Just three days after 9/11, Congress authorized a major expansion of executive power: the President could now wage war against terrorism without prior approval. The resolution was called the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and it passed almost unanimously. Its reauthorization, in 2002, brought our country to war with Iraq, and has been used to deploy American forces all over the world. More than twenty years later, the mood in the country has changed dramatically, and lawmakers in both parties are pushing to roll back the President’s discretion to use force. A bill to revoke the A.U.M.F. passed the Senate 66–30 a few weeks ago, and it is expected to pass the House as well. David Remnick talks with the senators who led that effort—Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, and Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana—and with Representative Barbara Lee of California, who, in 2001, cast the sole dissenting vote in all of Congress.
Plus, David Remnick remembers the beloved cartoonist Ed Koren, a fixture of the magazine for more than half a century.
Love Is Blind, and Allegedly Toxic
Miranda July’s New Novel Takes on Marriage, Desire, and Perimenopause
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Isn’t Going Away
How a Tech Executive Lobbied Lawmakers for the TikTok Ban
Wired’s Katie Drummond: The TikTok Ban Is “Rooted in Hypocrisy”; Plus, Hannah Goldfield on Culinary TikTok
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Could Swing the Election. Who Should Be More Worried—Biden or Trump?
Israel, Gaza, and the Turmoil at One American University
Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, Who Refused to “Find” Votes for Donald Trump, Prepares for Another Election
Jerry Seinfeld on Making a Life in Comedy (and Also, Pop-Tarts)
Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare
Jonathan Haidt on the Plague of Anxiety Affecting Young People
Maya Hawke on the Fear of “Missing Out,” and Jen Silverman on “There’s Going to Be Trouble”
How a Republican and a Democrat Carved out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban
The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024
The Attack on Black History, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb
Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, on Cultivating the Black Roots of Country Music
Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”
Percival Everett and the Reinvention of Mark Twain’s Jim
Trump’s Authoritarian Pronouncements Recall a Dark History
March Madness 2024: College Basketball at a Crossroads
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Should This Exist?
Without Fail
Hannibal Buress
Longform
Conversations