![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/09/multimedia/09stephens-kvqp/09stephens-kvqp-thumbWide.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
The Abyss Stares Back at Joe Biden
The president is starting to act like the predecessor he fought against.
By Bret Stephens
Since joining The Times in 2017, I have written about everything from China’s long-term decline to the enduring relevance of Edmund Burke to my grandmother’s advice about sex to my misgivings about The Times’s 1619 Project. I’m often described as a conservative, though I’ve been a harsh critic of the direction of the Republican Party. I believe in free enterprise, free trade, free speech, and the need to safeguard the institutions of democracy at home and abroad. I also think it’s healthy to be able to change your mind and to say so publicly — as I have about Trump voters and climate change.
My hometown is Mexico City. I studied political philosophy at the University of Chicago and comparative politics at the London School of Economics. I worked for The Wall Street Journal in Brussels, where I mainly covered European topics, and was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, where I covered Middle Eastern ones. For many years I was The Journal’s foreign-affairs columnist, for which I won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. I’m the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.” In 2022, the government of Russia barred me for life.
Every word I publish in The Times is rigorously fact-checked and edited. I am a national judge of the Livingston Awards but recuse myself whenever work is submitted by colleagues or personal acquaintances. The Times alone pays for my reporting trips. I don’t blurb books unless they are excerpts from columns or commissioned reviews. I sit on a few academic and nonprofit advisory boards, from which I derive no income or other benefit. Work I perform outside The Times is approved by The Times. I’m not on Twitter — sorry, “X” — or any other form of social media. Learn more about The Times’s standards.
Anonymous tips: nytimes.com/tips
The president is starting to act like the predecessor he fought against.
By Bret Stephens
This time with actual presidents.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
The leaders who brought Israel into crisis won’t be able to bring it out of it.
By Bret Stephens
Americans are owed better from the Democratic Party.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Biden’s problems are far more serious than a single night’s poor performance.
By Bret Stephens
None of the options ensure victory against Trump — and some of them could badly split the party.
By Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Goldberg, Patrick Healy and Bret Stephens
A debate before the debate.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
We take a look at J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Elise Stefanik and more possible Republican running mates.
By Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens
An incident at Columbia suggests that schools beset with antisemitism are beyond salvation.
By Bret Stephens
Easy money destroyed the basis for productive, competitive markets.
By Bret Stephens
What does the president need to do to win, at home and abroad?
By Bret Stephens and Patrick Healy
Israel, Ukraine and American democracy are on the line.
By Bret Stephens
Here’s looking at you, Hunter.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
People, and nations, succeed or fail to the extent that they refuse to hand over responsibility for their fates to others.
By Bret Stephens
Is it still true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Israel and Ukraine don’t have the luxury of fighting fecklessly.
By Bret Stephens
Spain is yet another government that suppresses independence-seekers at home while applauding those abroad.
By Bret Stephens
Iran’s rulers have forgotten that revolutions have a history of consuming their own.
By Bret Stephens
Justice Alito and Senator Menendez have one thing in common.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Rather than the utopia envisioned by protesters, it would be an Islamist state that persecuted Jews and denied anyone real freedom.
By Bret Stephens
The turmoil sweeping the world shows no sign of abeyance.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
The consequences of Biden’s decision to withhold munitions from Israel could be the opposite of what he intends.
By Bret Stephens
You are my daily reminder of what my Zionism is for, about and against.
By Bret Stephens
America is being tested in so many ways right now.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
A powerful new documentary gives voice to the rape victims of Oct 7.
By Bret Stephens
And a few things we’d like to forget.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
There’s no use in hiding presidential slip-ups.
By Bret Stephens
Behavior that would be scandalous if aimed at other minorities is treated as understandable or even commendable when directed at Jews.
By Bret Stephens
Who let the grown-ups out?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
A new survey shows a significant jump in antisemitic incidents.
By Bret Stephens
Israel has the right to retaliate against Iran’s missile barrage. It should bide its time.
By Bret Stephens
Being pro-Israel doesn’t entail slavish support for any leader of the country, particularly its most failed one.
By Bret Stephens
Avert your eyes.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
What does it say about a cause that won’t weed out its worst members or stamp out its worst ideas?
By Bret Stephens
April Fools’ Day is coming to a political system near you.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
He was a model of how politics was once done differently.
By Bret Stephens
There are two plausible theories for who’s behind the terrorist attack in Russia. Both are terrifying.
By Bret Stephens
The many ways 2024 is turning into honorable versus dishonorable.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar speech comparing the Gaza war to the Holocaust was profoundly wrong.
By Bret Stephens
There’s only one good way the war in Gaza ends.
By Bret Stephens
And not just Jan. 6.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Israelis aren’t likely to appreciate being told who should lead their government.
By Bret Stephens and Patrick Healy
As long as Hamas maintains military power, there is no hope for peace.
By Bret Stephens
Did Biden change anyone’s mind? And can he maintain the momentum?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
How quickly the far left pivots from “believe women” to “believe Hamas” when the identity of the victim changes.
By Bret Stephens
And Mitch McConnell is leaving the scene.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
The former South Carolina governor has good reasons to fight on.
By Bret Stephens
What can Biden do about it?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
The president cannot allow Russia’s rulers to think that his threats are hollow.
By Bret Stephens
The art of the deal has a downside.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
In Russia, it isn’t necessary to kill all the dissidents and journalists, just the bravest ones.
By Bret Stephens
A deeply unserious Republican Party faces a deadly serious global moment.
By Bret Stephens
Advice for the president after a tough week.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Trying to shield the president from public exposure will reinforce the impression that there’s something to hide.
By Bret Stephens
A popular academic theory merits closer scrutiny.
By Bret Stephens
Didn’t you hear that the fix is in?
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Only a direct confrontation with Iran will send the message.
By Bret Stephens
UNRWA’s problem goes much deeper than charges that it is infested with terrorists.
By Bret Stephens
Hounding Trump is an important task.
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Hamas could have devoted its money and time to building a future for its people, not a fortress for itself.
By Bret Stephens