Plumes of smoke rise from an oil storage facility after overnight strikes by U.S. and Israeli forces in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. “However incapable the [Iranian] regime may be of defending its airspace, it remains terrifyingly capable of killing its people,” Times columnist Bret Stephens writes. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS The most famous query in the history of modern warfare came from David Petraeus, then a major general, in an interview with R

A detail of Justice and History, a sculpture in the Senate wing of the Capitol, on Jan. 30, 2026. (Aleksey Kondratyev/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The four law firms that last year chose to fight President Donald Trump’s illegal intimidation campaign won at least temporary vindication this week. Federal judges had already struck down Trump’s executive orders trying to punish the firms for representing or employing people he considered to be his political enemies

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stands as President Donald Trump calls her name at an event in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2025. (Damon Winter/The New York Times) By MICHELLE COTTLE As I looked at Kristi Noem’s MAGA-fied visage plastered across the media on Thursday, along with the news that President Donald Trump had fired her, I couldn’t help thinking: This was always going to end in tears. Not because the defenestrated secretary of

Over the past several days, after President Donald Trump plunged the United States into a war with Iran, his fantasy of omnipotence has come crashing into reality, writes the New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen. (Photo illustration by Damon Winter/The New York Times) By LYDIA POLGREEN In Donald Trump’s fantasy world, America is invincible and impregnable. Its military is so advanced and skillful that it can pluck a sitting head of state from a hostile country and deposit

By ROSS DOUTHAT The best essay for understanding right-wing support for Donald Trump’s war against Iran was published in National Review in 2023, at the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Written by Tanner Greer, a conservative writer and China analyst, it argued that the official populist repudiation of George W. Bush and neoconservatism masked a deep continuity between the Iraq-era conservative mainstream and the Trump-era new right. Both the Bush-era hawks and the Trum

Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, after his conviction on charges of of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces,” at his home in Hong Kong, Aug. 15, 2020.  (Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The shadow of press repression is spreading around the world. In the past decade, the number of journalists detained and imprisoned has soared as governments seek tighter control over the media. Wh

A photo made during a government-led media tour shows a man in Tehran on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, as he sits in front of the wreckage of his apartment building after a nearby police station was destroyed by a U.S.-Israeli airstrike. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times) By NICHOLAS KRISTOF We Americans have begun another Middle Eastern war based on dubious intelligence claims, and as in 2003 I fear we haven’t thought through the substantial risks and uncertain gains. Presiden

“Let’s think about the Iran war in the light of Donald Trump’s career to date,” writes New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. (Shannon Lin/The New York Times) By ROSS DOUTHAT Let’s think about the Iran war in the light of Donald Trump’s career to date. What has made him so historically significant, so effective as a politician in spite of all his sins and faults, so enduring and dominant in the American political landscape? One thing especially: an incredible instinct for the