Reflections on a Year with Trump

Writers on how our world has changed since the 2016 presidential election.

Year One: Foreign Affairs

Trump has not just dismounted from America’s moral high horse. He has descended into the ditch to join those the US once felt able to condemn.

November 16, 2017

Elizabeth Joh

Year One: Stress Testing the Constitution

Can a former president sue a sitting president for defamation? Can a sitting president be sued for inciting a riot while a candidate? These might once have been abstract academic questions, but no more.

November 15, 2017

Marilynne Robinson

Year One: Words Matter

Perhaps it is providential that a figure so garish as Donald Trump landed in the White House when he did.

November 14, 2017

Steven W. Thrasher

Year One: When Black Women Lead

Black women have long known that America’s destiny is inseparable from how it treats them and the nation ignores this truth at its peril.

November 13, 2017

Charles J. Sykes

Year One: The Mad King

Less than a year into his presidency, we hear the same question again and again: What has to happen for Republicans to break with their Mad King?

November 10, 2017

Judith Shulevitz

Year One: Resistance Research

If people newly roused to political action are going to stay roused, then the Democratic Party had better pay attention and follow their lead.

November 9, 2017

David Cole

Year One: Up to Us

The courts cannot stand up to President Trump alone, and it would be a great mistake to think they could. In the end, the most important guardian of liberty is an engaged citizenry.

November 8, 2017

Katha Pollitt

Year One: Anger Management

I sometimes feel like I’m a different person now. I’m fidgety and irritable and have trouble concentrating. For months after the election, I could hardly read, except for books about Roman history, which turns out to be full of Trumps: fantastically rich sociopaths obsessed with crushing their enemies.

November 7, 2017

Charles Simic

Year One: President Ubu

Since Trump became president, every time I told myself this man is bonkers, I remembered Ubu Roi, realizing how the story of his presidency and the cast of characters he has assembled in the White House would easily fit into Alfred Jarry’s play.

November 6, 2017

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