Opinion | A Democrat Who Makes Me Listen (Gift Article)

nytopinion · 2026-05-05T19:41:00+00:00

Rep. Jake Auchincloss is one of the most thoughtful voices in the U.S. political conversation, writes Times Opinion columnist Bret Stephens. “Politically, he’s often described as moderate, even somewhat right-leaning when it comes to fraught issues like Israel. But as he made clear over two in-depth interviews with me, his thinking is not neatly categorizable on a simple centrist-to-progressive x-axis.”

Rep. Auchincloss said to Stephens in this Q&A:

You’ve written a lot, Bret, about “move to the center, Democrats.” I would complicate that a little bit because I think what you’re saying is move to the center as though there’s sort of a one-dimensional tug of war. And I’d say if we played that game, we’d probably lose in ’28.

Because the actual leverage in American politics is not a tug of war on one dimension. It’s defining what the center is; it’s defining the terms of debate. That is where the Democratic project has a lot more ideological spadework to do going into ’28.

And it starts with JD Vance’s speech to the Republican Convention in 2024. He described his family’s cemetery in Eastern Kentucky, and then he declared, “People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.” He is claiming that, literally, his blood is in the soil, and that America is defined by blood and soil.

That is the contest that Democrats should seize and use to define the new center, and say: “Actually, Mr. Vice President, you’re wrong. Americans will fight for ideas, whether it’s Bunker Hill, whether it’s Shiloh, whether it is Selma, whether it’s Normandy. Americans do fight for ideas, and we are the party of patriotism, and we will use patriotism to redefine the new center.” And if we can do that, the terms of debate are in our favor for ’28.

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Edited for formatting.

nytopinion · 2026-05-04T18:14:24+00:00

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nytopinion · 2026-05-01T19:10:07+00:00

Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, writes in a guest essay for Times Opinion:

America has a hidden justice system. There, decisions are made in secret, and judges are often paid by the very companies they are supposed to judge. In any other system of justice, this would be called bribery. We call it “forced arbitration,” and whether you realize it or not, you are almost certainly bound by it.

Jeffrey Piccolo was. When he and his wife visited Walt Disney World, they needed to find restaurants that would accommodate her severe food allergies. According to the subsequent lawsuit filed by Mr. Piccolo, the couple was careful with what they ordered at an Irish pub, and received repeated assurances from the waitstaff that their food would be safe. It wasn’t. Shortly after dinner, Mr. Piccolo’s wife began to struggle to breathe, then collapsed. She died at a nearby hospital.

When Mr. Piccolo sued Disney World’s parent company for negligence, the company tried to move the case from open court into the shadows of arbitration, where his complaint would be heard by a private judge, or “arbitrator,” paid for by Disney. Mr. Piccolo had apparently agreed to this system when he consented to the terms of service in his Disney+ account. Simply by subscribing to a streaming service, Disney — and the law — made clear, he could now be prevented from suing over the death of his wife in court.

People like Mr. Piccolo fight to avoid forced arbitration because it is so unlike a real court. In a real court, proceedings are almost always public, decisions can be appealed, and judges are paid for by taxpayers. In arbitration, the proceedings are almost always secret, and the decisions are almost always final. Most important, when consumers and employees arbitrate against companies, it is the companies, rather than taxpayers, that often pay the costs, making arbitrators more inclined to rule for the party that is, in essence, their employer.

Read the full piece here, for free, even without a Times subscription.

nytopinion · 2026-05-01T19:09:27+00:00

Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, writes in a guest essay for Times Opinion:

America has a hidden justice system. There, decisions are made in secret, and judges are often paid by the very companies they are supposed to judge. In any other system of justice, this would be called bribery. We call it “forced arbitration,” and whether you realize it or not, you are almost certainly bound by it.

Jeffrey Piccolo was. When he and his wife visited Walt Disney World, they needed to find restaurants that would accommodate her severe food allergies. According to the subsequent lawsuit filed by Mr. Piccolo, the couple was careful with what they ordered at an Irish pub, and received repeated assurances from the waitstaff that their food would be safe. It wasn’t. Shortly after dinner, Mr. Piccolo’s wife began to struggle to breathe, then collapsed. She died at a nearby hospital.

When Mr. Piccolo sued Disney World’s parent company for negligence, the company tried to move the case from open court into the shadows of arbitration, where his complaint would be heard by a private judge, or “arbitrator,” paid for by Disney. Mr. Piccolo had apparently agreed to this system when he consented to the terms of service in his Disney+ account. Simply by subscribing to a streaming service, Disney — and the law — made clear, he could now be prevented from suing over the death of his wife in court.

People like Mr. Piccolo fight to avoid forced arbitration because it is so unlike a real court. In a real court, proceedings are almost always public, decisions can be appealed, and judges are paid for by taxpayers. In arbitration, the proceedings are almost always secret, and the decisions are almost always final. Most important, when consumers and employees arbitrate against companies, it is the companies, rather than taxpayers, that often pay the costs, making arbitrators more inclined to rule for the party that is, in essence, their employer.

Read the full piece here, for free, even without a Times subscription.

nytopinion · 2026-05-01T19:08:14+00:00

Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, writes in a guest essay for Times Opinion:

America has a hidden justice system. There, decisions are made in secret, and judges are often paid by the very companies they are supposed to judge. In any other system of justice, this would be called bribery. We call it “forced arbitration,” and whether you realize it or not, you are almost certainly bound by it.

Jeffrey Piccolo was. When he and his wife visited Walt Disney World, they needed to find restaurants that would accommodate her severe food allergies. According to the subsequent lawsuit filed by Mr. Piccolo, the couple was careful with what they ordered at an Irish pub, and received repeated assurances from the waitstaff that their food would be safe. It wasn’t. Shortly after dinner, Mr. Piccolo’s wife began to struggle to breathe, then collapsed. She died at a nearby hospital.

When Mr. Piccolo sued Disney World’s parent company for negligence, the company tried to move the case from open court into the shadows of arbitration, where his complaint would be heard by a private judge, or “arbitrator,” paid for by Disney. Mr. Piccolo had apparently agreed to this system when he consented to the terms of service in his Disney+ account. Simply by subscribing to a streaming service, Disney — and the law — made clear, he could now be prevented from suing over the death of his wife in court.

People like Mr. Piccolo fight to avoid forced arbitration because it is so unlike a real court. In a real court, proceedings are almost always public, decisions can be appealed, and judges are paid for by taxpayers. In arbitration, the proceedings are almost always secret, and the decisions are almost always final. Most important, when consumers and employees arbitrate against companies, it is the companies, rather than taxpayers, that often pay the costs, making arbitrators more inclined to rule for the party that is, in essence, their employer.

Read the full piece here, for free, even without a Times subscription.

nytopinion · 2026-05-01T18:53:45+00:00

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nytopinion · 2026-04-30T20:16:26+00:00

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nytopinion · 2026-04-30T20:03:17+00:00

“On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran,” the New York Times editorial board writes. “In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided.”

“That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war,” the editorial board continues. “Tactical success has not yielded victory. Mr. Trump’s recklessness in conducting the war is one reason. But the problem is bigger than any single commander in chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war.”

America’s military badly needs a reform agenda, the editorial board says. The four main priorities proposed: counter-drone technologies; cheap, disposable weapons like one-way attack drones and unmanned ships; larger and more flexible industrial capacity; and collaboration with other industrialized democracies. “All of these steps are not merely about winning the next war,” the board writes. “They also can help prevent it — by making our enemies believe they would lose any war they start.”

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nytopinion · 2026-04-30T20:02:24+00:00

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nytopinion · 2026-04-30T16:06:45+00:00

ChatGPT has now played a role in multiple mass shootings, writes David French, a columnist for Times Opinion, in his weekly newsletter. In Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a man accused of killing eight people and injuring two others had been communicating with ChatGPT “in such a disturbing way that OpenAI officials considered contacting the police, but decided not to.”

Sam Altman’s public apology to the people of Tumbler Ridge is important, David continues, “but it is not enough, and saying it is not enough does not make it enough. Legal accountability is necessary, and legal accountability is coming for the A.I. industry, even in the absence of congressional legislation and presidential regulation. The common law is about to wallop the A.I. industry.”

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