


Zohran Mamdani is promising lots of things he can’t actually do
A few reasons to be relaxed about the plans of the Democratic front-runner to be New York’s mayor
Like many politicians running for office, Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old New York Democratic mayoral candidate, is partly a fabulist. His story includes tax hikes on the wealthy and businesses, free buses, free child care and a $30 minimum wage by 2030. Whether or not these are good ideas, most have as little likelihood of becoming tangible as one of Italo Calvino’s odd, enchanting, invisible cities.
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Donald Trump has purged one of the CIA’s most senior Russia analysts
The move will have a chilling effect inside American spy agencies

How Washington became Donald Trump’s chew toy
The politics are particularly potent today, but their origins are older than the republic itself

Does it make sense for America to keep subsidising a sinking city?
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a different kind of risk
Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to stop them from making it rain
The opponents of cloud-seeding come for geoengineering
The Democrats who find abundance liberalism threatening
A call for more building runs into trouble in NIMBY-land
The young American female soldiers of TikTok
An app that Congress considers to be a national-security risk helps to recruit soldiers