A picket fence near Oyster Bay in Long Island, New York, April 30, 2025. Trump isn’t interested in fighting a new cold war. he wants a new civilizational war. (Alex Kent/The New York Times) By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Every few years, I am reminded of one of my cardinal rules of journalism: Whenever you see elephants flying, don’t laugh, take notes. Because if you see elephants flying, something very different is going on that you don’t understand but you and your readers need to.

Adoration of the Shepherds, by Matthias Stom, c. 1650 (Wikipedia) By ROSS DOUTHAT Charles Murray’s new book, “Taking Religion Seriously,” in which he elaborates his reasons for trading atheism for a heterodox form of Christian faith, is a bit of a curious reading experience for me. This year I published a book arguing that it should be possible to reason one’s way from skepticism to belief and trying to unspool some threads of argument that the doubter might follow across the

Soldiers climb aboard a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel during NATO exercises in Harstad Fjord, Northern Norway, March 13, 2025. The Trump administration’s latest national security strategy, released last week, “names many of the core problems while proposing the worst remedies,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens writes. (Davide Monteleone/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS If Germany were invaded, just 38% of its citizens would be willing to fight for their country, acco

Share Our Strength, which began in the basement of a rowhouse on Capitol Hill, is now an intrinsic part of the fight against hunger across the United States. (Poan Pan/The New York Times) By MAUREEN DOWD Billy Shore always seemed too sweet to be in politics. I met him way back when pols and officials had the decency to creep away if they were caught doing something shameful. Shore was an aide to Gary Hart in the Senate and in his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. Hart

President Donald Trump participates in a cabinet meeting, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Dec. 2, 2025. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) By MICHELLE COTTLE It came a day or two late for Thanksgiving, but congressional Republicans gave democracy lovers something to be thankful for over the holiday weekend: signs of spinal fortitude. On Friday, the Republican chair and ranking Democrat of the Senate Armed Services Committee vowed to investigate the Trump ad

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, Nov. 4, 2025. (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD In early November, a conservative Supreme Court justice showed a clear-eyed understanding of the threat that President Donald Trump poses to the constitutional order. During an oral argument in a case involving tariffs that Trump unilaterally imposed by claiming emergency powers, Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that the move could weaken Congress in an endu

In an image provided by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands and released by House Democrats, the exterior of some of the buildings on Little Saint James, one of the private islands once owned by Jeffrey Epstein in the U.S. Virgin Islands. House Democrats on Dec. 3. 2025 released photographs and videos of Epstein’s home on Little Saint James, where his accusers have said that he trafficked underage girls for sex. (Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands via The

Protesters gather in Kyiv on July 23, 2025, after the Ukrainian Parliament voted to toughen restrictions on two of the country’s independent anticorruption agencies. “The significant fact about Ukraine’s corruption scandal is that it is having one,” The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens writes. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS The significant fact about Ukraine’s corruption scandal is that it is having one. A scandal, that is, as opposed to just a fa