Politics

United States

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

Christine Henneberg

Calculated Risks

Since the overturning of Roe, it has once again become a subversive act to provide medical care for women as though their lives are as valuable as men’s.

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

Diane Ravitch

‘Their Kind of Indoctrination’

For a range of far-right activists, Trump’s second term will be a chance to discipline public schools—and ultimately defund them.

January 11, 2025

David Cole

Free Speech for TikTok?

As the Supreme Court decides whether to let the US ban a hugely popular social media platform, it can either learn from its earlier mistakes or repeat them.

January 8, 2025

Piper French

The Reunited

The Biden administration has spent years reunifying families separated during Trump’s first term—but as his second approaches, they find themselves vulnerable again.

December 11, 2024

Martha C. Nussbaum

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