United States

How DeSantis Packed the Florida Supreme Court

With his right-wing judicial appointments, the governor of Florida has been carrying out the mission of the Federalist Society and removing barriers to his political agenda.

July 20, 2023

Sean Wilentz

American Carnage

Jeffrey Toobin’s book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing traces the path from Ronald Reagan’s antigovernment ideology to today’s radicalized right.

August 17, 2023 issue

Willa Glickman

‘People Are Not a Crisis’

Eric Adams has insisted that his administration is doing its best to house New York’s asylum seekers, but the city’s shortage of shelter space is the result of political choices.

July 23, 2023

Fintan O’Toole

Unrepentant Pence

Mike Pence’s religiosity may be entirely sincere, but it is also instrumental and highly politicized. He, like Trump, is in show business.

July 20, 2023 issue

Laurence H. Tribe

Constrain the Court—Without Crippling It

Critics of the Supreme Court think it has lost its claim to legitimacy. But proposals for reforming it must strike a balance with preserving its power and independence, which remain essential to our constitutional system.

August 17, 2023 issue

Jeffrey Toobin

Keeping Speech Robust and Free

The case of New York Times v. Sullivan set a vital standard in libel law. Could the clash between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems dismantle it—and at what cost?

July 20, 2023 issue

Adam Hochschild

History Bright and Dark

Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum and the documentary series based on the 1619 Project reflect deep divisions in how we recount our nation’s past.

May 25, 2023 issue

Matthew Desmond

The High Cost of Being Poor

The American government gives the most help to those who need it least. This is the true nature of our welfare state.

April 20, 2023 issue

Inaugurating a President

Masha Gessen

The Styrofoam Presidency

Many hoped Trump’s aesthetics were not a reflection of his entire political self, but merely a style that could be dropped when the occasion demanded it. But when the inauguration came, Trump trampled on some of the most hallowed public rituals of American power.

January 24, 2017

Darryl Pinckney

What He Really Said

President Obama’s first inauguration was the first time black people had come to Washington in great numbers, but not to protest.

February 26, 2009 issue

Darryl Pinckney

Beyond the Fringe

At George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration, the National Mall was cordoned off by chainlink fencing for the first time ever. Such stringent measures may have been inconsistent with America’s ideals, but not, apparently, with its laws.

February 22, 2001 issue

Francine du Plessix Gray

Old Times

Richard Nixon’s self-denial, self-mythologizing, and self-discipline were on full display at his 1973 inauguration.

February 22, 1973 issue

The Latest

Suzy Hansen

Twenty Years of Outsourced War

In Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay sets out to determine what twenty-first-century US foreign policy has done to the cocksure American mind.

October 19, 2023 issue

Kim Phillips-Fein

Conspicuous Destruction

Two new books argue that the private equity industry has created an economic order in which getting rich quickly preempts every other value, undermining companies and evading the law.

October 19, 2023 issue

Gabriel Winant

Eight and Skate

Today’s iteration of the United Auto Workers—now on a decisive strike—is both a renewal of an old tradition and a new creation.

September 23, 2023

E. Tammy Kim

Storyboards and Solidarity

The current Hollywood strikes have a precedent in Disney’s golden age, when the company was a hothouse of innovation and punishing expectation.

October 5, 2023 issue

Noah Feldman

The Court’s Conservative Constitutional Revolution

The bloc of conservative justices on the Supreme Court have dismantled many of the legal precedents on their hit list. What’s in store for the new term?

October 5, 2023 issue

Fintan O’Toole

Paradise Lost

In spreading lies about the risks of vaccines, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long played on anxieties about purity and pollution.

September 7, 2023

Eric Foner

Seeing Was Not Believing

A new book identifies the 1968 Democratic convention as the moment when broad public regard for the news media gave way to widespread distrust, and American divisiveness took off.

September 21, 2023 issue

Erin Maglaque

An Overabundance of Virtue

The scholar James Hankins has argued that the revival of ancient virtues was a central concern of Renaissance humanists. But can those virtues also be revived in modern America?

September 21, 2023 issue

Linda Greenhouse

Why Aren’t Cops Held to Account?

Decades of Supreme Court decisions have converted qualified immunity from a commonsense rule into a powerful doctrine that deprives people injured by police misconduct of recourse.

September 21, 2023 issue