The Big Idea
Outside contributors’ opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture.
If a president and his party want autocracy, the Constitution won’t prevent it.
Doing “burden sharing” wrong.
Fighting over immigration is central to the American story.
I don’t think conservatives’ fears are unfounded. But these facts may change some minds.
Our data shows that inequality isn’t an inevitable byproduct of globalization and technological change.
Trump’s best hope is to convince opponents he’s more popular than he actually is.
Did President Obama hand the ACA’s enemies a weapon by over-relying on executive power?
He receives “emoluments” from foreign officials.
The hostility to immigrants and Islam in the executive orders comes straight out of Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart.
It was a failed version of a Puritanical jeremiad
Beliefs do not exist in isolation.
It can even lead doctors to shun treating the sickest patients.
Donald Trump is poised to put “dealmaking” at the center of the presidential economic policy making tool kit.
The political truthiness has been flying thick and fast on this subject for decades.
She confronted some of the same stereotypes leveled against the early suffragists — and still won the popular vote
Among other moves, Republicans may use religious-freedom laws to curtail LGBTQ rights
A user’s guide to progressive federalism.
He got a lot done, but still left us living in Ronald Reagan’s America.
In many emerging and developing countries, the rule of law is weak, political influence and corporate power are intermingled, and fortunes can flip on the whim of a political leader.
A scholar of the Holocaust finds threats to American democracy coming from unexpected directions.
What’s more, a “liberaltarian” economic agenda can serve as an alternative to snake-oil populism.
We’re more likely to engage with “second-tier” friends online than in real life.
An exit interview with Jason Furman, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
And yes, it still matters.
The “normalization” of Trump creates problems, but it’s not clear what we can do to avoid it.
Americans have an overly dramatic view what the end of democracy looks like.
Organizationally, the US right is light-years ahead of the left. A leading political scientist explains what Democrats should do to change that.
Is he crazy, or crazy like a fox?
A leading expert on 1930s-era politics explains that Trump is a right-wing populist, not a fascist — and the distinction matters.
A literary organization shows that a rock-ribbed defense of the First Amendment can co-exist with empathy for marginalized groups.