Public broadcasting isn’t the enemy of free speech. Profit-driven media is. Trump’s attack on NPR and PBS distracts from the real path away from censorship and toward viewpoint diversity: a large, democratically controlled, publicly funded media ecosystem.
In the late 20th century, the Chicken McNugget became an icon of fast-food cost efficiency. The peculiar cuisine’s history is one of fascinating technological innovation as well as brutal labor exploitation.
The al-Hawl refugee camp in northeastern Syria is effectively an open-air prison for 50,000 people suspected of ties to ISIS. The Syrian Democratic Forces are struggling to deal with them — and now the Trump administration is cutting US funding.
The genocide in Gaza radicalizes Zionism’s long-standing colonial project. But Israeli leaders’ open rejection of any future possibility of a Palestinian state have undercut their own international legitimacy.
As India and Pakistan escalate tensions following the deadly Pahalgam attack, border communities in Kashmir face renewed shelling, economic fallout, and deepening fear. Our reporters bring dispatches from villages where civilians remain on edge.
The South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang has been engulfed by scandals over data breaches and dangerous work conditions. Having spent millions to lobby US politicians, the firm is now calling in their help to protect it from scrutiny by regulators.
The Trump administration says it wants Greenland for its natural resources. But that’s largely fantasy: while the island has critical minerals and fossil fuels, there’s almost no infrastructure to extract them. The real motives are likely geopolitical.
A month after Israel began its brutal war on Gaza, Yemen’s Houthis launched a blockade of shipping routes in the Red Sea. The US-led attempt to restore safe navigation was a disaster that has exposed deep fragilities in the global maritime trading system.
Iran’s rulers have managed to contain a wave of protest for now. But the nature of the unrest and the state’s lethal response make this an unprecedented moment since the 1979 revolution, with the threat of a US attack still hanging over the country.
Even the CIA has debunked “Havana syndrome” — the belief that hypersonic weapons are making American diplomats sick — but diehards in the media and Congress won’t let it go.
The US invasion of Vietnam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese people, resulting in millions of deaths. Fifty years ago today, the US-backed regime finally collapsed as North Vietnamese forces took control of Saigon.
After the bloody repression of the Indonesian left in the 1960s, Suharto’s regime wrote it out of the history books. Indonesian communists played a crucial role in developing national consciousness among workers and peasants against Dutch colonial rule.
All the political geography terms you slept through in high school.
Discontent over dire economic conditions lay behind the protest wave that rocked Iran earlier this month. A US attack will make things even worse for the Iranian people, whether or not it results in the regime change Donald Trump would like to see.
The glue that holds Donald Trump’s coalition together is not ideological coherence but a volatile compound of empire, spectacle, and grievance. Understanding these tensions helps explain both MAGA’s successes and its weaknesses.
Some of the most over-the-top apartments in New York City are owned — and left empty — by überwealthy foreign nationals.
The killing of El Mencho, Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, won’t slow the cartels, reduce violence, or stop the flow of drugs.
The state of Michigan filed a lawsuit in federal court last week against major oil companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron, accusing them of engaging in a decades-long conspiracy to block the development of clean energy and electric vehicles.
It’s no wonder Donald Trump was enraged by Bad Bunny’s halftime show at the Super Bowl. The Puerto Rican trap star has grown into the role of political artist, and the creativity of his music is an indictment of MAGA’s schlock-filled cultural wasteland.
While Donald Trump’s bid to grab control over Greenland from Denmark has been attracting all the headlines, the focus on the Arctic is also making Norway anxious. Its northern territory Svalbard could become another bone of geopolitical contention.