Latest
December 2, 2025
Be Grateful | Trump’s Latter-day Neoconservatism
Séamus Malekafzali
On October 13, international representatives gathered in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in the southern Sinai Peninsula. Sharm el-Sheikh had been occupied by Israel from 1968 to 1982, and suffered a major al-Qaeda attack in 2005; now President Donald Trump was there to ink an agreement that would end what he described as three thousand years of conflict in the Middle East. In keeping with such a momentous occasion,...
December 2, 2025
The Wife
Elisa Gonzalez
Marie recognized his wife the way she used to recognize her mother in a crowd of other mothers. Absolute certainty based on the scantest evidence: how she toyed with her hair, or untwisted a skirt. Marie had never met his wife, but fame, it seemed, could stand in for intimacy. She’d seen her in Vogue, arms akimbo, collarbones vamped, and in The New Yorker, staring down the lens with an...
December 2, 2025
The Masada Option | Zionism’s Death Drive
Yoni Gelernter
On December 15, 2023, an Israeli sniper operating in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City opened fire on three shirtless, unarmed men in their twenties, one of whom was waving a white flag. Two were killed instantly; the third fled into a nearby building, where he called out for help in Hebrew. He was discovered there by another IDF patrol, which shot him dead. At the time, there was already...
December 2, 2025
Global Whack-a-Mole | Soy Farming and Deforestation
Andy Cawley
In May, China responded to Trump’s trade war provocations by halting imports of U.S.-grown soybeans, turning to Brazilian and Argentinian suppliers. Given that just over half of all American soybeans produced in 2024 were destined for China, the resultant cratering of demand was “a massive shock to our markets,” a University of Nebraska agricultural economics professor told ABC News. “I hope China will quickly quadruple its soybean orders,” Trump posted...
December 2, 2025
States of Decomposition | Eating in New York State Prison
Sara G. Kielly
My childhood was replete with family meals and cookouts. Even after I moved out and was, at times, homeless, I always knew that I could turn to my mother for a warm meal. I reveled in the foods I loved and had no problem turning up my nose at food I disliked. (Consider the horror that is egg salad or cooked greens!) Until I was 22, I got to decide...
December 2, 2025
“Our Diminished Epoch” | An Interview with Stuart Schrader
The Drift Editors
From Chicago and D.C. to the U.S.-Mexico border and the coast of Venezuela, the hallmark of Donald Trump’s second term has been the unrestricted deployment of state violence. This carnival of coercive brutality comes after years of unsuccessful attempts, by the left, to curb our government’s use of force. The movement against racist police brutality that culminated in the protest wave of 2020 is now in retreat. Demonstrations against the...
December 2, 2025
Sonnet for Desert | Poetry
Kathleen Ma
with Sammy Prentice The cow named Desert sheared the grassland with grateful eyes. She reeducated the soil’s hardness. She would later be reborn as the lake’s surface. For now it was 1953. Her best friend was the suffering sea. A sturdy youth named Yiping led her up the mountain. Is he still my uncle? With every year, cuts of time raise him from dust. Me — I will wrest this...
December 2, 2025
Temporary Fixes | The Limitations of USAID
Olatunji Olaigbe
I first learned about USAID in 2017 while I was working at a computer cafe in Ilorin, North Central Nigeria. Educators used to come in to photocopy teaching aids supplied by the agency — mostly materials to help students with reading comprehension. There were never as many packets as children who needed them: as of 2024, the region still has only a 55 percent literacy rate. I made a copy...
December 2, 2025
Dignity and Access | On Food and Power
Abubaker Abed, Andy Cawley, Hamada Shaqura, Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Luis Feliz Leon, Olatunji Olaigbe, Pranay Somayajula, Sara G. Kielly, Shahad Elfaki, Vivian Hu, Zeead Yaghi
Back during the end of history, Thomas Friedman presented his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” in a 1996 New York Times op-ed. As he put it, “no two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” There was “no question,” he declared, that McDonald’s “is part of this worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy and submitting to its rules.” Today,...
December 2, 2025
Annunciation | Poetry
Oksana Maksymchuk
I imagine it being true You remained in bed shards of glass levitating, like a sparkling tapestry Sound asleep despite rolling thunderclaps flashes of alien fast-moving light In the morning when the search party arrived they found you, index finger marking a place in a book a white lily at your bedside filling the room with a fragrance and your face still a child’s bearing a mark of a kiss
