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“Stuck in the Past” by Annie Berke

Illustration by Ellen Weinstein, @ellenweinsteinilloz

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The tradwife, short for “traditional wife,” is a married mother of, usually, several children, whose baking, cooking, gardening, and home duties are boundless but elegantly executed, making for inspiring, infuriating social media content. Her husband might be a man in finance, or he might spend his days managing a cattle farm. What he does is irrelevant, and, to an extent, what she does is less revealing than what she doesn’t do. The tradwife doesn’t have a full-time job outside the home; she doesn’t mess around with processed foods; she probably doesn’t send her kids to public school; she doesn’t fight her husband to “wear the pants,” since she’s happy in her gingham nap dress.

The tradwife projects conservative values but in a wildly incoherent way, once you consider that acting the part of the perfectly old-fashioned housewife is her full-time social media–enabled job: Would a truly “traditional” wife insert herself into the public square this way, propping up a lucrative persona with a prop-husband and prop-kids? How often are these “traditional” rural paradises being subsidized, even bankrolled entirely, by fat cat fathers-in-law and conservative lobbying groups? (The answer is: a lot.

“The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Alarming Control Tactics” by Jessica Bateman

Illustrations by Sara Gironi Carnevale, @saragironicarnevale

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Misoprostol, which was originally developed in 1973 to treat peptic ulcers, was labeled as unsafe for pregnant women, as its side effects included miscarriage and uterine contractions. At some point in the late 1980s, women in Brazil—where abortion was and still is illegal—realized that these side effects could come in handy for ending unwanted pregnancies. A whisper network of sorts developed, and doctors soon noticed that the numbers of women coming to the emergency room with hemorrhaging and infections from unsafe home abortions had dramatically dropped.

Mifepristone, its sister drug, was developed in the 1980s by French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf, with the express purpose of finding a safe, noninvasive alternative to surgical abortion. It was approved by the FDA in 2000. When taken together, the two medications are up to 98 percent effective at ending pregnancies up to eight weeks. [...]

Anti-abortion advocates are now coordinating multipronged attacks on the medication, providers, and those who may need to take it. Twenty-five Republican members of Congress have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether the drug could be contaminating the water supply, and Representative Mary Miller of Illinois has drafted legislation that would require women to use “catch kits” when using the drug to end a pregnancy, rather than flushing the remains away.

“The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Alarming Control Tactics” by Jessica Bateman

Illustrations by Sara Gironi Carnevale, @saragironicarnevale

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Misoprostol, which was originally developed in 1973 to treat peptic ulcers, was labeled as unsafe for pregnant women, as its side effects included miscarriage and uterine contractions. At some point in the late 1980s, women in Brazil—where abortion was and still is illegal—realized that these side effects could come in handy for ending unwanted pregnancies. A whisper network of sorts developed, and doctors soon noticed that the numbers of women coming to the emergency room with hemorrhaging and infections from unsafe home abortions had dramatically dropped.

Mifepristone, its sister drug, was developed in the 1980s by French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf, with the express purpose of finding a safe, noninvasive alternative to surgical abortion. It was approved by the FDA in 2000. When taken together, the two medications are up to 98 percent effective at ending pregnancies up to eight weeks. [...]

Anti-abortion advocates are now coordinating multipronged attacks on the medication, providers, and those who may need to take it. Twenty-five Republican members of Congress have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether the drug could be contaminating the water supply, and Representative Mary Miller of Illinois has drafted legislation that would require women to use “catch kits” when using the drug to end a pregnancy, rather than flushing the remains away.

“Don’t Look Now” by Noah McCormack

Illustration by Adam Maida, @adamomaida

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Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling is about the life of a boy who grew up in this new horizonless London and how he ended up being murdered by gangsters. He was born to a prosperous London Jewish family but reinvented himself as the son of a Kazakh oligarch fighting for his £200 million inheritance. When his trail of lies caught up with him, he jumped to his death from the balcony of a luxury apartment building rather than face torture at the hands of men to whom he had promised 5 percent of his fake fortune. It is a tale of uncontrolled capital and what happens when the shrinkage of the social state leaves the only dream available that of being super-wealthy. Many boys around the world tell lies to fit in, but the specific lies he told and how they led to his death are a specifically British tale, of the legacy of imperialism, Thatcherism, and austerity.

The May issue of The New Republic is now available.

Cover story: “The Tech Lords‘ Evil Turn” by Timothy Noah

Illustration by Deena So'Oteh, @deena.so.oteh

“MAHA Is Monkeying Around With Lab Rats” by Shayla Love

Illustration by Alex Nabaum, @alexnabaum

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During Trump’s second term, the Navy ended testing on dogs and cats, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started phasing out its monkey research. In April 2025, the United States Food and Drug Administration announced a goal of replacing the animals on which new drugs are tested with “new approach methodologies,” or NAMs, over the next three to five years. [...] And in early 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency, which helps determine whether pesticides or other products are toxic, promised to end mammalian animal testing entirely by 2035. [...]

But the question of why the government has taken such an interest [in animal welfare] is complicated. The push originates from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said he is “deeply committed to ending animal experimentation.” [...]

At the same time, scientific decision-making in the Trump administration has been fraught, to say the least. It’s often mixed with politics, as Halabi and his co-authors pointed out in a 2026 paper in the ‘Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law’: “The current period is defined by an alarming intensification of partisan antagonism, administrative disinvestment, and strategic delegitimization.”

“Special Pharmacy” by Anna Louie Sussman

Illustration by Eva Vázquez, @evavazquezdibujos

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Americans’ well-being has by many metrics deteriorated. The prevalence of chronic disease is on the rise. For those without a college education, average life expectancy is falling. And more and more people are diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) with poor mental health, to the point that some experts warn of a mental illness “epidemic.”

Why is our society getting sicker? In ‘Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone,’ Khameer Kidia argues that an unjust world is an unhealthy world—that sickness, and in particular mental illness, can result from the gross misallocation of resources stemming from colonialism, capitalism, and the ongoing predations of rich countries and corporations.

“The Great Antifa Hoax” by Eric Alterman

Illustration by Wesley Merritt, @wesley_merritt

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“Antifa,” despite what you may have heard about Minneapolis nurses or Iranian mullahs, qualifies as the Trump administration’s Public Enemy Number One, and the administration is preparing to deploy the entire capacity of the U.S. system of justice to destroy not only antifa but also every means of support it can locate anywhere in American society, going so far as to invent an entirely new category of crime to do so.

What is perhaps most important to note about these events is the fact that, despite the prosecution’s consistent claims to the contrary, not only did the government fail to produce any evidence at all tying “antifa” to this protest and the ensuing violence, but there is also no crime anywhere in the U.S. legal code defined as “domestic terrorism.” It’s a made-up category invented by Donald Trump and company to try to criminalize any and all forms of domestic dissent they find overly troublesome. And given the lack of respect for due process, standard procedures, and even common sense inherent relating to so many aspects of Trump’s vengeance-mad political prosecutions, these powers could soon be leveled at literally anyone.

“The Right Gets Sober” by Dave Infante

Illustration by Pete Ryan, @petexryan

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Many of the right’s most revered figures are dry. Donald Trump is the most prominent teetotaler in the Republican universe. Tucker Carlson is a recovering alcoholic who’s been off the sauce since 2002 and favors the mind-expanding buzz of Zyn nicotine pouches. Joe Rogan, the Pied Piper of protein-addled Cybertruck owners, quit drinking in 2025. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former heroin addict, is known to abstain; conservative propagandist Dennis Prager has spoken at length about his son’s sobriety; Elon Musk reportedly favors ketamine to cocktails.

Yet none of these MAGA-lebrities have leveraged their sway over the red-hatted base to build momentum for a neo-Prohibition. Trump himself has marketed vodka in the past, and his son Eric owns a winery in Virginia. A political movement against booze, this ain’t—not yet, at least.

“Arrested Development” by Jess Bergman.

Illustration by David Litman, @dave.litman

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Typically set over a short period of time at the height of lockdown, [Covid-era set] novels place a group of neatly symmetrical characters—mothers and daughters; artists and patrons; couples and exes; boomers and Zoomers—in close quarters, with explosive, or cathartic, results. ‘Down Time,’ by contrast, is interested in duration: how the choices we made in the weeks and months before March 2020 took on a retroactive significance, the consequences of which might not have become clear until long after the emergency subsided. [...]

“How the Tech World Turned Evil” by Timothy Noah.

Illustration by Deena So'Oteh, @deena.so.oteh

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The story goes like this. A war is coming between good (AI) and evil (government regulation). If AI wins, a New Jerusalem will dawn where human intelligence is eclipsed by intellectually superior computers that represent, figuratively if not literally, Jesus Christ’s return. Techies call this the Singularity. Silicon Valley executives can prepare for that great gettin’ up day by paying $15,900 to attend a five-day seminar at an establishment in Santa Clara County, California, called—I kid you not—Singularity University. [...]

Until recently, tech showed limited enthusiasm for Washington’s lobby scene. A decade ago, it ranked fourth among lobbying industries, spending less than half as much as Big Pharma, which ranked first, according to the campaign website OpenSecrets. But by late 2025, the last year for which data is available, tech had moved up to the number two spot, spending nearly three-quarters as much on lobbying as Big Pharma (which still ranks first). The reason was AI. “AI didn’t just increase its footprint in Washington,” noted Ashley Gold in Axios. “It ate tech lobbying whole,” and it added to tech’s existing lobbying on corporate consolidation, privacy, and free speech new topics like crypto, defense procurement, and the insatiable energy needs of data centers.

“Beyond Disillusionment” by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein

Illustration by Gustavo Magalhães, @ogusmagalhaes

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Starting in about 2005, something nearly unthinkable began to happen: The lifetime value of a college degree began to decline. Up until then, and really for quite a while afterward, a degree was considered a smart bet on a person’s future income and prospects. Possessing a college degree (any degree!) generally meant higher income. At the late date of 2013, Barack Obama called higher education an “economic imperative.” [...]

Yet five years after graduation, only 55 percent of college graduates were employed in jobs that require a degree, according to a 2024 report. Many ended up working in the service industry. Caught in low-wage, often precarious jobs, some sought to form unions.

The April issue of TNR is now available.

Cover story: “There Will Be No Post-Presidential Peace For Donald Trump” by Matt Ford

Illustration by Randy Pollak, @getrandy_art