Melania Trump: Hero of the People?

Melania Trump: Hero of the People?

Amy Wilentz on the first lady, plus Katha Pollitt on the politics of motherhood, and Lee Saunders on unions after Janus.

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Amy Wilentz takes up the vital question, is Melania Trump a hero of the resistance—or an accomplice of evil? Is she edging “ever closer to open contempt for him,” as New York Times columnist Frank Bruni argues, and finding “increasingly clever ways to show it”? Or is she sticking with her role as wife to a racist tyrant with a clear history of infidelity—and lots of cash?

Also: Mothers and pregnant women are discriminated against, devalued, and punished—here at home, and around the world. Katha Pollitt talks about how that has happened—and why.

And as Labor Day approaches, we talk labor unions and politics with Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME. His union was the target of the Janus v. AFSCME decision by the Supreme Court in June, when it ruled, 5-4, that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining. Saunders explains what unions are doing to fight back—in the November election, and in the long run.

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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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