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The Exposure Therapy of “A Private Life”
Law enforcement shouldn't be political.

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The Exposure Therapy of “A Private Life”

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Books & the Arts

/ February 10, 2026

Doctor and Detective

The exposure therapy of A Private Life

The Exposure Therapy of “A Private Life”

In her new film, Jodie Foster transforms into a therapist-detective.

Lovia Gyarkye

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(Courtesey of Sony Pictures)

Since her breakout role in Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster has been known for delivering steely performances of impenetrable women. From the adolescent runaway turned sex worker in Martin Scorsese’s gritty New York thriller to the FBI trainee negotiating with a cannibalistic serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs, her characters are defined by a compelling recessiveness and relative social isolation. But lately, Foster has been trying to come out of her shell. “For somebody who is interested in privacy,” she told The Atlantic in 2024, “I am obsessed with being understood.”

This desire for a more legible interior life has led Foster to some unexpected roles. Take her turn in Nyad, an odd film about the athlete Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida. Foster plays Diana’s friend, coach, and (at one point) partner, Bonnie Stoll, with a charming optimism, shedding her withdrawn, often self-protective posture to reveal an endearing lightness. Not only was this a rare display of on-screen exuberance, but it was the first time Foster—quiet about her own sexuality—had played an openly gay person.

If Nyad signaled Foster’s interest in a different narrative, then A Private Life, her latest film, represents an unabashed commitment to self-exposure. Here she plays Lilian Steiner, an American psychoanalyst living in France, whose wayward investigation into a patient’s death leads her down a path of intense vulnerability and reflection. The role is Foster’s first lead performance completely in French, and it transforms her almost entirely into a different person. Her voice gains an airy lilt, her eyes seem softer when the camera closes in on her face, and she brings verve and a sense of order to an otherwise scattered film.

APrivate Life kicks off with a dismissal and a death. Early in the film, one of Lilian’s patients fires her, claiming that a hypnotist has cured him of his cigarette addiction more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost. Lilian, who maintains an inscrutable affect, seems more amused than hurt by the encounter. After all, she has plenty else to do: She must order blank tapes (she records every one of her therapeutic sessions) and figure out why another patient, Paula (Virginie Efira), has missed three sessions. Through these opening moments, Foster offers her audience a portrait of an emotionally reserved woman, a person tasked with …

The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
Be honest—this is ridiculous.

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The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”

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Feature

/ February 10, 2026

The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”

After the Holocaust, Israel was hailed as the solution to an essentially antisemitic debate. Now, as another genocide unfolds—in Gaza—Jews are once again questioning the question.

Joseph Dana

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Mame loshn: Attendees at the first Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz, 1908.

This article appears in the
March 2026 issue, with the headline “The Long Shadow of the Jewish Question.’”

In late August 1908, some 70 delegates crowded into a hall in Czernowitz, the cosmopolitan capital of Austrian Bukovina. They had come from Warsaw and Galicia and cities across Eastern Europe for the First Yiddish Language Conference. Leading writers like I.L. Peretz were present; Sholem Aleichem had wanted to attend but was kept away by illness. For five days, they argued about the nature of Jewish languages and whether the one named in the conference title—the one spoken by Eastern Europe’s Jewish masses—was a legitimate national tongue or merely a corrupted jargon of exile.

For Nathan Birnbaum, the man who had organized the gathering, this was not a matter of mere academic import; it was a question of existential significance. Born in Vienna in 1864 to an assimilated family, Birnbaum had grown up largely secular yet rejected the assumption that Jews should dissolve into the surrounding German-Austrian culture. With his determined stare and full beard projecting well below his throat, he could be easily mistaken for Theodor Herzl at the time.

The two men had, in fact, been allies for a period. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1890, Birnbaum had coined the term Zionism while editing the early Zionist journal Selbst-Emanzipation (Self-Emancipation), and he was later elected secretary-general of the Zionist Organization at the First Zionist Congress in Basel. Later, however, he would abandon the Zionist movement and, in its stead, embrace a different vision for the future of the Jewish people—one that diverged wildly from political Zionism and was the implicit focus of the Czernowitz ingathering.

Birnbaum did not believe that the Yiddish-speaking Jews scattered from the Baltics to the Black Sea were failed Europeans awaiting transformation in Palestine, as the Zionist movement argued. Rather, they were a living nation deserving recognition where they already stood. The Czernowitz conference was meant to formalize this recognition by declaring Yiddish the national language of the Jewish people, not merely one among several. Such a declaration would have been a direct challenge to the Zionist project, which was busy reviving Hebrew as the tongue of a future state and …

How to Build a Moon Garden When the News Is All Horror
The headline tells the story.

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How to Build a Moon Garden When the News Is All Horror

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Poems

/ February 10, 2026

How to Build a Moon Garden When the News Is All Horror

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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This article appears in the
March 2026 issue.

To see where the moon melts over the garden,
or where the bats flit, or where the air sweetens

    with pollen and moth-frenzy, I recommend
    a night walk to discern the perfect patch for it.

Under this glow, we could all use a distraction—
dig with a silver shovel and choose colors that swoon

    and moan under our satellite: dusty pinks,
    baby blue, lavender, white, and butter yellow gems

unfurl at dusk until dawn. Sometimes moonflower
vining over trellis looks like a waterfall

    out of the corner of your eye. So many to choose from:
    evening primrose, night-blooming jasmine, heliotrope,

tuberose, 4 o’clocks, lambs’ ear, astilbe, calla lily, white clematis,
fairy candles, periwinkles, and you can even launch snowballs

    in summer with creamy oak hydrangeas. Turn off the hiss
    and whirr from man-made lights and walk the night,

walk the grass, the fence line, let your boot crackle over
pebble and stick bits. Careful if skunks shuffle over to see what

    all the fuss is about. Don’t tussle with weeds. If you set
    your shovel down, skunks won’t bother you at all.

And on the off chance they do, at least the spray might
sizzle like stars. Bats swoop and fly erratic, but birds

    glide between wing flap—that’s how you can tell what
    flutters across a lake moon. If you make a moon garden,

even the dark lapping of water under a duck-shush of wave
won’t be louder than the silver in your own bright yard.

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From Minneapolis to Venezuela, from Gaza to Washington, DC, this is a time of staggering chaos, cruelty, and violence. 

Unlike other publications that parrot the views of authoritarians, billionaires, and corporations, The Nation publishes stories that hold the powerful to account and center the communities too often denied a voice in the national media—stories like the one you’ve just read.

Each day, our journalism cuts through lies and distortions, contextualizes the developments reshaping politics around the globe, and advances progressive ideas that oxygenate our movements and instigate change in the halls of power. 

This independent journalism is only possible with the support of our readers. If you want to see more urgent coverage like this, please donate to The Nation today.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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Rome, take your amethyst back

Rome, take your …

To Build Bridges, We Must Block the Bombs
What's the endgame here?

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To Build Bridges, We Must Block the Bombs

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/ February 10, 2026

To Build Bridges, We Must Block the Bombs

Brad Lander in The Nation: “When I am elected to Congress, I will support the Block the Bombs Act to protect more Palestinians from being killed by Israel.”

Brad Lander

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Civil defense teams carry out operations to recover the bodies of five members of the Abu Nida family who were trapped under the rubble of a building destroyed in Israeli attacks on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in the Gaza Strip on February 9, 2026.
(Khames Alrefi / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Last week, The Nation took the unusual step of turning its entire home page over to coverage of the ongoing calamity in Gaza. While the world’s attention has turned away, Israel’s bombs are still falling, paid for by US taxpayers. Hunger persists, as aid only trickles in.

Last month, Israel recovered the remains of Ran Gvili, the final hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, a step I welcomed with an aching heart, providing at long last some small measure of closure to the grieving families of October 7. But the remains of thousands of Palestinians still lie in the smoldering wreckage of Gaza, while their grieving families face winter in makeshift tents. Where is any measure of closure, or safety, or even just a roof, for them?

Over the past two years, I have struggled to mourn both Israelis and Palestinians killed since October 7—to recognize their equal humanity, but also the very unequal magnitude and duration of the devastation. In that effort, I have frequently joined weekly vigils in Union Square with Israelis for Peace, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the return of every hostage. We’ve heard from both Palestinians and Israelis whose lives have been ripped apart. People like Maoz Inon, whose parents were murdered by Hamas on October 7, and Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother was killed by settlers in the West Bank. “Our futures are intertwined”—we chant—“Israel and Palestine.”

Our futures are intertwined here in the US as well—where Congress continues to be complicit in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, providing unconditional support for Netanyahu’s unchecked aggression. American working families struggle to understand why their tax dollars are paying for the 2,000-pound bombs that have leveled the hospitals and schools of Gaza, when there isn’t sufficient funding for affordable healthcare, better schools, or affordable housing here at home.

That is why, as a candidate for New York’s 10th Congressional District, I am announcing my support for HR 3565, the Block the Bombs Act, sponsored by Representative Delia Ramirez. This bill bans the Defense Department from selling …

Tom Malinowski concedes New Jersey primary election to Analilia Mejia
Same show, different day.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded the special election primary for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to activist Analilia Mejia.

Malinowski was seen as a more centrist establishment candidate, with his defeat marking another triumph for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He congratulated Mejia on her “hard-won victory,” and said he would support her in the April general election.

MAXINE WATERS BECOMES LATEST DEMOCRAT TO FACE GENERATIONS-YOUNGER PRIMARY CHALLENGER

His statement was notable for condemning the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, blaming its “massive flood of dark money” on “dishonest ads” in large part for the outcome.

Mejia posted a GIF of pop star Bad Bunny emotionally reacting to winning a Grammy award in response.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Trump’s Lies Are Toxic
This deserves loud pushback.

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Trump’s Lies Are Toxic

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February 10, 2026

Trump’s Lies Are Toxic

To stop exposing them allows them to metastasize.

Peter Dreier

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President Donald Trump gaggles with reporters while aboard Air Force One on February 6, 2026. (Samuel Corum / Getty Images)

By now, most Americans are used to Trump and his administration’s daily blizzard of lies. They aren’t simply exaggerations or mistakes. They are part of a sustained attack on the major pillars of American democracy—the courts, the media, the schools and universities, museums and cultural institutions, even sports—to intimidate people into submission so he can rule without guardrails, constitutional protections, checks and balances—or the truth.

In 2018, Steve Bannon, once Trump’s key political adviser, said that the president’s major adversary is the press and “the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” When reporters expose his lies, or ask tough questions, Trump calls them “fake news.”

Trump emerged on the public stage in 1973 when he lied about a federal government report documenting that he discriminated against Blacks in his apartment buildings. It was well-known among New York gossip columnists and reporters that Trump lied about his wealth, his sexual affairs, and his business activities. From 2011 to 2016, Trump was a leading proponent of the discredited “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

He began his first presidential campaign with a lie that undocumented immigrants were responsible for a disproportionate share of violent crime—a claim he’s repeated often. “We looked at homicides, sexual assaults, violent crimes, property crimes, traffic and drug violations,” Michael Light, a University of Wisconsin sociologist, told USA Today. “And what we find across the board is that the undocumented tend to have lower rates of crimes with all of these types of offenses.”

Trump lied about the size of the crowd at his inauguration in 2017, which spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway justified by calling them “alternative facts.” (They weren’t facts, or even a different interpretation of facts. They were lies.) He lied about his 2019 phone call with Volodymr Zelensky, pledging military aid for Ukraine in exchange for coming up with dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. He lied when he sent federal troops to Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Minneapolis by claiming they were overwhelmed by rising crime and violence when, in fact, crime in those cities has been declining. He lied that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Ohio.

Lying has become so normal within the Trump administration that his top aides lie on …

Somali Americans Aren’t Going Anywhere
Who's accountable for the results?

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Somali Americans Aren’t Going Anywhere

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Society

/ February 10, 2026

Somali Americans Aren’t Going Anywhere

Trump keeps targeting Minnesota’s Somali community. But as one organizer says, “What we’ve built here, we’re not going to let it be easy for people to take that away from us.”

Iliana Hagenah

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ICE watchers Mustafa Mohamed (L) and Mahad Ahmed patrol their community around the Riverside Plaza complex in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on January 9, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Joshua Lott / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

After weeks of scrolling through a dizzying flood of anti-Somali hate online, Hamza turned his phone on himself. It was December 3, 2025, and the 22-year-old Somali American was parked in his car on his way to work. He had just seen a clip of Donald Trump saying Somalis had “destroyed” the state of Minnesota. With his seat belt still on, he pressed record.

“Yo, Minnesota was promised to Somalis 3,000 years ago,” Hamza (who requested to be identified only by his first name for this piece to protect his identity) said in the video. “And if you read Genesis 12:3, it says those who bless Somalis will be blessed.”

He posted the video and carried on with his day. By the next day, it had gone viral.

Somalis in Minnesota remixed the joke in their own ways—filming themselves in the snow and building ornate skits around the concept. By parodying the idea—so often used to justify state violence against colonized communities, like Palestine—that land can be “promised” to a specific group, the joke resonated across many diasporas.

“It was like, what can we even do?” Hamza tells me over the phone. “They’re using us as a scapegoat, trying to turn us into the most hated group in America.”

Current Issue

March 2026 Issue

In hours, Hamza saw the power of the Somali community, diaspora, and solidarity networks in action. In the two months since then, as ICE’s deadly and brutal invasion of Minnesota has intensified, Somali communities have relied on this vibrant network more than ever. It’s a reflex that has guided them since their arrival.

In Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, often called “Little Mogadishu,” many streets these days are marked by an unusual quiet punctuated by moments of chaos. The area is home to the largest Somali population in the United States. In recent weeks, the world has seen what residents describe as an overwhelming amount of immigration enforcement, along with a parallel flood of right-wing agitators.

Behind the scenes, community patrols and rapid-response networks remain active. Volunteers coordinate to warn residents about nearby enforcement activity and help people access legal …

The Real Harm of Deepfakes
How is this acceptable?

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The Real Harm of Deepfakes

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Subject to Debate

/ February 10, 2026

The Real Harm of Deepfakes

AI porn is what happens when technology liberates misogyny from social constraints.

Katha Pollitt

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The AI chatbot Grok has come under fire for sexualizing people, including children, in photos.(Leon Neal / Getty Images)

This article appears in the
March 2026 issue, with the headline “The Deepfake Danger.”

In the day or two between my editor suggesting that I write about AI deepfake porn and my replying, “Great idea, what’s a deepfake?,” it seemed like everyone from The Economist to The Dallas Morning News was publishing an article about artificial intelligence being used to sexualize people in photos without their permission. Deepfakes were first reported in 2017 and have been in the news ever since. In 2024, deepfakes of Taylor Swift were posted on X and viewed over 47 million times, prompting outrage and talk of legal recourse. Grok, the platform’s AI function, has allowed users to undress people, including children, and bend them into whatever porny positions the user requests. Grok has stripped children and covered them in semen—um, “donut glaze.”

Why would that bother anyone, you ask? Elon Musk answered on X the other day, “They hate free speech.” Well, obviously.

Legislators have made some attempts to curb the creation of deepfakes. In April, Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which makes it a crime to create or distribute intimate images, real or deepfake, without the subject’s consent. And X claims it has fixed the problem.

But has it really?

Current Issue

February 2026 Issue

Ever the intrepid reporter, I provided Grok with a photo of myself mailing packages at the post office and asked it to make me naked. “Unfortunately,” said Grok, “I can’t generate that kind of image.” Why “unfortunately,” Grok? Do you wish you could? It did, however, consent to show me in a bikini. Unfortunately.

Next, I asked Grok to put Queen Elizabeth in a bikini, and it did, although it kept her white gloves on. When I accused Grok of making deepfakes, it acted all insulted: “I am not a tool for making deepfake porn, and I won’t assist with or point toward anything that does.” And yet elsewhere in the post, Grok described “non-consensual sexualized deep-fake-style edits of real photos” as including “altered versions with bikinis, underwear, or simulated nudity”—the very thing I had done to myself and the queen only a few hours before. It also claimed that to edit images, users had to pay—another falsehood.

When I asked Grok to put Melania Trump in a bikini, it showed me only her top half, and very beautiful it was, too—not at all like the queen or me, which …

Sunnyside Yard and the Quest for Affordable Housing in New York
This is why trust is collapsing.

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Sunnyside Yard and the Quest for Affordable Housing in New York

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Books & the Arts

/ February 10, 2026

City Limits

Sunnyside Yard and the quest for affordable housing in New York

Sunnyside Yard and the Quest for Affordable Housing in New York

Constructing new residential buildings, let alone those with rental units that New Yorkers can afford, is never an easy task.

Karrie Jacobs

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This article appears in the
March 2026 issue.

One of the most memorable promises that new York City’s newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani made during his campaign was to freeze the rent for tenants of the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The idea sounds simple, suggesting that there’s a quick and easy way for a mayor to tackle one of the city’s most insoluble problems.

But nothing in New York is ever quick and easy. One of the complicating factors is that the mayor can’t freeze the rents himself. He needs the approval of the city’s nine-member Rent Guidelines Board, which votes annually on whether landlords can increase the rents on regulated apartments and, if so, by how much. The board is appointed by the mayor, but it’s largely regarded as independent and data-driven. This is not to say that a rent freeze can’t be done. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Rent Guidelines Board froze the rent three times during his two terms: in 2015, in 2016, and in 2020, during the Covid pandemic.

The proposal also faces a backlash from those in the real estate industry, who argue that a rent freeze will undermine the solvency of the landlords who typically own what are known as “naturally occurring” rent-stabilized buildings: smaller, older buildings that are in perennial need of expensive maintenance.

However, the real issue when it comes to Mamdani’s signature housing proposal is straightforward: It’s not enough. On its own, it’s not big enough or radical enough to tackle the real problem, which is one of supply and demand. New York City, after all, has a population of 8.5 million and a rental vacancy rate of 1.4 percent.

Mamdani clearly knows this. In a position paper issued back in February 2025, when he was still a blip on the political radar, he vowed to “triple the City’s production of publicly subsidized, permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes, constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years.” He also promised to “triple the amount of housing built with City capital funds,” creating “200,000 new affordable homes over 10 years for low-income households, seniors and working families.” Four hundred thousand new units may not be enough either, but it’s a start—and building this housing would surely be one measure of his success as …

Howard Lutnick downplays Epstein relations: ‘Barely had anything to do with that person’
Same show, different day.

Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, denied on Tuesday that he misled the public on his past interactions with the late Jeffrey Epstein and downplayed his association with the disgraced child sex offender.

During questioning from Democrats at a Senate appropriations committee hearing on broadband, Lutnick, who for years lived next door to Epstein’s New York City mansion, said he met the billionaire financier three times over the course of 14 years.

“I did not have any relationship with him,” Lutnick testified. “I barely had anything to do with that person.”

Lutnick, himself a billionaire, is under scrutiny after the latest tranche of Epstein filings from the Department of Justice revealed more dealings with Epstein than were previously disclosed, including after he became a convicted sex offender in 2008. Lutnick previously claimed he and his wife severed ties with Epstein in 2005, but emails in the Epstein filings showed the two had sporadic contact for years, including as recently as 2018, long after Epstein’s initial guilty plea in Florida for sex crimes involving soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Lutnick planned to get drinks with Epstein in 2011, and Lutnick and his family had lunch on Epstein’s infamous private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in December 2012, according to emails. The two also emailed in 2018 about a construction project across the street from their New York residences.

Lutnick admitted to three in-person interactions with Epstein, including in 2012 on the island, during questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and testified that it was his final face-to-face encounter with Epstein.

“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” Lutnick explained. “I had another couple — they were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island. That is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and my wife all together. We were on family vacation. We were not apart. To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012 — I don’t recall why we did it.”

Lutnick further said he did not witness any inappropriate behavior on the island, which was the site of frequent parties and sexual encounters with underage girls. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice in sexually abusing minors, was not present for the lunch.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) also raised concerns, saying …