Donald Trump Archives - Public Seminar

North America

Trump’s Way With Words

The metapragmatic presidency

May 20, 2026 • by Sanford Schram

Donald Trump has a kingly approach to his presidency—and to language. Yes, it is well-recognized that Trump does not command mastery of the basics of syntax and grammar of any language, including the one his supporters want to be declared the US national language, i.e., American English. No bother: Trump ...

History

The Waning of the American Illusion

And the virtues of democratic idealism

May 19, 2026 • by Sylvia Taschka

Was Ronald Reagan’s famous image of America as a “shining city on a hill” truly just an illusion, a Fata Morgana of the United States as a beacon of democracy, freedom, and moral leadership, a trick played on the world’s collective mind? In a podcast aired on January 14, 2026, Tucker ...

Activism

A Year After Cuts to USAID, an Urgent Reminder from the Ukraine-Poland Border

Documentary photographer Nancy Richards Farese captures the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the US’s shutdown of foreign aid

March 9, 2026 • by Nancy Richards Farese

In Przemyśl, a small city on the Ukrainian–Polish border, the train station has become something of a moral center. Late one November evening, fluorescent lights glare against steel rails as the night train from Kyiv pulls in late—again. The delay is familiar now. Russian forces bombed the rail line earlier ...

A Year After Cuts to USAID, an Urgent Reminder from the Ukraine-Poland Border

Politics

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

If constitutional constraints are real limits on government power, their violation must sometimes justify the same defensive responses that other rights violations justify

January 22, 2026 • by Michael Gregory

If you saw an armed stranger in body armor forcing his way into your neighbor's home at dawn, dragging a screaming mother away from her children while pointing a rifle at the family, would you have the right to stop him? By any means necessary? Now the forbidden version: What if ...

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

Politics

“Things Happen”

On one’s sense of impending doom

January 20, 2026 • by Arthur Goldhammer

Americans have long enjoyed a robust and righteous sense of impunity. No matter how badly our government blundered, we nevertheless clung confidently to the notion that we would always land on our feet. It has been said (allegedly by Bismarck, but there is little evidence to support the attribution) that “there ...

Education

The Words We Learn to Fear

How authoritarianism begins with the policing of language

December 4, 2025 • by Maria B. Olujic

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that line until my own country broke apart. Now I see what he meant—when people learn to fear their own words, it is its own form of exile. Two of my uncles learned this early: ...

Interviews

Fascism’s Body Politics

A conversation with Dagmar Herzog on disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

November 25, 2025 • by Dagmar Herzog and Adam Koehler Brown

"How do we recognize a fascism when we see one?" This is the opening line from Dagmar Herzog's new book, The New Fascist Body (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025). A leading historian of sexuality, disability, and German politics, Herzog now turns her attention to the frightening continuities between past and present authoritarian forces. ...

Sports

Eight Months to Learn Spanish

The 2026 World Cup will be a revelation, proving soccer’s arrival in the United States and inviting more Americans to see themselves as part of a Spanish-speaking Americas

November 25, 2025 • by Sean Jacobs and Ivan Pech Luna

On Sunday, October 26, Spain’s two powerhouse clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, met once again in El Clásico, the name given to any clash between the two. Both teams command massive global followings, including in the United States, and this weekend was no exception. The match, held at the ...

Politics

“Things Happen”

Staging sovereignty

November 19, 2025 • by Arthur Goldhammer

We have become accustomed to the Oval Office ritual by which Trump stages his pugnacious primacy. The protocol of the traditional press conference, in which the president stands and the press remains seated until recognized, is inverted. Trump sits as if enthroned on one of his gilded chairs, though not ...

Democracy

Is Social Media Destroying Democracy—Or Giving It to Us Good and Hard?

It’s easier to blame the algorithm than the bewildered herd

October 28, 2025 • by Dan Williams

One of our era’s most influential narratives is that social media is destroying democracy and perhaps civilization itself. For the liberal establishment, this story helps to explain the surging success of right-wing populism, as well as collapsing institutional trust, growing polarization, and an apparent explosion of misinformation and deranged conspiracy ...

Is Social Media Destroying Democracy—Or Giving It to Us Good and Hard?

Podcast

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

Season 2: Episode 1

October 24, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer for The New Yorker, discusses his recent article “Enemies of the State: How the Trump Administration declared war on Venezuelan migrants in the US.” In telling the story of a Venezuelan couple living in Chicago, one of whom was sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador, and one ...

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

Economy

Panama Against Trump

A country’s fate hangs in the balance as protestors take to the streets

October 13, 2025 • by Nolan Young

As Donald Trump prepared to take office in late 2024, the American president-elect issued a stunning threat: to “take back” the Panama Canal, almost a quarter century after the United States had returned control of the canal and the zone around it to the sovereign state of Panama. Once in office, ...