Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks to the press on July 22, 2026. (Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Alex Kent/The New York Times) By CARLOS LOZADA There is a difference between changing your mind and shifting your tactics, between evolving in your views and abandoning them because they’ve become unpopular or politically perilous. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoting a political ally, recently suggested to ABC News, with a laugh and a smile,

President Donald Trump speaks during an event in Garden City, N.Y., Aug. 14, 2026. (Al Drago/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD President Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to impose tariffs have become an encapsulation of his second term. They have hurt the American economy and his own popularity. They also range from legally dubious to blatantly illegal. With Trump now engaging in a trade war with Canada — which has decided to stand up to his bullying — we want to ste

“Good for Ocasio-Cortez for acknowledging mistakes. Now can we have some accountability for the vast damage that Woke 1.0 did, not to mention the damage that Woke 2.0 continues to do?” writes New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. (Harris Allen/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS It’s all but official. “Woke 1.0 was crazy,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said this month, quoting a far-left New York City Council member. Given Ocasio-Cortez’s own record — she previous

White House aide Natalie Harp looks on as President Donald Trump speaks during an expanded bilateral meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in the presidential compound in Ankara, Turkey, July 7, 2026. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) By MAUREEN DOWD I’ve spent my career watching officials maneuver and scheme, often in absurd ways, to get closer to presidents. But I’d never seen anything like the photo of Natalie Harp dashing after President Donald Trump’s golf

Patriotic netting stretched over construction scaffolding in Washington on July 4, 2026. (Gregory Halpern/The New York Times) By MICHELLE GOLDBERG Psychologist John Gottman said that nothing is so destructive to a marriage as contempt. Couples can come back from many sorts of conflicts, but not festering disgust — a sense, by one or both people, that the other is beneath them. That’s why, if blue and red America were spouses, the relationship would look hopeless. Call it irre

President Donald Trump takes the stage to speak in Garden City, N.Y., on Friday, Aug. 14, 2026. (Al Drago/The New York Times) By JAMELLE BOUIE The principal aim of President Donald Trump’s second term is revenge. Trump is consumed by this lust for revenge. It defined the first moments of his second term. “Within hours of taking the presidential oath,” my news-side colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report in “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald T

President Donald Trump attends a working lunch with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, in Evian-les-Bains, France, during the G7 Summit, June 17, 2026. (Photo by Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has proposed that the federal government take small stakes in the leading artificial intelligence companies so the public can share in the industry’s financial bonanza. He has reportedly suggested giving the government a 5% stake in his

The entrance to King’s College, part of the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, England, Nov. 29, 2018. “There’s no doubt that the press coverage of the [former Cambridge professor Jason] Arday affair was ugly and overwhelming,” Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes. “But the fault doesn’t just lie with rapacious yellow journalists.” (Tom Jamieson/The New York Times) By MICHELLE GOLDBERG Last year, Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education, a British magazine, w

A worker with a non-profit helps a woman, not shown, to enroll in health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act in New Berlin, Wis., on Jan. 8, 2024. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have effectively cut subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, making it harder for people who do not receive insurance through work to afford a plan. (Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD One of the federal government’s great ach

By Brunella Tipismana, reporting from Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma I thought I knew what poverty looked like. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru, in a family of former agricultural workers who remembered what it was like to live in thatched-roof houses. So when I drove through Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma, meeting Americans in some of the poorest ZIP codes in the nation, my first reaction was one I’m not particularly proud of. The people we met drov