United States

Originalism’s Charade

Two new books make a devastating case against claims that the Constitution should be interpreted on the basis of its purported “original meaning.”

November 24, 2022 issue

Darryl Pinckney

Georgia’s Battle Over the Ballot

The New Georgia Project has been working for years on getting blacks to register and vote, but it must find ways to overcome the state’s long and complicated history of voter suppression.

November 24, 2022 issue

Reginald Dwayne Betts and Serhiy Zhadan

Holding a Gun

An exchange of letters between Reginald Dwayne Betts and Serhiy Zhadan, lyrical writers of the tough places they come from.

November 24, 2022 issue

Joshua Cohen

Lucky Guy

Jared Kushner’s anti-ideological ideology is to get the best deal for whomever he represents—the business he was born into, the business he married into, and, most of all, himself.

October 20, 2022 issue

Eric Foner

The Complicity of the Textbooks

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.

September 22, 2022 issue

Jamieson Webster

A Child Is Being Aborted

Psychoanalysis helped me make sense of my desire to have a child. It also exposes the fantasies at the root of the fear of abortion.

September 21, 2022

Bench Ansfield

A Theater of State Panic

Beginning in 1967, the Army built fake towns to train police and military officers in counterinsurgency. Sierra Pettengill’s new documentary lays bare the fears and false promises behind them.

September 16, 2022

Maura Ewing

Clemency Under Fire

In Pennsylvania’s tight Senate race, John Fetterman’s commitment to commuting harsh sentences has come under fierce attack from the right.

November 7, 2022

America’s Housing Crisis

A deteriorating bank-owned house, Moreno Valley, California, August 2008

Francesca Mari

The Housing Vultures

The investors who exploited the 2008 financial crisis are dictating the bailout of this one.

June 11, 2020 issue

Gabriel M. Schivone

America’s Eviction Epidemic

Across the country, millions of people are facing eviction as protections in place for the pandemic have lapsed.

September 16, 2020

Roberta Brandes Gratz

How NYC Is Zoning Out the Human Scale

This is a New York story only for now. Upzonings and transfers of newly created air rights are occurring in cities around the country. When it comes to real estate, New York City may lead the way, but others follow in time.

December 30, 2019

A view from 7 DeKalb Avenue, an apartment tower in Downtown Brooklyn. Eighty percent of its 250 apartments are subsidized units, for which there were 87,754 applications when it opened.

Michael Greenberg

Tenants Under Siege: Inside New York City’s Housing Crisis

New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian emergency. The tide of homelessness is only the most visible symptom.

August 17, 2017 issue

The Latest

Jonathan Mingle

No Smoke, No Fire

Despite the gas lobby’s best efforts, Americans are waking up to the health impacts of gas stoves. There’s no going back.

February 1, 2023

Sam Huber

Risk, Originality, Commitment

For Andrea Dworkin, literature and social change were always entwined.

January 26, 2023

Linda Greenhouse

Victimhood and Vengeance

The contemporary rise of Christian nationalism in the US is a reactionary response to the country’s liberalization over the past half-century.

February 9, 2023 issue

Ben Fountain

White Fright

A. M. Homes’s new novel might be a satire of American politics, but should we be mainly amused, or mainly horrified?

February 9, 2023 issue

Ian Frazier

Grim Reapers

Mega-agriculture is destroying the Corn Belt and the Central Valley, which the country’s food system depends on. Can midsize farms survive to save it?

February 9, 2023 issue

Max Rivlin-Nadler

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Eric Adams’s involuntary hospitalization plan was the culmination of a year spent demonizing those on the lowest rung of New York City’s ladder.

January 18, 2023

Felicia Kornbluh

The Grassroots of ‘Roe’

My mother’s part in the 1970 repeal of New York’s abortion law is a lesson for today’s activists: all politics is local.

January 16, 2023

Alexander Burns

Making the Senate Work for Democrats

The very structure of the US Senate tilts it toward Republican rule. The Democrats hold the chamber now—what can they do to move their agenda forward?

January 19, 2023 issue