A different kind of Pennsylvania was on my mind recently, as I spent two weeks reporting this month’s cover story from what many commentators have described as the biggest Electoral College prize up for grabs on Election Day. Even if things go well in the swing states, though, as John Nichols reminds us, Harris’s chances of actually delivering on her most ambitious campaign promises will be as doomed as the Hotel Pennsylvania if Democrats can’t hold the Senate and retake the House. Just to add to our fall jitters, in this issue Elie Mystal also previews the coming Supreme Court term and Gaby Del Valle traces the strange journey of rhetoric from “Mother of Exiles” to “scourge of immigrants.”

Not all the news is so fraught, however. This month we also bring you Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone’s profile of the heroic Sakinah Ahad Shannon—a pioneering member of Jane, Chicago’s pre-Roe abortion underground, plus Elizabeth Pochoda on the Native American artist Mary Sully, whose take on history and celebrity is a revelation.

Other deep pleasures await you in Books and the Arts, where Jess Bergman weighs in on the latest Sally Rooney novel, Jorge Cotte celebrates the return of the British spy series Slow Horses, Michael Kazin considers the long shadow of the Scopes trial, Kevin Lozano meditates on Emily Witt’s new memoir about New York’s underground club scene, and Astra Taylor explores the forgotten and future history of debt resistance.

We also have an important forum marking the anniversary of October 7, a debate on the left’s embrace of antitrust, and our usual complement of compelling columnists. We can’t foretell what result November will hold, but we will be sure our next issue does its best to prepare you for it.

-D.D. Guttenplan,

Editor, The Nation

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