This time around was supposed to be different, and Trump’s tariffs were the proof. Though decried by Wall Street and economists, when his second-term policy sent the stock market into a tailspin, the airwaves were filled with spinners trying to stay the course. Trump himself was conspicuously defiant, until Wednesday, when the bond market panicked—and, just like that, the president blinked.

As our May cover story elucidates, they order these matters differently in Brazil. Politicians there are kept in line not by fear of the bond market, but by the Landless Workers Movement, which emerged from the Bolsonaro years stronger than ever.  How did they do it? You’ll have to read Vincent Bevins’s feature to find out, but one detail that struck me was the dividend for the country’s left in putting its energies into movement building rather than a political party.

In this issue we also have Regina Mahone’s account of the resurgence of abortion storytelling in the post-Roe landscape, while Bryce Covert investigates whether repeated promises by McDonald’s to end sexual harassment add up to anything more than rhetoric. Kali Holloway probes the mystery of the disappearing Democratic voter—and if that leaves you in need of therapeutic intervention, Jess McAllen has a warning you should heed.

Since it’s spring—we also have a crop of new reviews: John Banville on the roots of the Irish famine, Edna Bonhomme on Zora Neale Hurston’s lost Roman epic, Sarah Chihaya on two Sigrid Nunez adaptations, John Ganz on Donald Trump’s long con, Olufemi Taiwo on Agnes Callard and the pleasures and perils of public philosophy, and Vivian Gornick’s tough but tender assessment of Murray Kempton.

Onward!

–D.D. Guttenplan

Editor, The Nation

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