Current Affairs

When you stand for nothing, nobody wants to stand with you. Looking at Sir Keir Starmer, you start to understand why the Japanese invented ritual seppuku. Less than two years ago, Starmer led the British Labour Party to a commanding general-election victory, securing 411 seats in Parliament and becoming the first Labour Prime Minister in over a decade.

Even in our politically divided times, there are a few things most people can still agree are good and appropriate uses of public funds. Usually, these revolve around physical infrastructure: roads, bridges, public schools, libraries, and so on. Simultaneously, sports remain effective catalysts for bringing communities together and building civic pride in a city and state, as we’ve just seen with the massive outpouring of joy over the New York Knicks’ championship run.

From government-mandated menstruation classes to canceling student loan forgiveness, the campaign for more babies goes beyond banning abortion. Last year, at a Women’s History Month event, Donald Trump called himself the “fertilization president.” The moniker is an obviously pronatalist one, and it comes alongside a rise of cultural and political concern over the birth rate, particularly on the right.

The NYT best-selling author explains why a century-old socialist movement offers a powerful alternative to Zionism.

Electoral victories by socialists around the country show that the Democratic establishment is weak and can be overthrown. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Fox News. Socialists are winning everywhere! This week, three Congressional candidates backed by democratic socialist New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani won “stunning” victories in their primary elections.

An internet urban legend, now a hit horror movie, shows the vast, meaningless maze behind modern life. Modern horror media is always a revelation about the world that produced it, but few of our contemporary myths feel as precisely calibrated to the present moment as the Backrooms. The Backrooms are not a haunted house, nor an abandoned ruin, a cursed forest, or any of the traditional thresholds through which the uncanny once entered human life.

HBO's wildly entertaining docuseries turns petty disputes into a revealing portrait of modern life. “Love thy neighbor” may be a central commandment of the Bible, but you’ll find no such law in the Constitution. For many Americans, bubbling beneath the surface of our collective psyche is a fear that our neighbors—whether next door or several miles away—are constantly poised to harm us.

The science hasn’t changed. The urgency only increases. The public wants action. So why are politicians sticking their heads in the sand? Something odd and disturbing has happened on the issue of climate change in the last few years. Even as the crisis has gotten worse, and the need to address it more urgent, elected officials have been talking about it less.

Originally published in our magazine’s hallowed print edition 2026 May/June Details A former New Jersey state trooper reflects on following his father into law enforcement—and why he soon walked away from the badge. Recently I took in a matinee of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere at a theater. A dozen of us, all grey-haired, watched the show. The film is engaging art, and depicts Bruce Springsteen’s unorthodox effort in creating one of his early albums, Nebraska.

Despite all his wealth, Musk’s existence is a cautionary tale. “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — some homeless Palestinian Elon Musk is, at least on paper, the world’s first trillionaire. He reached that milestone on June 12, after SpaceX debuted as a publicly-traded company on the U.S. stock market at an initial offering of $150 per share.