What's the single biggest reason to expect a blue wave in November? Nothing makes voters angrier at the party in power than having less money in their pockets, and real disposable income is down, @billscher writes. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

New federal loan limits restrict borrowing for graduate degrees in many fields, and prospects for private loans are also grim. Many health care grad students say they can't get the loans they need. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

A new report makes a nuanced case for what post-secondary graduates need to get ahead. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

A misinformed, historically perverted idea underlies much of the work of John Roberts’s Supreme Court, @JRakove explains. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

A proposed settlement would give Visa and Mastercard’s duopoly a free pass, and won’t deliver meaningful relief on swipe fees. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

On our podcast, vote-at-home pioneers Phil Keisling and Barbara Smith Warner weigh in on the long-term impacts of Trump’s campaign against vote-by-mail. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

Discouraging surveys and a semi-illiterate president notwithstanding, reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

Right now, the geography of campaign spending tells a fairly straightforward story: Democrats are forcing Republicans to defend considerably more territory than Republicans are forcing Democrats to defend. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

Gloria Steinem’s surprising and impossibly beautiful last book has lessons for us all, @CYBingham writes. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

The number of Americans without health insurance is soaring this year. Last week’s Census Bureau report on the uninsured rate for 2025 is the last good news we’ll get for a while. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

Many Democrats are hot to remake the Supreme Court. But it’s the lifetime judicial appointment that just kept Donald Trump from meddling with the midterms, @billscher argues. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…

“One dismal morning in January 2001, I strode into a University of Oregon classroom to face 90 fresh-faced first-year law students. I had the unenviable task of explaining the ‘law’ behind Bush v. Gore, decided a month earlier,” Legal Affairs Editor Garrett Epps writes. “It was an impossible task. What could I say to these legal novices, beyond ‘It is not too late to reconsider the life choices that brought you here’?” “There was no explanation for Bush v. Gore other than the obvious: The Supreme Court took the election away from the people because five of its members didn’t like Al Gore,” Epps continues. “No decision in my lifetime has shown such contempt for the law or so consciously torn a catastrophic hole in the self-governing institutions the Constitution supposedly aims to sustain.” Even today, a quarter-century after the Court’s worst blunder since Dred Scott, no explanation fits the ruling into the fabric of American constitutional law. Instead, lawyers, scholars, and judges have treated this travesty as a human body treats a foreign object trapped in a wound. It is not incorporated but encysted: surrounded by protective tissue that limits the damage and pain. “Back in 2001 I would have welcomed the chance to offer my students a careful, clear explanation, written by credible constitutional lawyers, of exactly what was bogus about the decision,” Epps writes. “Yet when a useful rebuttal was most needed, no one stood forth with one.” In her new book, Fordham University Law Professor Julie C. Suk offers a mechanism that could have filled this vacuum: a “shadow court,” with nine “shadow justices” who publish their own judicial opinions, based on their own lines of constitutional reasoning, which could speak with democratic legitimacy to the nation as a whole. “Her proposal has many virtues: It is entirely legal, requires no amendment to the Constitution, and might very well help rebuild the national commitment to democratic self-government,” Epps writes. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/0…