United States Archives - Page 4 of 73

North America

Trump’s Charm Offensive

“You guys are the same as me”

November 1, 2024 • by Adam Koehler Brown

A #1 with a large fry, made and served by the forty-fifth president of the United States: Donald Trump was working a drive-through at a McDonald’s last weekend in Pennsylvania. He salted fries and greeted customers, a stunt meant to mock Kamala Harris and her repeated claim to have worked ...

Activism

The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”

Policing, migration, militarization, and the liberal-democratic provocation of the fascist turn in the Republican Party

November 1, 2024 • by James Porter

What Ranajit Guha has called the “prose of counterinsurgency” surely comes closest to characterizing the current state of abolitionist struggles within the context of the US presidential election campaign. With this concept, the postcolonial historian describes the strategies by which uprisings against imperial forms of domination have been degraded as ...

Activism

Voting While Uncommitted

Sustained collective action is not incompatible with the singular act of voting

October 31, 2024 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I have never subscribed to the idea that citizens who refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate in a tight race are somehow morally responsible for the election of a Republican, however bad that Republican might be. If we are serious about liberal democracy, then we must recognize that every citizen ...

Migration

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

Meet the infamously deep-pocketed, undocumented construction laborers building and then stealing American homes

October 18, 2024 • by Achilles Kallergis

Here’s a tip from the US political playbook: if your campaign is struggling, if you don’t have actual policies but “concepts of a plan,” if you secretly or openly wish for the “good ol’ days” when black people did “black jobs,” if you “forgot” to declare the lavish perks from ...

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

Education

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Preserving identity

September 26, 2024 • by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international community rallied behind Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country. Vital financial aid was accompanied by efforts to better understand a nation that did not surrender in the face of the Russian military forces that overwhelmingly surpassed the ...

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Literature

Poet Paisley Rekdal Summons the Lost Voices of Chinese Railroad Workers

Poetry on the landscape of race, past and present

September 24, 2024 • by Aditi Bhattacharjee

The transcontinental railroad—one of the great engineering feats of US history—was laid thanks to the labor of Chinese immigrants: between 1865 and 1869, some 12,000 Chinese workers constructed the western line. Yet very little evidence remains in the words of the workers themselves. “This is not to say there are ...

Poet Paisley Rekdal Summons the Lost Voices of Chinese Railroad Workers

North America

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

September 18, 2024 • by Henry Tonks

At the Aspen Ideas Climate Summit in spring 2022—one of those gatherings of the well-informed and the well-to-do so beloved by American politicians—Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, urged Republicans to “take back” their party from Donald Trump. “This country,” the veteran Democratic leader opined, “needs a ...

North America

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

August 28, 2024 • by Carl Landauer

Over the summer, I committed myself to reading the entirety of Project 2025, a policy document compiled by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from many veterans of the Trump administration, which I printed out in four thick three-ring binders. What follows is a review of the vision of governance the ...

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Podcast

Why Abortion Alone Does Not Make Women Free

A conversation with Felicia Kornbluh on Roe v. Wade

January 29, 2024 • by Claire Potter

A conversation with Felicia Kornbluh on Roe v. Wade. Let’s recap how abortion, after almost 50 years, once again became a matter of state law. ...

Why Abortion Alone Does Not Make Women Free

History

Can You Smile and Say “Land of the Free”?

An excerpt from American Confidential

November 6, 2023 • by Deanne Stillman

Can you smile and say ‘Land of the free’? Of course you can. There . . . that looks perfect. Did you know that this is where the West begins?” And then she would drive off and her mood instantly soured and she would wonder why her son Lee hardly ever ...

Politics

Could Donald Trump Pardon Himself?

Why the U.S. constitution doesn’t give the president a “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE” card

October 4, 2023 • by Gary J. Schmitt and Jeffrey K. Tulis

In the event of a 2024 reelection, the question arises: Can Trump pardon himself? Constitutionally, this issue exists within a gray area....

Life As “The Blind Man”

I’m now a different kind of person in the eyes of the world

May 10, 2023 • by Mitchell Abidor

It’s over a year now that I’ve navigated using a white cane, and if I had a dollar for every time someone helped me to cross the street, I’d have a dollar....