“Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”—George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796 “Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption…. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls.”—Donald Trump, Election...

There’s a moment in Cool Hand Luke when Luke, played by Paul Newman, is returned to a prison camp after escaping. Determined to break his will, the guards order him to dig a hole. After the hole is dug, another guard instructs him to fill it in. Dig. Fill. Dig. Fill. The exercise is not about punishment. It’s about submission....

I’ve been listening to and watching Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia for more than a year now: his speeches, his questions in Senate hearings, his oversight work. And I keep coming back to one clear thought: Jon Ossoff should not only be re-elected to the Senate. He should consider running for President. Why? Because he does something that has...

Last August, I wrote that I was “stepping back from the chaos” of Donald Trump. I meant to write about his presidency only when his actions were significant. That was the naïve part. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is democracy versus authoritarianism: 2025–2026 — Turned pressure on universities into national policy.After targeting individual universities with investigations and funding...

I began watching 60 Minutes when it premiered on September 24, 1968, when Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace introduced a new kind of television journalism: “a magazine for television,” flexible enough to go wherever the stories — and the facts — led. What followed was more than a CBS program. For me, it became a Sunday night institution. Under Don...

At a Trump-backed Christian prayer rally on the National Mall in Washington on May 17, officially called Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, thousands gathered beneath the familiar banners of faith, patriotism, and divine purpose. President Trump did not attend in person, but appeared by prerecorded video, reading Scripture and urging Americans to pray. Among Trump’s...

I never imagined I would be writing a commentary about the cancellation of a television program, certainly not one explained away under the dubious claim of “lost revenue.” It is a thin rationale that asks us to accept far more than it actually explains. Colbert has occupied the 11:30 slot on CBS longer than Johnny Carson held court on The...

Not long ago, I stopped watching the national news. I told myself I was stepping away from the noise and the churn for some peace of mind. But reading a daily paper doesn’t guarantee a complete sense of calm; it simply delivers the chaos in longer form: page after page of anger, violence, grievance, retribution, and my-way-or-the-highway governance. It is...

In June 1790, I attended an extraordinary dinner. Through a tear in the fabric of time, I found myself seated at a small table with three revolutionary figures: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. While the dinner itself was real, it was reconstructed by author Charles A. Cerami in Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s. Even if the precise words spoken...

CONTEMPT—Raw, in-your-face, unapologetic, and morally bankrupt. Every so often, the country reaches a point where character is not an abstraction but a requirement. We’re in one of those moments now. The country’s cynicism level has reached DEFCON 1. You can feel it in the way the culture has shifted. You can see it in how some treat once-trusted institutions with...