Entertainment
Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk fails to land the plane
There are certain films that look incredible — on paper. Those films are often put on the “Black List,” a register of the most-loved unproduced screenplays in…
February 5, 2025
Dive into this week's edition with Trump back in the White House, Iran's influence, California wildfires, and a peek at the 2026 elections. Don't miss out!
Beltway Confidential
California projects are overpaid and overdelayed
If you live in California and want something to be done on time and within its budget, well, you should probably try doing it somewhere other than…
Defense
Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ seeks to make America ‘greater’ in size by carving the world into 19th century-style spheres of influence
When, fresh from his November election victory, President Donald Trump began musing about buying Greenland, repossessing the Panama Canal, and annexing Canada, many people dismissed his visions…
Magazine
Robert D. Kaplan’s new book darkly games out how peace and freedom can lose
Eighty years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered one of the most absurd lines in a presidential inaugural address, assuring the war-weary nation that “the great fact to…
Magazine
Another book about my grandfather Whittaker Chambers puts politics before historical accuracy
Many historians date the (Second) Red Scare to 75 years ago this year. On Feb. 9, 1950, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy made his first anti-communist speech in…
Magazine
Jules Feiffer, 1929–2025
Jules Feiffer was perhaps the last emissary from what might be called the Heroic Age of the Cartoonist. Feiffer, who died on Jan. 17 at age 95,…
Entertainment
The dilemma of Severance
Few TV offerings are trickier than what screenwriters call a “puzzle box” in its second season. Free of the inaugural run’s expository constraints, such a program can…
Magazine
Trump wields pen to stop feds’ ‘jawboning’ of social media platforms
Among a flurry of activity on his first day back in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed the Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship…
Magazine - Your Land
A union of Karens
If the word “union” conjures up an image of a man in a hard hat reporting for duty to an assembly line, your understanding of how organized…
Magazine
Pat Barker’s other odyssey
The classics are having a moment. Not that they’ve ever fallen fully out of favor. But like any enduring cultural staple (Shakespeare, beards, long hairstyles) their fortunes…