
JD Vance’s Very Bad Week
What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.
By Michelle Cottle, David French, Michelle Goldberg, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger
I write about politics and culture from a left-leaning, feminist point of view, though I try to seek out stories that challenge my preconceptions. I’m particularly interested in the rise of authoritarianism in both America and around the world, the state of the progressive movement and the evolution of gender relations. You can sign up to receive email alerts when my column publishes.
Before I joined The Times, I was a columnist at Slate, and my work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic and many other publications.
My first book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” was about religious authoritarianism in American politics, a subject I’ve been reporting on ever since. It was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. After that, I traveled to various countries — including India, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Poland — to write “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World,” a book about global battles over gender and reproductive rights, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. Next, in a detour from politics, I wrote “The Goddess Pose,” a book about wellness culture and the long Western fascination with Eastern spirituality as refracted through the story of the peripatetic Russian yoga evangelist Indra Devi.
In 2018, I was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for reporting on issues of workplace sexual harassment. That year and again in 2024, I won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for opinion/criticism. In 2020, I won the Hillman Prize for opinion and analysis.
I grew up near Buffalo, earned my undergraduate degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo and then received a master of journalism degree at the University of California, Berkeley. I am an on-air contributor at MS NOW and live with my family in Brooklyn.
As an opinion columnist, I don’t claim to be objective: My politics inform most of what I write. But I do strive, always, to be accurate and fair. In addition to getting my facts right — or running a correction if I don’t — that means never quoting people out of context or omitting important information that might cut against an argument that I’m making. I don’t accept speaking engagements or payments of any kind from political organizations, and I make sure to disclose potential conflicts of interest. Like all Times journalists, I’m committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook.
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What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.
By Michelle Cottle, David French, Michelle Goldberg, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger

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