“Echo of Scalia.” “Originalist.” “Hostile to women’s health care.”
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Read a letter from Coretta Scott King and stories by Lizzie Presser, Kathryn Schulz, Michael Friscolanti, and Mitchell Sunderland.
On Wisconsin
In the wake of the Presidential election, it’s fitting to highlight this evergreen personal essay from the literary magazine Witness. In it, one man meditates on his home state, a cold place where a distrustful, resistant tribalism intersects with a history of early progressivism, harkening back to a time “when the Republican Party was on […]
My Journey to the Heart of the FOIA Request
Fifty years ago, the Freedom of Information Act gave the public access to government secrets — all you had to do was ask. How a simple request became a bureaucratic nightmare.
How Does It Feel? An Alternative American History, Told With Folk Music
On Guthrie, Robeson, Seeger, Lomax, Dylan, the Red Scare, the fall of labor, and what folk music had to do with it.
Resonant and Beautiful: The Meaning of ‘Allahu Akbar’
Mehreen Kasana reveals the many true and beautiful meanings that you’ve never heard of behind “takbir” — the expression of Muslim faith, “Allahu Akbar” — literally, “God is great.”
R.E.M.’s Political Songs Still Resonate Today
The band was never afraid to push social activism through their music.
Longreads Best of 2017: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Here’s every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
How Lobbyists Normalized the Use of Chemical Weapons on American Civilians
Or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the gas.
A President in Search of An Enemy
A brief history of the phrase, “enemy of the people.”

