July was a monumental news month, and August appears set to sustain the trend. We’re on it. 

In U.S. politics, the parade of “isms” – the wrongheaded application of broad, pejorative labels as a competitive tactic – may be marching now at double time. Are we entering a period of redoubled racism and sexism? Politics writer Cameron Joseph explores that question with care. 

And in what must have been an Olympian feat of diplomacy, some two dozen political prisoners from seven countries were part of a history-making swap with Russia. Diplomacy writer Howard LaFranchi is our news responder there, along with Fred Weir in Moscow.