The first Republican presidential primary debate highlighted “deep divisions within the Republican Party about foreign policy,” says The Nation’s national affairs correspondent John Nichols. He says the nationalist “America First” ideology championed by former President Donald Trump is now being pushed even further by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, who are critical of U.S.

On the same day a heat wave forced Milwaukee, Wisconsin, public schools to close for the day, moderators at the first Republican presidential debate in the city asked candidates if they believed climate change was caused by human activity. Their answers ranged from avoidance to outright denial. “I think this sums up the Republican Party at this point,” says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent at The Nation.

We feature highlights on climate change, foreign policy and Trump from the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 race and speak with John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, longtime leader of the private Russian mercenary Wagner Group, has reportedly died in a plane crash two months after his group launched a short-lived armed mutiny against Vladimir Putin. Several other key figures with the Wagner Group were also reportedly killed in the crash. The crash was “not unexpected,” says Kimberly Marten, Barnard College professor of political science, who has been researching and writing about the Wagner Group for years.

Ecuadorian voters have overwhelmingly supported a ban on future oil extraction in a biodiverse section of the Amazon’s Yasuní National Park — a historic referendum result that will protect Indigenous Yasuní land from development.

As a two-day BRICS summit gets underway in South Africa, we speak with author and analyst Vijay Prashad about whether the bloc — which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — can meaningfully challenge U.S. and Western domination in world affairs by building an alternative forum for countries of the Global South.

We look at the 70th anniversary of the August 19, 1953, U.S.- and U.K-backed coup in Iran, which took place two years after Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry that had been controlled by the company now known as British Petroleum. “If nationalization in Iran of oil was successful, this would set a terrible example to other countries where U.S.

We speak to the author of a new Human Rights Watch report that details how border guards in Saudi Arabia have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers — many of whom are fleeing human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Tigray region — trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi border since March 2022. The report documents Saudi border guards shooting women and children, firing explosive weapons at migrants and “executing” people at close range.