The.Ink

1 week ago | the.ink | Thor Benson

This morning, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is on his way to El Salvador to argue personally for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident wrongly kidnapped and now imprisoned without charge in that country’s CECOT prison. It’s an unprecedented step for a U.S. Senator, but we’re in new territory.

1 week ago | the.ink | Nate Schweber

Can an experimental program called ranked-choice voting improve democracy? Today in The Ink, journalist and author Nate Schweber dives deep on how it’s playing out in New York City. He talks about the city’s use of ranked-choice voting, which aims to provide a fairer, less polarized election experience and to enable voters to choose according to their conscience with less risk of backing a spoiler in a close race.

2 weeks ago | the.ink | Anand Giridharadas

We just had a deep, wide-ranging, and even inspiring conversation with more than 2,000 Ink readers and two guests from very different worlds: the philosopher Olufemi O. Taiwo and Michael Cohen, the former Donald Trump lawyer turned anti-Trump activist. Both conversations started with how to make sense of all the tariff chaos — and how Trump was finally “disciplined by reality.” But that was just the beginning.

2 weeks ago | the.ink | Anand Giridharadas |Joy-Ann Reid

We just finished a conversation with journalist Joy-Ann Reid and 3,400 Ink readers — and we talked about this past weekend’s “Hands Off!” protests, the Trump-Musk regime’s reign of destruction, the problems of American exceptionalism, and the crisis of media. And Joy dropped some of the hardest truths facing America right now:Black Americans are done being the country’s “moral mules.” They’ve preached, they’ve taught, they’ve led by example. Many are sitting the Resistance out.

2 weeks ago | the.ink | Anand Giridharadas |Astra Taylor |Liz Plank

Millions of people, in 1,400 cities and towns in red and blue districts across the United States, turned out this past weekend for the “Hands Off!” protests. We just asked Astra Taylor and Liz Plank — both of them brilliant authors, activists, and organizers — what comes next? Taylor and Plank (and the 2,100 viewers who joined us live) had plenty of ideas of where pro-democracy organizers need to put their energy going forward to build a movement with the power to change things.