Ten Notable Articles from 2025

1. Year of the Plague: Jake Gardner and the Ghosts of 2020

This article tops my list as an exceptionally well-crafted retrospective on a tragic suicide that encapsulates the “year of the plague,” when the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic spread worldwide, mass protests over the murder of George Floyd filled American streets, and Kyle Rittenhouse ignited yet another incendiary national debate about the Second Amendment. In May of 2020, outside a bar in Nebraska, “Jake Gardner killed James Scurlock on a street in Omaha and, shortly thereafter, killed himself,” as Matt Chabin writes in this Spotlight essay.

Chabin navigates the complexities of competing narratives around this seismic event with the meticulous attention to detail of a virtuoso investigative journalist and the literary mastery of an essayist of exceptional craft. He highlights the excesses of “woke mobs” and the weaponization of social justice ideology without losing sight of the genuine and deeply felt concerns about social injustice that were widespread at the time. The detached yet intimate attention to nuance and detail, coupled with an empathy that emerges from his personal history with Jake Gardner, gives this illuminating piece the air of a profound retrospective that reaches into the realm of the timeless. It transcends the cacophony of commentary that prevailed as events unfolded in real time.

2. Public Servant in Name Only: Rob Bresnahan Hardly Alone

This pointed editorial by Merion West editor-in-chief Erich J. Prince illuminates one of the most enduring concerns animating citizen cynicism about the integrity of politicians. Prince traces the surprising speed with which a newly elected Congressman from northeastern Pennsylvania—Rob Bresnahan—succumbed to the culture of graft that many see as endemic to Washington, D.C. Entering Congress in 2025 with a net worth of approximately $48m, Congressman Bresnahan became the second most active stock trader in Congress a year after he argued for the necessity of banning members of Congress from trading stocks.