The Argument

By New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture

What's The Argument about?

Strongly-held opinions. Open-minded debates. A weekly ideas show, hosted by Jane Coaston.

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Is It Time to Break Up With...

12.14.2022

In her two years hosting “The Argument,” Jane Coaston has changed her mind about many things — from court packing to police reform (though not on whether we should contact alien life). But this year, she has changed her political ...

The Argument episodes:

12.14.2022 Is It Time to Break Up With Your Political Party? In her two years hosting “The Argument,” Jane Coaston has changed her mind about many things — from court packing to police reform (though not on whether we should contact alien life). But this year, she has changed her political ...
12.07.2022 Should America Intervene in Haiti? ‘Go to Hell’ and Other Views The United States has a long history of military intervention in other countries. Today, Haiti is in crisis. The country is facing gang violence, extreme hunger and intense political turmoil, sparked largely by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last ...
11.30.2022 The One Thing Democrats Can Control — and How They Should Do It Are the Democrats, finally, in array? They’ve just had the best midterms by a sitting president’s party in about 20 years, and passed significant legislation in 2022. And now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is stepping down after nearly two decades ...
11.23.2022 Best of: Is the News Media Setting Trump Up for Another Win? This week, we're bringing you an episode from our archives that's more relevant than ever. After former President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of his 2024 White House bid — and his reinstatement on Twitter — there’s the matter of the ...
11.16.2022 Has Donald Trump Lost His Grip on the Republican Party? Donald Trump is running for president — again. Yet the results of last week’s midterms and the red wave that wasn’t signaled that perhaps Trump’s hold on the Republican Party isn’t so strong after all. But now that he’s back ...
11.09.2022 Donald Trump Was the Midterm’s Biggest Loser As midterm election results continue to trickle in, one thing is clear: There’s no predicting American voters. After an unexpected showing for Democrats in tight races across the country, Jane Coaston speaks with the Times editorial board member Michelle Cottle ...
11.02.2022 The Price of $5 Donations: Is Small-Dollar Fund-Raising Doing More Harm Than Good? As midterm frenzy reaches its peak, your inbox might be full of imploring fund-raising emails with increasingly desperate headlines: “Just $3 can make all the difference.” “Can you chip in today?” “Ultimately, it’s up to you.” In theory, the small-dollar ...
10.26.2022 ‘Maybe Gen Z Is Just Kinder’: How America’s Youngest Voters are Shaping Politics Members of Gen Z (Americans under 26 years old) have come of age during the Trump presidency and a pandemic, in an era of protests over police violence, attacks on reproductive rights, rising economic inequality, and frequent school shootings. These ...
10.19.2022 Has Polling Broken Politics? Election Day is just three weeks away — and that means it’s peak polling season. For political hobbyists, polling is the new sports betting: gamifying elections to predict outcomes that haven’t always proven accurate. If the 2016 election revealed anything, ...
10.12.2022 Is America Headed for Another Civil War? America is divided and battling many different internal “wars” — over politics, culture, language, religion. Is it possible all this internal division could culminate in a civil war? Today’s episode of “The Argument” brings together Jamelle Bouie and Tim Alberta ...
10.05.2022 Are You ‘Third-Party-Curious’? Andrew Yang and David Jolly Would Like a Word. For years, hopeful reformers have touted the promise of third parties as an antidote to our political polarization. But when so many of the issues that voters care about most — like abortion, or climate change, or guns — are ...
09.28.2022 After Dobbs: What Is Feminist Sex? What is good sex? It’s a complicated question that feminists have wrestled with for decades. From destigmatizing premarital sex to embracing no-strings-attached hookup culture of more recent decades, feminism has often focused winning sexual freedoms for women. But some feminists ...
09.21.2022 After Dobbs: Feminism Beyond the Gender Binary As the feminist movement has regrouped in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one of the more surprising debates that has emerged has been one about semantics. Some feminists argue that using ...
09.14.2022 After Dobbs: Does ‘Big Tent’ Feminism Exist? Should It? For decades, the story of the American feminist movement seemed like a progression of hard-won gains: Title IX, Roe v. Wade, the Violence Against Women Act, #MeToo. But in a post-“lean in” and post-Roe America, the momentum seems to have ...
09.07.2022 What Should High Schoolers Read? Book banning has surged in America’s classrooms. The free speech advocacy organization PEN America has compiled a list of more than 1,500 reported instances of books being banned in public schools and libraries in less than a year. As students ...
08.31.2022 Best of: Does the Supreme Court Need More Justices? Today, we're re-airing one of our most timely debates from earlier this year: Reforming the Supreme Court. This episode originally aired before the Dobbs decision was released this summer. 2022 is a big year for supporters of Supreme Court reform. ...
08.24.2022 Best of: Cancel America's Student Loan Debt! But How? Today, with the Biden Administration weighing whether to extend the federal student loan payment freeze, we're re-airing one of our most timely debates from last year: Canceling student loan debt. The problem of student loan debt has reached crisis proportions. ...
08.17.2022 Trump, Dr. Oz and Our Political Cult of Celebrity Celebrities. They are ubiquitous in American culture and now, ever increasingly, in our politics. From Donald Trump to Dr. Oz, the memeification of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — the power of celebrity has gripped ...
08.10.2022 Your Blue State Won’t Save You: Why State Politics Is National Politics Last week, Kansans voted in overwhelming numbers to protect abortion rights in their State Constitution — the first instance since the overruling of Roe v. Wade in which voters have been able to weigh in on the issue directly. But ...
08.03.2022 What’s God Got to Do With It? The Rise of Christian Nationalism in American Politics. Christian nationalism has been empowered in American politics since the rise of Donald Trump. From “Stop the Steal” to the storming of the U.S. Capitol and now, the overturn of Roe v. Wade — Christian nationalist rhetoric has undergirded it ...
07.27.2022 Is America Stuck in a Gerontocracy? American politics has an age problem. At least, that’s what voters think. According to a new New York Times/Siena College poll, 33 percent of Democrats who want a different candidate for president in 2024 pointed to Joe Biden’s age as ...
07.20.2022 A View From the Right on Progressives’ ‘Moral Crusade’ For years, Republicans have been known as the party of moral outrage. Take for instance the recent book banning wars, or Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But Democrats aren’t immune to moral outrage. At least that’s what Noah Rothman, a ...
07.13.2022 First Person: Why One Progressive Public Defender Hoped for an N.R.A. Victory Today we're bringing you an episode of another Times Opinion show, First Person. Hours after this episode was released, the Supreme Court overturned New York State’s gun-permitting system — a decision with major implications for the regulation of guns outside ...
07.06.2022 Roe Is Dead. How Will Democrats and the G.O.P. Evolve Without It? For nearly 50 years, the issue of abortion has driven voters of all persuasions to the polls. But now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and the question of reproductive rights has been returned to the states, America’s political ...
06.29.2022 ‘This Really Changes Things’: Three Opinion Writers on Cassidy Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 Testimony For the past month, the House select committee on Jan. 6 has held a series of public hearings on President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Yesterday it surprised all of us with some of its most stunning ...
06.22.2022 Is Crime That Bad, or Are the Vibes Just Off? From New York to San Francisco, there’s a sense that crime is on the rise in American cities. And in some ways, that’s true: Violent crime has risen. Murders are up nearly 40 percent since 2019. But property crime has ...
06.15.2022 Who Can Write About What? A Conversation With Roxane Gay and Jay Caspian Kang When does creative license become cultural appropriation? Take “American Dirt” and “The Help,” two books by white authors that drew criticism for their portrayals of characters of color. Artists’ job is to imagine and create, but what do we do ...
06.08.2022 Best- and Worst-Case Outcomes of the Jan. 6 Public Hearings On Thursday, a bipartisan House select committee will begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The weeks ahead will be awash with news as the committee reveals what happened in the days and weeks before ...
06.01.2022 A Debate Over ‘Common Sense’ Gun Legislation The recent shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, indicate that gun violence, and how to address it, is a conversation we unfortunately need to keep having. But what policies would make a difference and stop some of these mass casualty ...
05.25.2022 Who Decides the Right Way to Protest? Two years ago, the murder of George Floyd sparked protests across America, gathering an estimated 15 million people into the streets during the summer of 2020. Since then, Americans of all political persuasions have taken to the streets to make ...
05.18.2022 The Economy Is Weird. Two Experts on Where It Goes From Here. If you’re confused about the current state of the economy and where it’s headed, you’re not alone. The United States is experiencing inflation at the highest rate since the 1980s, and most Americans generally feel as bad about the economy ...
05.11.2022 Trump, the Primaries and the ‘Populism of Resentment’ Shaping the G.O.P. May is chock-full of primary elections, and they are starting to provide a picture of how deep the G.O.P. is entrenched in Trumpism. J.D. Vance, the 37-year-old venture capitalist and author of the acclaimed memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” won the Republican ...
05.04.2022 ‘You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet’: What’s Next if Roe Goes It was a historic twist in an already historic case: A draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision overturning two landmark rulings — Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — leaked to Politico, which published the 98-page document ...
04.27.2022 How Did Queer Kids Become the Battlefield For the Right’s Midterm Strategy? Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, states barring transgender athletes from participating in sports and censoring school curriculums around queer and gender identity — a wave of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation is spreading across the country, sustained in large part by the political ...
04.20.2022 From Amazon to Starbucks, America Is Unionizing. Will Politics Catch Up? From Amazon and Starbucks to large media companies, unionization has become a siren call for workers — white- and blue-collar — fighting for rights and fair wages. But in 2022, after two years of a pandemic, how have our ideas ...
04.13.2022 The Dangerous Lesson Viktor Orban Taught Republicans President Biden has described the world as being in a “battle between democracy and autocracy.” And Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent victory in Hungary, especially, has marked it as a country in pursuit of what Orban calls an “illiberal democracy.” ...
04.06.2022 Why Russian Sanctions Won’t Stop Putin The Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its sixth week. Atrocities committed by Russian troops have reached new levels; in Bucha, recent photos show dead, unarmed civilians lining the streets. The harrowing scenes have prompted NATO leaders to consider taking ...
03.30.2022 Ukraine Made Big Tech Pick a Side — But Who Are the Losers? Technology defines nearly every facet of our modern world. It almost feels that to exist today in the Western world, one has no choice but to engage in it. As a result, Big Tech holds an incredible amount of power ...
03.23.2022 It’s Not About Putin: Two Conservatives Break Down the G.O.P. Split Over Ukraine How should America respond to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? This week, Jane Coaston sought out perspectives of a particular group on this complex question: conservatives. The group has long been divided on foreign policy and, more recently, over Putin ...
03.16.2022 Putin Is ‘High Off His Own Propaganda Supply’ This week, an antiwar protester interrupted a Moscow broadcast with a sign in Russian reading: “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here.” With the Russian government promoting propaganda on news channels and most recently ...
03.09.2022 The New Phase of the Pandemic Is Covid Exhaustion We’re headed into the third year of pandemic life, and one thing is clear: We’re all exhausted from Covid. Virus caseloads are waning across the country, masks are coming off, people are traveling more, and office workers have new return ...
03.03.2022 Opinion Roundtable: The 'Dirty Compromise' That Could Stop Putin It’s been a week since Russia invaded Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled Ukraine and Russia continues to target major Ukrainian cities with powerful weapons. And amidst the chaos of war – President Biden held his first State ...
03.02.2022 Alexander Vindman on Why It’s the ‘Beginning of the End’ for Putin In the days since Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine, its citizens have taken up arms to defend their borders and their right to self-determination. Where is the rest of the world in all of this? To help ...
02.23.2022 The Complex Truth About American Patriotism An American flag, football, the national anthem, “Make America Great Again” — all of these can be symbols of American patriotism, but to whom? In 2022, the notion of being a patriot is complex to say the least, and in ...
02.15.2022 ‘This is About the Future of Freedom’: What Does America Owe Ukrainians? The U.S. State Department recently ordered all nonemergency diplomats and embassy employees to leave Ukraine, signaling that its personnel believe a Russian invasion of Ukraine may be imminent. Such a move by Russia would be the most consequential invasion in ...
02.09.2022 Affirmative Action Isn’t Perfect. Should We Keep It Anyway? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases, one involving Harvard and the other the University of North Carolina, that could reshape college admissions. Both schools are being accused of race-based discrimination in their admission practices. In the coming ...
02.02.2022 Can Democrats Win When They Talk About Race? With the midterm elections just nine months away, the Democrats face some hefty existential questions that need answers: Who are they in this post- and possibly pre-Trump era of American politics? Are they simply the anti-Trump party? Or are they ...
01.26.2022 ‘Hell Hath No Fury Like a Voter Scorned’: What 14 Swing Voters Have to Say A year into the Biden administration, most of us can agree on one thing: The United States remains a deeply divided nation, with polarizing opinions on all sides. But what about the voices from the middle, the independents? Swing voters ...
01.19.2022 Does the Supreme Court Need More Justices? 2022 is a big year for supporters of Supreme Court reform. Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that gave women nationwide the right to have abortions, might be overturned, and the debate around changing the way we structure the bench ...
01.12.2022 Can the G.O.P. Recover From the 'Big Lie'? We Asked 2 Conservatives There’s a divide in the Republican Party between those who believe the ‘Big Lie’ — that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump — and those who don’t. But which side is ultimately the future of the party? That’s ...

Older episodes

The Argument

What's The Argument about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Argument episodes:

Is It Time to Break Up With Your Political Party?

Should America Intervene in Haiti? ‘Go to Hell’ and Other Views

The One Thing Democrats Can Control — and How They Should Do It

Best of: Is the News Media Setting Trump Up for Another Win?

Has Donald Trump Lost His Grip on the Republican Party?

Donald Trump Was the Midterm’s Biggest Loser

The Price of $5 Donations: Is Small-Dollar Fund-Raising Doing More Harm Than Good?

‘Maybe Gen Z Is Just Kinder’: How America’s Youngest Voters are Shaping Politics

Has Polling Broken Politics?

Is America Headed for Another Civil War?

Are You ‘Third-Party-Curious’? Andrew Yang and David Jolly Would Like a Word.

After Dobbs: What Is Feminist Sex?

After Dobbs: Feminism Beyond the Gender Binary

After Dobbs: Does ‘Big Tent’ Feminism Exist? Should It?

What Should High Schoolers Read?

Best of: Does the Supreme Court Need More Justices?

Best of: Cancel America's Student Loan Debt! But How?

Trump, Dr. Oz and Our Political Cult of Celebrity

Your Blue State Won’t Save You: Why State Politics Is National Politics

What’s God Got to Do With It? The Rise of Christian Nationalism in American Politics.

Is America Stuck in a Gerontocracy?

A View From the Right on Progressives’ ‘Moral Crusade’

First Person: Why One Progressive Public Defender Hoped for an N.R.A. Victory

Roe Is Dead. How Will Democrats and the G.O.P. Evolve Without It?

‘This Really Changes Things’: Three Opinion Writers on Cassidy Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 Testimony

Is Crime That Bad, or Are the Vibes Just Off?

Who Can Write About What? A Conversation With Roxane Gay and Jay Caspian Kang

Best- and Worst-Case Outcomes of the Jan. 6 Public Hearings

A Debate Over ‘Common Sense’ Gun Legislation

Who Decides the Right Way to Protest?

The Economy Is Weird. Two Experts on Where It Goes From Here.

Trump, the Primaries and the ‘Populism of Resentment’ Shaping the G.O.P.

‘You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet’: What’s Next if Roe Goes

How Did Queer Kids Become the Battlefield For the Right’s Midterm Strategy?

From Amazon to Starbucks, America Is Unionizing. Will Politics Catch Up?

The Dangerous Lesson Viktor Orban Taught Republicans

Why Russian Sanctions Won’t Stop Putin

Ukraine Made Big Tech Pick a Side — But Who Are the Losers?

It’s Not About Putin: Two Conservatives Break Down the G.O.P. Split Over Ukraine

Putin Is ‘High Off His Own Propaganda Supply’

The New Phase of the Pandemic Is Covid Exhaustion

Opinion Roundtable: The 'Dirty Compromise' That Could Stop Putin

Alexander Vindman on Why It’s the ‘Beginning of the End’ for Putin

The Complex Truth About American Patriotism

‘This is About the Future of Freedom’: What Does America Owe Ukrainians?

Affirmative Action Isn’t Perfect. Should We Keep It Anyway?

Can Democrats Win When They Talk About Race?

‘Hell Hath No Fury Like a Voter Scorned’: What 14 Swing Voters Have to Say

Does the Supreme Court Need More Justices?

Can the G.O.P. Recover From the 'Big Lie'? We Asked 2 Conservatives

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