Opinion

Sergei Lebedev is a Russian poet, essayist and journalist. This piece is adapted from an essay, translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis, in the summer 2024 issue of Liberties, a journal of culture and politics.Alexei Navalny was…

Republican presidents and presidential candidates have used their leadership at critical moments to set a tone for society to live up to. Mr. Reagan faced down totalitarianism in the 1980s, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court…

If Donald Trump wins the White House this fall and has a chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two in the years that follow — by no means a certain prospect, but one that must be contemplated — his nominees are likely to be quite…

As NATO gathers for its 75th anniversary summit in Washington this week, President Biden is taking credit for the fact that European allies and Canada have increased defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars and warning that,…

When this Supreme Court term began last October, one of the more intriguing predictions from commentators was that Justice Amy Coney Barrett — entering her third full term on the court — would come out of her shell and emerge as the…

When the White House scheduled next week’s NATO “Washington Summit,” marking the 75th anniversary of the alliance’s founding, to take place just days before the Republican National Convention, it could not have predicted it would end up…

Whenever a politician cites “Judeo-Christian values,” I find it’s generally followed by something unsettling.Last month brought two flagrant instances. In both cases, Republican officials introduced state laws that formalize precepts of…

Amid the public fretting and finger-pointing rage over how to deal with a Democratic presidential nominee who most Americans think is too old for the job, some of the frustration is being directed at the first lady, Jill Biden. Which has…

Three Western leaders made big bets — overestimating their own political skills and underestimating the anti-incumbent mood — that appear to be backfiring in rapid succession. President Biden should study what’s happening in Paris and…

France held the first of two rounds of parliamentary elections on Sunday, and its “far right” party won big. I put that in quotes because right-wing parties in Europe can differ from the American far right — the immigrant-scapegoating…