The Agora
Op-eds, philosophical debates, and long-form essays
Plowshares Into Swords: The $1.5 Trillion Budget and the Test of the Republic
President Trump's FY2027 defense budget, the largest since the Second World War, asks whether the United States can sustain a wartime military mobilization atop a peacetime fiscal ruin — and whether a populist president can survive becoming the interventionist he once opposed.
The Purge That Weakens the Republic: Hegseth's Assault on the Promotion System Is an Assault on American Power
A defense secretary who has never commanded a platoon in combat is now overruling the merit-based judgments of career Army leadership to strip Black and female officers from the one-star promotion list — and the damage to American military readiness will be measured in recruitment shortfalls, talent flight, and strategic vulnerability for years to come.
A Republic Adjourned: Congress Leaves Washington as DHS Shutdown Becomes Longest in American History
On the 44th day of a funding lapse that has degraded homeland security, emptied TSA checkpoints, and imperiled World Cup preparations, both chambers of Congress departed for a two-week holiday — each having passed a bill the other will not accept.
Eight Million Americans and the Question the Republic Cannot Avoid
The third 'No Kings' mobilization flooded the streets of every state in the Union — but whether this extraordinary display of civic energy strengthens or fractures the American order depends entirely on what comes next.
The Republic Stirs: What Nine Million Americans in the Streets Would Mean for the Nation
The third No Kings mobilization, if it achieves its organizers' ambitions, will be the largest single-day demonstration in American history — and the country must reckon honestly with what that means.
The Purge That Weakens Us: Hegseth's Assault on Military Promotion by Merit Is an Assault on American Power
By blocking the promotions of decorated Army officers whose only apparent disqualification is their race or gender, the Defense Secretary has subordinated combat readiness to ideology — and every adversary of the United States is watching.
The Faena Doctrine: Trump Declares 'Cuba Is Next,' Rebukes NATO, and Offers the World a War as Investment Thesis
At the Saudi-backed Future Investment Initiative in Miami Beach, the President of the United States laid bare a vision of American power as both sword and prospectus — threatening Cuba, castigating allies, and selling a month-old war in Iran to a room full of sovereign wealth.
America's Voice, Silenced from Within: The VOA Propaganda Lawsuit and the Strategic Cost of Self-Inflicted Wounds
A new federal lawsuit alleges Kari Lake turned the Voice of America into a political megaphone during the Iran war — gutting the most effective soft-power instrument the United States has ever built at the precise moment it was needed most.
The Republic in Gridlock: When Election Reform and Homeland Security Collide on the Senate Floor
As the SAVE America Act debate enters its second week and a six-week DHS shutdown leaves airports in chaos, President Trump's demand to weld voting legislation to government funding threatens to prolong a crisis that is testing the endurance of American institutions — and the patience of the American people.
Five Days to What? Trump's Pause on Iranian Power Plant Strikes Tests Whether Diplomacy or Desperation Governs American Strategy
The President's announcement of 'productive talks' with Tehran — flatly denied by every senior Iranian official who has spoken — opens a narrow diplomatic window whose existence both sides dispute, even as the war's toll on American interests deepens by the hour.
The Court Takes the Field: Transgender Athletes, Title IX, and the Architecture of Equal Protection
As the Supreme Court prepares to adjudicate the constitutionality of state bans on transgender athletes in school sports, the case compels a reckoning with the meaning of sex discrimination, the reach of federal civil rights law, and the permissible boundaries of state authority over the bodies and lives of children.
Rubio's Tightrope: The Strategic Calculus of Brokering Peace in a War Where Only One Side Invaded
The Secretary of State's diplomatic campaign to broker a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire rests on the premise that symmetrical pressure can resolve an asymmetrical conflict — a strategic proposition whose historical precedents demand careful examination.
The Republic's First Promise: Birthright Citizenship Reaches the Highest Court
As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on President Trump's executive order seeking to nullify jus soli for children of undocumented immigrants, the nation confronts whether the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment means what it has always meant.
The Myth of the United Front: Silicon Valley and Washington Are Diverging on the Future of Artificial Intelligence
The alliance between America's technology companies and its defense establishment is fracturing along lines of military application, export control, and the fundamental question of who governs the most powerful technology ever built.