In April 2025, Obama, for example, spoke about the importance of preserving the international order, meaning the system of rules, norms and institutions that have been active since World War II. He said: 'And this is an important moment, because in the last two months, we have seen a U.S. government actively try to destroy that order and discredit it. And the thinking, I gather, is that somehow, since we are the strongest, we're going to be better off if we can just bully people into doing whatever we want.' As a scholar of the presidency, I know that most presidents stay quiet about their successors, regardless of what the current president does or says. They do this to avoid undermining both their own reputations as well as the stability of the presidency itself. President George Washington established the precedent that presidents retire after two terms and steer clear of public statement. John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, established a different model. After Adams lost his bid for reelection in 1828 to Andrew Jackson, he served in the House of Representatives from 1831 through 1848. Congress is an unusual perch for a former president, but it's a place where criticizing sitting presidents and their policies is part of the job. Adams had plenty of criticism there for his successors, including Jackson and James K. Polk....

In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic's David Frum reflects on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, examining how postwar reconciliation'not battlefield triumph'became America's true finest hour. He contrasts that legacy with Donald Trump's recent bombastic Victory Day statement, urging a rededication to the values that built a more peaceful world. David is then joined by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum to discuss the astonishing and brazen corruption of the Trump presidency, how authoritarian regimes seek to break institutions, and the hardship of losing friendships to politics. Finally, David answers listener questions on fostering open-minded political dialogue among polarized high-school students, why America hasn't developed a strong worker-based political movement like its European counterparts, and how to think about class in modern U.S. politics. He also weighs in on the risk of data suppression under the Trump administration and reflects on whether his long-held conservative values still belong to the political right....

On a late summer day in 1906, a small group of newly arrived Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia took a streetcar across town to Fairmount Park. Several miles from the cramped row houses and oppressive sweatshops of the immigrant quarter of South Philly, the neighborhood now known as Queen Village, they enjoyed a sunny picnic. Instead, they wanted to write 'revolutionary articles' that would spark the 'struggle against all that degrades and oppresses humanity,' as one of the leaders of the group, Joseph Cohen, later wrote in his 1945 memoir. More specifically, the picnicgoers wanted to start a newspaper. It would be titled Broyt un Frayheyt ' Yiddish for Bread and Freedom ' the anarchist reminder that to live the good life, one needs both. I'm a professor of media and politics at Temple University in Philadelphia. For the past year I've been tracking the life and times of my great-grandfather Max, a radical Yiddish journalist in the early years of the 20th century. To my surprise, I found he had lived here in Philadelphia, and his story is part of a largely forgotten moment in U.S. history: when Philly was an epicenter of the national anarchist movement, heartily supported by the city's burgeoning Jewish immigrant community....

In some ways, Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a horror-tinged Victorian critique of the perils of existing in thrall to one's own image, is a story ready-made for 2025. The title character, a young man of striking beauty, begins the novel as a vain but apparently harmless naif. By the end, his possession of a magical portrait that ages and bears the physical marks of his sins while his own face and body remain unchangingly youthful and innocent has turned him into a monster. It's an intentionally superficial edit of the Faust story: A man barters away his soul in exchange for his heart's desire, but rather than yearning for something tinged with nobility'true wisdom, say, or love'he just wants to be gorgeous, forever. He gives up substance for surface; that is his tragedy. And oh, does Sarah Snook's new one-actor take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, now on Broadway, make hay of the obvious parallels to our time, in which social media has made the drive to maintain an idealized aesthetic more powerful than ever. Snook, who received a Tony nomination this week, plays 26 roles, with the help of elaborate wigs and even more elaborate camerawork. Mostly, the latter is performed by a crew of operators who follow her throughout the show. But midway through, Snook herself takes charge, using a smartphone to broadcast herself to a giant screen suspended above the stage as she embarks on a hedonistic rampage. Playing with filters, she gives her face an unsettling porcelain-doll perfection, then zooms out, cackling with glee as she strips the effect away to show her true face....