Polarization

Throughout history, poverty, class and economic self-interest have driven radical political movements. The Bolsheviks harnessed the anger of impoverished workers and peasants to create a movement that controlled the world’s biggest country for seven decades. The Nazis came to power due to both the Great Depression and resentment towards a small but economically nimble Jewish community.

When Theoneste Mutabazi started teaching at Umuco Mwiza School in Kigali in 2008, he marveled at everything its students had. There was an art room, a music room, and a library “with many books,” he says during a phone call from his office in the Rwandan capital. Since then, Umuco Mwiza, whose name means “good culture” in the Kinyarwanda language, has added more classrooms and even a large recreation area.

President Donald Trump on Sunday wished all Americans an Easter filled with "peace and joy," then unleashed on his detractors in politics and the courts who he said are blocking his agenda and putting the country at risk.

In America, while a rising number of women are dying because doctors refuse to treat their miscarriages or are arrested for having them, where millions of women may lose hard-won voting rights while others are eradicated from public life and historical record because of their gender, six rich women did what rich people do best in perilous times: blissfully abscond to the safety of their own private estates or islands or yachts — or, in this case, spaceship — and flaunt their wealth to the masses.

Americans were sharply divided over the public health response to COVID-19, including masking, remote learning, business closures and vaccines. Five years after the start of the pandemic, Judy Woodruff sat down with two people on opposing sides of that divide trying to figure out how to move forward. It's part of her series, America at a Crossroads.

Geoff Bennett:

Americans were sharply divided over the public health response to COVID-19, things like masking, remote learning, business closures, and later vaccines.

It was an audacious proposal. In the fall of 2023, sophomore Alex Herz emailed the entire faculty of Stony Brook University. The New York campus was in turmoil. Pro-Palestinian protesters and Jewish students were having angry confrontations. Professors were also fighting among themselves. In response, Mr. Herz recommended instituting a forum for civil discourse.

“Some professors reached out to me on the side and said, ‘I like what you’re trying to do. Let’s talk,’” recalls Mr. Herz, who is Jewish.

Although the Social Security Administration has never missed a payment since it began issuing monthly checks in 1940, some recipients are afraid that they’re on the verge of losing the income that sustains them. It’s a message that they’re hearing a lot, even though the Trump administration says this is not true.

The website of the Grafton County Democrats, a grass-roots organization in central New Hampshire, encourages citizens to protest “the impending demise of our Social Security services and earned benefits.”

As history shows, one never vanquishes the Jacobin instinct; one only suppresses or resists it for a while. That’s why NR is essential.

On Monday, the Trump administration struck back at the legal-industrial complex's war against MAGA. President Donald Trump's Justice Department filed an emergency request asking the Supreme Court to take a stand on the "epidemic" of national injunctions that leftist district court judges are using to halt the Trump agenda.

Trump's lawyers said on Monday that only the Supreme Court can stop this "power grab."