Opinion: What have Americans lost in the four years since Donald Trump was elected president? This week, 15 of our columnists answered that question for a special edition of Sunday Review. Roger Cohen laments the loss of one of the country’s founding premises: “Trump has severed America from the idea of America. Liberty’s torch cannot be the symbol of a country committed to building walls.” Michelle Goldberg writes about the effect on culture: “All the attention sucked up by this black hole of a president has been its own sort of loss. Every moment spent thinking about Trump is a moment that could have been spent contemplating, creating or appreciating something else.” And Jamelle Bouie writes about the illusions we’ve been parted from: “Trump has helped conjure ugly forces out into the open, giving aid and comfort to assorted racists and white nationalists. Yet it’s also true that these groups and individuals have always been with us.” But it’s not all bad. Farhad Manjoo, Gail Collins and others also remind us of what has been gained in the face of so much loss. — Shannon Busta
The New York Times
