North America Archives - Page 3 of 21

Democracy

Trump Returns

Anyone who knows what will happen in 2028 probably doesn’t know much

February 6, 2025 • by David Plotke

The following remarks were first presented on November 13, 2024, in a public lecture at the New School for Social Research. Donald Trump’s substantial victory was a big deal, but not yet a full-scale political shift. Trump made a successful move in the trench warfare that now defines American politics, ...

Music

Election Anxiety Mixtape

What a Public Seminar editor is listening to in order to alleviate election dread

November 5, 2024 • by Alex Rossen

For the past year, commentators from all sectors of the American political spectrum have remarked on the impending enormity of the 2024 US presidential election. I am here not to join them but to offer a token of wellbeing. This week, Public Seminar’s editorial team is turning to music for escape, ...

North America

Trump’s Charm Offensive

“You guys are the same as me”

November 1, 2024 • by Adam Koehler Brown

A #1 with a large fry, made and served by the forty-fifth president of the United States: Donald Trump was working a drive-through at a McDonald’s last weekend in Pennsylvania. He salted fries and greeted customers, a stunt meant to mock Kamala Harris and her repeated claim to have worked ...

Activism

The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”

Policing, migration, militarization, and the liberal-democratic provocation of the fascist turn in the Republican Party

November 1, 2024 • by James Porter

What Ranajit Guha has called the “prose of counterinsurgency” surely comes closest to characterizing the current state of abolitionist struggles within the context of the US presidential election campaign. With this concept, the postcolonial historian describes the strategies by which uprisings against imperial forms of domination have been degraded as ...

Democracy

Leaving Honduras

The legacy of US military and economic interference that continues to drive migration

October 31, 2024 • by Jeremy Robson and Leah Zamore

As US border policy grows ever more restrictive, the Biden-Harris administration’s “Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America” strategy is commendable for aiming to tackle the inhumane conditions in Central America that are causing so many people in the region to uproot in the first place. The strategy ...

Capitalism

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

What should Kamala Harris learn from the complicated history of post-1970s New Liberals

October 21, 2024 • by Henry Tonks

Breaking with the strategic ambiguity of her presidential campaign’s early months, Vice President Kamala Harris served up a clearer distillation of her economic agenda in a speech to the Economic Club of Pittsburgh on September 25. The speech was fêted as Harris’s “pragmatic,” “moderate-friendly” pitch. Harris also, however, pointed to ...

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

Migration

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

Meet the infamously deep-pocketed, undocumented construction laborers building and then stealing American homes

October 18, 2024 • by Achilles Kallergis

Here’s a tip from the US political playbook: if your campaign is struggling, if you don’t have actual policies but “concepts of a plan,” if you secretly or openly wish for the “good ol’ days” when black people did “black jobs,” if you “forgot” to declare the lavish perks from ...

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

North America

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

September 18, 2024 • by Henry Tonks

At the Aspen Ideas Climate Summit in spring 2022—one of those gatherings of the well-informed and the well-to-do so beloved by American politicians—Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, urged Republicans to “take back” their party from Donald Trump. “This country,” the veteran Democratic leader opined, “needs a ...

North America

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

September 11, 2024 • by Claire Potter and Julia Sonnevend

When United States president Joe Biden stumbled on the debate stage on June 27, 2024, it wasn’t that he just seemed old, it was that a man who had charmed voters for half a century with his bright smile, kindness, and folksy quips seemed to have vanished. ...

North America

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

August 28, 2024 • by Carl Landauer

Over the summer, I committed myself to reading the entirety of Project 2025, a policy document compiled by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from many veterans of the Trump administration, which I printed out in four thick three-ring binders. What follows is a review of the vision of governance the ...

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

North America

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation returns to its roots

August 26, 2024 • by Chelsea Ebin

For the past four decades, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has published policy proposals ahead of presidential elections. The most recent installment of the “Mandate for Leadership” series, published in 2023, is a 900-page collection of essays written by a host of right-wing thinkers and advised by more ...

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

Democracy

The Right Hand of the State and the American Left

Progressives are increasingly wary of the “national securitization of the state”

May 31, 2024 • by Basak Kus

The rift within the Democratic base stems not so much from disagreement over the left hand—which both sides support, albeit in varying ways and degrees—but over the excesses of the right hand....

North America

Trump Returns

Anyone who knows what will happen in 2028 probably doesn’t know much

Election Anxiety Mixtape

What a Public Seminar editor is listening to in order to alleviate election dread

Trump’s Charm Offensive

“You guys are the same as me”

The “Prose of Counterinsurgency”

Policing, migration, militarization, and the liberal-democratic provocation of the fascist turn in the Republican Party

Leaving Honduras

The legacy of US military and economic interference that continues to drive migration

Behind the Balancing Act of Kamala Harris’s Industrial Policy

What should Kamala Harris learn from the complicated history of post-1970s New Liberals

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

Meet the infamously deep-pocketed, undocumented construction laborers building and then stealing American homes

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation returns to its roots

The Right Hand of the State and the American Left

Progressives are increasingly wary of the “national securitization of the state”

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