Latest
June 3, 2025
Competing Moral Visions | Two Paths for Pronatalism
Gaby Del Valle
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, held just one month into Trump’s second term, Attorney General Pam Bondi took the stage to inform the audience that Trump’s cabinet officials were the best of friends. “We’re all on the phone together all the time,” Bondi gushed, calling Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin “a dear friend” and Elon Musk her “buddy.” Bondi was clearly attempting to quell rumors of discord;...
May 22, 2025
A Disaster Big Enough | Climate Policy on Life Support
Jake Bittle
In November 2024, one week after the presidential election, I attended the United Nations climate change conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a major oil producer. The globe was still reeling from Trump’s victory, which many negotiators believed would spell the withdrawal of the United States from the climate fight. Trump had pledged to exit the Paris climate accord and “terminate the Green New Deal” — a reference to...
May 15, 2025
Unified Purpose and Total Vision | Our New Department of Justice
Piper French
A typically deranged February DOJ memo designating immigration enforcement as the department’s new priority begins with a little rhetorical flourish: “The Department of Justice is the only federal agency with a name that includes a moral imperative.” By now, we have all become so inured to the Trump administration’s talent for stripping meaning from words that this line almost doesn’t faze; it’d be corny to call it Orwellian. Though perhaps...
December 18, 2024
Rented World | Poetry
Ridwan Tijani
Time cuts me down like a clipped coin and I’m no longer sufficient unto myself. — Osip Mandelstam Cloud horses cross sun Think great death of fireflies Sit on cracked stoop counting deaths Tinnulus tinnitus Know gods aren’t meant to be weightless Alcuin of York found it easier loving beautiful creatures sweet scents & lovely sounds Here decades like days Trudge fulvid streets rustracked & full Full of submerged laughter....
December 18, 2024
Margaret | Fiction
Ji Hyun Joo
Margaret is growing another boob. She suspects — she’s not entirely sure. For the past few weeks a lump, now the size of a kiwi, has been swelling between her right breast and armpit. Margaret first noticed it in the shower, back when it was a very slight bump. It didn’t feel hard like she imagined a tumor would feel, which is why she left it alone, assuming that it...
December 18, 2024
I Bet People Will Join Us
Na Zhong
Years ago, as an intern at an English-language publication that champions translated literature, I asked the editor how he dealt with the thorny issue of “translation style.” He looked at me, puzzled. “What’s that?” It was my turn to be tongue-tied. “It’s a quality… permeating a work of translation… that immediately tells you it is a translated text.” He didn’t get it. I let the topic drop. I later realized...
December 18, 2024
Men at Arms | Fiction
Steven Potter
We called him Thomas, never Tommy, because Tommy Guns were the weapons of gangsters and no amount of yearning on our parts could make a Red Ryder air rifle so cool. Thomas used no gunpowder, and his metal BBs only penetrated human skin when fired at point-blank range. But he did have a lever action and a beautiful hardwood stock, and these things, taken together, seemed capable of convincing the...
December 18, 2024
African But Not Too African
Carey Baraka
In October 2023, Bloomsbury began to republish titles from the vaunted African Writers Series, an imprint that published 359 books between 1962 and 2003. Put out by the London-based publishing house Heinemann, most of the early AWS entries were originally written in English, but soon translations from other languages into English appeared. The AWS sought to establish a center for African writers, ensuring they were read in countries other than...
December 18, 2024
“Let’s Not Kid Ourselves” | An Interview with Jayati Ghosh
The Drift
According to one narrative that has cohered since the 2024 election, the failure of Kamala Harris’s campaign can be chalked up to the political effects of inflation. After all, voters were more concerned about the economy, per Gallup, than they had been in any election year since 2008; by dismissing economic concerns and focusing on Donald Trump’s threat to democracy, Democrats grossly miscalculated. It seems clear, in retrospect, that “Bidenomics”...
December 18, 2024
Break Maiden | Poetry
Kathleen Radigan
Just when I think I am dead, I see horses in the next yard, glistening. Their bones crack like glow sticks. They honk up ethereal snot, spit pearls into the pool. The minute I hear them pounding down the street, I forgive their stench, their eagerness to deceive. I forget how they left, how they gambled my fortune to dust. What providence! The Lord let them return, velour skin stinking...
