brexit to Do with the Price of Fish?

How did this minnow of an issue almost cause Britain to crash out of the European Union with no trade agreement? The answer: symbolic sovereignty.

December 24, 2020

The Latest

Radcliffe Roye

‘God, Guns, & Trump’: Anatomy of the Crowd

What the body language of Trump supporters tells us about America’s divided future.

January 22, 2021

Richard Kreitner

Secessionist Talk Is Serious

Disunion is hardly a new theme in American politics. In this moment of tumult, it would be unwise to rule out its return.

January 19, 2021

Marc Weitzmann

A Rising Tide of Violence in France

The roots of radicalization in the country’s colonial past.

February 11, 2021 issue

Michael Eric Dyson

St. Paul’s Letter to America

“After the Capitol offense, all thoughts of American exceptionalism should be dead,” says the apostle. “But you need not despair.”

January 18, 2021

Shennette Garrett-Scott

What Price Wholeness?

A detailed new proposal for reparations for slavery raises three critical questions: How much, exactly, does America owe? Where will the money come from? And who gets paid?

February 11, 2021 issue

Jonathan Stevenson

The National Security Counselor

“Entrenched constraints would have been damn useful in preventing Trump from heedlessly tearing down the US-led postwar liberal order.”

January 16, 2021

Sarah Churchwell

Lincoln’s Warning Against Mobocracy

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” declared the man who would be America’s sixteenth president. Only justice can make a more perfect Union.

January 15, 2021

Perry Link

Seeing the CCP Clearly

For Chinese dissidents, the end of Washington’s deference to Beijing has been a long time coming.

February 11, 2021 issue

Lavender Au

China’s Big #MeToo Test

When the people’s republic claims to have achieved gender equality, how to deal with a high-profile accusation of sexual harassment is a tricky matter.

January 12, 2021

Jonathan Stevenson

Trump’s Lingering Menace

A seditious president who fomented an insurrection in the Capitol remains the commander-in-chief of the US military. That is an intolerably dangerous situation.

January 9, 2021