Many Trump critics are focused on what he is doing to our basic democratic compact. But there’s a reason that all the presidents who led us through our worst previous crises also had an aggressive program of reform—including public provision and ownership.
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs.
Posted inPolitics
Voters Did Not Understand the Stakes in 2024
A large majority of American voters are greatly dissatisfied with the state of things, most especially the economy. It turns out that median voters were catastrophically misled about the stakes of the election last year.
Posted inPolitics
Goodbye, White House. Hello, Trump House.
It turns out that the notion of American exceptionalism actually makes the country more vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover. But it’s not too late to stop Trump’s attempt to consolidate a dictatorship.
Posted inAmerica and the World
The Pirate Lord Donald Trump
President Trump is violating norms and laws that stretch back to before the founding of this country.
Posted inPolitics
The New Republican Voice of Sanity Is … Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Greene has emerged as something of a Republican voice of reason, at least by the standards of MAGA in 2025, perhaps the lowest bar imaginable. That might be useful for Democrats.
Posted inPolitics
Mad King Trump Seizes Your Money
We’ve written before about how Trump is spending money without congressional authorization, with the open support of the corrupt Republican hacks on the Supreme Court. Now, with the government formally shut down, Trump has ramped up this practice.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Joe Biden’s Ignominious Gaza Failure
Trump’s hamfisted diplomacy underscores that Biden could have ended the conflict more than a year ago, but now he’ll be remembered for being beaten at humanitarian diplomacy by Donald Trump.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Why Can’t a Trump Deal End the War in Ukraine?
It’s not a situation amenable to Trump’s traditional approach of clumsy, heavy-handed pressure.
Posted inPolitics
Donald Trump to Trump Country: Drop Dead
One of the most baffling themes of Donald Trump’s second term is how he is specifically ruining the cities and lives of his most loyal voters—taking their factories, their jobs, their health care, their hospitals, and their future. The first knife Trump drove into the backs of red economies was to repeal almost all of […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Socialist Case for Antitrust
The modern antitrust movement, sometimes called the neo-Brandeisians after the former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, had a major influence on the Biden administration. Now that Donald Trump has returned to power, what’s next? Over at the new publication The Argument, Matt Bruenig has a critical review of what he calls the urtext of the modern antitrust […]