Headwaters: October 5–11, 2026

The weekly roundup of what we’ve done at Liberal Currents includes sharp reviews of the new books by Francis Fukuyama and Sarah Longwell.

Articles:

• “Fukuyama's Glasses,” Katherine Alejandra Cross: Like the man himself, Francis Fukuyama's new memoir In the Realm of the Last Man combines startling insight and baffling contradiction.
• “You Can't Run From Christian Nationalism,” Holly Berkley Fletcher: White evangelicals are the single most influential voting bloc in American politics. They cannot be ignored.
• “Concede Nothing,” Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis: Trans people are who we say we are, and we will fight and organize on those grounds.
• “The Illusion of Consent: A Rape at Cornell and the MAGA Right,” Alan Elrod: For the new right, when a man is accused of rape, he is first and foremost a victim of feminism.
• “You Can't Build a Better Politics on Bad History,” Joseph Stieb: Sarah Longwell's How to Eat an Elephant offers useful advice for Democratic politics. Yet it is also based on a false history of the GOP.

Podcasts:

• “We Squandered It! Why the World Is on Fire” (Neon Liberalism #94, with Ben Wittes): How we went from the triumph of the fall of the Berlin Wall to our current world.
• “At First ICE Loses, Then It Flies, Flies Again” (Half the Answer #107, with Gillian Brockell): ICE has been transporting people in inhumane conditions to countries to which they have no affiliation or connection.
• “Dreaming of a Blue Texas” (Out of the Jaws #13, with Jesse Dollemore): On apocalyptic thought in the evangelical community, the role of liberal media in the struggle against fascism, and more.
• “Rape Culture, Male Supremacism, and the MAGA Right” (Liberal Currents Live #10): American politics is being structured around rape as a core pillar of Trumpism.

Editors’ Notes:

• “A Free Society Is an Urban Society”: Cities are a key pillar in creating a society of free individuals.
• “A Bestiary of Dictators and Totalitarians”: Non-democracy, explained.
• “The Point of Government Equity Stakes Is Personalism”: It is not industrial policy. It's the rule of men rather than of laws.

Videos and shorts:

• “Christian Nationalists Are Going to Get Us All Killed”: Jesse Dollemore on their power, influence, and authority in the Trump administration.
• “Venture Capitalism and American Politics in 2026”: Caitlin Green and Adrian Daub on venture capitalists’ mindset when they venture into politics.
• “The Western Hemisphere After Trump”: Matthew Downhour says that national security arguments for economic self-sufficiency have some merit, sometimes.
• “Drone Warfare and the Changing Tides of National Military Capabilities”: Guillaume Attia and Samantha Hancox-Li talk about how technology is changing balances of power.
• “Drone Warfare and the Ball Bearings”: Samantha Hancox-Li explains why you can’t actually win the war from the air.
• “The Rural Voter Is Fascism's Greatest Friend”: Adam Gurri says the vision of freedom in the countryside is grounded in delusion.
• “You Don’t Understand Democracy”: Democracy and dictatorship take many forms, and Adam Gurri walks us through the basic types.

Selections from The Reconstruction Papers:

• Chapter 12: “Imagining Life After Patriarchy,” by Jude Doyle.
• Chapter 13: “How to Normalize Immigration: Elements of Liberal Immigration Reforms,” by Anna Law. 

We’re happy to announce that The Reconstruction Papers is now available in audio.

Riptides (new!):

• “ICE Shoots a Man in Front of His Child”: Oscar Belgal, Pete Hegseth, and cruel and unusual punishments. (Friday, October 9)
• “The Party of Rape”: Bernadette Greene-Placentia, Victor Marx, and Donald Trump, now practically bribing voters. (Thursday, October 8)
• “Trump’s Domestic Policy Is Domestic Abuse”: Mass deportation, corruption, media consolidation, and voter suppression. (Wednesday, October 7)
• “The Next Great Test of American Democracy Approaches”: Polls, election interference, Flávio Bolsonaro, impeachment, and 86’ing L.A. (Tuesday, October 6)

Sign up here to get Riptides—a liberal look at the news, four days a week—by email.

Some of what we’re reading elsewhere:

• PEN America’s list of the most-banned books in America: “Book bans in public schools…now affect nearly every state and disproportionately target books about race and racism, titles by or about people of color, and books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes, as well as works for older readers that include sexual references or discussions of sexual violence.”
• Anthony L. Fisher details the Trumpist censorship regime for MS NOW: “Elon Musk’s devotees and Trump-friendly opinion writers might still cling to the fiction that there was a Joe Biden-led ‘censorship industrial complex,’ but the assaults on free speech enumerated in this column are actually happening.”
• Andy Craig in the UnPopulist, with one weird trick for removing executive branch officials: “Let the Senate vote on impeachment verdicts by secret ballot.”