What Does It Mean to Resist Trump in 2025?

In today’s newsletter, for this week’s 100th Anniversary Issue, a look back at the power of James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind.” But, first, Eric Lach reports on the prosecutor who took a stand against Trump’s Department of Justice. Plus:

You wouldn’t think it possible that a Federalist Society member and former clerk for the archconservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would show more grit in the face of Trumpism than the entire leadership of the national Democratic Party, but here we are. Three weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term in office, Danielle Sassoon, a thirty-eight-year-old lawyer whom Trump had named acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has provided the first dramatic check against the Trump Administration’s rampage through the federal government. On Wednesday, she refused her bosses’ orders to drop the criminal-corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. She offered her resignation, and put her career on the line, rather than do the dirty work Washington directed her to do. Read the story »

P.S. “What if we just cuddle, and by cuddle I mean not actually touching …” John Kenney shares some lovely Valentine’s Day poems for married people. (For other married people—you’re probably doing great.) 😍