"The notion of the good life has not just been an ideal to strive for. It has also been a criterion for identifying lives that are not worthy." A widre-ranging essay from Jan Grue on disability and how we think about what makes life worth living.

"We do not live in a gerontocracy. We live in an oligarchy where a disproportionate number of the oligarchs happen to be old. That’s a different social problem, requiring a policy response focused on affordability and economic justice, rather than intergenerational equity."James Chappel on Sam Moyn

"1970, the year in which Reichardt’s film takes place, is a hinge between the utopian visions of the 1960s and the nihilistic spirit to come, one which touts creativity and human ingenuity but keeps its eye squarely on the profit line." Jacob Rubin on Kelly Reichardt, art, and AI.

"Tech workers are not like artists for a great many reasons, the biggest one being that they don’t make any art.” Now online from our Spring issue, Jacob Rubin on Kelly Reichardt, theft, and the work of art in the age of AI:

the booing is an important tactic in the movement to BRING BACK SHAME @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social takes us from tactic to strategy: www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

"On May 11, 2022, Shireen was covering an Israeli raid on homes in the Jenin refugee camp. Despite a valid press credentials and a well-adjusted protective vest and helmet, an Israeli sniper found the small vulnerable area of flesh between the two and shot my cousin in the head without warning."

1. ICE has not paid for detainee medical care for 7 MONTHS The termination of payments to providers has coincided with a MASSIVE SPIKE in detainee deaths. This is a health crisis and a moral crisis. Follow along for details. 🧵

Our new issue, FOREVER WARS, heads to press soon. Featuring a roundtable on Iran with @peymanjafari.bsky.social, Ali Kadivar, Manijeh Moradian, @naghmehs.bsky.social, @alexshams.bsky.social. Plus @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social @harshawalia.bsky.social @dwaldstreicher.bsky.social +

First group of migrants deported from the US ​under recent third country deportation with DRC have now been forcibly shipped off to Kinshasa. Deportees are originally from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador. This deportation agreement follows a partnership granting US preferential access to Congo's minerals.

Palestinians living in the West Bank cannot feel safe anywhere. Raja Shehadeh reporting from Ramallah on the sharp rise of settler violence and IDF complicity since the start of the war.

So many Haitians were placed in detention that even the Reagan administration acknowledged the situation “could create an appearance of ‘concentration camps’ filled largely by blacks.” @policingblack.bsky.social on the ways that anti-Black policing have shaped today's deportation regimes.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is running a conversion therapy program. We are calling on everyone — not just those who are transgender, not just those who have loved ones in prison — to recognize what it represents and to oppose it.

“It seems that ICE’s primary objective was less to get bodies inside of prison cells and more to be seen and filmed—and for those videos to sow confidence or fear, depending on the watcher.” Now online from our Winter 2026 issue, Liv Veazey on the agency’s spectacular shows of force:

"If Chuol dies like other Sudanese or South Sudanese, he is not dying because of some special reason that makes him Chuol. It’s not personal. He is just dead. And as he will die, just like other Sudanese, he is not eligible for DCAT. " @joshuacraze.bsky.social on DHS's twisted logic

This is exceedingly bad news.

Israel’s incursions into southern Lebanon look less like a new doctrine than the revival of strategic vision associated with Ben-Gurion: preemption, cross-border force, and the reshaping of neighboring realities through military power @joelleabirached.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/mil...

ICE is STILL in Minnesota and STILL terrorizing communities. Reporters that say otherwise are either uninformed (which....) or lazy (which... ) or just repeating regime lies (which... is also extremely bad). People are still missing, people are and will be traumatized, businesses demolished...

The high fantasy—that the strongest would defend the weakest—will strike many in our current political climate as too ridiculous, too impossible, but the fact it continues to have purchase on our collective imagination is a sign that not all is lost. —Junot Díaz www.bostonreview.net/articles/ris...

Brasilian feminist activist Marielle Franco's killers have just been convicted. From the archive, here's an article of hers we published at the time of her assassination. newleftreview.org/issues/ii110...

"There’s no need for pretense anymore: women, even the wife of the most powerful man in the world, are put on earth to be dominated." Devastating new piece by @judith-levine.bsky.social: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

A long read, but worth it. Sharp analysis by an economics professor of the threat that cryptocurrencies play, especially with Trump stumping for them. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Vivian Gornick thinks through our times with a Joachim Fest's memoir of Nazi Germany: "You’ll see how easily it can all happen—how easily we can all become good Germans." www.bostonreview.net/articles/tur...

“We—that is, Americans—live most of the time inside the cocoon of our small daily lives. Except for fire, flood, or outright war, the history-making world hardly ever impinges on most of us. For the most part, it is over there and we are over here.” New from Vivian Gornick:

One reason Minneapolis remains in the world's eye is we have one of the most robust & independent media ecosystems remaining in the country. You all need this...and more! @mprnews.org @startribune.com @sahanjournal.bsky.social @minnesotareformer.com @minnpost.bsky.social @racketmn.com etc.

Alex Pretti's murder struck a nerve in the health care community, not just as a tragic loss of one of their own but as emblematic of the dangers facing workers and the moral basis of medicine itself. @joelleabirached.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/occ...

"The partition is simply another vehicle for annexation. This is no Marshall Plan for Palestinians, to say the least, but effectively a fire sale of their land and resources." An essay on how we got here from Aslı Ü. Bâli and Aziz Rana: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Must reading (as so much is) from the @bostonreview.bsky.social. @debchasman.bsky.social's interview with Robin D.G. Kelley on placing the ruthless brutality of ICE within the broader history of police violence. www.bostonreview.net/articles/ren...

"The colonists, fewer of whom could vote, and all of whom were supposed to defer to the judgment of their representatives, nonetheless assumed a capacity to consent to law or withhold consent “after the fact.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/bar...

Walz: "What's happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN"

"The first ICE inspection report on Camp East Montana revealed a litany of abuses: makeshift construction, broken sinks and toilets, flooded cells, insufficient food." www.bostonreview.net/articles/pro...

I did an interview with Robin Kelley about the murder if Renee Good — and what we know from history about strategies of resistance to armed agents of the state. www.bostonreview.net/articles/ren...

I am already seeing reporters parrot DHS's version of the story, which is journalistic malpractice. Every story they spun about being under threat in Chicago was either seriously undermined by subsequently revealed evidence or outright proven false in court. Lying is ALWAYS their first move.

It's as if the spirits of Umberto Eco and Borges were summoned to confront the absurdity of LLMS. Absolutely brilliant. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-b...

Throughout 2025, our writers delivered fearless analysis and creative resilience—refusing to compromise on fundamental values of justice and humanity in the face of brazen cruelty and democratic decline. Revisit the writing readers turned to the most:

Like their South African counterparts, Palestinian activists have confronted the limits of a “segregationist apartheid” paradigm. @panashechigumadzi.bsky.social: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Extraordinary text by Honora Spicer, situating context & origins of horrors of contemporary migrant detention at Fort Bliss in El Paso ("Camp East Montana"), exemplifying systematic abuses of Trump 2.0's campaign of persecution & terror vs migrant communities www.bostonreview.net/articles/pro...

In the latest forum of @bostonreview.bsky.social I wrote about migration, social class and the causes of displacement around the world. You can read the essay, the responses and the response to the responses online here & also subscribe to Boston Review!

[email protected]: What happens If enough daycare centers and community hospitals close, if workers cannot access the care that allows them to show up and generate profit for others, if the most fundamental mechanisms of social reproduction collapse? www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

On the destruction not only of public schools in Gaza, but all of the public sector: With only private companies entering, "the markets are full of things that are not really necessary: ketchup, a thousand kinds of chocolate, fruit juices, even sodas." www.bostonreview.net/articles/fir...

I wrote about care, capitalism and going on strike

“But I thought this was why Columbia had to pay the government a zillion dollars and accept restructuring,” said no one ever

this is more or less the whole thing imo

The new schools in Gaza are private, and their scarcity drives up prices. Gaza journalist Rami Abu Jamous takes his son to the first day of kindergarten: www.bostonreview.net/articles/fir...

“Anti-wokeism is about giving ideological cover to longstanding priorities on the right—dismantling the welfare state and ramping up the carceral state, especially in the form of immigrant deportation and detention.” Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:

As ICE agents terrorize Chicago neighborhoods and rough up my friends, patients, neighbors, and elected officials with total impunity, this essay I wrote for Boston Review last week on the myths surrounding "political violence" is as pressing as ever. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply. @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

The widely accepted narrative that Trump "chickened out" on Chicago is completely incorrect. ICE's incursions are getting worse here every day.