The Baffler

Baffler no. 86 is now available online and in print. “Tight Ship” is dedicated to efficiency and incompetence alike, with stories on municipal socialism and militarized governance, taxation and invasive biology, Central African beer and the “pork cycle.”

Interested in asymmetrical warfare against American empire? Exploit our market sensitivity and raise our insurance premiums, as has Iran. thebaffler.com/outbursts/ro...

In our new issue, famed cartoonist @achewood-official.bsky.social takes a walk—then keeps going, then speeds up. What is he running from? What is he running toward? And what would compel a person to take up such a grueling, punishing hobby?

Foreign sanctions have curtailed Iranian architects' choices in materials and design. Instead, as @yarbatman.bsky.social writes, they innovate in brick.

“As the DRC enters its thirtieth year of armed conflict involving a legion of rebel groups, Primus lager, the brewery’s flagship brand, is one of the few things that unites the country.” thebaffler.com/salvos/the-b...

London’s trees and parks are home to some fifty thousand feral parakeets. The exotic birds provide a bit of local color in an otherwise gray city. But the species is decidedly non-native—and some locals want them gone. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“Literature, like music, often exists in dialogue with its past and with its peers, and ‘Music Against the Night’ and ‘Partita’ offer the opportunity to deconvolve the relative contributions of theme and form.” thebaffler.com/latest/an-al...

Activists have spent years trying to confirm the existence of the Border Patrol “cover-up” teams that respond to crime scenes involving their agents. A police report on the shooting of Marisol García Alcántara offered a smoking gun. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-r...

“There were sightings in California, in St. Louis, in Montreal. A Carnival cruise ship en route to the Bahamas reported a young girl’s head, skin tanned a deep bronze, whirring about the deck, darting down to snatch an abandoned shrimp cocktail.” thebaffler.com/fiction/the-...

Conservationists are trying to undo the damage that humans have done. But what does it mean to manage a ruined landscape? In Baffler no. 85, Ash Sanders describes the impossible mission to save the Colorado River and its population of humpback chub.

I recommend Madeline Baker's piece in @thebaffler.com for additional context thebaffler.com/salvos/i-mig...

New novels by Yiyun Li and Barbara Kingsolver take classical music—its scales, stacked melodies, and doomed prodigies—as their subject. Kevin Ng reads between the notes.

“After all, her face seemed to say to middle America, how dangerous could feminism be if she’s pushing it?” thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

“Local socialist victories have kicked off a positive feedback loop and inspired yet more socialists to run for office in our time. The candidates tell us they want to collectivize the relations of production. Can they?” thebaffler.com/salvos/pay-a...

Polymarket and Kalshi are transforming every aspect of our lives into a gamble. But insurance companies have been doing that for a long time, betting on war and turmoil, our homes and health. thebaffler.com/salvos/infin...

“She was reaching women I would never know. This, I thought, was how social change really occurred.” thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

“The Border Patrol, which unlike most U.S. police forces typically deals with noncitizens, has long been given unusual leeway among law enforcement agencies.” thebaffler.com/salvos/the-r...

A century ago, socialists rose to power in Milwaukee. To raise revenue for their projects, they had to get creative. In a preview from our upcoming issue, David Backer describes their winning fiscal strategy. thebaffler.com/salvos/pay-a...

The courts have barred New Hampshire from fully enforcing a prohibition on election officials accepting student IDs for voting. Back in 2017, Zachary Roth reported on the long-running campaign to suppress the vote in that state. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“Contrary to the jibes we see in the ‘Post’ and other right-wing rags, one would do well to revisit the pecuniary accounts of yesteryear. There, you’ll find that the red-baiting trope that socialists spend other people’s money isn’t entirely true.” thebaffler.com/salvos/pay-a...

Desperate times call for The Baffler. Subscribe now. thebaffler.com/subscription...

Socialism has swept cities across the nation. If a new cohort of left-wing mayors has any hope of success, they will need a socialist finance for the twenty-first century—one guided by the example Milwaukee set a hundred years ago. thebaffler.com/salvos/pay-a...

In July of 2021, Marisol García Alcántara was shot in the head by Border Patrol. She survived. And her fight for justice, culminating in an upcoming lawsuit, just might serve as a referendum on the agency’s license to kill. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-r...

After Gloria Steinem was converted to the cause of women’s rights in 1969, she turned the tables on the powerful men she once covered, holding them accountable with all she had learned about sexism. thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

How does legislation addressing a manifest nonissue like out-of-state voter fraud gain serious traction? In New Hampshire’s case, it was, in part, through support from its influential secretary of state. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“Hedge funds like Susquehanna International Group are now some of the largest traders on Kalshi, using institutional money to bet on everything from the weather to sports.” thebaffler.com/salvos/infin...

In this preview from our upcoming issue (out next week!) David Backer explains how Milwaukee’s twentieth-century municipal socialists successfully funded their ambitious agenda—and reduced public spending to boot. thebaffler.com/salvos/pay-a...

naturally, @katewagner.wehwalt.net is a perfect reviewer for bryant simon's new book on public restrooms in america

wrote about what a drag it is to take a piss in public for @thebaffler.com thebaffler.com/latest/go-pi...

“In her last weeks, my grandmother must have become aware of what a burden she was to us. If existence is twofold, composed of presence in space and time, she seemed to wish to sacrifice the first in exchange for the prolongation of the second.” thebaffler.com/stories/my-m...

It might be, as one doctor puts it, “the best time in human history to have rheumatoid arthritis.” But that does not make the process of interfacing with the health care industry—or health insurance indsutry—any less taxing. thebaffler.com/odds-and-end...

They say the states are the laboratories of democracy. And New Hampshire has served as a testing ground for the Republican Party’s Trump-era strategy on voting for some time. Back in 2017, Zachary Roth reported from the Granite State. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

Gloria Steinem was no radical. But as Vivian Gornick writes, she knew how social change worked. thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

Gloria Steinem died last month at the age of ninety-two. Vivian Gornick writes on how she came to become a political force beyond the feminist movement. thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

Gloria Steinem was a booster for Feminism 101. It took Vivian Gornick thirty years of politics to understand her value. thebaffler.com/latest/learn...

From the Archives: Zachary Roth delivers a bracing account of how New Hampshire has always been on the vanguard of the right-wing crusade to suppress ballot access among the poor and transient. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“The more ambitious agenda here is to gradually transform the right to vote into a kind of status marker.” thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“I’ve been failed upward through all the tiers of drugs, from the oldest and worst (cheapest for insurance) to newer, much more expensive specialty drugs. It took me four years to find a treatment program that gives me something like a normal life.” thebaffler.com/odds-and-end...

Baffler no. 85 features new short fiction from @anathanwest.bsky.social. Read “My Mother’s Mother’s Death” on our site now:

The Trump administration is working overtime to suppress the vote with claims of fraud. And it’s not for the first time, either. Back in 2017, Zachary Roth wrote on these Republican-led efforts in the Granite State. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-p...

“Corners get cut to keep the dollars flowing, and in effect, people like you and me foot the bill so that utilities can remain attractive on capital markets.” thebaffler.com/latest/power...

“The public bathroom may be reentering the public agenda, but the imaginations of city officials are limited.” thebaffler.com/latest/go-pi...

“The serious problems and impressive achievements of Wikipedia had always coexisted—and still do.” thebaffler.com/latest/cabin...

There are plenty of people in the U.S. who get their power from public utilities—in Los Angeles and San Antonio, for instance, or in the entire state of Nebraska. What would it take to roll it out to the rest of the country? thebaffler.com/latest/power...

“From the Big Apple to liberal San Francisco to the Deep South, more often than not, pissing is a privilege with a price tag, not a right.” thebaffler.com/latest/go-pi...

Leslie Fiedler made a career defending America’s low and middlebrow fiction. But he made an exception for novels that articulated a political complaint from women, who he felt had a “corrupting influence on American letters.” thebaffler.com/outbursts/it...

Wikipedia is too big, too varied, and too contradictory for its many contents and authors to be described in toto. So in his new history of the site, Richard Cooke zooms in on the particulars. thebaffler.com/latest/cabin...

America’s Revolutionary aristocracy were neither liberators nor champions of the people. They were landed gentry who distorted and tamped down popular energies to reassert their right to power and property. It's a trick the elites are using right now. thebaffler.com/salvos/on-th...

Americans’ energy costs are on the rise. The average bill rose 30% between 2021 and 2025. Customers are footing shareholder value. thebaffler.com/latest/power...