“The Nation” Is Siding With Humanity
As unregulated, profit-driven AI threatens our economy, climate, and safety, we can’t let tech-bro profiteers define our future.
Print Magazine
May 2026 Issue
Cover art by: Brian Stauffer
Purchase Current Issue or Login to Download the PDF of this Issue Download the PDF of this Issue
Editorial
What We Need to Ask Ourselves About AI
Seven questions to resolve before we let this fast-moving technology run rampant.
Subscribers Only Selma Still Matters
What was born there was a new definition of who gets to be an American. And that legacy is under threat.
Why Fascists Fear Free Speech
The White House is following an old authoritarian playbook to suppress dissent.
The Cost of Making Cesar Chavez the Face of a Movement
The harrowing revelations about Chavez expose how much Latino history in the United States has been made to rest on one man.
Why Black People Can’t Earn Our Way Out of Racism in Maternal Care: A Q&A With Khiara Bridges
In her new book, Bridges found that healthcare provided through private markets leaves more room for discrimination and unequal care to take root than in a public program like Medicaid.
Regina Mahone
The Cost of the Iran War
“It takes money to kill bad guys,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said as he sought $200 billion in funding for the Iran war in March. But the cost far exceeds money.
Subscribers Only The Last Cheap Ride
The collapse of intercity bus service isn’t an accident of the market. It’s the result of treating transportation as a privilege.
How a Rocket in Iran Reverberates in Gaza
As Israel bombards Iran with rockets, it is sealing off borders across Gaza and the West Bank, halting the flow of food, aid, and bodies.
Column
Subscribers Only America’s True Fascist Architectural Legacy
It’s not the kitschy White House ballroom—it’s logistics warehouses converted to ICE detention centers.
Subscribers Only Americans Are Being Bled Dry by Hidden Taxes
Three private taxes are pushing electricity costs far above what ordinary people can afford.
Subscribers Only We All Hate AI, but if You’re Poor, It Can Really Ruin Your Life
Debt collection. Parole decisions. Oversight of public services. It’s all being outsourced to AI, with terrible consequences for poor people.
Letters
Letters From the May 2026 Issue
Voting for vets… The meaning of evangelical… Billionaire ball clubs…
Feature
Subscribers Only AI for the People
A manifesto for an AI revolution that works for the many, not just the billionaires.
Subscribers Only The Great AI Grift
Tech leaders and the Trump administration want you to believe that AI is the key to a new golden age. The reality looks more like a bold daylight heist.
The Pentagon Is Going “AI First”
The US military is placing the technology at the center of its mission, and the human costs promise to be staggering.
As AI Breathes Down Our Necks, It’s Time for a Luddite Renaissance
Nineteenth-century textile workers longed to stay human in a machine age. So do we.
Subscribers Only San Diego’s AI Battlefield Heats Up
The city is at the forefront of the fight against using big tech to surveill residents. But AI poses new threats.
Subscribers Only What Happens When “Your Honor” Is a Robot?
The age of artificial judges is fast approaching. What will that mean for justice?
Subscribers Only The Death of an AI Whistleblower
Suchir Balaji sought to expose OpenAI’s data abuses. Did it come at the expense of his own life?
Subscribers Only Patrisse Cullors: Art Is Liberation
Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors says cultural work will be the key to shifting the system and imagining a world after MAGA.
Books & the Arts
Ben Lerner’s Novel of Fathers and Sons
His most experimental and unsettling book, Transcription as us whether art is futile or the most important weapon we have.
Harry Haywood and the Radical Politics of Black Communism
For Haywood, a truly radical working-class politics in the United States also required a program of self-determination.
Jay McInerney’s Yuppie New York
The novelist has spent a career mocking and romanticizing the lifestyle of New York's bourgeoisie. Now, in his latest, he examines them as they come to the end of their lives.
Subscribers Only The Worlds of Jamaica Kincaid
Memory pervades a new collection of nonfiction, and so do the ghosts of empire.
What Happened to Tucker Carlson?
The transformation of a once promising, if conservative, magazine journalist into a conspiracy-minded talking head.
