The New Republic’s Favorite Stories of 2025 | The New Republic
Year in Review

The New Republic’s Favorite Stories of 2025

Here are the TNR stories our editors and readers alike loved this year.

Illustration by Cold War Steve

Real Men Steal Countries: Inside Trump’s Absurd Greenland Obsession

By Christopher Hooks

An underdressed reporter journeys across icy, barren Greenland—and into Trump’s bored, nineteenth-century brain.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Amy Coney Barrett Isn’t What the Conservative Legal Movement Expected

By Matt Ford

The Supreme Court’s second-newest justice is proving herself to be a non-hack—to the increasing consternation of MAGA.

Illustration by Matt Mahurin

Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State

By Greg Sargent

He is descended from Russian Jews—you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilable. Today, his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and unassimilable. How far will Miller’s sadistic designs go?

George Etheredge/The New York Times/Redux

Firewood Banks Aren’t Inspiring. They’re a Sign of Collapse.

By Sean Carlton

Rural communities are banding together to chop firewood so that people in need can heat their homes. This shouldn’t be necessary.


Illustration by Gustavo Magalhães

Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed

By Molly Osberg

Financiers have bamboozled the public for years about their expertise in “fixing” companies. Yet they often—and sometimes deliberately—run them into the ground.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Trump’s Military Parade Was a Pathetic Event for a Pathetic President

By Malcolm Ferguson

The turnout wasn’t anything like what he wanted—and not everyone who showed up was even a fan of his.

Illustration by Alex Nabaum

The Island Where People Go to Cheat Death

By Shayla Love

In a pop-up city off the coast of Honduras, longevity startups are trying to fast-track anti-aging drugs. Is this the future of medical research?

CHRISTINE SPENGLER/SYGMA/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Decades Later, the Truth Behind a Grisly Mass Murder in El Salvador

By George Black

The 1980 execution of four American churchwomen was one of the most shocking human rights crimes of the twentieth century. No one has ever really gotten to the bottom of it—until now.


Illustration by David Litman

What’s the Matter with Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi?

By Jacob Bacharach

Tech billionaires and iconoclast journalists suddenly see eye to eye.

Illustration by Nicolás Ortega

How the Billionaires Took Over

By Timothy Noah

Yes, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. But the far bigger menace is the monstrous growth in wealth concentration over five decades that made a Trump presidency possible—and maybe inevitable. Here’s how we let it happen.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Right​’s Baseless​ Project to ​Link Trans People​ With Extremism

By Melissa Gira Grant

A campaign for the FBI to adopt a new designation of “transgender ideology–inspired violence and extremism” is less about law enforcement than politics.

Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press

Bari Weiss’s Big Secret Is That She’s Boring

By Alex Shephard

The “contrarian” journalist’s new vision for CBS News appears to just mean reinventing Crossfire.

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

Trump’s Immigration Nightmare: It Is Happening Here

By Radley Balko

With astonishing speed, the administration has toppled the most cherished pillars of a free society. And the experts agree: It’s all going to get much, much worse.

Nathaniel Wilder for The New Republic

Inside the Hunger Crisis in America’s Last Frontier

By Grace Segers

Alaska’s unique challenges make it difficult to obtain healthy food and adequate medical care. Are the Trump administration and Congress making it worse?

Greg Kahn for The New Republic

How I Became a Populist

By Alvaro M. Bedoya

My time at the Federal Trade Commission—before Donald Trump fired me—totally changed the way I see our political divide.