The day they ask if you’d ratherbe burned or buried,
the president crasheshis bike into a sand dune.
Sitting in the long waiting roombetween seconds, I notice you,
made god-like by your pain,wrapping the world around your finger,
pushing the cursor forward & back,pausing for glints of detail
in the periphery of the shaky video:the spokes of the wheels drenched
in the reflection of the whitecapsslapping the shore in the distance,
the surprised look of the mancollapsed on his side, useless
as a bouquet of liliessagging next to a hospital bed,
fallen before he ever had the chanceto learn he was falling.
It comforts you, how in a timebefore all this history,
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.
In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.
We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.
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In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
something brutal & long gonelike a sabertooth tiger
is slowly licking its cubinto a deep, peaceful sleep.
Down the hall in the children’s ward,we watch as a little boy draws
thick lines on a toy horsewith a sharpie, inventing the zebra.
Matthew TucknerMatthew Tuckner's debut collection of poems, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2025.