Opinion Columnists

This time with actual presidents.

The White House desperately tries to take word salad off the menu.

In both Trump cases the liberal dissenters are more originalist than the conservative majority.

The president just doesn’t see that it’s time to take the win.

These Palestinians say Arabs and Jews can live in peace.

Trump’s refusal to quit in 2016 won’t work for the incumbent in 2024.

To make sense of a decaying America, Thomas L. Friedman talks to a trusted friend about the mangrove tree.

The American Republic feels fragile.

Why subordinates or the “deep state” can’t substitute for a vacuum at the top.

Does Biden run? Does he step aside? His recurring considerations are family, legacy and, yes, his age.

The political journalist Elaina Plott Calabro traces the political trajectory of the vice president — and why her 2016 image might be just right for 2024.

Impeachments, bankruptcies, fraud judgments, felonies. Nothing sticks. Nothing matters.

Christian nationalists aim to impose their beliefs on others.

Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, President Biden — who is best positioned to beat Donald Trump in November?

Israel and the U.S. have made a boogeyman out of the U.N. group that’s providing critical services in Gaza.

Instead of clearing the way for victory, liberals may well be paving the way for defeat.

The leaders who brought Israel into crisis won’t be able to bring it out of it.

Trump fears that Biden will demonstrate the difference between a leader who puts the country first and a leader who put himself first.

Thanks to Donald Trump, we don’t have to speculate.

The messy, fascinating history of American exceptionalism has taken a strange turn.

The Nixonian theory of presidential power is now enshrined as constitutional law.

The president’s team should stop gaslighting us.

They share anti-immigrant prejudices, but not all the same policy priorities.

Americans are owed better from the Democratic Party.

On the eve of going to prison, populism’s grand strategist talks about what another Trump presidency would look like and the rise of MAGA-type movements around the world.

What is the Democratic Party for if not for dealing with a situation like this?

Rarely has a case had less legal meaning and greater moral weight.

A second Biden term would be unusually dangerous for the country in a very significant way.

With Israel possibly winding down its war in Gaza, we should be paying more attention to the crisis building in the more populous West Bank.

Do the Democrats really want to stop Trump? What are they prepared to do?

None of the options ensure victory against Trump — and some of them could badly split the party.

A late-Soviet debate night doesn’t mean we’re in late-Soviet America.

The vice president is the obvious path out of the mess Joe Biden has created.

I joined my Times Opinion colleagues Ross Douthat and Michelle Cottle to discuss the debate — and what Democrats might do next.

Three Opinion writers weigh in on the first presidential debate of 2024.

Donald Trump is too grave a threat to America. Democrats need a nominee who can unite the country and articulate a compelling vision for it.

Democrats must grapple with his disastrous debate.

The Trumpist right is presenting aggressive legal theories that fail again and again.

Homicides, which surged during 2020, have been plunging.

A debate before the debate.

When the two candidates square off, we can expect disorientation, dizziness and much else.

The left’s narcissism of small differences hands mainstream positions to Republicans.

Where would each of the candidates lead us — or drag us — on foreign policy issues convulsing the world?

While Maryland embraces egalitarianism, Louisiana veers toward Christian nationalism.

We take a look at J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Elise Stefanik and more possible Republican running mates.

Both parties are changing shape. What should they do about it?

An incident at Columbia suggests that schools beset with antisemitism are beyond salvation.

The breathless catastrophizing of Trump and his allies is not an expression of ignorance as much as it is a statement of intent.

The high stakes of Bowman’s primary make his carelessness especially frustrating.

Modern American lawmakers are not limited by the colonial imagination.

The candidates have no shortage of flaws.

By averting his eyes as his red lines are ignored, Biden is wasting his leverage over Israel.

He’s just as intense, but a bit more mellow. Or is he?

The case against Marcellus Williams is far from settled.

The former president is no more prepared for a second term than he was for a first. He may even be less prepared.

Democrats should rally around a bill to overhaul the 1873 anti-vice law.

Inflation is Biden’s weak spot. Matthew Yglesias argues that it may also be Trump’s.

Can populist leaders actually fix the world’s unsolvable problems?

Audaciously and laughably, a playboy plutocrat turns himself into Everyman.

I don’t like operating in unison, and I’ve never been much of a tribalist or a joiner.

A collection of stories on the challenges and joys of coming out later in life.

What does the rise of partisan sectarians portend for the rest of us?

Easy money destroyed the basis for productive, competitive markets.

You have to wonder if American “friends” of Israel have any clue about the nature of Israel’s government.

The best way to think of the holiday is not as the moment Black people attained freedom but as a moment in the struggle to realize freedom.

Yanna Krupnikov probes the motivations of Americans who avoid politics — but often vote.

A Christian nationalist upset causes Republican angst.

A look at the senator’s defense of Donald Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election.

Infected with ideological purity, the West Coast is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.

The Israeli journalist Amit Segal discusses Benny Gantz’s departure from the war cabinet, Israel’s shift to the right and whether a new theory of security is emerging in Israeli politics.

Hollywood shouldn’t pre-emptively capitulate to the MAGA movement.

There cannot be compromise on the question of American democracy.

Intelligence strongly correlates with positive educational and career outcomes, but it is not everything.

In a long conversation, the first-term senator from Ohio talks about Trump, populism, the 2020 election, Ukraine and the Republican V.P. slot.

It was never going to be easy to get voters to abandon their hero.

Israel, Ukraine and American democracy are on the line.

Even the weak regulatory grasp of capitalist democracy is too strong for, well, capitalists.

Why higher rates are replacing inflation as the thing to hate.

The MAGA movement tears another state Republican Party apart.

Why America’s oligarchs are rallying around Trump.

Here’s looking at you, Hunter.

There is a difference between peace and capitulation.

The era of Southern apartheid is inseparable from poverty, exploitation and violence.

His executive order limiting asylum seekers may be political, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Officials should have told us what they knew, or at least leveled with us about what they didn’t know.

Why the MAGA movement loves Mafiosi.

This is what happens when you say it’s the legal system that’s indefensible.

Annie Lowrey talks about how the affordability crisis is shaping how Americans perceive the state of the economy.

Progressive elites aren’t helping the people they say they’re fighting for, and they’re hurting the rest of us.

It’s a political problem, not an economic crisis.