JACOBIN

FEBRUARY 18. 2025

Young Snipers in Love Across The Gorge

Apple TV+’s The Gorge finds two attractive young snipers, Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, flirting across the abyss as they guard the gates of hell below. It’s a promising premise, but it never pays off.

Syria Remains a Battleground for Competing Regional Powers

Turkey’s ruling AKP views the fall of Assad in Syria as an opportunity to project power across the region. But the conflicting interests of the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and the US will make attempts by any one power to exert influence over Syria fraught.

Trump Is Moving to Kill a Key Federal Environmental Law

Over the weekend, the Trump administration began the process of defanging the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act — a mandate that allows communities to protect themselves from polluters.

Can Federal Workers Stop Trump?

After what has felt like an eternity of Elon Musk and DOGE running rampant across the federal government, federal workers themselves and their unions are now leading the pushback.

J. D. Vance Shocks Europeans — for the Wrong Reasons

J. D. Vance offended European colleagues on Friday by publicly doubting that they are champions of democracy. Some of the examples he cited were spurious — but the EU establishment’s shocked reaction itself spoke to their unreflective groupthink.

Russell Vought Wants to Burn the Government Down

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought has spent his life trying to cripple the ability of the state to benefit anyone but the rich, to the point that it can’t be put back together. With Donald Trump in office, he can finally do it.

FEBRUARY 17. 2025

Edward Sard and the Rise of the Permanent War Economy

The war industry has become a permanent fixture of US capitalism, channeling massive public subsidies to private corporations. The first writer to analyze this “Permanent War Economy” was Edward Sard, a brilliant Marxist economist working in the 1940s.

Bill Gates Is Playing Both Sides of the Climate Crisis

Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It's just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.

Remembering Washington State’s First Socialist Lawmaker

Last November, Seattle voters elected socialist Shaun Scott to the Washington State legislature. Writing in Jacobin, Scott tells the mostly forgotten story of the only socialist to make it to Olympia before him, over 100 years ago: William Kingery.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

The rich tradition of Black Marxist thought — one that includes W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Frantz Fanon, among many others — emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.

FEBRUARY 16. 2025

billy woods: “My Music Is Radical, in Its Own Way”

Rapper billy woods is a leading figure in contemporary underground hip-hop. He spoke to Jacobin about the inspiration for his music and his left-wing politics.

Tim Scott Is Fighting for His Donors’ Junk Fees

Joe Biden’s CFPB passed rules limiting overdraft and credit card late fees. As the chair of the Senate committee that oversees the agency, Tim Scott wants to reinstate these junk fees — a key priority for his donors in finance.

Trump’s Gaza Plan May Mark the End of the Postwar Order

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is not just abandoning those norms — it appears to be actively legitimizing ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Federal Workers Are Mobilizing Against Musk’s Purge

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's assault on federal workers threatens government employees, working conditions throughout the economy, and the viability of crucial services. Federal workers are uniting across agency and union lines to fight back.