Scott Widmeyer

Ten years ago this week, on Nov. 8, we gathered with friends and neighbors in Glenford to watch the presidential election returns. We were almost certain we’d witness the election of America’s first woman president, Hillary Clinton. Instead, Donald Trump won the presidency. Over the past decade, he has reshaped the Republican Party and forced […]

Donald Trump may be Democrats’ most immediate political challenge. Their most consequential long-term struggle may be within their own party. From New York City to Michigan, Colorado to Maine, Democrats are engaged in a fierce struggle over who will define the party’s future. Is it the progressive left, energized by democratic socialists and grassroots organizers? […]

We are now 452 days into President Trump’s second term. As many Americans observed Easter or Passover this month, the president again chose vulgarity, menace, and spectacle. In remarks about the Iran war, he went so far as to warn that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He also […]

In recent weeks, it has become harder to ignore what is happening to American journalism. Reporters have been arrested while doing their jobs. The home of a Washington Post journalist was searched. Public-records requests—the backbone of public accountability— are increasingly delayed, denied, or allowed to wither through bureaucratic indifference. At the same time, major newsrooms […]

Typically, when one year ends and another begins, we look back—cataloging disappointments, tallying progress and resolving to do better next time. There’s nothing wrong with that ritual. But this year, I want to try a different tack. Rather than rehash the negatives of 2025, I want to focus on something that feels increasingly scarce in […]

Where is America headed? It’s a question we all must confront amid the political violence shaking the very core of our country. Wednesday’s assasination of the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk lands like a shockwave across an already fragile America. Each headline of another shooting—whether it claims a public leader, schoolchildren, or someone walking down the […]

While the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking drama continues to unfold on the national stage, local communities in the Catskills—from Saugerties to Woodstock to Earlton—are contending with their own troubling cases of sexual exploitation. Saugerties is facing two significant matters. In one case, a town police officer has been charged with multiple felony counts alleging he […]