Dev Patel as Kid in his directorial debut Monkey Man. | Universal Pictures Dev Patel’s action-packed directorial debut also takes aim at contemporary Indian politics. Monkey Man, a gripping, blood-soaked action film from first-time director Dev Patel, has garnered acclaim for its fight scenes — including, famously, when the main character cuts a man’s throat open by holding the knife in his mouth. Undergirding all this action, however, is also an attempt at commentary about growing authoritarianism in India, and how political leaders leverage both religion and police to maintain their power ..read more

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee about the fiscal year 2025 budget on April 16, 2024.  | Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images Senate Democrats put a quick end to Republicans’ political stunt. Republicans’ political impeachment stunt against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas came to a head this week in the Senate, with lawmakers in the upper chamber voting to dismiss the charges. On Tuesday, House Republicans sent two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the upper chamber, and on Wedne ..read more

At a protest in Rome in October 2023 calling for a ceasefire and aid into Gaza, a protester holds a sign calling for an end to “colonialism and displacement” in Palestine. | Simona Granati/Corbis via Getty Images The historical discussion at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Is Israel a “settler colonial” state? That charge has been the subject of fierce debate in recent months amid the continuing Israeli assault on Gaza after the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Colonialism is a system in which one people dominates another and uses the subjugated group’s resources for its own benefi ..read more

Unhoused people photographed in San Francisco in February of 2024. | Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images Grants Pass v. Johnson could make the entire criminal justice system far crueler. It also tests the limits of judicial power. The Supreme Court will hear a case later this month that could make life drastically worse for homeless Americans. It also challenges one of the most foundational principles of American criminal law — the rule that someone may not be charged with a crime simply because of who they are. Six years ago, a federal appeals court held that the Constitution “bar ..read more

Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” screams “Freedom” inside the US Senate chamber after the Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Most of the justices seem to want to make it harder to prosecute January 6 rioters. The Supreme Court spent about an hour and a half on Tuesday morning arguing over whether to make it much harder for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who joined the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. It appears, after Tuesday’s arguments, that a maj ..read more

Tucker Carlson speaks in Florida on April 2, 2024. | Ivan Apfel/Getty Images Carlson mainstreamed antisemitism for a long time, and conservatives seemed not to care. Then he set his sights on Israel. The New York Times once described Tucker Carlson’s Fox News hour as “the most racist show in the history of cable news.” In the past week, allegations of bigotry involving his new show on X have come from a rather different corner: his fellow conservatives. The fight started April 9, when Carlson published a friendly interview with Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac. The pastor — who has reportedly ..read more

Activists for transgender rights gather in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on April 1, 2023. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images The Court mostly reinstates Idaho’s ban on transgender health care for children. The Supreme Court handed down a strange set of opinions on Monday evening, which accompanied a decision that largely reinstates Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The ban was previously blocked by a lower court. None of the opinions in Labrador v. Poe spend much time discussing whether such a ban is constitutional — although Justice Brett Kavan ..read more

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media after a pretrial hearing on March 25, 2024, in New York City. | Justin Lane/Getty Images The trial on the least important topic may be the most important to the 2024 election. When former President Donald Trump was indicted in New York for falsifying business records last March, many anticipated that would be the prologue to the main event: charges over Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election. Yet the two election indictments — and another prosecution of Trump for hoarding classified documents — have moved slowly and been beset with delays ..read more

Explosions are seen in the skies of Israel’s capital, following the retaliatory attack from Iran over the weekend. | Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel was a military failure. But things could still get a lot worse. When Iran launched a large retaliatory drone and missile assault on Israel on Saturday night, it raised fears that the Middle East was on the precipice of a regional war. But by Sunday morning, the situation looked far less dire. Iran had telegraphed elements of its attack and its willingness to end the two-week period of hostilities there ..read more

Then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and comedian Dawn French with a £4.3 million Gift Aid subsidy check marking the conclusion of a charitable fundraiser in 2001. | Michael Stephens/PA Images via Getty Images Companies sometimes match donations to charity. What if the government did too? Imagine a charity comes to you with an offer. If you give them a donation now, they’ll get it at least partially matched — so for every dollar you give, a wealthy benefactor will add 25 cents. Your giving has a higher bang for the buck than normal. Now imagine the charity instead tells you that your gift might h ..read more