What Lindsey Graham Wanted

Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last night, was a pivotal citizen of the Washington conversation. He loved being in the mix, slapping bipartisan backs off camera, and then, when…

Trump Loses Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine last night when he called President Trump to talk with him—about the trip, about one of the president’s key legislative…

The Quintessential Politician of This Era

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In his way, the late Lindsey Graham, who unexpectedly died Saturday evening, was…

The Scrubbed and Simple Moon

Watchless, wordless, compassless. Isn’t that when mountains open and light roars through, as when in the delivery room, slammed by a lot of meaningless brightness, you cried and were held…

It’s Not Just Annoying, It’s Inescapable

Source: YouTube Summary If Julius Caesar had debuted this year, William Shakespeare might have been accused of writing it with AI. A certain suspicious rhetorical device appears again and again…

The Return of the Democratic Manly Man

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026,…

NATO Is Going Strong, Actually

Source: YouTube Summary Donald Trump has long treated NATO like a punching bag, leading many observers to proclaim the demise of the Western alliance. Some analysts have called NATO “a…

The Surprising Source of America’s Success

Driving on I-79 south from Pittsburgh toward Charlottesville, I started composing this birthday card in my head—a love letter to America on its 250th birthday. The hills of Pennsylvania were…

You Can Know Too Much About Your Genes

I was pregnant with my first baby when my grandmother died. The last time I saw her,  she had moved into an assisted-living facility where all of her worldly possessions…

A New Test for Free Expression

On Thursday morning, PEN America, the free-speech organization, posted an article detailing the “isolation and exclusion” many Israeli and Jewish writers have felt since October 7, 2023. The authors describe…