The Nation November 2025

AFTER 160 YEARS OF SUFFERING THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OFFICIAL OBJECtion to this publication’s mission of speaking truth to power, it’s easy to get jaded about attacks from politicians. Yet we were still surprised when Vice President JD Vance used a mid-September podcast from his vice-presidential office to go after The Nation. We appreciated that Vance described The Nation as a “well-respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American Civil War.” We were less appreciative, however, of his clumsy critique of our coverage of the death of Charlie Kirk, which elided the fact that our columnists condemned the political violence that took the conservative activist’s life while pointedly criticizing his record. And we wish the vice president had gotten his facts straight before inaccurately painting The Nation…

SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING IN FARAWAY NEPAL—the first revolution not only powered by network technology but also in many respects about it. In a week-long blaze of fury, young protesters belonging to a movement known simply as “Gen Z” burned the Parliament, the Supreme Court, multinational businesses, and the homes of disfavored politicians, some of whom were chased down and beaten by mobs. The Brahmin Communist prime minister, KP Sharma Oli, resigned, and the movement’s leaders entered into discussions with the army, which has historically answered to the monarchy, to form a new government. On September 15, one week after the start of riots that claimed at least 72 lives—most of whom were protesters killed by police—the dead were honored as “Gen Z martyrs.” The new regime is headed, for…

Editor’s note: Recently, 160 people at the University of California, Berkeley, were notified that their names had been sent to the Trump administration—specifically, the Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights—as part of a federal investigation targeting “alleged antisemitic incidents.” The people named included faculty, students, and staffers, although none were informed of any specific allegations against them. “We’re in Kafka-land,” observes Judith Butler, who learned in September that they were one of the people on the list. The internationally renowned philosopher, who for decades has been among the most prominent members of UC Berkeley’s academic community, is also one of many Jewish scholars who have been sharply critical of the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza. Upon learning of the university’s actions, Butler wrote a stirring response, which…

IN AUGUST, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SHOCKED the academic world by announcing that it would be pausing PhD admissions in nearly all of its world-famous humanities programs. While the ongoing crisis in the humanities—that is, the deliberate marginalization and even elimination of humanities programs by neoliberal administrations in order to reorient schools toward more lucrative business, engineering, and tech programs—is not unique to UChicago, the extent of the damage is especially jarring. What is distinct about the university is its staggering indebtedness. According to Clifford Ando, a professor of classics who has been reporting on the crisis for years, the university’s debt ballooned from $2.2 billion to $5.8 billion between 2006 and 2022—an increase of more than 250 percent, and the equivalent of 68 percent of the university’s total assets.…

THERE’S A CORRUPT SCHEMER BORN EVERY MINUTE, and US history is filled with presidents who have pressured businesses to serve their political agendas. The fact that Donald Trump is epically brazen and selfish only underscores the need for real anticorruption measures. We cannot just rely on hope, shame, or anger to curtail such abuses; the protections must be structural. After late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel criticized Trump and his followers last month for seeking “to score political points” from the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Brendan Carr, Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened retaliation: “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel,” he said, “or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC.” ABC quickly suspended Kimmel, and only after a massive public outcry did the…

ON SEPTEMBER 2, THE US MILITARY SANK A GO-FAST boat in the southern Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, killing 11. The United States then hit two more boats, on September 15 and 19, killing another six people. The Army attacked another craft off Venezuela’s coast in early October, reporting four fatalities on board. Trump has also since notified Congress that the US is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the region. The murders were premeditated. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order designating Latin American drug cartels as terrorist organizations. A month later, the State Department added Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua to the list. On August 8, The New York Times reported that Trump had “secretly signed a directive to the…