Politics

United States

Reports from the Slaughterhouse

A century after Upton Sinclair exposed the inhumane and unhygienic conditions of Chicago’s stockyards, life for animals in America’s factory farms and slaughterhouses is still gruesome.

December 19, 2024 issue

David Cole

Gender-Affirming Care & the Courts

The Supreme Court will rule this term on whether a Tennessee law denying minors treatment for gender dysphoria discriminates on the basis of sex.

December 19, 2024 issue

Patricia J. Williams

Torn Apart

Errol Morris’s new documentary looks unflinchingly at the horrors of Donald Trump’s policy of separating families at the border.

December 5, 2024 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Second Coming

Disinhibition will be the order of the day in Donald Trump’s America.

December 5, 2024 issue

Coco Fusco

The Crime of Human Movement

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.

November 21, 2024 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Protection Racket

For his supporters, Donald Trump’s misogynist attacks against Kamala Harris turn his own history as a predator into an asset.

November 21, 2024 issue

Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson

The Peril of Civil Breakdown

The US political situation radiates instability. How likely is extremist violence in the aftermath of the election?

November 7, 2024 issue

Pankaj Mishra

The Flailing Superpower

The spectacle of America on the global stage

November 7, 2024 issue

Election 2024

Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson

The Peril of Civil Breakdown

The US political situation radiates instability. How likely is extremist violence in the aftermath of the election?

November 7, 2024 issue

Mark Danner

Getting Out the Fear Vote

As Trump improvises at his rallies, his grim imaginings of a mongrelized, crime-ridden country are transformed into unfalsifiable myths.

November 7, 2024 issue

Samuel Earle

The Problems with Polls

Political polling’s greatest achievement is its complete co-opting of our understanding of public opinion, which we can no longer imagine without it.

October 17, 2024 issue

Joseph O’Neill

Bring Back the Fight!

In recent weeks, Harris and Walz have replaced a dynamic movement with a meat-and-potatoes campaign. That needs to change.

October 3, 2024

Mass Incarceration

Jacob Kang-Brown and Jack Norton

America’s Hidden Gulag

The nationwide federal detention of immigrants in county jails perpetuates a profit-driven system of mass incarceration.

February 19, 2021

Audience members at the New York City Council hearing on the closure of the Rikers Island Jail and the building of four borough-based jails, New York City Hall, September 5, 2019

Anakwa Dwamena

Competing Visions for New York City’s Jails

With the future of New York City’s correctional system at stake, the overwhelming feeling among activists and community members is disappointment and frustration.

October 4, 2019

Yasmina Price

Everyday Resistance in ‘Time’

Garrett Bradley’s intimate documentary shows how one person’s incarceration affects the lives of so many more.

October 24, 2020

Tameca Cole: Locked in a Dark Calm, 2016

Nicole R. Fleetwood

Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

I began what would become Marking Time by displaying photos of incarcerated relatives around my apartment, partly as an attempt to work through my own discomfort with the pictures of them in prison, and to bring their presence into my daily life.

April 28, 2020

The Latest

Sean Wilentz

Vance’s Junk History

J.D. Vance has cited Andrew Jackson to justify the idea that a president can disobey the federal judiciary’s rulings. The historical record says no such thing.

April 25, 2025

Julian Bell

Internalizing the Crises

Joseph Leo Koerner’s latest book considers what art becomes when politics has been stripped down to relations of force.

May 15, 2025 issue

Noah Feldman

The Last Bulwark

The fate of our democracy today depends on the judiciary’s commitments to liberty, constitutionalism, and legality.

May 15, 2025 issue

Joshua Leifer

Reoccupying Gaza

A consensus has by now emerged among Israel’s leaders that the country’s army will take direct, long-term control of the Strip—and attempt to expel its inhabitants.

April 23, 2025

Jerome Groopman

Measles Gone Wild

During a burgeoning measles outbreak, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has continued to make contradictory remarks, publicly endorsing the measles vaccine while raising doubts about its safety.

May 15, 2025 issue

Nic Johnson

Breaking the Conveyor Belt

Motivated perhaps above all by culture-war grievance, in the past month Donald Trump has tried to radically reshape a century-old system of global trade.

April 20, 2025

David Cole

Why Harvard Defied Him

How the university fares in its struggle with Donald Trump may well determine the future of academic freedom in the United States.

April 19, 2025

Nawal Arjini and Willa Glickman

The President of Brooklyn

The saga of Eric Adams’s mayoralty has come to epitomize the spirit of Trump’s second term—from its ethos of aggrieved narcissism to its punitive approach toward the vulnerable.

April 17, 2025

Duncan Hosie

The Apathetic Court

The Supreme Court has in recent years consistently neglected petitions from inmates across the country—even those with the most persuasive claims.

April 9, 2025

David Cole

Academic Freedom in Peril

Two books by leading First Amendment scholars offer a timely defense of the principle that politicians should not try to control what universities and professors teach their students.

April 24, 2025 issue