The Nation

With the Trump Stench Gone, the Knicks Make History

Dave Zirin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The bad vibes lifted, and basketball fans witnessed a miracle at Madison Square Garden. Before Wednesday night’s NBA Finals game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, one fan burned sage outside of New York City’s Madison Square Garden. He was performing this ancient rite to remove the sulfuric stench and potentially season-wrecking bad vibes caused by President Donald Trump’s deeply unwanted and very sleepy presence at Monday night’s Game 3 of the best-of-seven series. For the first half of Game 4, it looked like the cleansing ritual was in vain. The odious Trump odor was still in the air, as the Knicks went down by 29 points in the third quarter. The stank was real, less because of the repugnant memory of him smirking and saluting as the boos rained down upon him during the national anthem, but more so because the New York City police insisted upon keeping up the Trump security fence that has turned the area around Madison Square Garden into a dystopian police state. Even without the president there, it took hours to enter the arena, bags were banned, and a TSA style rub-down was required before entry. Folks may understandably not weep for the finance and celebrity class who could afford the tickets, but the Knicks’ grotesquerie of an owner, James Dolan, also canceled the watch parties outside MSG that had electrified the city. The landscape outside the arena would be barren: from a showcase of unbridled humanity to a postapocalyptic wasteland. Dolan’s decision was only announced a few hours before the game and led to a public spat between Dolan and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Again, the focus before tip-off was on so many things that had nothing to do with the game itself. Maybe the sage was slow acting, or perhaps this New York team is just that special, because the political hangover finally subsided and the aroma turned sweet as the Knicks engineered the greatest comeback in the history of the NBA Finals, and perhaps, given the stakes, the greatest comeback in the history of professional sports. The young and callow Spurs held an 81–52 lead before the game ended improbably with a Knicks 107–106 victory. That means the Knicks ended the game on a 55–25 run. The Knicks won thanks to a sequence that will never be forgotten: Forward OG Anunoby first blocked what could have been a game-clinching layup by Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox with 14 seconds to go and then, sprinting for 30 feet and jumping so high his hand was 13 feet in the air, he tipped in the winning shot with one second to play. There will be statues of that tip-in, and they’re probably already being sculpted. Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson was also relentless, even when it looked like they were out of the game, and scored 36 points. The Knicks looked like they were cooked. But they are never really out of any contest because they have repeatedly shown that they’d sooner pass out on the court than concede a loss. Here is your mind-blowing statistic about this team: They are 5–3 over the last two post-seasons in games when they have been down by 20 points. The rest of the league? 4–71. There will be endless debates about whether the Knicks won the game or the Spurs just choked it away. The Spurs scored 76 points in the first half and only 30 in the second—the second-highest point differential by a team per half in NBA history. The Spurs also, again incredibly, had more turnovers than baskets in the third and fourth quarters. But wherever you fall—it’s clearly a combination of both—the Knicks never gave up and that needs to be the lead story before anyone criticizes the Spurs. As the fans are saying on the street and across social media, “My Mayor is Muslim, My Bagel Is Jewish; Trump Tried to Kill The Vibe. Knicks in Five.” For that to happen, the Knicks have to go to San Antonio on Saturday, close it out, and win this city’s first title in 53 years. If they lose this weekend, it’s back to New York for Game 6. Either way, if the Knicks can stick the landing and win the title, Wednesday night’s game will be cemented in sports lore for as long as people play and watch professional sports. New York is now alight in royal blue and orange. This is “the city game,” and the city is letting the world, after 53 years, know it.

Today a Welfare Trillionaire Is Born

Corbin Trent — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

SpaceX goes public today. Bubbles and public assets are creating the first trillionaire in human history. SpaceX goes public today at around $1.7 trillion. Elon Musk owns enough SpaceX stock that, on top of everything else he holds, Musk becomes the first person in human history to cross the trillion-dollar line. The coverage will be all hype. Unprecedented. A genius. Where’s he going next? What does the future hold? It wasn’t like Elon Musk invented some amazing capacity. He didn’t do something transformational for the world. He didn’t harness electricity. He didn’t invent the transistor. He didn’t invent rocket flight. He didn’t invent satellite technology. He didn’t even make any of it that much better. What he did was learn how to game the system. He took what America built through generations of investment and generations of hard work and turned it into a profit center for himself. He took American loans, American intellectual property, American space, American airwaves, and turned them into a wealth engine for one man. Tesla exists because of a half-billion-dollar loan from the American government, handed over in 2010 when the banks wouldn’t touch him. The deal gave the government the right to buy 3 million shares of Tesla stock at a locked-in cheap price. That was our cut if the company took off. The company took off, and Musk rushed to pay the loan back nine years early, because, under the deal, early repayment canceled the government’s shares. They were worth about $270 million the week he wired the money, and Tesla’s stock has multiplied many times over since. The press called the repayment a triumph. We got our money back with a little interest, and he kept the stock the American people were due. SpaceX is the same story just bigger. In a purely capitalist system, SpaceX wouldn’t exist. It would’ve died in 2008. The company was broke; three rockets had failed, and Musk was burning the last of his money. Then NASA wrote a $1.6 billion contract for cargo runs to the space station, and that money built the Falcon 9. The people who study this industry say it plainly: NASA is what saved the company when it was on the brink of bankruptcy. And NASA by then was an agency we’d been squeezing since the 1980s. We decided, instead of doing things ourselves as a nation, instead of demanding the lion’s share of what we’d developed over 60 years of rocketry and satellites and spaceflight, that we’d hand it off to billionaires and let them compete for the contracts. SpaceX now holds around $22 billion in federal contracts. Across the whole Musk empire the public money runs closer to $38 billion. The launch pads, the airwaves, the satellites overhead, the early customers, the technology our space program spent two generations developing. He built on all of it, and we kept no share of it. I’m not saying SpaceX is bad at rockets. The rockets work. But outbidding Boeing and Lockheed, the most bloated contractors in America, is a low bar, and he cleared it with technology our space program spent 60 years developing, on contracts we paid for. And China is proving right now that none of it was one man’s miracle. They’re behind on reusable rockets and behind on launch rates, sure. They’re also closing fast, as a national project, with state companies and state-backed startups and satellite constellations in the tens of thousands. Getting to space is something a country can decide to build and own. We decided to hand it to one man instead. The rest of his fortune sits in Tesla, and that deal is even worse. Tesla is worth more than every other major carmaker on the planet combined. Toyota, BYD, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, Mercedes, BMW, all of them together, still short of Tesla. Plenty of those companies earn more actual profit than Tesla does. Toyota alone makes several times Tesla’s money. The valuation isn’t a measure of the business. It’s an obvious bubble, one of those bubbles people will look back on like the tulip bubble and ask how anybody ever believed it. Meanwhile, the tariffs are the only reason Chinese carmakers aren’t whipping us in our own market. BYD passed Tesla as the biggest seller of electric cars in the world, and it makes a good one for around $10,000. Musk has admitted himself that without trade barriers, Chinese automakers would demolish most of their rivals. The tariff wall protects the whole American industry, and Tesla is its single biggest beneficiary. We’re babying these companies instead of pushing them to get better, and we’re not taking a dime of ownership while we do it. They’ll tell you the wall is national security. It isn’t. We haven’t kept our means of production. We don’t make enough steel even for ourselves, and that’s while we’re barely building anything. Start building at scale again, and we’d be importing even more of it. We can’t build transmission lines or move energy around this country. We’ve lost the machine tools. We shipped the means of production to China and other countries, and now we’re handing what’s left to a handful of billionaires. National security would be making these companies better. It would be forcing them to share the patents we paid to develop. It would be forcing a universal charger. It would be making them earn their money through quality production that competes on the open market, not through bubble valuations.

Breaking Donald Trump’s Cycle of Abuse

Michele Goodwin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Trump’s attacks on Americans are nothing short of domestic violence—and we must identify and treat them as such. A “signs of an abuser” quiz on the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office website reveals what Americans have observed during the Trump presidency, especially survivors of intimate partner violence. Specifically, Does your partner play mind games? Does your partner act negatively to authority figures? Does your partner call you names? Does your partner belittle or talk down to you? Does your partner blame you if something goes wrong? Does your partner use shame to control a situation or get their way? A different government website lists financial signs of an abuser, such as stealing money from you, and “forcing or pushing you to give them the money you make.” Remember when Trump sought a personal payout of $230 million in taxpayer dollars, and the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, claiming that he was wronged by the government? Or his $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to pay January 6 insurrectionists? The signs are all hiding in plain sight. Just last week, Trump demonstrated why so many Americans believe that he lacks the temperament to be president or the ability to appropriately relate to women. Trotting out a familiar trope, he called CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins a “young beautiful woman,” and then berated her for not smiling, announcing to a group of reporters, “I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we had borders, because we have a strong military.” None of this is new, and that’s why it’s dangerous and a threat to the United States. Americans continue to be harmed by the actions of this administration and president. In his personal capacity—for which there is no criminal immunity—and in his role as leader of the United States, Trump has demonstrated poor judgment and ill temperament. As noted by federal judges, including the justices on the US Supreme Court, President Trump has ignored Congress and court orders. His response? “They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the Rhinos and the radical left Democrats,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court justices, in February. Simply put, Trump is a president who ignores the rule of law, shows disdain for courts, and contempt for critics, including within the Republican Party. For this and more, Americans need to confront not only how we end this abusive relationship, but also how we prevent this type of assault from within from ever happening again. Nearly 10 years ago, Donald Trump secured his first term as president, winning the 2016 election and defeating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Notably, just weeks before the election, David A. Fahrenthold broke a now-infamous story about a recording of Trump telling former NBC morning show host Billy Bush, “when you’re a star,” women let you “grab them by the pussy.” The full transcript can be read here. Trump’s casualness about groping women by their vaginas and committing sexual assault was chilling then and is no less offensive and alarming now, particularly in light of the dozens of accusations against the president and a number of his closest advisers. Myriad photos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein before 2016 have since gained a darker meaning. The recording, taped by Access Hollywood in 2005, includes audio as well as some video footage. In the weeks that followed the release of the tapes, numerous women obtained lawyers, called reporters, wrote editorials; all claimed that Trump inappropriately and unlawfully touched them. Lawyers offered to provide free legal services to these women and any others who had similar experiences but were afraid to speak out. More than a dozen women came forward, painfully recalling instances where they say Trump assaulted them—on airplanes, in his office, outside of the US Tennis Open Stadium in Flushing, New York, and various other cities and states. They are mothers, instructors, businesswomen, and former beauty pageant participants. Trump defended himself against the allegations and threatened to sue. Then and now, Trump continues to claim he is not a sexual assaulter, despite a New York jury’s unanimously finding that he sexually assaulted journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. In fact, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case, wrote in the 59-page order that E. Jean Carroll “convincingly established and the jury implicitly found that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm.” Remarkably, Trump’s Department of Justice has now launched an investigation into E. Jean Carroll—another sign that the president has weaponized the agency for his personal bidding, to go after his critics and those who seek to hold him accountable. At the time, news media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal warned Americans that this type of verbosity and misogyny in Trump’s public commentary was nothing new. According to Fortune, “It’s no secret that Donald Trump has made many sexist and misogynistic comments both before and during his campaign.” The problem for the United States and the world is that he is no longer candidate Trump; he’s been elected twice to serve as the president. Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed him on August 6, 2015, at the first Republican presidential debate, asking: “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.… You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Trump brushed aside Kelly’s question, claiming he was “kidding,” and enjoying “a good time.” Distressing, however, was his warning: “And honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that.” Months later, Kelly would release a book, claiming that not only had her question to Trump been leaked prior to the debate in question but that quite possibly someone—and she does not allege who—tried to poison her. For his part, Trump concluded his scrap with Kelly on Twitter and CNN, asserting that the news anchor “had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Trump’s transgressions against women have not only been his self-described groping, his demeaning female reporters, and the sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll, but also attacks on reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortion. Beyond ordering the incineration of nearly $10 million in birth control overseas, and decimating access to preventive care abroad and at home, Trump has said there should be some form of punishment for women who seek abortions. At the time, in 2016, it raised serious constitutional law questions. What types of punishment? How would the state carry out such punishment? Whom would the state choose to punish? Ultimately, he nominated Supreme Court justices who would do his bidding and overturn Roe v. Wade—at least one promise he has kept. However, Trump’s assault or domestic violence is not only against women or people with the capacity for pregnancy; it’s a much broader threat. Trump’s machismo approach to governance has directly led to the targeting and even killing of American demonstrators—actions defended by his administration. In Minnesota, Renée Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent. Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who worked with veterans, was gunned down days later by Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents. There have been others targeted and harmed for standing up to the administration’s callous priorities. Trump has weaponized the Department of Justice to retaliate against judges and defy court rulings. He has ignored Congress and assumed powers that he does not have, including related to tariffs, and the war with Iran. Trump’s attacks on our democracy and disregard for the rule of law are nothing short of domestic violence—and we should identify and treat them as such. This includes the threats against academic freedom, law firms, critical funding for science and innovation, the Department of Education, and First Amendment freedoms, and the rollback of crucial environmental and health protections. His priorities have been particularly cruel toward women. His administration has attempted to disenfranchise or make it more difficult for 69 million women to vote through its support of the SAVE Act. Officials have fired high-level women officials across the government from the military to the Library of Congress. By dismantling or freezing key federal health programs, such as Title X—signed into law by President Nixon—the administration has literally put women’s life at risk. The National Women’s Law Center has put it this way: “The Trump administration…has taken aim at the very idea that gender equality is a shared, national value, recasting…discrimination as an acceptable norm.” The United States Congress, courts, and civil society need an intervention plan. At the center of extracting the US from this domestic violence is not only the 2026 midterm elections but also active work to make sure this never happens again. Without this work, we risk further numbness and indifference to Trump’s brand of gross misconduct and misdeeds that may be difficult for the nation to ever fully recover from. One thing is for certain: While the president has sought to belittle and harass women, line his pockets, pursue war in Iran, invade Venezuela, threaten Cuba, and take over Greenland, what he has not done is provide a coherent plan of care and attention for Americans, especially women.

The Hottest World Cup in History

Mark Hertsgaard — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The World Cup is not just a sports story. It’s a climate one, too. This summer’s World Cup will be unlike any other in the 96-year history of the world’s most popular sporting event. Never before have players on the field and spectators in the stands faced the intensity of heat expected to confront them at the matches taking place over the next 39 days, starting with today’s opener between Mexico and South Africa. The extra heat is due in no small part to rising global temperatures driven by burning fossil fuels, making the 2026 World Cup not just a sports story, but a climate one, too. Game-time temperatures at many of the host venues in the United States and Mexico are projected to be higher than during any previous World Cup, according to new scientific studies. (The 2022 World Cup was hosted by Qatar, but its desert heat was offset by shifting the tournament from summer to winter and holding matches in air-conditioned stadiums.) Climate change has increased the number of extremely hot summer days in 14 of the 16 cities hosting matches during the 2026 Cup, the scientific nonprofit Climate Central found. Perhaps most at risk is Miami, which “now experiences roughly two additional weeks of extreme June and July heat compared to the 1970’s,” Climate Central’s Ben Tracy reports. In anticipation of the exceptional heat, FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, has taken the extraordinary step of ordering referees to enforce a three-minute break halfway through each half so players can rest and hydrate. Nevertheless, the heat could be so intense, especially in Miami, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Guadalajara, and Mexico City, that players’ performance—how fast they can run, how many minutes they can play—is projected to suffer at 97 of the 104 total matches. “It has such a huge impact on the way you play,” former pro footballer Marissa Abegg told Tracy. That, in turn, has implications for the flow of play and the outcomes of matches: Teams that rely more on speed or endurance, for example, will potentially be disadvantaged. Spectators, too, will suffer. Eleven of the 16 venues are open-air stadiums where spectators will endure the full wrath of the prevailing heat and humidity. Health experts warn of increased risks of heat stroke, dehydration, and kidney failure. In response, some stadiums are adding cooling stations, misting tents, and additional medical staffing. So a friendly request for our fellow journalists on newsrooms’ sports desks: Acquaint yourselves with the abundant science behind these warnings, via the links in this article. And mention that science occasionally in your reporting and commentary. To ignore climate change would omit crucial context that fans will find useful for understanding why their favorite teams and players excelled or languished during this World Cup. There will be plenty of opportunities to make the climate connection. Commercials will occupy two minutes and 10 seconds of each hydration break, but for our TV and radio colleagues it will be easy enough during the remaining 50 seconds of airtime to note that these breaks are taking place because, thanks largely to global warming, players are enduring some of the highest temperatures in World Cup history. A full account of the climate connection would include not only what climate change is doing to the Cup, but also what the Cup is doing to climate change. A Guardian article described how this year’s tournament is “on track to be the “most polluting” World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average.” The Guardian notes various “FIFA own goals,” including the association’s decision to increase the number of competing teams from 32 to 48. Most impactful, however, was FIFA’s decision to name three different host nations, rather than the usual one. And since Mexico, the United States, and Canada are large land masses, teams and spectators traveling to and from venues must travel long distances by air, a notoriously carbon-intensive means of transport. Finally, in what The Guardian calls a sponsorship deal “that looks like it was concocted in a greenwashing laboratory,” FIFA in 2024 “signed a four-year partnership deal with Aramco, the state-owned Saudi energy behemoth that is the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter on Earth.” In short, there are plenty of climate angles for journalists to explore while covering the 2026 World Cup. The same was true of the Winter Olympics earlier this year, and in 2022, and of the 2024 Summer Olympics. In each case, most coverage was disappointingly silent on the climate connection to these globally beloved sporting events. The next 39 days will reveal whether the 2026 World Cup will be any different.

The Art of the American Revolution Across the Generations

Rachel Hunter Himes — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The United States’ founding moment from Washington Crossing the Delaware to the paintings of Jacob Lawrence, Kara Walker, and Kent Monkman. Although I must have visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art hundreds of times, I’ve never spared more than a glance for Washington Crossing the Delaware. The painting has always seemed to me more image than object, an untethered graphic whose transposability yields it to all sorts of uses—such as when, earlier this year, it was projected onto the Washington Monument. Having seen it on commemorative coins, ceramic plates, tea towels, and postage stamps, why would I need to seek it out in person? It is perhaps this transposability, this reproducibility, that also leaves Washington Crossing the Delaware so open to reworkings. Almost a dozen modern and contemporary artists have riffed on it, among them Jacob Lawrence, Robert Colescott, Grant Wood, Alex Katz, and Kent Monkman. Some of these artists have drawn on the Crossing’s status as an American icon to make political statements. In 2017, Kara Walker reworked the painting to comment on Trump’s inauguration. Other explorations have tended toward formal reinvention. A young Roy Lichtenstein, before his Pop Art breakthrough, painted two versions in an abstract, naïve style around the same time that Larry Rivers offered a brushy, sketchy reinterpretation, at least partly as a figurative challenge to the hegemony of Abstract Expressionism among New York painters. Each refashioning is both a departure and a return. These reworkings affirm the status of the Crossing as a foundational American image, even as they offer new visions of the nation’s past and future—and help us understand how the painting itself worked as a political intervention into both the myth and the politics of the United States. To approach the many reworkings of Washington Crossing the Delaware, one must begin with the original. Heading to the Met’s American Wing, I spotted it practically a mile away, occupying one of the gallery’s foremost sight lines. It is oppressively large, at 12 by 21 feet, and insistently framed, in a gilded setting topped with a patriotic trophy—a replica of the frame it originally appeared in during its first showing in New York, in 1851, the year of its completion. The painting, by the German artist Emanuel Leutze, shows the crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776, a maneuver that allowed the Continental Army to launch a surprise attack on the Hessian forces at Trenton, yielding a victory that marked a turning point in the American Revolution. Maybe you can see it in your mind’s eye: George Washington standing in the prow of a rowboat, his raised leg firmly planted on the seat before him, gazing steadfastly ahead. All about him, soldiers strain at the oars, propelling the boat across an ice-choked river; one clutches a furled American flag. The scene is grand, the style exacting and meticulous. The tour guides (five of them, to be precise) who pass through the gallery during the half-hour I spend with the painting invariably noted its “inaccuracies.” Leutze shows Washington and his men in narrow rowboats, when in reality they made the crossing in wide, flat-bottomed freight boats. Although the crossing took place at night, Leutze shows a breaking dawn. One guide questioned whether the central figure really looked like Washington, whose likeness survives only in paintings. Another noted the “German” elements of the work, pointing out that the chunks of ice that float on the surface of Leutze’s Delaware look more like formations on the Rhine than those on the waterways of America’s Northeast. I found this strange. Washington Crossing the Delaware is a constructed representation, not a stand-in for Washington himself or a mirror of the historic crossing—an event that Leutze’s painting postdates by three-quarters of a century. While the Crossing reflects the wave of reverence for the “father of the country” that swept the United States upon the 50th anniversary of Washington’s death, another of its immediate contexts are the Revolutions of 1848. Leutze, born in 1816 in Württemberg, immigrated with his family to Philadelphia as a child. In 1841, he returned to Europe to study at the Royal Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. There, he trained in the genre of history painting, developing large-format compositions with grand and consequential themes. While in Düsseldorf, he cofounded and led Malkasten (“paint box”), a democratic organization of liberal artists who supported the struggle to establish a unified German republic. Although the fragmentary and uncoordinated German uprisings of 1848 were ultimately crushed, Leutze did not abandon his democratic commitments. His Crossing, which toured in Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Cologne a few short years after ’48, was intended to reignite revolution in the hearts of his countrymen with its portrayal of a decisive moment in the struggle for an American republic. Astute observers, as the art historian Barbara Groseclose notes, might even have reflected on the fact that it was Hessian mercenaries whom Washington and his troops met on the shores of Trenton, hired out by the ruler of the Electorate of Hesse. During the German Revolution, the state briefly adopted democratic reforms that were soon undone in a reactionary backlash. Leutze’s Crossing, an American icon, was also a painting with a dual citizenship and an international politics. Just over 100 years later, Jacob Lawrence began a body of work he called Struggle. The small tempera paintings in this series would chronicle the early history of the United States from the American Revolution through the early 19th century. Lawrence, quoting Leutze, called the 10th painting in the series Washington Crossing the Delaware. (Like Leutze’s Crossing, this work is also in the Met’s collection.) The upright Washington of Leutze’s composition, however, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, in boats rocking on choppy waves, crouched figures huddle under blankets and cloaks. Spiky bayonets and oars fill the scene with violent diagonals as blood drips from the sides of the crafts, evoking the injuries sustained and the lives lost in the major defeats that preceded the crossing. Lawrence subtitled the works in Struggle with voices from the past. His Washington Crossing the Delaware features a quote from Tench Tilghman, an aide to Washington: “We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton…the night was excessively severe…which the men bore without the least murmur.” While Leutze condensed American independence into the figure of Washington in an image that also evoked Europe’s revolutions, Lawrence, in his remaking of the Crossing and elsewhere in Struggle, represents revolution and nation-building as a collective project undertaken by anonymous and forgotten actors. Starting work on Struggle in 1954, the year of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Lawrence pointedly advanced an integrated history, foregrounding figures like Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent whose death in the Boston Massacre is regarded as the first casualty of the Revolution. Two of the series’ paintings show slave uprisings, representing those internal bids for liberty and equality as equally significant to the American project as the battles against Britain.

Inside the Conference Where Conservative Women Let Loose

Amy Littlefield — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The mainstreaming of brazen sexism in the conservative movement left the attendees at Turning Point’s women’s summit looking for a soft place to land. Two jets of pink smoke erupted on either side of the stage in a San Antonio hotel ballroom as the Christian wellness influencer Alex Clark strode to the podium in a filmy white dress. Behind her a screen displayed the words “faith over feminism” in cursive. The conservative organizing network Turning Point USA had kicked off its first annual women’s leadership summit since the group’s cofounder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot last year, and Clark was about to give some of Kirk’s offensive words about women a makeover. Clark queued up video of a viral moment from last year’s conference. Sitting on stage with his wife, Erika, Charlie Kirk had lectured the 3,000 young women present to focus on finding a husband. “If you’re not married by the age of 30, you only have a 50 percent chance of getting married, and if you don’t have kids by the age of 30, you have a 50 percent chance of not having kids,” Charlie pronounced, and Erika interjected, sweetly, “To add on to that, to the women who are getting married after 30, that’s OK…. God is good.” This year, about 2,000 people, most of whom didn’t raise their hands when asked if they had attended last year, sat watching this video. The word “young” had been dropped from the conference’s title and many of the attendees were well over 30. Some of them laughed appreciatively at Erika and Charlie’s rapport, as if they were watching their mom gently chide their dad. Then Clark got serious. She said Kirk’s words last year had hurt because she herself is in her early 30s and still unmarried. “I’ll be honest, I was sitting in the audience, and it stung a little bit,” she said, and the titters of laughter ceased. “But I also knew Charlie.” Because even though Kirk could be a little direct, he wasn’t wrong about the statistics on marriage, Clark went on to say. “They’re actually worse,” Clark breathed. Clark went on to advise her fellow single ladies on how to have a “God-honoring single season,” a time when young women were free to have a career and buy as many throw pillows as they wanted while waiting for a husband. Also by Amy Littlefield For at least some of the women present, there was an edge of hurt to reliving this moment. Ann Dailey Moreno was in the audience last year, unmarried, and 28. She’d been so upset by Charlie’s words that she started to cry right there in her seat. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not welcome,’” Dailey Moreno told me, choking up again at the recollection. “That was disgusting. I’m sorry. I love Charlie Kirk but that was not the right thing to say.” She wasn’t alone in feeling offended. “Literally not every woman has kids,” Roselle, 26, and president of the Turning Point chapter at her California state university, agreed. “Like, they either can’t have kids, or they might love kids, but their job takes them elsewhere.” “I agreed with all the women that kind of criticized him,” she added. There are moments when the misogyny that animates the conservative movement becomes so visible that even the women who help power that movement can’t stomach it. We are in such a moment now. The mainstreaming of brazenly sexist influencers like Nick Fuentes; the young men chanting, “Your body my choice,” the naked pro-natalism of the Trump administration’s Moms.gov website; and yes, attempts to revive a 1980s-style marriage panic have driven young conservative women to the left. The number of women ages 18–29 identifying as liberal has surged in recent years, creating a widely noted gender gap between these women and their male peers. Even Charlie Kirk, all but sanctified by his martyrdom, was being gently rebuked for sexism at his own organization’s summit. “Charlie and Erika were the perfect combination, because Charlie could come off a little blunt,” Clark said from the stage to a round of appreciative laughs, “and Erika was always this sweet, soft-spoken one, who could tie up everything in a really nice bow.” The solution? Those sweet, soft-spoken women were going to have to deliver the word. In Kirk’s absence, women at the conference were rebranding the same message—feminism is evil, marriage and God are good—in more relatable form, with sizable doses of MAHA, and just a hint of spice flaring between the Trump administration and the MAHA moms. Erika Kirk was the poised figurehead, the Christian mom under siege by the violent left as she defended the right of women to be feminine. “At its core, feminism is a worldview that treats many of the things that make women uniquely women as obstacles to overcome rather than divine gifts to embrace,” Kirk declared, as she kicked off the conference. But while Kirk now leads Turning Point, she was scarcely present at the summit beyond her opening speech. Instead, the face was Clark, who joined Turning Point in 2019 as host of a pop-culture podcast and now hosts the conservative wellness show Culture Apothecary. She’s built an audience of “crunchy” conservatives by blending warnings about microplastics and mouth-breathing with bizarre claims about how hormonal birth control can make you “falsely” bisexual. Thanks largely to Clark’s curation, this was Gen Z conservatism dipped in a buttery vat of MAHA. In the exhibit hall, mixed in the Christian right’s typical fare—booths set up by policy shops like the Heritage Foundation, anti-abortion groups like 40 Days for Life, and Christian education institutions like Hillsdale College—were displays advertising prenatal vitamins, toxin-free toothpaste, organic makeup, wheat mills, blue-light-blocking glasses, and seasoning made from cow brains. Women in floor-length skirts stood shaking violently side-to-side on vibration boards intended to burn calories and reduce joint pain. The Let Freedom Bling Boutique sold sequin tank tops; the Stacked with Purpose booth peddled bracelets that would unlock your “prophetic identity”; the XX-XY athleticwear company was raising money to help athletes who defend women’s sports—by keeping trans women out. I was offered a sample of guava-grapefruit-flavored electrolytes. It was delicious. I bought a box of PFAS-free dental floss, just to see if it would stick in my teeth. It didn’t. I was encouraged to host a discussion on taxes or education with my friends, “like a book club, but for policy.” I grabbed a sticker depicting Rosie the Riveter flexing alongside the words “Voting is My Superpower,” a brochure on biblical femininity from the conservative alternative to Girl Scouts, a postcard from Students for Life that read “Will You Go Green?” and, on the back, warned of the dangers of contraception. A purveyor of bread mills told me that their products could cure my Celiac disease. The man hawking the tins of cow organ dust told me it would be a good way to reintroduce meat into my vegetarian diet. Later, I turned down the opportunity to do group Pilates because I was in a dress; I’d followed the official conference “look book,” which was heavy on florals and cream. Without feminism to turn to in the face of misogyny, the women present were finding sisterhood through grievance with the woke left (especially the trans women they saw as threatening to womanhood), personal health optimization (for longevity and fertility), and a softer version of the same message about marrying young and having babies. The mainstage speakers showed the range of femininity that the modern conservative movement would endorse: There were political figures like Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and marriage influencers like Savanna Stone, who believes women shouldn’t have the right to vote. The speaker’s messages about women’s roles ranged from the biblically literal to the feminist-adjacent. Millicent Sedra, a Christian influencer from Australia who casually denied evolution from the stage, told women to stop complaining about being “servants” to their husbands and to “start serving with gratitude.” On the other end of the spectrum, Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins talked about the challenges of working 15 hours a day and how she found the linen-wearing, sourdough-baking “trad wife” influencer image unattainable. What unified these speakers was their urgent warning to steer clear of feminism, an ideology that not all of them seemed well versed in.

How Prison Neglect Killed Alex Kuhnhausen

Kevin Light-Roth,Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

He reported minor symptoms to his jailers. Two weeks later, he was dead. On April 21, 2024, Katie Kuhnhausen woke before dawn. She showered in the dark, dressed quickly, and jammed the day’s provisions into a backpack—snacks, a hairbrush, bottled water, lipstick. She planned to do her makeup in the car. The drive from her home in Vancouver to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla took about four hours, and she was running behind. “I was feeling really nervous,” says Katie. “I hadn’t heard from my husband in eight days at that point.” Katie’s husband, Alex Kuhnhausen, had fallen ill some weeks earlier. There was no formal diagnosis, but he presented alarming symptoms. On April 7, he told prison medical staff he had been coughing and sneezing up blood for three days and sleeping for most of the day for the past week, according to Department of Correction records reviewed by The Nation. The following day, he told them again that he had been coughing up blood. The physician’s assistant wrote that it “could be a thrush,” and prescribed Alex an “oral wash.” The care was subpar, but Katie says Alex shrugged it off. He didn’t think he would need to deal with prison medical staff again—his release date was four days away, and his wife planned to take him directly from the prison gates to a local ER. But two days later, on April 10, he was placed in solitary confinement after guards allegedly caught him with drug paraphernalia. His release date was pushed back. On an assessment form, a licensed practical nurse checked off that Alex was “medically suitable” for solitary. In the hole, Alex’s condition deteriorated. He again requested medical attention. On April 17, a physician’s assistant came to Alex’s cell and conducted a consultation with him. Although he remained in his cell throughout the encounter, her report states that he was able to get off and on an exam table. She wrote in her notes that Alex was “not feeling well…. Hard to make himself drink fluids. Intermittent nausea with vomiting, worst when he gets out of bed. Sleeping all day and all night. Recently came to [solitary confinement] about 2 weeks ago, was injecting suboxone.” But she dismissed the possibility of serious illness out of hand, concluding that his condition “appears to be more dehydration” than thrush and speculating that Alex was going through “suboxone/opioid withdrawal.” It was a bizarre conclusion. Alex exhibited just one of the nine diagnostic criteria for opioid withdrawal—nausea and vomiting—and three or more must be present to satisfy the diagnostic threshold. Some of his symptoms, particularly his continual sleeping and inability to drink water, are antithetical to the symptoms of opioid withdrawal, which is characterized by lasting insomnia and fever. Also, Alex continued to receive daily doses of suboxone, a synthetic opioid substitute that is used to tamp down withdrawal symptoms and stave off cravings, through the facility’s Medication Assisted Treatment program. His symptoms did square neatly with those of another, much more sinister ailment: sepsis. Later, when he was properly evaluated, doctors immediately realized that this was the condition actually afflicting him. Untreated, it would only get worse. Inside prisons and jails, Alex’s experience is an everyday occurrence. Doctors and nurses routinely ignore incarcerated people’s symptoms, even in dire situations. David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, says nurses and physicians working in prisons frequently question whether the people asking them for help are sick at all. “There is, unfortunately, a pervasive belief among many prison staff that essentially all incarcerated people are liars,” Fathi says. “And if the patient happens to be someone with a history of drug use, as many incarcerated people [are], that presumption becomes almost irrebuttable. It becomes very, very hard to overcome.” Medical staff tend to think incarcerated patients are feigning illness in pursuit of a free high, says Fathi. “This presumption that many prisoners are drug-seekers leads to really far-reaching, systemwide consequences.” In some instances, healthcare staff assume prisoners have overdosed, despite evidence to the contrary. Their assumptions can “waste precious time” a dying patient doesn’t have to spare, Fathi says.

Pope Leo’s First Encyclical Is a Game Changer

Erik Baker — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Yes, it’s a warning about the dangers of AI. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Something that has been oddly overlooked about Pope Leo XIV in digesting his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, is that he is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The volume of takes on artificial intelligence flooding the public sphere in the last few years has been so torrential that it is tempting to think of Leo as simply one more thought leader throwing his hat into the discursive ring. And secular readers will reasonably default to bracketing everything theological in the encyclical and focusing on the parts that can speak to their own concerns in an idiom they recognize. But Magnifica humanitas, published on May 25, is not just one AI treatise among others, nor is it merely a reflection on AI from an irreducibly theological standpoint, although it is both of those things. It is also—and foremost, in my view—a pastoral statement to the church that Leo leads, the most robust articulation to date of his vision for his pontificate, and an act of position-taking in the debates that have riven Catholicism since the mid-20th century and which have threatened, since the election of Leo’s predecessor Pope Francis, to tear the church apart. Understanding Magnifica humanitas as a fundamentally ecclesiological document is necessary not only to interpret the text correctly, but, counterintuitively, to grasp its most important lessons for the secular left. The reforms ushered in by the Second Vatican Council, which unfolded from 1962 to 1965, reshaped the trajectory of Catholicism more profoundly than anything since the church’s definitive response to the Reformation at the 16th-century Council of Trent. Most visibly to ordinary churchgoers, Vatican II kicked off a process that led to the radical transformation of the structure of the Mass at the end of the 1960s. But the council also produced a range of official documents that, taken together, signaled the church’s decision to seek a rapprochement with modernity after generations as arguably its most powerful institutional opponent. The liturgical and doctrinal changes effected by Vatican II empowered laypeople to participate more fully in the life of the church and committed the Catholic hierarchy to taking seriously the need to learn from those outside its ranks. From the beginning, Vatican II appalled Catholic traditionalists who felt that the church’s identity was inextricably antimodern, and that one of its most urgent tasks was to defend the principle of hierarchical authority from the leveling impulses of the modern world. The most radical traditionalists broke formally with the church, willingly or unwillingly, in the decades after Vatican II, but many council critics remained faithful, working patiently within the church hierarchy to slow or roll back the process of reform. Pope John Paul II (who presided from 1978 to 2005) brokered a détente of sorts between reformists and traditionalists, but by the early 21st century the conflict had heated up again, fueled by the exposure of pervasive sexual abuse within the church, alarm at declining Mass attendance in the Global North, and the growing political salience of the church’s conservative positions on key culture-war issues like abortion and homosexuality. Pope Benedict XVI (2005–13) made a series of controversial conciliatory gestures to traditionalists, while Francis (2013–25) drew their ire for his strident efforts to revive the reform spirit of Vatican II—coincident with the increasing prominence of traditionalist Catholicism on the “post-liberal right” in Europe and North America. Enter Leo XIV. The first American pontiff’s ability to secure widespread cross-factional support at last year’s conclave—as well as his decision to honor the late-19th-century Pope Leo XIII, a forceful critic of the ills of industrial capitalism who also opposed efforts to “modernize” the church—led many observers to suspect that he intended to downplay questions about the church’s internal affairs in favor of a renewed focus on Catholic social teaching. Magnifica humanitas, however, leaves no question that Leo recognizes that even if such a compromise were theoretically desirable, it would not be practically feasible. The encyclical argues that forcefully that a church capable of addressing the world amid the turmoil for which the rise of AI serves in the text as a synecdoche must also be a church in which all its people, not only its hierarchs, take an active role in shaping its destiny. “Social Doctrine is not merely a message addressed to society,” Leo writes. “it is also an examination of conscience for the Church.” Magnifica humanitas begins with an introduction laying out the encyclical’s core motif: the contrast between the biblical images of the building of the tower of Babel and the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. Leo argues that AI restages this choice for us today, and his suggestion that AI risks serving as a modern tower of Babel is what has drawn the most attention since the encyclical’s publication. But before he gives his full examination of AI, the pope devotes two long chapters to an account of the development of the church’s social doctrine and its most important principles. This account is significant both for what it emphasizes and what it downplays. Leo frames the development of Catholic social teaching as the fruit of the church’s willingness to approach the world open-mindedly and to listen to a diversity of voices. “The truth of the Gospel is not imposed from above, but grows over time within the concrete interweaving of lives, communities and cultures,” he writes. Historians may fairly question the extent to which the original elaboration of Catholic social teaching under Leo XIII and his successors embodied this ethos, but what Leo describes is unquestionably the spirit of Vatican II, as he emphasizes: In the conciliar documents, Leo writes, history is understood as a dynamic setting in which the church “learns to develop her own teaching at the service of the dignity of every person and the good of all peoples.” This is also the spirit of Pope Francis. Leo unequivocally affirms the value of “synodality,” church jargon for collective discernment and participatory reform, which was one of the most important themes of Francis’s papacy—and one aspect of Francis’s leadership particularly despised by traditionalists. In Magnifica humanitas, Leo explicitly advocates “the adoption of a synodal style,” which entails “a culture of transparency, accountability and evaluation.” In this light, it is striking what plays little role in Leo’s presentation of the church’s social doctrine: its conservative teachings on gender and sexuality. He does describe “induced abortion, killing of the innocent and euthanasia” as “choices that the Church considers gravely wrong” and writes that the family is “founded on the enduring union between a man and a woman.” But this whole field of moral theology—one that many conservative Catholics consider the heart of their political philosophy—is clearly peripheral to his social vision. His encyclopedic recounting of the development of Catholic social teaching entirely omits Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae and its further elaboration in John Paul II’s “theology of the body” lectures, which together helped codify a traditionalist interpretation of the church’s teachings on marriage and the sanctity of life (including, most controversially, a total proscription of artificial contraception). Even Pope Francis, in his landmark social encyclical Laudato si’, included a passage warning against an attitude that “would seek ‘to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.’” Despite the specious connection that some other Christian critics of technology such as Paul Kingsnorth have drawn between Silicon Valley transhumanism and the concept of transgender identity, Leo does not include any such chastisement in Magnifica humanitas. That is not to imply that Leo secretly disagrees with any of what the church teaches about gender and sexuality. What I think Magnifica humanitas does allow us to glean, in connection with other recent statements from Leo and the Vatican, is that the pontiff recognizes that there is intense disagreement among faithful Catholics on this issue and that the church has historically failed to entertain dissenting views in a spirit of synodality. That was the more or less explicit conclusion of a blockbuster Vatican report released in May, in which a committee convened to study controversial issues that surfaced through Francis’s synodality initiatives acknowledged the church’s role in perpetuating “the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families” and admitted harmful effects of conversion therapies promoted by Catholic groups. For his part, Leo has remarked that “we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the church says about any given question”—falling far short of endorsing doctrinal change but leaving the possibility tantalizingly open. Magnifica humanitas builds on these gestures by including some of the most striking acknowledgments in the history of the papacy of the church’s capacity to get important questions gravely wrong. The encyclical is the first to acknowledge the problem of sexual violence perpetrated in the church; in it, the pontiff endorses his predecessor’s remarks to journalists: “I also thank you for what you tell us about what goes wrong in the Church, for helping us not to sweep it under the carpet, and for the voice you have given to the victims of abuse.” The first pope descended from enslaved Africans also issues an unprecedented apology on behalf of the church for its “past complicity and blindness in the face of the injustice of slavery.” The institution’s inexcusably protracted approach to the total condemnation of slavery is, for Leo, a paradigmatic example of “the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards.” The human beings who make up the church, in his view, always risk failing to properly understand what God is trying to tell them.

Is Graham Platner Fit to Be a US Senator?

Corbin Trent — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The Democrats of Maine answered that question. For a week, I’ve watched the commentators and the party line up to tell me Graham Platner is too compromised for the United States Senate. Last night, the Democrats of Maine answered them. He’s on track to win his primary with about 72 percent of the vote, carrying nearly every county in the state. This is not the outcome for a candidate distrusted by the voters; in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a landslide. Every time I hear a pundit call his behavior “disqualifying,” or read another opinion piece about the horrendous human being that is Graham Platner, I can’t help thinking about the people already in the Senate. How are they handling power? Are they showing us the upright moral high ground? While Israel was dropping white phosphorus on people in Lebanon, The New York Times called it a munition that “can be extremely harmful.” White phosphorus burns through skin to the bone. They called it “harmful.” Like cholesterol. Like skipping the gym. This is the same paper that spent two months interviewing women who dated Graham Platner, hunting for something disqualifying. White phosphorus on civilians gets “can be extremely harmful.” Graham’s private life gets a microscope. The media and the Democratic establishment have been scouring his personal struggles and trying to equate them with his fitness to serve. Relationships that ended badly. Texts he regrets. The years he spent drinking, trying to outrun what he brought home from Ramadi and Fallujah. He’s a Marine who came back with PTSD and a drinking problem and did the work to come out the other side. That’s not a disqualification. In most of America, that’s the story of a man growing up. But run for office as a regular guy, and every private wound becomes a headline. And all that pressure has made him into something rare. He’s already survived the worst they can do to a person out in the open, which means there’s nothing left to hold over his head. You can’t blackmail a man whose flaws are already on the table, and you can’t scare him off a fight by threatening to expose him. Sure, sexting with a woman while you’re married isn’t admirable. But that has never been the test of whether someone can be trusted with power. The test is how you conduct yourself when you have it. And by that test, the Senate Platner wants to join is morally bankrupt. The senators our media holds up as the moral, dignified ones get to sit in a hearing and debate the merits of binding our military and our intelligence even tighter to a government that’s carrying out a genocide, and that gets called sober and serious. Just policy. Just pragmatism. Working hand in hand with people committing war crimes gets called statesmanship. Chuck Schumer voted for the war in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people died. He leads the Senate Democrats now, and he’s never once had to sit where Platner’s sitting. He keeps his leadership and his reputation as a statesman because he didn’t personally drop the bomb. He was just part of the machine that did, and nobody in the machine is ever responsible. And it isn’t just him. Dozens of them, in both parties, voted for that war or funded the ones that came after, and not one has answered for a single death. Platner, though. Platner pressed “Send.” Platner was “unsettling.” I don’t feel betrayed by Platner. I feel betrayed by the people sitting in judgment of him. John Yoo wrote the legal memos that authorized torture, and he teaches law at Berkeley, and the same crowd that finds that perfectly normal clutches its pearls over a man’s text messages. Half the Senate calls itself moral because they never yelled at a girlfriend, while they vote to arm and fund the killing of tens of thousands of children.

Trump’s AG Appointee Is a Literal Sock Puppet

Elie Mystal — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Todd Blanche might be the most craven attorney general yet. Thankfully, he’s also incompetent. Donald Trump has nominated his own personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, to serve as attorney general. Blanche has been the acting AG since Trump fired Pam Bondi. The nomination raises a crucial question that we are often forced to ask these days: How screwed are we? I could make an argument that Blanche is worse than Bondi, but that would be a distinction without a difference. Like Bondi, Blanche is willing to do whatever Trump tells him to do: He’s willing to file frivolous lawsuits against Trump’s enemies, use the awesome power of the Department of Justice to support Trump’s private financial interests, and say literally anything Trump wants him to say. Where Blanche stands out is his willingness to do all of this without any veneer of shame or legal independence. Bondi would say and do whatever Trump wanted her to, but she seemed to at least try to give the appearance of independent thought. Blanche, by contrast, has appeared to allow Trump to write legal filings himself. Bondi was a marionette, but Blanche is a straight-up sock puppet: Blanche can only move his mouth when Trump sticks his arm up Blanche’s ass. Blanche rose to fame and power as Trump’s personal attorney during the Stormy Daniels saga. For some reason, there are people, including Trump apparently, who think Blanche “successfully” defended Trump during the trial surrounding his hush-money payments to Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. But Trump, and Blanche, lost that case. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He avoided jail time only because Judge Juan Merchan punked out and granted Trump an “unconditional discharge” in 2025 after Trump recaptured the presidency. If Trump had lost the 2024 election, he’d likely be in jail, thanks in part to Blanche’s pathetic defense. Blanche’s incompetence has been the defining feature of his time in government. As acting AG, he’s done nothing but file frivolous, borderline-nonsensical lawsuits against Trump’s enemies, like James Comey. He is also responsible for the white-grievance reparations fund that was meant to pay out Trump’s private January 6 army. That idea was so bad that even other Republicans blanched at the thought and shut it down. Blanche is the worst kind of attorney, because he only does what his client wants. He doesn’t provide any advice, doesn’t tell the client that their ideas are bad, and doesn’t even shape those bad ideas into their most palatable legal forms. He just does what he’s told. He’s more of a notary public than a legal adviser. You could call up any lawyer whose QR code you scanned on the subway and get Todd Blanche. But that’s not why Blanche is unfit to lead the Department of Justice. A subway lawyer could make a fine AG if they understood their client to be the American people. But Blanche doesn’t think he works for the American people. He doesn’t even think he works for the American government. Blanche’s one and only client is Donald Trump. Blanche has never for a day stopped being Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney, even as he’s been given more and more prosecutorial power inside the Department of Justice. Confirming Blanche as AG is like letting the mob boss pick the police commissioner. All that said, Blanche’s signature feature, his incompetence, might also be the saving grace for the rest of us. An incompetent AG who’s tasked with doing Trump’s bidding is far better than a competent AG trying to do Trump’s bidding. Consider the list of people who have served as attorney general (acting or confirmed) over Trump’s two terms: Jeff Sessions Matt Whitaker William Barr John Eastman (Eastman was never acting AG, but during the run-up to the January 6 coup attempt, after Trump lost the election and Barr refused to try to overturn it, Barr was pushed out and Eastman was effectively running the DOJ for several days.) Pam Bondi Sorry, friends, but I cannot look at that list and think, “Oh noes, not Todd Blanche, how will we ever survive?” Sessions is as close as we’ve come to having a Klansman running the DOJ in the 21st century. Whitaker was a toilet-bowl salesman. Eastman would have ended the republic if he could have. Bondi spent more time working on her burn books than her legal briefs. And then there’s Bill Barr, easily the most effective attorney general Trump has ever had. Barr was useful to us for about three weeks, when Trump was trying to overthrow the government, but, other than that, Barr was a terror for democracy. He was a relentlessly effective advocate for strongman control. He helped sculpt “unitary executive theory” into a blank check for Trump’s attempts to destroy the administrative state. And he used all the powers available to the DOJ to hide the truth and lie to the media. If (or when) Trump tries to overthrow the government again, will Blanche stand in his way like Barr once did? No, of course not. Blanche will do everything he can to help his client achieve his goal, no matter how illegal or unconstitutional that goal is. But Blanche will be bad at it. He’s not as smart as Barr or as creative as Eastman. He doesn’t have the connections of Sessions, and he can’t even sell a toilet bowl as effectively as Whitaker. Even Bondi could at least do a Mean Girls impression. All Blanche can do is put Trump’s Truth Social posts on DOJ letterhead and wait for the MAGA Supreme Court to bail him out. That doesn’t mean he should be confirmed as attorney general. Democrats should do everything in their limited power to stop him—and, frankly, even Republicans should demand a more effective advocate for their worst desires. If he gets the job, his tenure will be awful and lawless. Trump will use the power of the DOJ against his perceived enemies without facing any legal accountability whatsoever. But how is that different from every day? How would it be different with any AG Trump would nominate? If you want to stop a sock puppet, you don’t demand a different sock. You disarm the guy animating the puppet. Donald Trump has been the “acting” attorney general for his entire second term. As long as he holds power, the puppet he picks to say his words doesn’t really matter.

Sonny Rollins Lived to See Justice for His Wrongly Convicted Father

Aidan Levy — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The jazz legend fought for nearly 80 years to clear his father of racially motivated charges. In the wee hours of September 7, 2025, his 95th birthday, Sonny Rollins received news that felt like a dream: The secretary of the Navy had ordered his father’s wrongful 1946 court-martial conviction to be overturned. The jazz legend, who died on May 25, had been waiting eight decades for justice to be served. A draft of this article is one of the last things he read—a final coda to a life spent fighting injustice. Walter William Rollins was a decorated naval steward who had served generals, presidents, and members of Congress. He was arrested 80 years ago this past February on charges of committing adultery, violating a taboo of interracial romance with a white woman. For this and other unproven charges, ranging from “scandalous conduct” to embezzlement, he faced up to 180 years in a naval prison. In his 26 years of service to the Navy, Walter Rollins had maintained a spotless record. He had risen to the rank of chief steward at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, the highest a Black service member could attain at the time. The armed services remained segregated until 1948. There was no material evidence of any wrongdoing, and both the woman in question and her husband vehemently denied the allegations. Adm. Arthur W. Radford, a close friend of Walter Rollins who would soon become the second chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, served as a character witness. However, congressional pressure and an all-white court-martial in Jim Crow Maryland meant that injustice prevailed. Sonny celebrated his 16th birthday by going with his family to say goodbye to his father before the start of his two-year prison sentence. “It was like being lynched,” Rollins recalled recently, speaking of his father’s ordeal. The posthumous exoneration marked a stunning reversal. “You don’t hear stories like this, because they don’t happen,” he said. “This happened.” And yet, for decades, Rollins pretended that this legal lynching never happened. “I had sort of eliminated what happened to him from my mind,” he said. “It was a terrible thing to go through, and so I had to get away from having to think about that the rest of my life.” I discovered this buried family secret while doing research for Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, the biography I published in 2022. There was no mention of this traumatic chapter in Rollins’s life in his voluminous archive at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, nor in the thousands of interviews with Rollins. Terri Hinte, his publicist of 50 years, had never heard about it. After the story of Walter Rollins’s arrest broke, though, it was anything but a secret. The scandal was reported in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and hundreds of other publications in the US, and as far away as Sydney, Australia, in exhaustive detail, displaying a rush to judgment in the court of public opinion. Some articles referred to Walter as “Othello.” Sonny’s first mention in print was not about his music, but in connection to the case. Following the revelation of this ordeal in the book, Rollins was reluctant to reopen that door and risk crushing disappointment. “He was already living with this, he was resigned to it, there was nothing that could be done,” Hinte told me. And yet, “it was so clearly a gross miscarriage of justice. How can you just be resigned to that?” So as my press tour unfolded, I began quietly working with Hinte to see if this wrong could be righted.

America Is Due for a Deep Clean

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

This country cannot deliver on its promises until we collectively act to to ensure equal protection for all. I love America—the place where I was born, the people who have loved me, the songs that have shaped my soundscape, and the story in which I’ve had to negotiate my own existence. I also know America well enough to know her deepest flaws, and I know she will never be all that she aspires to be until she repents of the marginalization of some people from her beginning. Langston Hughes wrote, “America never was America to me, / And yet I swear this oath— / America will be!” At this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we have a nation we love, founded on a great dream and the words of men who, even when they signed their names, knew that they were empty phrases for poor men, women, Indigenous people, and Black people. 250 Years of Searching for a More Perfect Union Alexander Hamilton, the Wrong Founder William Hogeland Separation of Church and State: America’s Best Idea John Fugelsang We Must Restore Congress as the Predominant Branch of Government Jamie Raskin It is as though our great Declaration and Constitution represent a great political house with empty rooms. There have been empty promises and empty dreams for so many. The quill wrote “freedom” and “justice,” but the same quill enshrined counting an enslaved human as three-fifths of a person; it also lessened women and never ensured that the right to vote and the right to public education were guaranteed by the Constitution. Still, some people have always kept believing they could fill the house according to the instructions of the grand design. For 250 years, every moral movement that has pushed this nation toward greater justice has tried to fill the house according to the promise on its deed. This was supposed to be a turnkey job, but so much was left undone and unfulfilled. So the abolitionists tried to fill the house with the justice and freedom promised to enslaved people through the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and the work of the Reconstruction. The Social Gospel and labor movements tried to fill the house with equity for poor people, and the suffrage movement tried to fill the house for women. The civil-rights, women’s-rights, immigrants’-rights, and LGBTQ-rights movements all tried to fill the rooms of the house that remained empty for so many people. Today, movements for a living wage and healthcare and action to address the climate crisis are still pushing to fill the empty rooms. All of these movements have been trying to fill the house with what was promised would define the house from the beginning—the rights that the founders said were endowed by God and thus inalienable. At times over these 250 years, we have been successful in partially filling this house, but we have also seen effort after effort to remove any progress and to reject what we thought was finally, permanently in this house called America. As a theologian and student of Scripture, I want America to hear a message from Jesus right now. In the New Testament, Luke records that Jesus said: When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. Our Constitution and founding documents and creeds are clean and in order. They promise so much of what we all know to be right and good. This is why Dr. King was able to say he believed in a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. But unrealized and spoiled, this dream leaves some rooms of our body politic vacant and subject to other spirits that are wrong, unjust, mean, deceitful, fascist, authoritarian, and immoral. These spirits come in and take over the house with even greater malice than some of the former occupants. Could this be the root of our crisis today? Because we didn’t fill the American house with fully secured voting rights and equal protection for all, immoral and mean spirits have swept in to reverse fundamental voting rights, birthright citizenship, and the basic civil rights of people on the streets, who are now subject to search and seizure by masked men. Because we didn’t fill the house with healthcare as a human right, now we have forces that want to take away Medicaid and SNAP and other basic protections that we thought were secured. Because we didn’t fill the house with living wages, a new political majority brought forces who give the greedy more tax cuts, who are overturning labor rights and have granted corporations the status of people, and who allow those corporations to pay unchecked amounts of money into our political system, treating people like things and corporations like people. Could this be where we are? We once said we would be a nation that went to war only when we were attacked, but slowly this partial concept was removed and restraint on presidential powers was weakened, leaving the house open to someone abusing power and starting a war because of a feeling he has in his gut. We must be honest and say we let in much of what we see now. And we must take responsibility for doing what we have the power to do to set our house in order. Religious leaders, progressive media, and movement activists must form a moral fusion movement strong enough to deep-clean our house. We need a Third Reconstruction to fill the house with policies that will guarantee a living wage, healthcare, fully funded public education, affordable housing, green jobs, justice for immigrants, and a peace economy. We must go to work now, in this 250th year, to build a coalition that will vote for a deep clean: a massive sweeping of corrupt political leaders, from the statehouse to the White House, who have either abused their power or refused to challenge those who did. And this deep cleaning must go on for a while, not just one sweep in an election.

The Contradictions of 1776

Gerald Horne — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

From the outset the United States was founded to protect both freedom and slavery. Joseph J. Ellis is one of the most celebrated historians in the nation. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and once the holder of an endowed chair at Mount Holyoke, he was hailed by The Washington Post as the “most widely read scholar of the Revolutionary period and…probably the most influential as well.” His best-selling books on Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other founders have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have been instrumental in forging a remarkable consensus, from left to right, that sees July 4, 1776, as a sacred date and a great leap forward for all of humanity. But in his latest book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, Ellis reconsiders the essence of his oeuvre and this consensus, which is akin to the pope reconsidering Catholicism. Focusing “on two unquestionably horrific tragedies the founders oversaw”—the “failure to end slavery, and the failure to avoid Indian removal”—Ellis seeks to understand how and why they happened. “Next to the failure to end slavery,” he writes, the “inability to reach a just accommodation with the Native Americans was the greatest failure of the revolutionary generation.” Charting not only the history of the republic’s founders but also the history that preceded and followed them, he outlines what he terms the “Great Silence”: “For more than four centuries, the most important voices of Western civilization remained mute as a highly organized program of unspeakable barbarity with genocidal implications flourished throughout Europe. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Aquinas, Erasmus, Locke, and all the Catholic popes regarded slavery and the slave trade as acceptable features of European society.” Why has Ellis chosen at this late date to break from the pack of rationalizers and justifiers? The antics of the 47th US president and his avid followers have clearly left him shaken, but more than that: They point to a pattern, “an inherently paradoxical pattern,” that “racism surges only after some semblance of racial equality becomes foreseeable,” which Ellis now believes runs throughout this nation’s history. It began, he notes, “during the American founding,” and “we are currently living through its most recent manifestation in the movement to ‘Make America Great Again.’” Ellis does not expand on this explosive point, but he concedes that the late Edmund Morgan, one of his mentors, got it right, particularly in his trailblazing American Slavery, American Freedom, which argues that these polar opposites were there from the outset. Much like Macbeth and Banquo’s ghost, Ellis concedes, the nation cannot evade the tragedy preordained at its founding. To begin his story, Ellis starts with the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade, which accelerated as the settlers landed on these shores and was “growing exponentially” in the prelude to 1776. He observes cogently that “creating a [multiracial] society” was not as pressing a concern in the imperial capitals as it was here. Abolition would have created such a nation, and this was inconceivable for most of the founders, he suggests. Likewise, he presents the expropriation of the Indigenous as being virtually inevitable, given the pressure from below of land-hungry settlers. Throughout his account, Ellis continually reminds us that without a compromise favoring the enslavers, the republic would not have materialized—to which I say: So what? This could have meant another Canada, a pleasing alternative to the war-driven status quo. He also explores the central paradox found in the fact that the republic depended on the labor of enslaved workers, one that Morgan had put at the center of his own work—namely that, as Ellis writes, “the presence of an enslaved black population actually enhanced the commitment to freedom by the white population of Virginia…. Less prominent Virginians were spared the task of performing manual labor, since enslaved blacks filled that role, thereby allowing all white Virginians to unite racially instead of being divided into upper and lower classes, as was the case in England and throughout Europe.” A corrupt bargain indeed: a republic born out of enslaving many so that some could profit and be free. Naturally, such a society would engender enormous instability. Enslavers, and those who admired them, Ellis writes, “were sitting atop an active volcano on the verge of eruption…especially in the Tidewater [Virginia] counties, where Blacks outnumbered Whites three to one.” Virginia was the California of the founding, the largest and most prosperous settlement, and it produced a disproportionate number of presidents in the antebellum era. Yet as a place where enslaved Africans tended to reside, it was simultaneously “the soft underbelly of the American resistance” to London’s rule. Being the richest and, at the same time, the most insecure of the 13 states fomented unsteadiness that ultimately culminated in civil war. This was especially the case, Ellis writes, when Virginia’s last colonial governor, Lord Dunmore, created the “Ethiopian Regiment, numerous and armed,” which began “marching toward isolated plantations with revenge in their hearts. Any Virginia planter who harbored doubts about the wisdom of war with Great Britain quickly discovered a powerful reason to abandon those doubts.” Simultaneously, the British Empire was becoming ever more dependent on Black labor. As Ellis writes, “the Caribbean, most especially Jamaica…provided more revenue to the empire than all the American colonies put together.” Seeking to keep a lid on Ireland, and increasingly on India as well, the British felt compelled to enlist more Black troops, which was not endearing to the settlers.

The Entwined History of Capitalism and Race in the Americas and Beyond

Bill Fletcher Jr. — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Better to start the history of the United States in 1492 than in 1776. I have grappled with the relationship between capitalism and race since I became a leftist. My path was far from direct, starting with developing an interest (and later becoming an activist) in the Black Freedom movement and then being exposed to the thinking of Malcolm X, whose autobiography I first read at the age of 13, in the fall of 1967. Both he and, later, the Black Panther Party refuted the notion that the development of “race” and capitalism were two fully independent processes, and they noted, significantly, that the resolution of racist (and national) oppression could not be accomplished in the absence of a direct confrontation with capitalism. That increasingly made sense to me, but an important unanswered question revolved around the strategic implications of such an understanding. Several years ago, I stumbled across a formulation by George Padmore, the onetime communist and leading member of the Communist International who would eventually become a noncommunist Pan Africanist, that captured both my concerns and my criticisms regarding how too much of the left failed to appreciate the strategic and practical implications of the link between race and capitalism. In 1937, Padmore was asked by the prominent socialist magazine Left Review to contribute to a symposium on the Spanish Civil War. Padmore stated without hesitation his solidarity with the Spanish Popular Front and the struggle against fascism, but he also expressed his frustration that his Spanish comrades had not included or recognized the centrality of what was then known as the “national-colonial question” in the context of fighting the fascist coup led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Specifically, Padmore took issue with Spain’s colonization and racialization of parts of Africa. “The sympathy of Africans and other colonial peoples naturally goes out to the toiling masses of Spain in their heroic struggle against Fascist-barbarism, for they have not forgotten Abyssinia,” he noted (referring to the Italian invasion of what is now Ethiopia under Mussolini). But “precisely because of this, it is so regrettable that democratic Spain, by failing to make an anti-imperialist gesture to the Moors, played into the hands of Franco. This should be a reminder to the European workers that: ‘No people who oppress another people can themselves be free.’” Since discovering this quote several years ago, I have remained haunted by the larger story that it tells about radical politics. Linking the struggle against fascism to the struggle against empire and colonialism, Padmore made it clear that progressive forces had no choice but to engage with a politics of both anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism—a struggle for racial and national emancipation as well as an emancipation from the forces of exploitation and dictatorship. I have found few other statements that so succinctly summarize the dilemma facing much of the left in the Global North—a statement that kept returning to me as I read the compelling new book by Sylvie Laurent, Capital and Race. The debate over the relationship between race and capitalism, anti-colonialism and national liberation, has been ongoing ever since  the left was first called the left. Within socialist and progressive movements, the matter regularly emerges in late-night bull sessions and in white papers and policy programs. Is it possible to develop a unifying and universal class politics that focuses on emancipating all of the oppressed around the world that does not ignore or marginalize in some way the specific concerns of race, national oppression, and sex? Should class politics and economic programs be the priority, or should we focus on other injustices? And what are we to do about those movements of national liberation that uplift some groups within a region but not others? How does a politics that seeks to establish nation-states accord with socialism’s internationalist ambitions? In the United States, this debate has existed, in effect, since the colonial era. It has also perplexed and divided the left around the rest of the world as republican and anti-colonial movements emerged, in particular in the Southern Hemisphere. The debate is integrally connected to larger themes, especially one that periodically arises as a source of controversy: the role that the European conquest of the Americas and the slave trade in Africans played in the development of capitalism as a global system. To paraphrase Padmore: To what extent can progressive movements in the so-called Global North be truly progressive, egalitarian, and committed to working-class emancipation if and when such movements ignore—or worse—national, anti-racist, and anti-colonial struggles in the places oppressed by their own governments? It is for this reason that Capital and Race is such an invaluable text. In many respects, its importance resides in the centrality placed by the author on the year 1492. Laurent does not claim that 1492 marked the beginning of capitalism; in fact, she describes capitalism as a process unfolding over hundreds of years and going through various stages, including agricultural, mercantile, and industrial. But it is in and around 1492, with the Spanish victory in the Reconquista (defeating the Moors and driving the Jews out) and the commencement of the invasion of the Western Hemisphere, that we see dramatic changes in the scale and pace of capitalist development that could have occurred only as a result of the conquest of the Americas and the introduction of the African slave trade. Although Laurent appears to cautiously accept the notion that the construction of race preceded the rise of capitalism—a point with which I disagree—she correctly identifies an early expression of it (one could even call it a proto-racism) in Europe in connection with the persecution of certain populations: for example, Jews, who were racialized as “others” prior to the full development of capitalism with the enslavement of Africans and the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Laurent doesn’t address whether such tendencies of racialization existed in other parts of the world—or, if so, why they didn’t play a similar role to what we saw in the construction of European (and later North American) capitalism. But she does demonstrate that the system we have come to know in the post-1492 period as race and racism emerged in direct connection with the development of capitalism and the expansion of empire. The slow evolution of the religious persecution of European Jews into a form of racialization; the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and the claim by the monarchy of seeking an alleged purity of the blood; and the enslavement of Africans and the genocidal destruction of Indigenous civilizations in the Americas—all were part of a larger program that focused on the justification of horrific oppression, along with the creation of systems of social control, in order to serve the growth, expansion, and political stability of the developing capitalist states. For Laurent, this intertwined development of capitalism and race became more pronounced as the European empires began to enslave Africans and to conquer parts of North and South America. The formal racial constructions that Europe installed were part of the violent period of conquest and slavery that some have described—following Karl Marx—as “primitive accumulation” and others have called “war capitalism.” To put it another way (and borrowing from Eric Williams), slavery did not happen because of racism; rather, racism emerged as the direct result of slavery and how it allowed some to profit off the labor—and land—of others. The dispossession of the Americas, and later Africa and Asia, put into place a global system of capitalism despite the fact that the initial conquerors—Spain and Portugal—were still in late-stage feudalism at the time of the conquests. Here, Laurent makes a critical point, noting that much of the wealth gained by Spain and Portugal did not remain in those countries but went to banks in the Netherlands—capitalism’s first real financial center—and then were used in other parts of Europe to help finance capitalist development. Capitalism, therefore, must be understood as having started as a global system rather than one that began, for example, with the factories of Britain, as some on the left would have it. One great advantage to Laurent’s book is the way she deftly shows that the construction of race and racism was always a political and economic project that served two interrelated purposes: the justification of oppression and dispossession, on the one hand, and control over the labor and produce of the oppressed, on the other. The successful plunder of much of the world in order to enrich Europe and, later, North America and to advance capitalism necessitated the construction of a system of racial differentiation. As Laurent notes, elements of this system could be seen in the persecution of Jews—which certainly had become, by the 19th century, an anti-Jewish racism—and the “othering” and racialization of various ethnic populations, but it became an integral part of the capitalist system ever after. Under capitalism, “race” becomes a defined set of categories and takes on a qualitatively different aspect from anything that preceded it—i.e., by condemning entire populations for eternity to a status of subordination to and incompatibility with the dominating race, with no means for achieving freedom outside of collective struggle. Laurent notes that in the colonial era beginning with 1492, the colonial oppressors held different and often contradictory views vis-à-vis the populations they dominated or sought to dominate. By way of example, Spain and Portugal debated the “right” to enslave the Indigenous peoples of the Americas while not debating the legitimacy of seizing their land and riches. Yet there was no debate about the “right” to enslave Africans!

Tulsa at a Crossroads

Kristal Brent Zook — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Reparations and restoration on Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day. On June 1, 2026, Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Tulsa, made a historic announcement in what I like to call a microphone-drop moment. After months of silence and whispers about what he would do to address calls for reparations, Nichols unveiled his plans at a much-awaited ceremonial presentation at the Greenwood Cultural Center in North Tulsa, on the day that he’d recently proclaimed Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, a citywide holiday. From his place at the podium, Nichols spoke directly to the two known remaining survivors in the audience, honoring the community harmed by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that killed some 300 citizens in what has been called the most violent act of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history. (Today, only one survivor remains: Lessie Benningfield Randle, who is 111.) It was time to restore, Nichols said, quoting from the book of Isaiah. “Instead of your shame you shall have double honor. And instead of confusion, they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore, in their land, they shall possess double. Everlasting joy shall be theirs.” As Nichols later explained to me, he selected that passage because it spoke of a “reconnection and renewal of the relationship between God and his people. Tulsa, as a city in the Bible Belt, had broken that covenant in the most profound way possible, and in a very aggressive way, for a long time.” That was all well and good, many who attended that day must have thought, as they waited. But what was the mayor actually going to do? They’d gathered expectantly to hear what they hoped would, at last, be an action plan. On this first day of observance, Nichols continued, “I’m announcing that my office has been working alongside our legal department on the establishment of the Greenwood Trust—a private charitable trust that will raise and facilitate the investment of $105 million in private funds along our road to repair, restoration, and righteousness.” Boom. There it was. Audible gasps could be heard from the crowd as he laid out what would come next. At that moment, Tulsa established itself as next in line to possibly become only the second city in America to provide reparations to a Black community historically harmed by racist actions. Evanston, Illinois, had been the first, in 2019, when the city’s legislative body voted to make payments of up to $25,000 for eligible applicants who had experienced housing discrimination and redlining between 1919 and 1969. As of September 2025, Evanston had met with more than 271 beneficiaries and paid out more than $6 million. While the federal government actively blocks efforts at repair for historically harmed communities, there is hope in a growing number of municipalities—cities and towns all across America—where more than 200 reparations initiatives have been established in the last several years. In my hometown of Santa Monica, California, one of the largest locally funded initiatives of its kind was unanimously approved by the city council in early 2026 with a $3.5 million Restorative Justice Fund—a development that had been instigated by the successful case of Constance White, the 90-year-old daughter of entrepreneur Silas White, who acquired land for an “Ebony Beach Club” in 1957. Nat King Cole was among the supporters, and some 2,000 members had signed up. White’s dreams were obliterated, however, when the city seized the property under eminent domain, and eventually demolished the building. In nearby Manhattan Beach, a wealthy town that still has a Black population of only about 1 percent today, “Bruce’s Beach,” a seaside resort that was seized from Black entrepreneurs Charles and Willa Bruce in 1924, was also recently returned to the couple’s great-grandsons. For the first time ever in this country, a local government body returned actual land to an actual Black family—land that had been taken under eminent domain for racially motivated reasons.

Gen Z’s Ability to Detect AI Is Far Lower Than You’d Expect

Jack Dozier — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A new poll revealed that young people are overly confident in their ability to identify AI content. On May 20, 2025, Google DeepMind released Veo 3—the AI video generator. The opportunity to produce realistic clips from brief textual prompts landed at fingertips’ reach—that is, if you were willing to pay the hefty $249.99 monthly fee. While generating Oscar-worthy documentaries at home still lies in the future, Google’s achievement settled a long-standing AI debate and proved that native, synchronized audio with cinematic text-to-video content was possible. Already, use of text-to-photo and text-to-video platforms is proliferating online. From AI-generated deepfake nude photos to political opposition ads—namely, in New York, Virginia and Texas—generative tools furnish damaging images and clips to bad-faith actors within seconds. What makes this ease of access more concerning: A majority of Americans are highly confident they can identify AI-generated images and videos, per the spring 2026 Yale Youth Poll. The experiment provided participants with two pairs of headshots: one pair from Adobe Stock and the other from single-sentence descriptive prompts on DeepMind’s publicly available Nano Banana 2.0. Expectedly, the most technologically literate subgroup of the poll (ages 18–34) overwhelmingly shared a confident belief that they were capable of detecting AI-generated content. But under this subsequent direct test, 80 percent of that demographic could identify AI images only 50 percent of the time. No longer do top-of-the-line AI images give viewers the “uncanny valley” feeling, nor are telltale signs of extra or mismatched limbs ever-present. These results, dating from early March 2026, disproportionately affect young people and mark the beginning of a slippery slope in distinguishing AI-generated content from reality. To address this concerning phenomenon, a community of content creators intent on promoting AI literacy has bubbled up over the past year. Jeremy Carrasco created his social-media accounts to share informational videos about AI-generated content, but only gained significant attention after debunking a viral video of animals bouncing on a trampoline in July 2025. The original video, which gained 244 million views on TikTok at the time of publication, fooled many viewers into believing this footage—generated to look like it was from a Ring-style camera—was genuine. For many, per Carrasco’s comments on Instagram, it was a wake-up call to the hyperrealistic capacities of generative AI tools. Carrasco approaches this quandary of AI detection through an almost scientific process, using a tool kit the average social-media user does not possess. “As a former encoding engineer, I have a lot of ways to just download the videos, look at their metadata, and understand where they likely came from, even from a platform level,” he said. “Most of what I actually think is accessible and durable is a lot of linguistic and pattern analysis.” Carrasco’s video format draws inspiration from NPR’s Car Talk. Like Car Talk’s hosts, Click and Clack, Carrasco takes viewers through a diagnostic process before reaching a conclusion about whether he found the content to be genuine, all while maintaining a goal of “helping people figure out where things are coming from in an entertaining and science-based way.” Evidently, Carrasco tapped into a bountiful market. With a cross-platform social-media following of more than a million, Carrasco estimates that he receives somewhere between 20 to 25 video requests daily from viewers. As such, Carrasco’s efforts exist to address an ever-changing media landscape in real time and without barriers to access: a digital-era public service. Yet, without Carrasco’s professional expertise, it is nearly impossible for the average viewer to determine what is and is not AI-generated. And independent content creators simply cannot keep up with the rapid flow of AI-generated content online.

Inside the Anti-ICE Protests at Delaney Hall

Amanda Moore — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

As federal agents increase the use of force at the facility, demonstrators are adopting new tactics. Since Memorial Day weekend, detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a hunger and labor strike to protest conditions at the facility—including substandard medical care, poor food, uncompensated labor, and the detainment of the elderly, minors, and pregnant women. Outside, protesters have gathered every day in solidarity. Some chant and hold signs; others work to block ICE vehicles from entering and exiting the detention center. Delaney Hall presents logistical challenges for demonstrators that weren’t in play at other ICE detention facilities that sparked mass protests. The Broadview facility in Chicago is in an industrial warehouse area, and the Whipple Building in Minnesota sits on a sprawling campus of federal buildings and parking lots. By contrast, Delaney Hall is on a four-lane thoroughfare. Trucks and buses drive by perilously close to protesters at all hours of the day and night. As a result, this past week’s protests at Delaney Hall forced protesters to alter their tactics. As I covered the actions at Broadview, I dodged rubber bullets and faced down armed officers; at protests in Portlands, it was pepper balls. As I shadowed immigration raids in other cities, ICE and Border Patrol agents routinely used tear gas. At Delaney Hall, agents were armed with Tasers and the most potent pepper spray available. I arrived at Delaney Hall on Tuesday, May 26. The protesters had set up barricades at one entrance to the facility, where employees of GEO group—the private contractor running the detention center—would come and go. At the other side, the driveway that the ICE vehicles mostly used, protesters linked arms and stood in the way. In response, the agents would rush into the crowd, brandishing Tasers, batons, and pepper spray. Sometimes they’d come into the crowd to chase a specific person, but that didn’t mean they ignored everyone else. In one run-in, as I was filming agents chasing a protester and wrestling him to the ground, I got a full dose of pepper spray. Shortly after, agents chased a protester across the street and down to the train tracks that run parallel to the road. They tased him, pepper-sprayed him, and detained him. From that point forward, it seemed like at least one agent was always holding a Taser, ready to go. When protesters attempted to block the ICE cars, they always cleared space for medical emergency vehicles. This soon became something of a ritual, since emergency vehicles were in steady demand. It was not long until every time one arrived ICE cars were close behind them, zooming through the path that protesters made for the ambulances. Even with its superior firepower, the ICE contingent at Delaney Hall was clearly understaffed. Eventually, agents parked a row of DHS vehicles parallel to the line they held in in front of the detention facility entrance. The next night, a set of talkative but violent agents were at the end of the line, where members of the press had gathered. A few protesters had decided to block the road and keep the trucks from their routes, but they were a small minority. Soon, an argument ensued. As the protesters fought one another, the agents looked on and joked among themselves that the fracas wasn’t their problem. “That wasn’t your stance in Minneapolis,” I said. Outside of the Whipple Building, agents had regularly broken up fights between left-wing activists and right-wing ICE supporters. “What changed?” Instead of answering, they asked me what Minneapolis had been like (short answer: cold). They went on to explain that they also had been stationed there. I told them I had been covering ICE and the Border Patrol since August, and this was the most violent I had yet seen them be. “What about Minnesota?” they asked.

Trump Wants You Talking About His Manners—Not His Election Lies

Chris Lehmann — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Don’t let Trump’s blowup on NBC’s Meet the Press distract from what he actually said. When President Donald Trump abruptly broke off his interview with NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, the consensus among the commentariat was that Trump was once more acting out of hair-trigger pique and poor impulse control. The exchange “was explosive” and “heated”; the aggrieved president “stormed off” into a cloud of paranoid conspiracy theories about the media’s collusion with Democratic-engineered election theft. Such accounts fit a common template of coverage during Trump’s second term: The president, never an avatar of calm, reasoned judgment, is increasingly in thrall to wild mood swings and tantrums—when, that is, he’s not falling asleep on the job after a late-night bout of online ****-posting. Yet there’s always been ample calculation in Trump’s shows of grievance and outrage, and Sunday’s performance was no exception. It’s important to underline this given the context for Trump’s outburst: Welker’s insistence that Trump’s multiple allegations of rampant election fraud carried out by his political opponents have no basis in fact. In grouping this under the vague and ever-pliant heading of “Trump unhinged,” our keepers of public discourse are repeating the miscalculation that they made in the run-up to the failed coup attempt on January 6: By failing to account for Trump’s theatrics as anything more than the latest flourish from an old man predisposed to shouting at a cloud, they’re missing the urgent and disturbing effort to discredit an election that will serve as a referendum on Trump’s performance. To grasp this point, we must pan back from the decontextualized presentation of “takeaways” from Trump’s interview with Welker and consider the full exchange. Trump’s belligerent replies to Welker’s correction of his false election claims came near the end of a 40-minute interview, which proceeded along remarkably equable lines—especially by the standards of Trump’s usual run-ins with mainstream press reporters, particularly those who are women. More than half of the sit-down was devoted to Trump’s assessment of the Iran War and prospects for an agreement to end the conflict; seeming to relish the role of a diplomatic power broker, Trump described what he considered the successful US campaign to “decapitate” the leadership of the Iranian regime and to lay waste to its military resources. He also claimed, for the umpteenth time, that the United States is on the verge of a lasting peace deal with Iran—while also holding out the prospect that he could unilaterally bomb the country into submission. After claiming to have masterfully maneuvered Iran’s leaders into the framework of an agreement, he said they would sign “or I’m gonna blow the hell out of them.” This was all Trump’s usual fact-challenged bluster about his handling of the war, but apart from a stray swipe at opinion polling (“They’re all fake polls, especially yours,” Trump told Welker) and a drive-by characterization of Welker as “a big progressive,” Trump mostly projected a statesmanlike calm (once more grading on a curve) through most of the interview, hailing his own supposed breakthroughs in negotiations and contrasting the timeline leading to the conclusion of hostilities to the quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq. Then there was the weird series of weather and technical delays that extended the scheduled taping of the exchange. Trump had invited Welker to interview him after an appearance in Wisconsin to shore up support in the beleaguered Midwest farm economy. As they sat in a corrugated tin shed in front of a prop John Deere tractor, the skies opened up, and the torrential rain made it difficult for the interlocutors to hear each other. They paused repeatedly for several minutes to let the rain let up; on another occasion, taping difficulties prompted a similar delay. Through the foul-ups, Trump maintained his generally even keel, marveling about the downpour and joking about the delays—scarcely the temperament of a guy hell-bent on blowing up the whole proceedings. Trump’s talk became more overtly warlike when the discussion turned to domestic politics—though even then his tone didn’t modulate much. When Welker asked him about the status of his “so-called anti-weaponization fund” in the wake of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement that the payoff scheme for January 6 rioters was dead in the water, Trump went into a tirade about the justice owed to victims of the “radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe.” “People have been destroyed, many have committed suicide. Think of it, people have committed suicide because of a bunch of thugs went after them.” If one were to actually think of it, of course, that phrasing is a far more apt description of the police officers victimized by the mob at the US Capitol than of the brownshirts seeking to install Trump as a dictator. But Trump was eager to revisit all the hits from the January 6 playlist, calling out James Comey—whom Trump fired more than three years prior to the insurrection—as “a dirty cop” and falsely claiming that FBI agents were leading rioters into the Capitol. As Welker patiently called out these falsehoods, Trump turned on her, saying she was “either crooked or stupid. You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged.” In his trademark register of aggrieved customer demanding to talk to a manager, he claimed that Democrats are again seeking to rig the outcome of last week’s gubernatorial “jungle primary” in California because it’s taken more than five days to tally the votes—even though the lead GOP candidate, Steve Hilton, is poised to make it into the final runoff against Democratic opponent Xavier Becerra. Trump’s California charge is structurally identical to his claims that election night counts were manipulated against him when large numbers of anti-Trump voters in urban districts were accounted for later in the evening because it takes longer to count votes in more densely populated jurisdictions. The claims were **** then, and they’re **** now. So it was no wonder that Welker’s decision to make that point against Trump’s bogus assertion that he knows about voter fraud “by looking” evidently provoked the president to cut the interview short. Even then, however, he hadn’t “stormed off” or otherwise erupted; when Welker asked him to stay because she had flown out to Wisconsin to the sit-down, he countered that he’d been sitting with her for an hour in the rain—before signing off with, “Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” Yes, this was condescending, patriarchal Trump-speak, but it was hardly a devastating breach in White House media relations, as Welker confirmed from her perch in the NBC studio; in a followup exchange with the president, she recounted, they both agreed that the weather delays had created difficulties for the exchange and that there’d be a follow-up interview for the show at a later date. That all gave the lie to Trump’s fulminations over the “crooked” state of things at NBC and how “a country can never be great with a dishonest press.” (On Welker’s side, the closing blowup also served to dilute the memory of her disastrous debut on the show in 2023, with a Trump interview that left a series of trademark flagrant Trump lies unchallenged, including several whoppers about January 6.) Why did Trump shift so rapidly to outrage before the NBC cameras? We can rest assured it wasn’t due to the controlled diplomatic prowess he always claims to be training on his counterparts across the negotiating table in Iran. No, Trump’s outburst allowed him to use a major network platform to cast unfounded suspicion on the vote in California, which happens also to be dominated by the Democratic Party. And in doing so, he once more got the rest of the punditocracy to focus on his allegedly erratic personal bearing—and not his election lies. Without missing a beat, Trump’s lickspittle speaker of the House, Mike Johnson—the ardent House member who strategized with the Trump White House to get a vote before Congress to upend the results of the 2020 on January 6—has taken up the same claim that the California voting count must be crooked because of… vibes. “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove,” the addled lawmaker explained to reporters on Monday. “But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.” By throttling Kristen Welker in the style of a professional wrestler, Donald Trump short-circuited the country’s public discourse in a way that a fierce Midwestern thunderstorm never could. After such a gratifying afternoon’s work, why on Earth wouldn’t he come back for more?

How Trump Has Boxed Himself Out of a Face-Saving Iran Deal

David Faris — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

By failing to absorb the lessons of Iran’s strategic victories, the White House is on course to turn the present stalemate into a disastrous quagmire. The conventional wisdom today is that President Donald Trump can’t bring himself to sign off on specific aspects of an interim agreement with Iran that finally reopens the strategic Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping because cutting a deal would deeply wound his delicate pride. By this reckoning, the president is just too arrogant and delusional to countenance an agreement that looks anything like the President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018 and has railed against for years as an embarrassing capitulation. This general assessment of Trump’s haphazard approach to an accord to end hostilities with Iran isn’t wrong, but it tends to downplay how deeply unworkable the president’s preferred exit strategy really is. Today, any return to the status quo ante in Iran—a basic framework to contain the country’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for standard economic and diplomatic concessions—isn’t really achievable. What’s more likely, amid the stalemated US offensive and shambolic overtures to broker subsidiary regional agreements to rein in Iran, is a moderately less favorable deal than the one Trump torched eight years ago, because America’s strategic position in the region is clearly in irreparable shambles. The US and Israeli militaries have failed to produce the results they hoped for in their Plan A approach to bring the Iranian regime to heel with a massive display of air power. And the weeks-long standoff over control of the Strait of Hormuz has made it painfully clear that Tehran now possesses its own considerable leverage over the global economy. The combined effect of these setbacks has been to blow up the existing regional security architecture, which we now know was propped up by little other than systematic graft, US and Israeli conventional military dominance and the willingness of both powers to act with utter impunity and contempt for international law. To get the Strait of Hormuz open again, Trump is going to have to at least tacitly acknowledge that there can be no return to business as usual if and when the negotiators are able to work out some kind of deal. Any agreement that stands a chance of making it through the various power centers of Iran’s mysterious postwar regime will leave the country in a stronger position than it was before Trump got peer-pressured into this idiotic misadventure. That’s because, despite fanciful wishcasting from the White House and right-wing foreign policy pundits about how the health of the global economy can easily be routed around Hormuz, it will take years to build the pipelines and ports needed to decrease the waterway’s strategic importance. Pipelines and harbors can also be bombed—and we can trust that Tehran will focus its energy and creativity on keeping the Strait as its chief strategic linchpin in the region. The real legacy of Trump’s misadventure in Iran is the way the president’s boundless arrogance and indolent inability to plan or follow through on anything has served to deliver Hormuz directly into the hands of Iranian leaders as the foundation of a new era of unrivaled influence over the global economy. After all, if a profoundly outnumbered and outgunned Iran can destroy military bases operated by the mighty United States and force Donald Trump to crawl back to the negotiating table, how can anyone be confident that thousands of miles of functionally defenseless pipelines can be secured from the same threat? Iran’s newfound power has also inverted the negotiating dynamic in ways that go far beyond renewed passage of commercial ships through the Strait. For years Republicans chided President Barack Obama for focusing narrowly on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program while leaving other elements of the regime’s regional strategy in place—including its support for Hezbollah, its ballistic missile program, and even the character of the regime itself. They demanded “issue linkage,” believing that there was no serious hope of winding down the country’s nuclear program without coercing Tehran into a grand bargain—or, better yet, regime collapse. But now it is Iran demanding issue linkage, insisting that a humiliatedTrump halt the barbaric destruction of Lebanon by his unconscionable allies in Jerusalem, submit to some kind of fee-for-service arrangement through Hormuz, and make a serious, enforceable commitment to nonaggression. Even if the Iranians are somewhat overplaying their hand, I’m not sure anyone realizes quite how astonishing and thorough this turnabout really is. Iran also isn’t bending because Trump’s feeble counter-blockade of Hormuz isn’t working. Every single prediction about how close Iran is to collapsing or folding has been proven hilariously wrong. The most recent of these is the feverishly touted “storage capacity” crisis for oil—one of the chief objectives of Trump’s counter-blockade. (In fairness, predictions about how the global economy would imminently collapse without getting Hormuz open have also not aged well.) On April 14, influential New York Times columnist Bret Stephens cited an Iranian opposition claim that the country’s oil fields would be forced to shut down “within weeks” of a blockade. He was almost certainly parroting propaganda from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank that, in the great neoconservative tradition, seems to exist less to defend democracies than to embroil them in endless wars. On April 15, FDD’s Miad Malaki went on Fox News and claimed that Iran had “13 to 15 days” of storage capacity before oil wells would need to start shutting down. That was 56 days ago, and in spite of all these confident geopolitical prophecies, a Great Iranian Oil Storage Crisis is not yet upon us. None of the strategic geniuses promoting them seemed to understand what actually happened next: Iran could simply built or repurposed its oil-storage capacity, rerouted exports, and reduced production. That set up the regime with what now looks to be an indefinite runway to endure the blockade. Nor can Trump easily negotiate his way out of this self-imposed dilemma. That’s because America is facing an adversary that justifiably will not trust the United States to follow through on any of its commitments—or to refrain from murdering the parties it’s allegedly engaged with in diplomatic negotiations. For Tehran, Trump himself is the main reason the country cannot sign a phased agreement that delivers little to nothing up front. It’s not just the repeated attacks Trump has unleashed during negotiations over the past year; the whole arc of Iran policy under his two terms militates any viable framework for an agreement, as does the prospect that someone even less principled and trustworthy could replace him in two, four, or six years. Iran will therefore require more than a gussied-up version of the Obama Iran deal to reopen Hormuz. What’s more, Iran’s negotiators believe, not without reason, that they have the leverage to wait for it. To move toward an agreement, they will need to see visible proof that Trump is capable of putting the bureaucratic machinery in motion to make sanctions relief a reality. Perhaps more important, they need to see the Trump administration making concessions now in order to have any confidence that it can implement greater concessions later on. Then there’s the regional power that goaded Trump into this disastrous conflict in the first place. Iranian diplomats know that if Trump can’t restrain Israel now, it’s far from guaranteed that Netanyahu and his successors won’t launch fresh air attacks at will going forward. The tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran over the weekend are exactly the kind of thing that Tehran fears will go on indefinitely. That dynamic alone would make it impossible for Iran to confidently rebuild its ruined infrastructure. These complicated factors mean that America has never needed a stable, trustworthy leader more than it does right now. Instead, it is currently helmed by an impulsive, rapidly declining cable-news addict whose incessant social-media shitposting is a negotiator’s nightmare. (Indeed, Iranian leaders have been allegedly told—again, with ample justification—to ignore it altogether.) All of these obstacles make it likely, despite Trump’s incessant, unfounded claims to the country, that the whole stalemate could go on for months. The markets no longer seem to care one way or the other, and if both Trump and Tehran believe they can endure the political fallout from their mutually ruinous blockades, what exactly is going to lead to a breakthrough? In a world of conventional political incentives, a deal would have already happened. After all, putting Netanyahu in his place while ending the war, reducing US military presence in the Middle East, and bringing prices back down to somewhere in the neighborhood of where they were in February would be a genius political move for Trump and the GOP. There’s also a very clear opportunity for the opposition party, if Democrats can find a way around their own pro-Israel, anti-Iran dead-enders. The long-standing bipartisan, pro-Israel consensus in the United States is emerging as a distinct electoral liability for both parties. Democratic voters now overwhelmingly back a reassessment of America’s uncritical support for Israel, and that shift is happening inside the GOP too. A recent Politico poll found that a 52 percent majority of 2024 Trump voters disapprove of the Israeli government’s current policies, and just 27 percent of the voters who put him in office approve of both Israel and its actions. There is nothing but an upside for Trump should he end the war on terms favorable to Iran and then tell Netanyahu to go pound sand. American voters couldn’t care less who controls the Strait of Hormuz, so long as the cost of living goes down and there’s no threat of mobilizing the 50,000 American troops in the region for a disastrous ground war. As Obama understood, and Trump apparently does not, the only position that—for better or worse—enjoys backing from a majority of the American people is that Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons. Yet Trump is such a hopeless, preening narcissist that he won’t be able to withstand the withering criticism such a pivot would draw from the congressional Republicans, cable news chatterboxes, and sinecured think-tank operatives who are unable to see Iran as a more or less normal authoritarian country willing to inflict extraordinary pain on its citizens to ensure the survival of the execrable ruling regime. Worse, even if an agreement is signed and the smoke clears, the scale of America’s defeat in this war would then become impossible to dismiss or downplay. Iran has unexpectedly exposed the hollowness of the conventional military dominance that the United States and Israel wield in the region. In one fell swoop, the Iranian response to the invasion has turned the entire US basing structure in the region from an asset into a liability. The days of pushing adversaries around without any fear of reprisal are gone. And while it remains to be seen how and under what circumstances Iran would be willing to deploy its new leverage, this is basically a worst-case-scenario outcome from the perspective of the feckless American leaders who launched it. It’s also true that the corrupt, unstable balance-of-powers arrangement that America presided over as of February was crying out for a reevaluation anyway. The path to a prosperous, peaceful Middle East runs, as it always has, through a just and durable settlement to the plight of the Palestinians. And the path to heightened conflict and imperial defeat is just what the Trump administration has drawn up: diplomatic rule by a sclerotic gangster capitalist order, imposed through the Gulf Arab tyrannies against the wishes of the vast majority of the region’s inhabitants, permitting Israel and the United States to violently and indefinitely dominate the region. Coming to terms with how thoroughly Trump’s Iran gambit has destroyed that state of affairs will likely take years. As a practical matter, though, it can be summed up quite cogently: To paraphrase Anton Chigurh, the sociopathic hit man from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, “If the strategy you followed brought you to this, of what use was the strategy?”

Daniel Ellsberg vs. “Ordinary Insanity”

Norman Solomon — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A new documentary issues an urgent warning about our dangerous nuclear delusions. A few days before Thanksgiving in 2021, Daniel Ellsberg looked directly into a camera lens and talked about nuclear preparations for annihilating almost everyone on Earth. “That is insane,” he said. “And you have to call it a kind of ordinary insanity, because it’s so widely shared.” The new film An Ordinary Insanity condenses Ellsberg’s essential message into a half hour. It follows the acclaimed 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Judith Ehrlich—who codirected that Oscar-nominated movie and is the director of An Ordinary Insanity—says that “as his understanding of nuclear war evolved, Dan confronted it for us and dug deep into its roots.” When Ellsberg gave the 7,000 pages of the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, he was risking the rest of his life in prison for exposing the official deceptions behind the Vietnam War. That brave act, causing him to be vilified and beloved, began his five decades of tireless antiwar efforts. Through it all, his main preoccupation continued to be reducing the risk of nuclear war. Early in his professional life, Ellsberg had become a “national security” insider, with expertise in the command and control of nuclear weapons along with strategic planning. Access to official calculations made him aware of scenarios for initiating Armageddon. Some classified plans for starting a nuclear war, with a first strike on the Soviet Union and China, were beyond shocking. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated in 1961 that the effects of our carrying out those plans, the annual operational plan for which the weapons existed and were on alert, they estimated it would kill 600 million people. A hundred Holocausts,” Ellsberg says in An Ordinary Insanity. “When I saw that estimate in the White House, I thought that was the most evil planning that had ever existed in the history of humanity.” As scientific research advanced and climate modeling discovered nuclear winter, estimates like 600 million became outdated. “For only the last 40 years of the nuclear era, not considered at all before 1983, we’ve known soot and smoke was a crucial lethal effect of nuclear weapons,” Ellsberg recounts in the film. “The firestorms created by nuclear weapons would have lofted the smoke from these burning cities into the stratosphere, quickly enveloped the globe and blot out most of the sunlight, not all of it but about 70 percent of the sunlight, which would create winter, killing all harvest for at least several years and up to a decade or more, starving nearly everyone. Not quite everyone. It wouldn’t be an extinction event. Ninety-eight percent gone within a year, starving to death.” While working at the military-enmeshed Rand Corporation think tank before leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press, Ellsberg had been studying what he describes as “the highest-stakes hypothetical gamble in human history, whether or not to launch nuclear missiles on the basis of ambiguous warning.” That quest for understanding led him to the conclusion that ICBMs—the land-based part of the air, land, and sea triad—are the most dangerous component of the unspeakably dangerous nuclear arsenal. The importance of eliminating ICBMs figures prominently in Ellsberg’s landmark book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, published in 2017. The Nation later printed an article that he and I cowrote to emphasize the point: “The single best option for reducing the risk of nuclear war is hidden in plain sight. News outlets don’t mention it. Pundits ignore it. Even progressive and peace-oriented members of Congress tiptoe around it. And yet, for many years, experts have been calling for this act of sanity that could save humanity: Shutting down all of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Those missiles, on hair-trigger alert, are the only weapon that forces a president into “the urgent decision of whether to launch nuclear war,” Ellsberg explains in An Ordinary Insanity:

On “The Nation” and Empire

Katrina vanden Heuvel,The Nation — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Our magazine has refused to accept what contributor Gore Vidal once described as the “cozy unremitting war” that puts this country in a state of conflict, year after year. The United States was a youthful 89 years old when The Nation was founded by abolitionists at the end of the Civil War. Over the ensuing 161 years, our magazine has maintained a set of North Star values that have guided us through the darkest moments in this country’s 250-year journey. Among the steadiest of these values has been our opposition to the imperial adventures, bloated Pentagon budgets, and warped priorities that wrongheaded presidents and pliant congresses have led our country into. We have not opposed every war. But we have consistently refused to accept what our longtime contributor Gore Vidal once described as the “cozy unremitting war” that puts this country in a state of conflict, or on the verge of it, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. So it was that, as Nation editors and writers prepared this special issue marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, we were also busy opposing Donald Trump’s illegal, immoral, unnecessary, and undeclared war with Iran. The president’s ill-advised decision to pick this fight quickly spawned regional conflicts, global economic chaos, and mass opposition. But we have not opposed the war merely out of disdain for Trump’s reckless disregard for the consequences of his actions. We opposed it as the latest example of an American pattern of disregarding diplomacy in favor of a military adventurism that destroys lives, wreaks havoc abroad, and—as Secretary of State John Quincy Adams warned on July 4, 1821—so deeply involves the US in foreign intrigues that leaders abandon the pursuit of domestic tranquility and leave us with an America that is “no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, it is striking to note that the founders warned against many of the very harms of military adventurism that The Nation has decried throughout its history. “No nation,” James Madison warned, “could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Addressing the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Madison declared: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” Later, in the mid-1790s, Madison argued: War is, in fact, the true nurse of Executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the Executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the Executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied, and it is the Executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the Executive brow they are to encircle. In those first decades of American independence from the clutches of the British Empire, Madison’s concerns were widely shared by other founders, as well as by ordinary Americans. “[America’s] glory is liberty, not dominion. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield, but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace,” Adams announced in a message to Congress. Indeed, he stressed: She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue…. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. We mark this July Fourth by recognizing that The Nation has grounded its opposition to military adventurism in many of the same values articulated by the founders. From its inception, The Nation has challenged America’s imperial misadventures and the military-industrial complex that developed to advance them. In 1893, nearly 30 years after the magazine’s founding, when European and American businessmen overthrew the queen of Hawaii and sought the annexation by the US of the island she ruled, The Nation denounced the takeover as antidemocratic and warned of what might come next: People talk about the grand civilizing and protecting mission of the United States. We are not to shrink selfishly and timidly within our own borders, but are to go forth, as a state-errant, to redress the wrongs of other countries, to rescue the oppressed, and, incidentally, to take their land.… What they have in their minds is a remorseless trampling upon native rights, opportunities for personal enrichment.… That, in plain terms, is what the benevolent mission of the United States will come to in execution—its tender mercies proving cruel—and that is the end to which the Hawaiian beginning will surely conduct us. That prophecy was immediately validated by the United States’ entering into war against Spain. The Nation rallied to oppose the 1898 Spanish-American War. The magazine also enthusiastically endorsed the Anti-Imperialist League, “whose object is to bring together the united efforts of men of repute throughout the country to resist what is commonly called imperialism, or the annexation of territory not contiguous to the United States.” E.L. Godkin, The Nation’s founding editor, was among the leaders of the Anti-Imperialist League, joining Mark Twain, William James, and Andrew Carnegie to “resist what is commonly called imperialism.” When that conflict led America into its first brutal counterinsurgency war, in the Philippines, The Nation asked, “What are we doing but establishing chaos and carrying it on as a sort of business in which we are proud to excel?” The editors wrote that “Anti-Imperialism is only another name for old-fashioned Americanism.” Under the leadership of Ernest Gruening, the managing editor from 1920 to 1922, The Nation became a lonely voice denouncing America’s use of “gunboat diplomacy” to press its agenda in Latin America and its interventions in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the 1920s. Gruening later became a champion of Franklin Roosevelt’s still-relevant “Good Neighbor” policy, which stressed economic and political cooperation to improve relations with Central and South American nations. After World War II, The Nation warned about the dangers of the emerging national-security state and the use of the Red Scare to justify intervention abroad and oppression at home. In 1960, The Nation reported that the US was training Cuban exiles as paramilitaries in the forests of Guatemala. The exposé, ignored by the mainstream press, was followed by the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the execrable US covert war and overt economic boycott of that island that continues to this day. The Nation still takes pride in having been labeled a premature opponent of the Vietnam War, by predicting as early as 1945 that the French effort to revive its imperial control of the country would fail and, in a 1954 editorial by the historian Bernard Fall, warning against the US getting involved militarily. A decade later, in 1964, after Gruening, now a senator from Alaska, cast one of the only two votes against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, The Nation stood in staunch opposition to the ensuing escalation. While the mainstream press recycled the government’s propaganda on the war, we exposed the lies and horrors on the ground.

Tom Paine’s Fight

John Nichols — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The pamphleteer’s insistence that America live up to its revolutionary vows still rings true 250 years later. In 1806, 30 years after he inspired the taxed-but-not-represented colonial subjects of King George III to rise up against “tyrannical monarchy”—with a promise that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again”—Thomas Paine was barred from voting in the last American midterm election of his revolutionary life. A partisan election inspector at a polling station in New Rochelle, New York, denied the franchise to the aging pamphleteer. The inspector, a Tory dead-ender who opposed Paine’s radical views, claimed that the author of Common Sense and The American Crisis was not a proper citizen of the country where, in the view of no less a revolutionary icon than Samuel Adams, Paine’s words had “unquestionably awakened the public mind and led the people loudly to call for a Declaration of our National Independence.” It’s easy to understand why the inspector, who occupied his position as the face of the local establishment, would resort to peddling lies about the young nation’s agitator-in-chief. After all, Paine’s advocacy for democratic reforms—and the economic and social justice that might extend from them—threatened the elites not just of the old United Kingdom but of the new United States. The denial of Paine’s right to participate in the politics of the nation he helped call into being was in keeping with the practice of a time when the right to vote was far from sacrosanct. Late-18th- and early-19th-century elites policed the franchise with an eye toward averting robust democracy. We know about Paine’s disenfranchisement because he had once been accepted by those elites, and even after his views on property and religion led to his exclusion from the circles of power, he still wielded a pen mighty enough to amplify his objections to Tory abuses. Others were not so fortunate. Widespread disenfranchisement based on race, gender, economic position, viewpoints, and immigration status was the norm in America’s formative years. White male property owners—roughly 6 percent of the population at the nation’s founding—empowered themselves and mostly disempowered everyone else. The same Constitution that determined that an enslaved Black person would count as only three-fifths of a human being for the purpose of congressional apportionment also blocked anyone who was not “a natural-born citizen” from serving as president or vice president. And in the first decades of the American experiment, President John Adams and his governing Federalist Party approved legislation that made it dramatically harder for immigrants to become citizens, because working-class newcomers tended to oppose the Federalists. Other rights we’ve since come to take for granted were denied to Americans in the first years of the new republic. Newspaper editors were arrested and jailed for publishing dissenting views. And a member of Congress, Matthew Lyon of Vermont, spent months behind bars after suggesting, among other criticisms, that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp.” Indeed, for all the talk of “American democracy” that has been expended by Fourth of July speakers over the past 250 years, the real history of the United States is that of an unending battle over the rights to vote, hold office, and meaningfully challenge elite power to actually deliver economic, social, and racial justice. For as long as this country has existed, so has the fight to realize the full promise of its democracy. This battle is far from finished. As the United States prepared to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for a mad rush by Southern Republicans to eliminate congressional districts that have empowered Black-majority communities such as Memphis. The GOP implemented gerrymanders designed to leave Democrats without representation in states where they make up 40 percent or more of the electorate. “The right wants to dilute Black voting power in order to gain power,” explained Tennessee state Representative Justin Pearson, who saw the Memphis-based congressional district he was seeking to represent sliced into three Republican-leaning districts.

Can America Experience a New Birth of Freedom?

The Nation — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Five progressive leaders offer a powerful reminder of the country’s unfinished journey. The Nation asked prominent progressives if America at 250 can experience a new birth of freedom. Here’s how they responded. Senator Bernie Sanders: Over the past year, I must confess, I’ve been thinking a great deal about American history—about the men and women who, in 1776, with unbelievable courage, announced to the world that they would no longer be ruled by an all-powerful English monarch. Let us never forget the extraordinary message their Declaration of Independence delivered for their time, and ours: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These patriots won a Revolutionary War against overwhelmingly powerful British military forces and established a democratic form of government that inspired the world—confirming in their Constitution that, in America, we will have no kings. In 2026, our message is the same: No kings. We will not allow this country to descend into authoritarianism or oligarchy. In America, “We the People” must rule. Today’s establishment, including corporate media and many of my colleagues in Congress, want you to believe you are powerless—that you cannot change the status quo. That’s a lie. Throughout our history, when Americans have stood up and fought for justice, they have prevailed. The founders did it when they stood up to King George III. The abolitionists did it when they ended slavery. The working class did it when they formed unions. The suffragettes did it when they secured voting rights for women.

The Centuries-Long Struggle to Make the Constitution Equal for All

Steven Hahn — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The effort to transform the United States’ founding document into a vehicle for egalitarian politics. It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a time since the Civil War era when the US Constitution—its meanings, rights, and protections, its checks and balances and violations—was more consequential or contested in our political life. Thanks to the Trump administration, hardly a day goes by when a presidential order, a Justice Department prosecution, or a Homeland Security detention and expulsion doesn’t overstep the bounds or outright ignore constitutional norms and practices. And as we all know, even before Trump was sworn in a second time, there were serious questions about his eligibility for the presidency, given his participation in the January 6, 2021, uprising. Who would have thought that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, determining who might be barred from office for engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, would be at the center of a judicial reckoning? Or that birthright citizenship, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, so foundational to securing and expanding our civil and political rights, would be under concerted attack and now awaiting a Supreme Court ruling demanded by Trump? How the Constitution will be interpreted by a right-wing Supreme Court, and whether its long-accepted rules for the wielding of power remain intact, are questions that now stare us in the face. Sad to say, given the moment, relatively few Americans know much at all about the Constitution: the framework of governance it sets out, the interpretive conflicts it has spawned, or its lengthy historical arc, amendments and all. At best, they see the Constitution as an important part of the country’s origin story, tethered almost umbilically to the earlier Declaration of Independence, which few Americans know much about either. This may be why the Democrats’ efforts in 2024 to present themselves as the defenders of democracy and the Constitution didn’t work very well, and why, even in 2026, they are still struggling to do either. One of Akhil Amar’s ambitions in his new book, Born Equal, is to help remedy these deficiencies. A distinguished constitutional scholar and professor at Yale Law School, Amar has been among the most prolific and influential interpreters of the Constitution and its history, writing multiple books as well as law-review articles, many crafted with a broad audience in mind. Even more impressive, he has now embarked on a three-volume “epic saga” of the Constitution that begins with the founding of the United States and will end with the present. Born Equal, which charts the Constitution’s history from 1840 to 1920, is the second of the series. As one might expect given the subject, Born Equal is a long book, and it offers both more and less than its title suggests. More, because Amar often takes us back to the Constitution’s making and early history and provides a larger political history as well, organized chiefly around the fight over slavery and the coming of the Civil War. Less, because we don’t get to the crucial Reconstruction amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—until we’re 500 pages in, and because he spends remarkably little time on the important period between 1870 and 1920, especially with the making of the 19th Amendment, which established women’s suffrage. Readers will find a lengthy and somewhat loopy narrative presented in a conversational style, apparently designed to keep the interest of nonspecialists, and a pretty familiar cast of characters whose surnames are quickly dropped: Elizabeth (for Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Frederick (for Frederick Douglass), Harriet (for Harriet Beecher Stowe), and so on, all the way to Abe (for Abraham Lincoln—a nickname that Lincoln hated for the same reason that the other figures would likely find this cringeworthy, as a sign of public disrespect). But through the book’s more than 700 pages—Amar says it would have been even longer if not for the opposition of his editor—there is an important and compellingly developed idea, one that has been at the heart, in shorter and longer versions, of his work: the idea of a “liberal originalism.” Unlike the more commonly invoked notion of originalism that many conservatives embrace, which focuses on the original text of the Constitution and the apparent intent of the founders, Amar sees an originalism based on “equality,” one connected to the Declaration of Independence and expressing the deepest aspirations of the founding generation. In Amar’s view, this liberal originalism shaped constitutional rhetoric across the Northern states between 1776 and 1860, with Lincoln eventually emerging as its true embodiment, not just because of his powerful and enduring words at Gettysburg in the fall of 1863 but also because, throughout his political life, Lincoln found in the Constitution the basis for antislavery and an egalitarian republic. The first three-quarters of Born Equal focuses chiefly on the struggles in the Northern states to advance a liberal originalism, especially in campaigns against slavery and in support of women’s rights. Amar therefore begins with the World Antislavery Convention of 1840 in London, when the eight women in the American delegation were excluded from the proceedings. It was a powerful moment on the road to the women’s-rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and to the expanding role of women in the abolitionist movement. Amar’s narrative here is rich and detailed. The same can’t be said for his treatment of the Southern slave states: He devotes relatively little attention to their internal politics, defense of slavery, economic organization, or the development of secessionist thought. No member of the slaveholding leadership is mentioned often enough to merit first-name treatment (also, perhaps, a sign of Amar’s scorn), and even though many had their own versions of constitutional originalism and the right of revolution, he doesn’t take them very seriously. As a result, Amar pretty much regards the slaveholders’ behavior in the deepening crisis over slavery’s future as “foolish” and “stupid.” The handwriting, he insists, was on the wall: The political balances in the country were coming to favor the Northern states; slave-grown crops like cotton were unlikely to fare well in the contested trans-Mississippi West; and the world was turning against slavery on multiple grounds. “A truly farsighted South” (a stand-in term for a complex region and set of people, white and Black) that recognized the “evil” and “unsustainability” of slavery would have sensibly tried to cut some deals: accepting gradual emancipation, say, on the model of New York, in return for a variety of concessions, including cash and land grants in the West. These states might, that is, have heeded Lincoln’s constitutional views and moral imperatives, along with the economic benefits that such an arrangement may have brought. In this, Amar offers a version (albeit a more transactional one) of the long-debunked “repressible conflict” interpretation of the coming of the Civil War, which argued that slavery had reached its natural limits and that a negotiated settlement was possible, only to be spurned by self-interested politicians who had forgotten the lessons of the founders. The truth is that the South’s cotton economy was thriving and had made the fortunes of what had become the richest and most powerful landed elite in the world. Slave labor was also exploited very profitably in the production of commodities other than cotton—sugar, rice, tobacco—as well as in mining, building infrastructure, and even some manufacturing. And by the 1850s, the winds of abolition and progressive reform were waning and a new conservatism and nativism was taking hold in the United States. Enslavers or those sympathetic to them still controlled the White House, the Supreme Court, much of Congress, and had strong supporters in both the Whig and Democratic parties. Why shouldn’t the slaveholding leadership have thought that secession and political independence were achievable? Amar also seems to believe that the gradual emancipation of enslaved people as it unfolded in places like New York, as opposed to disunion or war, was a perfectly reasonable solution to the crisis. Perhaps he forgets that the legislation enacted in New York and in most other states of the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic freed no slaves; instead, it freed the children of enslaved adults, and only when they reached adulthood themselves (21, 25, or 28, depending on the state, and also on the gender of the prospective freedpeople). Eventual “liberation,” moreover, brought with it no civil or political rights in the North; nor would it have done so under similar conditions in the South. Instead, the emancipation process often ended not in freedom but in some form of extended servitude. During the Civil War, Lincoln imagined a 35-year plan of emancipation with the promise of colonization (meaning exile) either in Liberia or some other foreign territory rather than freedom in the United States. Amar is remarkably unconcerned about what this would have meant for Black people. Nor does he seem to recognize that any such deal between white leaders in the North and South would have rendered what became the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (not to mention his book itself) inconceivable.

The Revolution Heard Around the World

Sophia Rosenfeld — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The global politics of 1776. What a time to try to commemorate this nation’s founding! Imperialism is back. Militarized federal agents have been massing in cities to root out people deemed unwelcome or disloyal. The president styles himself more as a monarch than a civil servant, from the plans for his new golden ballroom to the parade of courtiers and oligarchs paying him homage. Given this situation, what are the options for narrating the story of the Declaration of Independence 250 years after the fact? Are we left with anything other than irony—or tragedy? Of course, histories of the American Revolution published to help mark the current semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence were written at least in part before the second Trump administration began. So it isn’t entirely fair to expect their authors to take the story up to the point of telling us what to make of the head-spinning past 18 months. But such histories do have an added function in this anniversary year: Their job is to tell us where we’ve been in a way that illuminates aspects of the present and, ideally, get us to think afresh about where we should be going. So far, it doesn’t seem like historians have found any real answers. Richard Bell’s The American Revolution and the Fate of the World provides, in this regard, an opportunity to reflect on the difficulty of that charge and also the limits of the response. Bell’s primary solution in this ambitious volume is to widen his scope. Addressing the reader in jaunty, confident prose, he works hard to convince us that the American Revolution was a lot less provincial than we were taught in school. The events of 1776 and their aftermath, he argues, not only required white English settlers and British government officials to pick a side—they swept up and reshaped the lives of all kinds of other peoples in what would become the United States and around the world. That includes enslaved people of African descent and the people of numerous tribal nations native to the Americas. It also includes aristocratic French generals and Spanish navy men, Chinese dockworkers and Indian rulers, British anti-war agitators and Hessian mercenaries, convicts en route to Botany Bay and Sierra Leonean settlers, Irish American printers, farmers, and arms dealers, Jamaican washerwomen, and Loyalist wives looking for safety in British Canada. Bell’s global approach fits broadly within several ongoing trends in academic history writing. One is treating the multiple revolutions that took place on both sides of the Atlantic in the 18th and early 19th centuries as interconnected, especially with regard to the demands of maintaining and funding commercial empires. Another is decentering the 13 original British seaboard colonies in North America in favor of what is often called “Vast Early America,” a segment of the globe stretching from the Caribbean to French Canada to the Spanish American and Native West, with links to places as far-flung as China, India, and Brazil as well as continental Europe and West Africa. And yet another is drawing attention to the uncelebrated and even the nameless as much as the famous “founders”—which has also meant emphasizing the significance of bloody power struggles on the frontier, the plantation, and the high seas as much as what happened in the meeting halls and taverns of Philadelphia. Our picture of revolutionary America is very different today, and considerably more complex, than that which accompanied the Bicentennial’s tall ships back in 1976. Bell’s synthetic account is indicative of just how much we’ve learned in the ensuing years. What Bell does not tell us, however, is also typical of much of the newest history of the revolutionary era. Readers will discover little in The American Revolution and the Fate of the World about what to make of it all then or now. Bell declares early on that America’s turn to independence was a “geopolitical earthquake” that “shook every quarter of the globe,” sending people, goods, and news in extraordinary new patterns around the planet. The revolution, he adds, professing no exaggeration, “set much of the world as we know it in motion.” But in his episodic and kaleidoscopic telling, it’s hard to see how the many compelling pieces that Bell offers fit together as a whole—and, if they don’t, what made this particular war any different from those that preceded it, including the similarly global Seven Years’ War less than two decades earlier, or most that came after. Which is to say that The American Revolution and the Fate of the World is a global history that never really informs us how the revolution ended up defining the “fate of the world,” or what it might mean for the world at present. Bell’s rousing introduction suggests that one major theme connecting all of his varied subjects is, loosely, liberty. Many of the specific stories that pepper his chapters highlight the ways that, in the course of the struggle for national independence and its aftermath, the quest for freedom and self-sovereignty animated different people in different places with varying degrees of success. Early on, for example, we meet the minor Prussian nobleman Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who helped transform the Continental Army by introducing European tactics as well as sanitation standards before dying mired in debt, having crafted an unconventional life as a naturalized citizen in upstate New York. We also spend time with, among others, Molly Brant, a Mohawk woman partnered with an Irish-born diplomat, who became a spy and a refugee-camp coordinator in the service of the survival of her tribe; William Russell, a Boston teacher who dreamed of riches as a privateer (i.e., a government-licensed pirate) and ended up escaping a series of terrible confinements, from England’s southwest coast to a dungeon ship anchored in Brooklyn Bay; and a variety of abolitionists, from British radicals to Black escapees from slavery and “freedom fighters” like Harry Washington, once the property of the first president, who made it to Canada only to find himself stuck in terrible circumstances in West Africa, now governed by a British trading company. Bell narrates these micro-histories with aplomb, even as some readers may grow weary of the many similes and metaphors evoking bombs, thunderbolts, and shock waves. But the overheated martial language serves a purpose: Bell’s history is, at its core, a chronicle of military action. What his subjects get caught up in are not the elevated principles of the Declaration of Independence so much as a long and brutal inter- and intra-imperial trade war that stretched in both its origins and its implications well beyond its official beginning at Lexington and Concord in 1775 or its conclusion with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, an agreement highly beneficial to the new United States, whose genesis Bell describes exceptionally well. King George III, we learn, was sure the whole disturbance would be over quickly because of Britain’s objectively superior forces. (Where have we heard that before?) But, as Bell notes, “Europe’s quarrels” turned into “America’s opportunity.” Foreign allies—driven considerably less by ideology than by self-interest in the form of potential territorial and economic gains against their rivals—soon signed on, dragging the fight to many corners of the world. For their own part, the American patriots had few objections to making common cause with Catholic kings, in the case of France and Spain in the 1770s, or aristocratic Muslim rulers in South Asia by the start of the next decade, as long as it helped stretch the British thin enough to make their defeat possible. Nevertheless, Bell points out, the consequences of these skirmishes were ultimately more than just military or diplomatic. For it was in the interstices of sea and land battles around the globe, especially after the French and Spanish were rallied to the cause and privateering took off, that the possibility of some new kind of liberty, frequently rooted in survival strategies as much as anything else, drew expanding rounds of participants into the conflict. Given the highly fluid nature of this global struggle, people like Molly Brant, William Russell, and Harry Washington—not to mention more privileged figures like Peggy Shippen, the co-defector and wealthy wife of Benedict Arnold—could be said to have been improvising, or maybe just capitalizing on new possibilities as they materialized, in sometimes successful efforts to improve their lots. Yet a countervailing theme in Bell’s book, as with much of the recent historiography, is the endurance and even expansion of racialized slavery across the period of the American Revolution and the bitter irony of widespread Black and Indigenous support for the Loyalist and British side as the better option in the quest for freedom. Bell does not explore in any detail what the historian Edmund Morgan once described as the revolution’s great “paradox,” the imbrication of slavery and freedom, aside from suggesting that an attachment to property and profit outweighed concerns about humanity on the part of unnamed white patriots. Nonetheless, Bell rehearses the tragic story of slavery’s postrevolutionary endurance right along with the growth of abolitionism’s international ranks. The same goes for the accelerated Native dispossession that was a result of the victors’ steady westward expansion. By the end of the 18th century, Bell makes clear, the revolution that had opened up novel questions about what it would mean to build a nation rooted in freedom had simultaneously extended the geography of racialized slavery into new territory and stripped Indigenous people of ever more of the land on which they had long dwelled.

Graham Platner Is About to Find Out Whether Mainers Really Have His Back

John Nichols — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Voters, not DC insiders, will determine whether the Senate candidate is credible and viable. Bar Harbor, Maine—Corinn Keblinsky surveyed the crowd of Graham Platner backers that had packed this town’s historic Criterion Theatre on the Friday night before Maine Democratic primary voters will send the first tangible signal regarding the fate of Platner’s US Senate candidacy. Keblinsky, an accountant from Standish, Maine, said she was more interested in the verdict that will be rendered Tuesday by the people seated around her—and by voters across the state—than in the pronouncements from pundits and politicians in Washington. Like everyone who pays attention to politics in Maine, Keblinsky was well aware of an increasingly frenzied national debate about Platner, the 41-year-old Marine veteran and oyster farmer turned US Senate candidate whose controversial past has dominated cable news shows and newspaper front pages in recent days. And she was frustrated by the national coverage. “It’s out of control,” she said. “They’re all talking about Maine, but they don’t know Maine.” This was a common theme among Mainers I spoke with last week in Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Bangor, and other communities around the state. While Platner is facing a firestorm from national commentators—some who see reports on Platner’s sexting, since covered-up Totenkopf tattoo, and “toxic” relationships as “disqualifying,” and others who simply worry that a weakened Platner might fail to dislodge Republican US Senator Susan Collins in November and upend Democratic prospects for retaking the Senate—the candidate maintains substantial support in the state, where his campaign literature declares: “Maine First. Maine Always.” As a weekend headline from Maine’s largest newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, explained, “Maine Democrats largely stand by Graham Platner amid D.C. worries.” Why the dichotomy between the state and national discourse? Many voters said they have a sense of regional connection with Platner. “He’s just Maine. He sounds like Maine,” said Keith Tharp, a photographer from the town of Mount Desert. “When he’s talking, he comes across as a Mainer. So, we want to hear what he has to say.” What they’ve heard, argues Erin Oberson, a copresident of the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which has endorsed Platner, is “a candidate who will represent the working class”—a determined advocate for Medicare for All and saving rural hospitals, for strong unions and pay equity, for taxing the rich and standing up to oligarchy. And while so much of the coverage of the Senate race has focused on Platner’s stormy personal life, his struggles after returning from four combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on a string of divisive comments he left on online forums, much of the talk in Maine is about where he stands on the issues—and on a broader fight over economic inequality and whether working Mainers will be able to afford housing, healthcare, and heating oil in winter. “We’ve been robbed of things in this world by the people who run it,” said gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, a veteran union activist and legislator whom Platner has backed for governor. “This isn’t a campaign. This is a movement,” declares Jackson, who, like Platner, has been endorsed by US Senator Bernie Sanders and echoes the message of the two-time presidential contender, who remains popular in Maine. “We’re not from the left. We’re not from the right,” declares Jackson. “We’re from the bottom, and we’re rising.” The extent to which this rising will benefit Platner remains to be seen. But if there was one sentiment that came through loud and clear after a week of unsettling reports on Platner’s past, it was that Mainers want to have their say.

Not Even Trump Can Ruin the Knicks’ Moment

Dave Zirin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

New York City hates Trump—but that won’t stop him from attending tonight’s NBA finals game at Madison Square Garden. My beloved New York Knicks—the team of my youth, the team of my life—have won 13 straight playoff games and are up 2–0 in the best-of-seven NBA finals against the San Antonio Spurs. The most painful championship drought in sports could be ending after 53 years. As Pete Axthelm wrote in 1970, basketball is above all else “the city game,” and finally, at long last, the NBA title could be coming back to the city of Rucker Park, Earl “The Goat” Manigault, and Power Memorial High School. The trophy could be returned to the only city where, as Rick Telander reminded us in 1977, “heaven is a playground.” No one can ruin this moment, though Donald Trump is certainly going to try. Trump has announced that he will be in attendance tonight at Madison Square Garden for Game 3. This means an unprecedented and incredibly expensive security operation just to get him to his box seats. The city is telling fans to get to the game two hours early, carry no bags, and expect TSA-style security at the doors. The raucous watch parties outside of MSG for fans who can’t afford the outrageous ticket prices—as of publication, the cheapest available tickets for Game 3 are $4,755—will be banned in the name of “security.” (We will see how easy that dictate will be to enforce.) Trump’s presence casts a shadow because New Yorkers do not like this man. It’s like having Bull Connor show up to the NAACP Image Awards because he’s a fan of Misty Copeland. The depth of the city’s distaste for Trump can’t be fully captured in polling or the voting numbers in the last three presidential cycles. The disdain goes back to the 1980s, when Trump fomented racial violence around the case of the now-exonerated Central Park Five and tried to tear down and develop some of the most precious parts of the city. His return also recalls his 2024 Madison Square Garden hate rally, when, just days before the election, he brought out “comedians” who spewed racial invective, most infamously Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” That event was widely compared to a 1939 Nazi rally held at MSG. Trump was allowed to hold that abomination on the hallowed grounds of “the World’s Most Famous Arena,” because of his longtime friendship with Knicks owner James Dolan. Like Trump, Dolan is an anti-worker nepo-baby who has been accused of sexual assault and being a racist, so their friendship is one of shared interests and hobbies. Trump also has been fulsomely welcomed by NBA commissioner Adam Silver. (Can we finally dispense with the fiction that Silver is some kind of crypto lefty?) I can’t imagine the players will be thrilled that he’ll be there either. The president has consistently trashed NBA players over the years, because of their refusal to visit the White House and kiss his ring. Trump is more of a fascist narcissist than a conservative ideologue and so he has a compulsion to place himself in the middle of the country’s biggest sports events. In 2025, he was the first president to attend the Super Bowl (where he was booed and the NFL’s anti-racist messaging was removed from the end zones, lest he take offense). Trump also regularly attends the hottest Ultimate Fighting Championship events and was at the Daytona 500, where friendly cheers massaged his ego. Then there was the 2019 World Series in Washington, DC, where he was met with raucous chants of “Lock him up!” His most recent trip to a sporting event in New York City was to last year’s Men’s US Open Finals, where even the normally polite crowd jeered him. But he is undeterred, with both his narcissism and keen political eye firmly set on glomming onto the New York Knicks. In a bizarre way, it’s a credit to the Knicks’ run that Trump wants to attach himself to their playoff streak like a barnacle on a boat. The miraculous winning streak even provided a moment almost as rare as the Knicks journey to the precipice of a championship: I found myself agreeing with Stephen A. Smith on something. ESPN’s star talking head and scold of the political left is a die-hard Knicks fan, and he, surprisingly given his political proclivities, called upon Trump to change his Monday night plans and not attend. Even with the blood-red carpet laid out by Dolan and Silver, Smith said what the majority of New York City is thinking: that this is our moment and should not become another opportunity for Trump to feed his authoritarian personality disorder. Yet, despite the two-hour waits at the door, the incredible inconvenience, and the presence of a white nationalist leader cheering on a team as diverse and international as the city itself, not even Donald Trump can spoil this—at least I dearly hope that is the case. Knicks fans have been waiting decades for another title, and during these playoffs, this team has discovered a selfless way to play that is beautiful to behold. They are led improbably by Jalen Brunson, a six-foot point guard built like a fire hydrant who was a second-round draft pick. Brunson is already legendary for his late-game heroics, but he is also, alongside center Karl-Anthony Towns, playing in a style that recalls the 1973 Knicks champions led by Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley: They put the team above the individual, whipping the ball around until there’s an opening. No, not even Trump can ruin Game 3. The bandwagon has no room for this bigot. Trump will have to be content to stand in the shadows of his box seats, hiding from the boos, and watch a squad whose approach to basketball is antithetical to everything the avaricious, self-obsessed Trump represents.

Fire Bari Weiss!

Joan Walsh — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Which is worse, her political malevolence or her incompetence? After CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley was fired by Bari Weiss’s incompetent henchman Nick Bilton last week, the network veteran went public with his complaints about Weiss’s politically motivated mismanagement of the show. One of his most noteworthy complaints was that she pushed the correspondents to add distortions and lies to some of their segments. Media critics asked that Pelley be more specific, and on Sunday, with The New York Times, he was. Most outrageously, he told Lulu Garcia-Navarro that for a February segment on the ICE siege of Minneapolis, four hours after the show’s final deadline, Weiss asked him to make the protesters look more violent, and add that the martyr Renée Good, mother and poet, was driving toward her murderer (even though multiple forensic video examinations, including by CBS, concluded that she had already turned the car away from him when he shot her in the head). Pelley refused, and the segment ran as it had been produced. He never heard back from Weiss about it. “There was a thumb on the scale for the president’s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News,” he added. I’m as big a fan of Pelley’s bravery in confronting Weiss and Bilton as any journalist with integrity, but I have to point out, with respect, that Pelley had already bent over backward to present “both sides” of ICE’s deadly siege of the city. In the interview with Garcia-Navarro, he exaggerated the violence of the protesters, saying they accounted for “half” of the “confrontations” that rocked Operation Metro Surge: I felt it was very important to identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were half of these confrontations, and so I instructed my producers to find images in which we see the protesters acting aggressively. We found a picture of a protester chest-bumping an officer. We found a picture of an officer being hit in the head with a snowball. We culled together a lot of video of protesters screaming in the faces of officers because we were going to talk about the killing of Pretti and the killing of Good, and it seemed to me important to tell the audience about the entire context. I thought we’d done a really good job with this. We also included a picture of Alex Pretti before he was killed kicking out a taillight on a police car and made a point of saying, this is Alex Pretti and this is what he did…. We had already scrubbed the video archives, looking for those scenes. OK, a snowball, a chest-bump, and a kicked out police-car taillight. And some screaming. Compared with two murders, at least one other shooting, an innocent disabled woman violently pulled from her car, an elderly Hmong man wrested from his house in his underwear in the brutal Minneapolis cold, protesters tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos kidnapped from school and taken to Texas as immigration authorities tried to deport his father… I just did that from memory. Oh, and a whole lot of screaming and swearing by ICE and CBP officers. “Fuckin’ ****,” which is what Jonathan Ross said after murdering Renée Good, is just one example. But I don’t want to be too hard on Pelley. He is a distinguished 37-year-veteran of a news organization steeped in notions of “objectivity” and “balance” that haven’t really served the country since the Reagan years. This is his default. And especially in the Trump years, I think even some good journalists who want to resist falling victim to Trump’s attacks, whether that’s extorting $16 million out of ABC with a lawsuit the network would have won and the same amount from CBS for an even more bogus lawsuit, are looking over their shoulders more. Given all the surrendering we’ve seen from top media executives and some journalists, Pelley’s courage stands out. Just a week ago, he confronted Bilton to his face demanding an explanation for Weiss’s decision to fire esteemed 60 Minutes producer Tania Simon and veteran correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega a few days before. He called it “Black Thursday” and said Weiss was “murdering” the venerable television news magazine. “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job,” Pelley told Bilton, and he asked why the former tech journalist had taken the job “knowing that you will never be welcome here.” Bilton shot back, “I am not intimidated,” but he left the meeting after only 15 minutes, telling staff, “Enjoy the bagels.” Weiss charged Pelley with creating a “hostile work environment,” and Bilton fired him a day later, “for cause,” which means he got no severance. (That’s gonna be a fun lawsuit for Pelley’s attorneys.)

Marjane Satrapi’s Rebellious Art

Jeet Heer — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The radical legacy of the cartoonist and filmmaker who created Persepolis. Marjane Satrapi was a born troublemaker. This was surely due in no small part to her remarkable heritage, which was both aristocratic and radical—a combustible combination that seems to have gifted Satrapi with a confidence that powered her resilient scrappiness. Satrapi, who became a celebrated cartoonist and filmmaker, died on Thursday at age 56. She’s best known for her internationally best-selling graphic memoir Persepolis, first serialized in four volumes in France from 2000 to 2003 and then translated into English in two volumes, published in 2003 and 2004. Satrapi also cowrote and codirected an animated adaptation in 2007, which was nominated for an Oscar. Persepolis tells the story of Satrapi’s coming of age against the turmoil that follows the Iranian revolution of 1979. She was 10 years old when the country erupted, forcing the long-ruling Shah to flee and bringing Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The main thrust of the narrative is Satrapi’s increasing estrangement from the theocratic regime as she chafes against its restrictions on women. But the book is also about her family, which had been deeply intertwined with the national politics of Iran for more than a century. Her maternal great-grandfather, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, was shah of Iran from 1848 to 1896. Satrapi’s grandfather, although technically a prince, rebelled against this royal heritage and became a communist. He was frequently jailed by subsequent monarchist regimes, which came from a separate line. Most of Satrapi’s family shared her grandfather’s politics. They were secular leftists who opposed both the dictatorship of the shah and the theocracy that was established by the 1979 revolution. Satrapi’s maternal uncle, Anushirvan Ebrahimi, had been exiled to the Soviet Union under the shah. He returned to Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and was arrested and executed by the new regime. Satrapi’s father, Taji, was an engineer, her mother, Ebi, a dressmaker. Even as a child, Satrapi was alert to the ironies and contradictions of their status as well-to-do communists. She was embarrassed by her father’s Cadillac and the fact that her beloved maid wasn’t allowed to eat with the family. Raised on stories of her heroic ancestors, Satrapi nursed dreams of not just being a revolutionary but even a world-changing prophet who would spread a true message of equality. Any child with such grand ambitions is a poor fit for a dictatorship, especially if that child is a girl living in a tightening patriarchy. Satrapi repeatedly clashed with the authorities. She went to protests, sometimes against her parents’ wishes. She talked back to teachers and ran afoul of the Guardians of the Revolution who policed the streets for signs of impious behavior. She was a Persian punk with a taste for sneakers and pop music (Iron Maiden, Kim Wilde, and Michael Jackson). The Iran-Iraq war made the country even less safe and intensified the crackdown on dissenting voices. Satrapi’s parents decided it was safer for her to finish her education elsewhere, so at age 14 she was sent to stay with family friends in Austria and study at a French school in Vienna. Although she kept up her good marks, she ran into all sorts of trouble in Vienna, hanging out with pseudo-anarchists, smoking and dealing drugs, and once again telling off the powers that be. When a nun at her school said Iranians “have no education,” Satrapi responded that she heard “you were all prostitutes before becoming nuns.” This got her expelled. Satrapi experienced the alienation that often bedevils immigrants. “I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West,” she said. In her last months in Vienna, she spiraled downward, living on the streets for three months and nearly dying of bronchitis. This crisis forced her to quit her European studies and return to Iran in 1989. Under the tolerant care of her parents, she studied visual communication at Islamic Azad University in Tehran and had a brief, unhappy marriage with a painter. One problem with studying in Iran was that, when learning figure drawing, the students had to work with models who were fully draped to preserve modesty. Satrapi would later blame the stylized anatomy in her art on this education.

How Jared Kushner Sparked a Political Crisis in Albania

Mitchell Prothero — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Outraged Albanians are targeting the presidential son-in-law for pursuing a $4 billion luxury resort deal in a business climate rife with corruption and environmental neglect. Dozens of protesters gathered at a scenic lagoon outside the Albanian coastal city of Vlore on May 23 to oppose the development of a luxury resort by an international consortium led by Jared Kushner. The demonstration received scant attention from Albania’s media establishment, which is controlled by many of the same oligarchic forces that support the Kushner project. But over the next two weeks, the public mood in Albania turned sharply against the resort, in addition to another Kushner-helmed development. The projects have reportedly amassed some $4 billion from global investors, including Kushner’s long-standing partners who run sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. The developers of the Vlore resort sent a stark message by erecting a barbed-wire fence around the property and unleashing a retinue of private security guards to administer beatings to the next round of anti-development protesters in early June. These draconian measures reinforced the broader Albanian public’s impression that their country is becoming a plaything of privileged oligarchs; the protests continued to gain momentum, and built into a major political crisis by the end of last week, with thousands of people now turning out for near-daily protests. The Albanian government, led by the semi-autocratic and pro-development Prime Minister Edi Rama, now faces a unique coalition of environmental activists, local residents claiming corrupt developers and government officials screwed them out of their property, and ordinary people concerned that Albania’s explosion of luxury development is linked to money laundering. Among other things, the mounting protests in Albania are demonstrating that the Trumpian model of oligarchic impunity is not only aging badly in America but also proving to be an increasingly toxic export. The complicated and messy scandal has galvanized anti-government sentiment among Albanians, who have long endured rule by powerful oligarchs and corrupt politicians with extensive ties to an Albanian organized crime diaspora. Rama’s Socialist Party and the opposition Democratic Party (with neither socialism nor democracy being anywhere close to either party’s actual governing agenda) often trade accusations of corruption that the Albanian people have credited—often with sound justification. “It’s a political battle between two sets of criminals,” one local journalist remarked about the Albanian governing duopoly. “There’s no good guys here, so people accept the accusations are true and apply to both sides.” Still, the disillusioned-to-cynical Albanian public seems to have found a new common enemy in Jared Kushner and his high-rolling investor consortium. The conflict harks back to 2024, when Rama unilaterally approved Kushner’s controversial development proposal for Sazan Island, a waterless rock covered in Cold War–era bunkers off the coast of Vlore—along with a smaller, but still disruptive, project that would level a nearby coastal wetlands. Albanian environmental regulators were sidelined as Rama fast-tracked the deal. He was initially able to contain public discontent by touting the tourist revenues from the Kushner projects to one of the smallest and poorest countries in southern Europe—a pitch very much in line with Rama’s campaign to get Albania approved for European Union membership. Sazan Island, about five square miles of rocky scrub an hour off the coast, historically has been a closed military zone—a monument to the paranoid, autocratic reign of Albania’s former communist dictator Enver Hoxha. The rocky outcropping had been heavily fortified with a welter of bunkers, minefields, and artillery emplacements, all to fend off an impending invasion by an unlikely alliance of NATO, the USSR, and neighboring Yugoslavia that never materialized. After the Hoxha regime’s fall in 1991, Sazan remained empty, apart from the odd hiker or curious Italian tourist. The island has no water source, almost no beach, and a prohibition on camping because of forgotten minefields, long-abandoned stocks of rotting antique artillery shells, and a population of extremely poisonous vipers. With Vlore’s hospital more than an hour away by boat, a snakebite would prove fatal, so hikers are forced to leave at sunset. Albanians had long greeted any proposal to build a resort on Sazan as a punch line, insisting that there’s a reason it remained uninhabited over the past 6,000 years or so. But that all changed in 2021, when Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump took a holiday yacht trip—accompanied by the banking heir Nathanial Rothschild, who introduced the pair to Rama. The power couple fell in love with Sazan and the neighboring Zvërnec peninsula on the mainland. Zvërnec, a more viable spot for a resort and home to marshlands, pristine beaches, monk seals, and about 70 species of endangered birds including flamingos. By 2024, Kushner’s investment fund Affinity Partners, backed by a trio of Qatari billionaires, had proposed a series of developments anchored by luxury hotels on Sazan and Zvërnec.

Imperial Folly

Robert L. Borosage — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The problem of simultaneity. Under Donald Trump, the United States is, as policy analyst Karim Sadjapour suggested, the “attention deficit superpower.” On the campaign trail, Trump railed against the failed wars of the establishment. Once in office, he campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, while bombing seven countries plus fishing boats in the Caribbean, decapitating Venezuela, embracing Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, lacerating our allies, threatening to send troops into Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, and Columbia, and launching an aggressive war on Iran, with Cuba soon to follow. Is there any coherent explanation—or even plausible excuse –for the past months, other than reasonable doubts about the mad king’s sanity? In the Financial Times, contributing editor Patrick Foulis suggests there is. Trump and his strategists, he argues, are addressing the “problem of simultaneity,” the threat that haunts global empires: a possibility of concurrent attacks by multiple adversaries across the world that could overwhelm the empire’s capacities. The Pentagon once aspired to be ready to fight two major wars simultaneously, but that nightmare was abandoned with the end of the Cold War when, as Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, put it, “We are running out of enemies. We are down to Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung.” Now, with the rise of China and Russia’s recovery, concern about simultaneous threats has revived. The hawks surrounding Joe Biden sought to respond by rousing the allies to help bear the burden from the Baltics to the South China Sea. Trump, of course, scorns all things Biden and so launched a different course. Flagellate the allies into action, placate China and Russia for the time being, while “sequencing” preemptive wars to degrade our enemies, and buy time to build up America’s military. Take out the “rogue” leadership in Venezuela. Then attack Iran. Cuba soon to come. The conflicts, according to Trump’s defense strategist Elbridge Colby, are “designed precisely” to avoid concurrent wars—not counting the bombing of several countries in the War on Terror. And demand a staggering $1.5 trillion annual military budget—a $500 billion, a nearly 50 percent increase in one year that standing alone is more than any other country spends on its military. And that, of course, doesn’t include the cost of the Iran War or the rebuilding that will take place if it ever ends. The US will soon consume about 45 percent of the world’s military budget. Put aside concerns about international law—dismissed as “international niceties” by the Stephen Miller, Trump’s rabid White House deputy—it sounds like a plan. But a ruinous one. The flaws are clear and already obvious. One is that wars don’t go as planned—particularly imperial ventures in distant lands. In case we forgot about our misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we now have the fiasco in Iran to remind us. Second is that the United States can’t really control the timing or location of conflicts. We have alliances with more than 50 countries, with another dozen quasi-allies like Israel. When they feel secure, free riding on US military protection is a sensible course. But they also have their own interests and enemies—as Israel has demonstrated—and will work to drag the US into wars not in the time or place of our choosing. Third, preemptive wars—even if precisely sequenced—don’t address our pressing real security threats. After suffering over 1 million deaths from Covid, building global capacity to deal with pandemics would be an obvious priority. As climate change unleashes cascading catastrophes and uproots ever more people, accelerating global cooperation to address it is essential. Pandemics and climate change pose a greater real and present threat of a “simultaneity attack” than any of our supposed adversaries.

The Spiritual Roots of Change

Deepak Bhargava — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A President’s Letter. Deepak Bhargava, a longtime organizer and the President of the Freedom Together Foundation, a charitable foundation that supports people who have been denied power to build it and create a more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable society. Bhargava regularly shares his reflections and analysis on the challenges and opportunities facing democracy, social movements, and philanthropy in his President’s Letters. In this edition, he explores the role of faith and spirituality in social change and what these traditions can teach us about sustaining hope, courage, and collective action in difficult times. For more information and to sign up to receive President’s Letters, visit www.freedomtogether.org. Dear friends, When Freedom Together announced a new focus on “Faith, Bridging, and Belonging” in 2024, I got some raised eyebrows. I’ve noticed that people who are otherwise welcoming of differences get visibly uncomfortable when others speak about their connection to the sacred. In some settings, I have found that it can be easier to come out as a gay man than as a person of faith. Some of this resistance derives from real and painful experiences with religious institutions. That pain shouldn’t be minimized. And I also believe there can be no transformational social change across this country without two key components: engagement and leadership from diverse communities of faith and tapping into the power of spirit. I have felt the power of faith in my own journey. One of my most powerful memories is of my grandmother taking me to temple as a child—and being captivated by the sound, the color, and the smells, even as I understood little of what was happening. Later, I asked puzzled classmates who usually didn’t want to go to church to take me to their family’s religious services, and felt awe in the presence of the sacred, regardless of the faith tradition. I was moved to deepen my own spiritual practice decades ago. When the heartbreak of this work felt like too much to bear, the sacred became an essential refuge, helping me hold the raucous energies of grief and frustration. What I’ve come to recognize over the years is that this connection to the sacred is also the taproot of social change—the fundamental, infinite source of energy, wisdom, and commitment that powers the work of justice. I now see three reasons faith is integral to social justice work. First, faith and spirituality are the deepest sources of motivation. Policy and organizing work too often treats people as calculating economic agents driven by material self-interest. But we are also moved by deeper longings—to be good, to be fully seen, to give and receive care in community, and to live rightly according to our vision of the sacred. The worldwide authoritarian turn is a response to the collapse of neoliberalism, a system that ordered society for 50-plus years while widening inequality and tearing the social fabric. Authoritarian movements have succeeded not because of their policies, but because they are rousing powerful, misguided energies of fear and hatred in response and using those emotions to organize large numbers of people and turn communities against one another. The answer, therefore, is not simply an expanded child tax credit, asylum reform, or better messaging, however necessary those may be. We need a great awakening of consciousness. We need faith and spirituality to stir souls and put fire in the belly. Second, faith communities are America’s largest available source of people power.

These College Students Are Getting in ICE’s Way

Paul Hudes — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Brown students have formed a neighborhood organizing group that uses courthouse patrols, rapid-response alerts, and mass mobilization to disrupt ICE’s Rhode Island operations. The Star Wars franchise is fertile ground for political allegory. While the internet has compared Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Galactic Empire, Brown University sophomore Dakota Pippins would like to draw another parallel. Pippins is a volunteer with the Rhode Island Deportation Defense Network (DDN), a collection of six neighborhood groups across the state that organize ICE-watches and mass mobilizations with a bilingual deportation defense hotline. The DDN is sprawling and somewhat amorphous. It has also been greatly successful in deterring ICE from making detainments in certain parts of the state. Pippins explained how the decentralized nature of the movement can be understood by looking at the depiction of the Rebel Alliance in Andor—one of several Disney series prequelling the 1977 film. In the original Star Wars, you’re introduced to the rebellion as a centralized group of dissidents, but grass-roots opposition doesn’t materialize out of nowhere. Andor shows “how you build up to a rebellion,” he said. “You have a bunch of different groups and people who all share a distaste or hatred for the empire.” The unit of the DDN that draws volunteers from Brown is called the College Hill Organizing Group (CHOG); they patrol at the Garrahy courthouse—a uniquely ugly building—in Downtown Providence. What over the past year has unfolded outside of the courthouse has also occurred at courthouses across the country: “Court hearings are public record, so [ICE] knows when certain people are going to be there,” said Etta Robb, a volunteer with the DDN and a recent Brown University graduate. “They wait outside their court hearings, and take them as soon as they leave the building.” During shifts at the courthouse (some call them “outreach,” some “ICE-watch,” others “patrol”), volunteers stop passersby to discuss the hotline and the DDN’s legislative efforts, all while on the lookout for ICE. When federal agents appear, a message is relayed to a deportation defense hotline which makes an announcement to over five thousand people in Providence through WhatsApp and Telegram channels. “We go down there and we do outreach, and we talk to people, and we protest, and we get really loud, and we let people know ICE is in the area, and then they leave without taking anyone,” Robb said. “[The ICE agents] will troll a little bit,” said Diego Castillo, a volunteer with the DDN and a junior at Brown. “But when we we’re willing to be out there, even for hours with them, I think it really just shows how much we care, and for the most part they leave.” The CHOG was born following Brown community members’ mounting fear of ICE after the detainments of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk from Columbia and Tufts respectively. Robb recalled that over 300 people showed up to the first meeting in late spring of 2025. “We were trying to figure out what it would mean to mass mobilize in a little bit of time,” Robb said. “We’ve seen how all of these institutions just roll right over when ICE actually comes, and so we’re like, we need to take it into our own hands,” she added. “There’s a lot of focus on institutions like Brown as [the buffer] between Trump and students. But, the truth is it’s students, us, the ones on the ground, who can actually protect each other.” Robb pulled out the call log of the hotline: “So today, so far there’s been, I think, only one. Yesterday there were six,” she said. “There are days when there’s definitely like,” Robb counted off her phone screen, “12.” Over the past year, the DDN has refined its operation. While the deportation defense hotline is active 5 am to 9 pm daily, the CHOG has narrowed in on exactly when ICE is likely to appear at the Garrahy courthouse, limiting its patrols to 9 am to noon Monday through Friday. “We’ve gotten good at it, like I think we’re at a point where we’re kind of better than the ICE agents,” said Raya Gupta, a volunteer with the DDN and a sophomore at Brown. “I mean, it flip flops, because we all have to adjust our tactics, but in the past couple mobilizations, there were a bunch of them, and none of the times were they able to take people,” she continued. “We’re very persistent and tactical.” As the network has grown, volunteers have become more confident in their procedures. “I know what to do when ICE shows up to the courthouse. I’m not scared to knock on windows anymore and ask people if they’re law enforcement to confirm if it’s ICE or not,” Gupta said.

How Much On-Screen Violence Is Too Much?

Vikram Murthi — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

I’ve always been a little sensitive about films that depict school shootings. But Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama was an outlier. When the clock struck midnight on May 1, the far-right conspiracy website Infowars went offline with a whimper. The organization was dissolved after multiple successful defamation lawsuits were filed against its founder, Alex Jones, and eventually no one could pay the $81,000-per-month rent for the website’s studio space. Jones owes more than a billion dollars after he spent years claiming that the deadliest K-12 shooting in history was a hoax perpetrated by the government to promote the passage of strict gun-control laws. The victims’ families were subjected to relentless harassment and death threats by Jones’s followers, who believed that they and their dead children were “crisis actors.” Neither my blood pressure nor my sanity can countenance the conspiracy theories that hucksters like Jones peddle as if they were dietary supplements or survivalist supplies. But as much as the Sandy Hook truthers are blinded by hateful ideology, I have to believe some of their fervor stems from how bewildering that particular tragedy was. School shootings are as endemic to 21st-century America as the common cold: Roughly 233 of them occurred last year, though that number isn’t definitive, since there is no standard definition of the term “school shooting.” But even taking into account our acquiescent gun culture and the current adolescent mental health crisis, the mere idea that someone would shoot 20 6- and 7-year-olds with a legally purchased semiautomatic rifle can short-circuit even the stablest of minds. I have been prone to depression for most of my life, and I have managed it, sometimes more successfully than others, with self-medication and irregular emotional support. Hence, my depressive periods tend to blend together in my memory. (Frankly, they aren’t severe or notable enough to be worth remembering at all.) But the months following Sandy Hook were a different story. The shooting happened at the tail end of finals during my sophomore year of college. I had plenty of time to absorb, and be affected by, the tributes and debates that took place throughout the winter break and the subsequent spring semester. I felt vaguely embarrassed by how affected I was and brushed off queries from my friends about my low mood. I had no personal connection to anyone who was killed. I didn’t even have younger siblings whom I could project my secondhand grief onto. I suppose part of the reason I was so unnerved by the whole affair was that I knew in my heart that nothing would change, culturally or politically, in its aftermath. Sure enough, those forebodings were confirmed when numerous states passed laws that weakened gun restrictions in the months after the shooting. If 20 dead kids weren’t enough to alter the terms of the gun-control debate in this country, then the debate was over. My distance from the incident could not heal my raw nerves. I remember my mother offhandedly mentioning that, since it was two weeks before Christmas, the victims’ parents almost certainly had presents for their kids already stashed away in their homes. The heartbreaking banality of that statement undid me like a zipper. The first time I was first paid for my writing was in my junior year of college when I reviewed a David Spade standup-comedy special for The A.V. Club. It would be another few years before I could call myself a film critic. I settled instead for developing an inchoate cinephilia. Like most burgeoning cineastes, I embraced a permissive attitude toward on-screen violence as an outgrowth of a generally progressive view of art. But even as a young man, I found it distressing to watch depictions of children getting gunned down to manufacture drama. I remember barely being able to stomach Battle Royale (2000), a pre–Hunger Games dystopian action film about junior-high-school kids who are forced to fight one another to the death by their authoritarian government, when my college roommates screened it in our apartment. Years later, I was asked to review Paul Greengrass’s 22 July (2018), a docudrama about the 2011 domestic terrorist attacks in Norway, and I distinctly remember thinking that the film offered nothing substantial enough to justify its graphic recreation of those brutal events. I have similar difficulties with films I otherwise adore, like John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), in which an unproductively sour taste floods my mouth when a gunman’s bullet blasts through a little girl’s vanilla ice cream and into her chest, leaving her covered in blood. My fragility around this issue has compounded in recent years as contemporary cinema reflects the normalization of wholesale slaughter as a hazard of American life. Vox Lux (2018), for example, capitalizes on the trauma of mass shootings to lend sociocultural heft to a rudimentary exploration of contemporary celebrity. The weakest shot in Weapons (2025), a supernatural-horror film about 17 children who mysteriously disappear, features a nightmarish image of an assault rifle eerily floating in the sky, cheaply summoning a tangible source of terror as a vehicle for narrative ambiguity. The specious evocation of real-life carnage has become something of a cinematic red line for me, admittedly complicating my otherwise open-minded philosophy regarding artistic depictions of aberrance. My oft-frustrating sensitivity to cinematic depictions of mass gun violence came to mind as I watched The Drama (2026), Kristoffer Borgli’s new commercially successful (and critically divisive) dark romantic comedy. The film chronicles the repercussions of a woman’s revelation to her fiancé and friends that she had planned, but didn’t carry out, a school shooting when she was a teenager. The hesitant confession of the bride-to-be, Emma (Zendaya), occurs in mixed company—Emma’s maid of honor responds negatively to the admission because her cousin had been paralyzed in a shooting—days before her wedding to Charlie (Robert Pattinson). The final preparations for the nuptials become shrouded in unease and regret, with Charlie haunted by nightmarish images of mass death and the film’s soundtrack peppered with allusions to gunshots and screams of terror.

Graham Platner and the Rise of White-Male Identity Politics

Joan Walsh — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Platner’s rocket to stardom reflects something ugly that’s developed, not only on the right but the left as well. As of Wednesday morning this week, even after his sexting scandal broke, I knew two things about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner: I was glad I didn’t have to vote in Maine, and that if I did, I would probably hold my nose and vote for Platner. Senator Susan Collins is despicable, her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh unforgivable. Defeating her is essential. It’s Friday morning, and now I know deep down I could never vote for Platner. (I’m still glad I don’t vote in Maine so I won’t be tested on Tuesday.) Platner, as most of the political world now knows, was accused Thursday afternoon in a New York Times story of behaving in “unsettling” ways, as one of the women put it, to at least three girlfriends, between 2013 and 2021. As many people also know, especially Platner stans, the worst allegations in the article—that he was physically abusive, and that he knew his “skull and bones” tattoo was an SS Totenkopf, which he has repeatedly denied—came from a conservative GOP operative. Do I like that? No. But I believe her, and I don’t believe Platner. The Maine oysterman has been through a lot since his 20-year-old Totenkopf was revealed in October (he had no idea it was a Nazi symbol, he said. He’d danced with his shirt off at a wedding, in front of his Jewish family!). Then came allegations that he had posted, on Reddit and other social media, various icky thoughts about women, Black people, and gay people. He said both the tattoo and the sometimes outrageous Reddit posts were a product of his PTSD and alcoholism from his military service, which included not only the Marines but a stint at the mercenary group Blackwater. He asked for understanding and compassion. He received it. But consider this, when you think about whether to trust him: If the New York Post is to be believed, as recently as Tuesday he told Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who’ve endorsed him, that there were no more muddy boots to drop, and that the “worst” of the rumors they might be hearing weren’t true. Then he canceled the rest of his Washington meetings and ran home to Sullivan, Maine, to do damage control on the coming New York Times story. Even if you don’t believe that story, or don’t want to believe the Republican victim, you’d have to count what he told Sanders and Warren as something akin to a… lie, wouldn’t you? Platner did something similar in his interview with MSNOW’s Chris Hayes last night. When Hayes asked him whether there were other “texts, photos, floating around that will hurt the campaign,” and whether he worried about it, the candidate brushed it off: “I’m not worried about it. There may be things out there, but they’re before I was in politics and a public figure.” He repeatedly depicted the negative stories coming out against him as what happens when you’re “going up against an entrenched political machine.” Disapproval was only coming from “career politicians.” Platner went on: “My journey is one of transformation.” And my journey is one of disillusionment, and maybe some regret that I ever believed him. Dude, you got into politics last August. So anything that happened, say, that spring must be forgiven? Yes, I’m a little pissed off. I’ve been Platner-skeptical since the Totenkopf reveal, but my Maine friends and acquaintances, as well as people I respect in the broader progressive community, love him. But I think Platner’s rocket to political stardom reflects something ugly that’s developed, not only on the right but on the left too: The only acceptable form of “identity politics” now is white-male identity politics. On the left, women and people of color have been told since Kamala Harris lost in 2024, even going back to Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, that we are the problem; our “identitarianism” drove away moderates and white men in 2016, and in 2024, even some Black and Latino men. Over and over we’ve been told: We gotta support candidates, like Platner, who have a lot of guns, and pickup trucks, and tattoos, and a military background, even if it includes Blackwater; a history of racist and sexist remarks and gay slurs on social media, and a history of shady behavior toward women, because it’s the only way to reach white working-class men. I’d say that’s pretty insulting to white working-class men.

What’s Behind the Corporate Pillaging of “60 Minutes”

Ben Schwartz — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

By firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley, the leaders of CBS News have elevated toadying over truth-telling. CBS News used to be a place where reporters won Emmys and got raises for telling the truth. This week, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley got fired for it. At a staff meeting, the 68-year-old, 37-year-veteran of the network called out his new boss, executive producer Nick Bilton. Pelley could not contain himself when Bilton said CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss “loves this institution. She loves 60 Minutes.” Pelley interrupted with controlled fury. “She is murdering 60 Minutes,” he said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.” Pelley went on: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the Evening News have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?” To illustrate his point, Pelley listed the 60 Minutes staffers who had been fired on what is now known at their offices as Black Thursday. That day came in the aftermath of Weiss’s decision to stop the planned broadcast of a story on the brutal conditions at El Salvador’s Terrorism Containment Center (CECOT) where the United States sent Venezuelan migrants for detention after their apprehension by ICE. Weiss felt the story was not balanced, and sought to add a MAGA counterpoint to what 60 Minutes already felt was a balanced, finished piece. 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi publicly criticized Weiss’s decision and was fired. “I have been a journalist for 25 years,” Bilton shot back. “I’ve sat across from incredibly powerful people like you have, and none of it intimidates me. OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.” Bilton then proved exactly how not-at-all intimidated he was by bringing Pelley’s outburst to the attention of Bari Weiss. Weiss accused Pelley of creating an unsafe work environment and insisted that he apologize. As this happened internally—an audio recording of the meeting was leaked to media outlets the day of the confrontation. What began as a closed-door shouting match between a reporter and a senior executive—a far-from-unprecedented occurrence in the history of journalism—went public as national news. It raised the stakes considerably. Of course, Pelley refused to back down. He meant every word of it. With his unapologetic criticism now public, CBS fired him. Nothing says you won’t be intimidated like firing someone for criticizing you. Pelley spent nearly four decades at CBS, reporting, sitting at the anchor desk, and making it to 60 Minutes as a worthy successor to Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, and colleagues like Lesley Stahl. Pelley’s firing comes less than a week after Steven Colbert’s last episode aired and the affable, unremarkable Byron Allen has taken his place with his apolitical, sponsor-friendly show Comics Unleashed. It also comes as reports went viral that CBS News was trying to woo right-wing bro podcaster Joe Rogan over to 60 Minutes, in an attempt to connect with his vast listenership. (CBS now denies this.) A Rogan-branded 60 Minutes would be the journalistic equivalent of Trump building a UFC octagon arena on the White House lawn. In damage control mode, Nick Bilton contacted senior correspondents Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim, and Bill Whitaker to reassure them of journalistic independence. Given the last 18 months of CBS acquiescing to Trump, we’ll see how long this lasts. Why is all this happening at once? Yes, Pelley brought a level of reporting excellence and a historical relationship with 60 Minutes’ audience that can’t be replaced—but in the Trump 2.0 era, those qualities are a hindrance, not a help. People like Pelley tend to feel they know what they’re talking about and question their bosses. Worse, other people listen to them—a definite bug, not a feature, for the MAGA model of public discourse. In CBS’s brave new world, loyalty comes first—namely, the kind Weiss shows to her employers and not to her news division. As Pelley railed about Weiss’s lack of credentials in New York, Republican senators cited the same issue as they balked at at the news of Trump’s appointment of a new director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte. Pulte, 38, has no intelligence experience—a first-order disqualification in the past that roughly equates to a Harvard PhD for the country’s MAGA leadership caste. His chief qualification for the job is a singular loyalty to Trump—the same quality we saw on display from the CBS suits who gave Simon and Alfonsi the boot for their exposé on CECOT abuses and then dismissed Pelley for talking back to senior executives. It means not only does Pulte not question; he doesn’t really have the capacity to question. It’s hard to believe that Bilton and Weiss acted alone when they sent a senior reporter and CBS icon like Pelley packing. 60 Minutes is the most highly rated news show on television. It’s racked up 4 million YouTube subscribers. Pelley is a large factor in that success. As Dan Rather recently wrote, “Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, is a bit player in this drama, executing decisions that are made far above her pay grade.” It’s not hard to divine who the players “far above her pay grade” are; Rather is most likely referencing the owners of CBS, the Ellison family. Recently actor Mark Ruffalo, a vocal opponent and organizer against the Ellison’s mammoth buyout of Warner Bros. and a pro-Palestinian activist, came to a similar conclusion on the I’ve Had It podcast. “To quote one prominent agent whose name I won’t divulge here,” Ruffalo said, “these are some vindictive motherfuckers, the Ellisons.”

We Took CBS’s Money. We Won’t Trade It for Silence.

Talan Collins,Santiago Campos,Sebastian Broche,Chris Gloff — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Four Mike Wallace Scholarship recipients on the rebellion at CBS News and the future of an American institution. We are often told not to bite the hand that feeds us. In our case, we were not explicitly told not to speak. No one needed to tell us. CBS News funded our education and honored our work—our role was to acknowledge the network’s generosity and graciousness. The implicit lesson here was that gratitude should speak for itself. The expectation was simple: accept the recognition, cash the check, and leave the criticism to someone else. We cannot. We are the four most recent recipients of the Mike Wallace Memorial Scholarship, funded entirely by CBS News. The network has invested tens of thousands of dollars in our education and recognized us as representatives of journalism’s future. That future—thanks to the corporate leadership of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, whose editorial interventions in the network’s flagship newsmagazine, 60 Minutes, spurred the firing of several of the network’s veteran producers and reporters—is now in jeopardy. The shameful attack on 60 Minutes hasn’t happened because the program, or the network, is losing ratings, revenue, and respect; it’s occurred as part of the bid to impose ideological orthodoxy on the network’s news division. Weiss’s agenda to appease the Trump administration sends the message that institutional loyalty matters more than editorial independence, and that the truth is merely one side of a debate. The upshot of this timorous model of newsgathering is that neutrality, not objectivity or accountability, is the highest virtue of journalism. Mike Wallace didn’t think so, and neither do we. Below, each of us offers our personal reflections on our tenure as Mike Wallace scholars amid the corporate news crisis at CBS. Silence Is Complicity Santiago Campos When I accepted a scholarship in Mike Wallace’s name, I knew I had a responsibility to call out the counter-journalistic practices at the organization he worked for. Staying silent at such a moment would have made me complicit in the disgraceful repudiation of the high standards set by Wallace and his colleagues at 60 Minutes. While I was not expecting the remarks I delivered in acceptance of my scholarship to leave the room, I was not surprised when they did go viral. At a time when public trust in mainstream media is at record lows, my remarks captured a widespread frustration with journalists who are unwilling to take a stand against the ways in which corporate consolidation is disfiguring the work they do at their own outlets. My speech shouldn’t have made headlines—aspiring journalists should be expected to speak out against threats to the profession. Professional journalists should not need a high school student to ask these questions. Yet my remarks were met by an eruption of applause from nearly every journalist in the room that night. I was glad that they clapped. But the real question is whether they have the courage, integrity, and willingness to speak truth to power when it matters most. Afraid of losing their jobs in a hyper-competitive market, many of them see staying quiet as the safer option. That’s not a luxury extended to the people they cover. As a student journalist who has spent the past two years covering US immigration policy, I have reported firsthand on the grave threats posed by mass deportation campaigns—not just to undocumented migrants but to the broader American public. Today, ICE has detained green-card holders, American citizens, and has violently menaced protesters, culminating in the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Under the ownership of David Ellison, a public ally of President Trump, and the direction of his appointed lackey Bari Weiss, CBS is suppressing the distribution of stories on the administration’s handling of immigration. Before 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley introduced me at the Emmys, he recognized his ousted colleague Sharyn Alfonsi. Earlier that day, Alfonsi had lost her contract at the network after management worked to suppress her segment on the harsh conditions experienced by Venezuelan migrants at CECOT, the Salvadoran mega-prison used to hold US deportees. Pelley was soon penalized for speaking out. After a venerable 37-year career, he was fired by the network after criticizing the policies of Weiss and her management team in a contentious staff meeting. Alfonsi and Pelley put their jobs on the line to resist efforts to silence and marginalize their work. All journalists at CBS should follow their lead. Their fear is understandable, but it doesn’t excuse their silence. The stakes are too high. Truth, Above All Else

The House Voted to End the Iran War. Now the Real Battle Begins.

Jeet Heer — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Congress took an important symbolic step toward reasserting its authority over war powers. But much, much more needs to be done. The anti-war cause won a rare and heartening victory on Wednesday when the House of Representatives passed a measure, the Iran War Powers Resolution, calling on Donald Trump to “remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, winning bipartisan support from 211 Democrats and 4 Republicans who broke with the president—Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan, and Warren Davidson of Ohio. While Massie and Davidson are long known for being staunchly anti-interventionist libertarians, the defections of the two other Republicans are significant because they are moderates who represent swing districts. Fitzpatrick and Madison were surely motivated in part by the fact that the Iran war is overwhelmingly unpopular. A new poll by The Economist/YouGov shows that 68 percent of voters believe Trump “should make a deal to end the war in Iran as quickly as possible.” They and the rest of the bill’s supporters did well to pass a resolution that not only reflects popular opinion but also reasserts the constitutional role of Congress over the waging of war. Yet passing a resolution is easier than enforcing it. As The New York Times reports: The House’s vote was only the first step in a complicated and likely uphill path for the resolution. It now heads to the Senate, which under the war powers law must take it up within roughly two and a half weeks. It does not need a presidential signature, but even if Congress were to clear the measure, its legal force would remain uncertain. Getting the Senate to pass the measure could be difficult, but it is not impossible. Last month the Senate passed a similar resolution by a vote of 50 to 47, with four Republicans joining almost all Democrats (John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, now an infamous buffoon, being the sole member of his party to vote against the resolution). If both the House and the Senate pass the resolution, it will not need the president’s support because it will be what is known as a “concurrent resolution”—in effect, a legislative veto. But what happens next is less certain, because it is unclear whether a concurrent resolution used in this manner is constitutional. The Constitution could not be more explicit that the responsibility for declaring war rests with Congress. Yet, in practice, this power has been eroded by the massive expansion of the national security state, which has led to a centralization of power in the executive branch. The result is an imperial presidency that frequently wages war with minimal consultation with Congress, let alone explicit authorization. In 1973, in a backlash against the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon’s abuses of power, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. Under Section 5(c) of that law, a concurrent resolution should be enough to end a war. But a decade after the passage of the War Powers Resolution, the Supreme Court ruled against the practice of legislative vetoes in the case of INS v. Chadha (1983). Although narrowly dealing with an immigration case, the decision had a far-reaching impact. Within the Reagan administration, an anonymous memo on the case (possibly written by future Supreme Court Chief John Roberts) gloated that “this is a historic ruling in favor of the executive branch. There are nearly 200 statutory provisions containing legislative vetoes. Some prominent examples include the War Powers Act…” That view has persisted. In January, Vice President JD Vance stated that “every president, Democrat or Republican, believes the War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law.” Although Vance didn’t name the Chadha decision, it was clearly what he had in mind. (As often in politics, Vance is a naked hypocrite here, since in 2023 he argued that the War Powers Resolution should be used to constrain Joe Biden’s support of Ukraine).

A Personal TomDispatch Farewell

Tom Engelhardt — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

After 24 years of incisive reporting and commentary on America’s destructive imperial exploits, Tom is passing the torch. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. Yes, I began TomDispatch 24-and-a-half years ago and, today, I’m finally putting up my own last piece, at least as the editor in chief of this site. Very soon, the superlative Nick Turse will be running TomDispatch under the auspices of The Intercept (though I’ll undoubtedly continue to lend a hand). It’s been a long run. I only wish I could say that, so many years later, this world is a better place.… Sigh, no such luck. (Anything but, in fact!) There are so many people to thank, including all the remarkable authors I’ve published. I couldn’t even begin to list them here, though I’d love to thank each of them from the bottom of my heart. And what a mess their pieces might have been if Christopher Holmes hadn’t shown up online to lend an eternal hand or my old friend Annette Liberson-Drewry hadn’t done the same, both proofing the stories in a fabulous and never-ending manner. And let me not forget Annelise Whitley, who was always there, as (until relatively recently) was Erika Eichelberger! And I can’t even begin to thank the scads of wonderful writers who kept this site afloat all these many years! I only wish I could still thank Mike Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, Todd Gitlin, Chalmers Johnson, David Rosner, Jonathan Schell, and Howard Zinn, who are now gone from this world of ours, not to speak of so many TD authors (far too many to name) who are still deeply alive and kicking on this all-too-strange Trumpian planet and many of whom, I hope, will continue to write for this site under Nick Turse. I can’t even imagine what my world would have been like if Hamilton Fish hadn’t called me so long ago. He suggested turning the e-mails I had begun sending out to friends in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on my city and Washington, DC, containing articles that struck me at media sites around the world and my own little explanatory introductions, into a website that he (not I) called TomDispatch. And what would I have done if The Nation Institute (which then became Type Media Center) hadn’t supported me all these years? They—and Taya McCormick-Grobow, in particular—were simply fantastic! And how would I have lasted if so many TomDispatchreaders hadn’t so generously contributed money to keep this site alive? And so, nearly a quarter of a century (and many exclamation points!!) later, I find myself in a world that would have been unimaginable, even in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when life on this planet became ever stranger. Sadly, then, let me bid farewell not on a planet gloriously or even passingly better, but Trumpianly worse than I ever might have imagined. And let me also offer a small bow of thanks to the many thousands of wonderful readers who have followed this site, sent its pieces around, contributed money to keep it going, and made my life matter. And let me also offer my thanks to all the other sites that reposted TD pieces so wonderfully over the years. Thank you so, so much. Oh, and if you feel in the mood, I now have my own Substack ready for me, where, after a little time off, I hope to keep writing the odd thing—perhaps the equivalent of my TD introductions—about this ever-stranger planet of ours (as I will also, I hope, continue to do at Nick’s version of TomDispatch from time to time). To subscribe to my new Substack, just click here. And as I used to do so regularly in another life on another planet (or so it now seems to me), I’m soon going to pick up the book manuscript of an old friend (and well-known writer) and begin editing it. And with all of that in mind, here’s my final piece as the guy who created and ran TomDispatch all these years, the last of the hundreds (certainly 300 or more!) I’ve personally written since 2001 at this site. OK, here’s what this old man remembers nearly a quarter of a century later. I was living in New York City (as I still am) when, on September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes full of passengers hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 innocent people. Until that moment, of course, such a thing would have been beyond inconceivable, no less watchable on TV, in the United States of America. Had someone written up such a plot with Osama bin Laden and crew in the cast of characters, it would have been treated as the worst kind of unpublishable science fiction. But, of course, it did indeed happen and, in some strange sense, in its wake (an all-too-appropriate word under the circumstances), our world did indeed seem to flip upside down. That was, of course, after President George W. Bush responded early that October by—God save us!—invading Afghanistan (which, at least to me, was a shock and a half in its own right) and launching his disastrous “Global War on Terror.” Sometime in the weeks that followed, my memory (not exactly trustworthy at almost 82 years of age) is that I saw an article deep inside the print New York Times (which, by the way, I still read daily on actual paper) noting that US soldiers were by then fighting in parts of Afghanistan where the troops of the Soviet Union had struggled endlessly (and lost badly) during that imperial power’s disastrous Afghan war of the previous century, which did indeed help take it down. And that, too, in some grim fashion, stunned me. Talk about mistakes that history had all too clearly signaled should never happen again (and again and again)! I was at the time (even if barely) online and so I copied that piece into an e-mail and sent it out with a note to a small set of friends. And somehow that began the process that led to TomDispatch.

The District 12 Candidate Nobody Is Talking About

Katha Pollitt — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

“Our democracy is in deep trouble,” says Nina Schwalbe, “from vaccines to abortion to science, to SNAP, to rule of law.” I wasn’t going to write about Nina Schwalbe. As you may or may not know, she’s the global health expert and scientist running for Jerry Nadler’s fabled seat in Manhattan’s 12th Congressional District. (Long focused around the Upper West Side, the district now includes the more conservative Upper East Side.) If you live uptown, you might have run into her chatting with voters at a neighborhood Greenmarket or in front of Zabar’s, or seen one of her posters in a storefront window. But she’s gotten little media attention and few endorsements. She’s right down there with Laura Dunn, the civil liberties lawyer backed by the National Organization for Women who is the other low-profile woman running for the slot. What made me curious about Schwalbe, and also, to be frank, enraged on her behalf, was a long cover story in New York magazine. The cover, which announced, “The Next Mr. Manhattan,” featured photos of the four top candidates—Micah Lasher, Alex Bores, George Conway, and Jack Schlossberg—squished together in a van, looking very pleased with themselves. Schwalbe was not mentioned once. It’s true that the men’s campaigns are swarming with volunteers and staffers, and are lavishly funded—Lasher has over a million from Michael Bloomberg, Bores more than that from tech- and crypto-bros. All four are also the object of much punditry and polling, with many endorsements from prominent people. I get glossy mailers from Bores and Lasher practically every day, and endless extremely annoying e-mails from Schlossberg reminding me that he is a Kennedy. It is hard to imagine Schwalbe breaking through this wall of media and money, but still: How democratic is the race if you need millions of dollars and preexisting fame to run a visible race? Jack Schlossberg has no relevant experience, and no credentials that I can see, but Nancy Pelosi endorsed him. (At least Schwalbe will be included in a debate next Tuesday on WNYC.) I asked Schwalbe why she decided to run, when I interviewed her at her modest Upper West Side apartment at the end of May. She is a 60-year-old lesbian mom with a calm, friendly manner and no trace of the urgent egotism that characterizes so many politicians. “Our democracy is in deep trouble,” she told me, “from vaccines to abortion to science, to SNAP, to rule of law.” As for her lack of political experience, she pointed out her deep experience with international health, and how she had been in charge of, among other things, global covid vaccine distribution during the Biden administration. “I’ve worked in over 100 countries—I’ve delivered.” The immediate impetus for her foray into electoral politics was the mass firings at USAID and CDC, the US departure from the World Health Organization, and the canceling of DEI. “You can’t really do public health without DEI. It doesn’t work.” She continued, “Nobody was stepping in. Congress certainly wasn’t.” Schwalbe would certainly bring expertise and plenty of experience on public health to Congress. That’s why among her endorsements are Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, with whom she worked on the WHO’s global pandemic treaty, and her old friend Representative Jim Hines (D-CT), who assured her that her skill set would be valued by her fellow legislators. “I have real insight into how government works, and passing that allocation or appropriation is just the first step. We have a ton of wonderful bills that have been passed but not executed.” For example, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, 60 percent of the subways in the 12th district are not accessible. It’s good to hear she’d be welcome in Congress, but how does she plan to get there? “Our path to victory is the power of the people,” she told me. Besides street canvassing and the Greenmarkets, the campaign posts frequently on Instagram and TikTok. But I’ve yet to receive a campaign e-mail or invitation to a house party or other event. There’s a handmade old-style feminist feel to Schwalbe’s campaign—V, formerly Eve Ensler, is an endorser. I like it that she goes into Central Park and asks young women if they feel body-shamed. I like that she mocks expensive glossy mailers. But it does feel a little low-key. People power takes well, lots of people, and it takes a real organization to get them out, or even make it known that you exist. As of last week, she told me, she had gotten about 1400 donations. Only a handful of her TikToks have gotten more than a few hundred clicks. Still, she points out that around 30 percent of voters are undecided. So, in theory, there’s hope. Our conversation was a bit rambling, but I learned a lot about, for example, Covid. According to Schwalbe the six-foot rule was excessive. It was originally meant for the flu. Closing the schools was another mistake, she said. She actually wrote an article to that effect in The Atlantic in 2020, but the teachers’ union was adamant about the shutdown. “Science is very hard to communicate, and we just have to do a better job of it. You can’t just say something works. We have to be able to explain the nuances. Because that’s where we lose trust.” Even on the Upper West Side, she meets anti-vaxxers who think the Covid vaccine let Bill Gates put a chip in your arm. “I say, he doesn’t need to because you have one in your pocket.” Good answer! I came away liking Schwalbe as a person quite a bit, and grateful for the science lesson. But what would she say, I asked, to someone who said, I agree with everything you stand for, but you don’t have a chance and if I give you my vote maybe Schlossberg would get in? “I would say, imagine a world where we voted for the person that we wanted to see in office.” Imagine it, sure. But in the real world? I would love to see Schwalbe win a surprise victory over the media, the money, and, yes, the men. Could that happen? She thinks so: “If I wasn’t an optimist I wouldn’t do this.” I’m more of a skeptic than an optimist these days, but I wish her all the luck.

Israel Tortured These Activists. Now They're Speaking Out.

Saliha Bayrak — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Multiple Gaza flotilla activists describe severe violence and psychological torment while in Israeli detention. As hundreds of activists from the latest voyage of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) and Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) returned to their homes around the world, multiple participants reported that Israeli authorities physically and psychologically abused them in a systematic manner reminiscent of the mistreatment that Palestinian political prisoners are subjected to every day. I spoke with a few of these activists—who had set out to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza—and they all described serious injuries inflicted on them by Israeli authorities. Starting on May 18, Israel intercepted dozens of boats and abducted about 430 activists who were carrying aid to a besieged and starving Gaza, as part of a now decades-long mission started by the FFC. The abductions occurred over two days in international waters, dozens of miles away from the coast of Palestine. Activists were then transported from their boats to Ashdod port in Israel on “prison ships” with makeshift holding areas constructed from shipping containers and barbed wire, without any information on when and where they would arrive. The excruciating journey lasted up to two days. Cássio Pelegrini, a Brazilian pediatrician who was aboard the GSF boat Hawsha, told me that Israeli authorities beat him until they broke a rib, and then continued to beat him despite his fracture. “They started intercepting us really far from the Palestine coast, so they could have more time to perpetrate the violence, ” Pelegrini told me. “All the violence happens there, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the ocean, when nobody is watching.” Read our previous Gaza flotilla coverage Israel Just Attacked Another Flotilla. But the Movement Will Never Stop. Saliha Bayrak A Reflection on “Objective” Journalism From the Global Sumud Flotilla Alex Colston The Freedom Flotilla Is Sailing Into Its Most Dangerous Waters Yet Saliha Bayrak “They Wanted to Humiliate Us”: Israel’s Abuse of Freedom Flotilla Activists Saliha Bayrak From the Gaza Flotilla: “I’m Here Because My Jewish Heritage Demands It” David Adler Ariadne Telles, also from Brazil, told me that her hands were zip-tied so tight that she fractured her radius bone. Mecid Bağçivan, from Turkey, said that he was shot with a rubber bullet at close range and wound up needing reparative surgery. Amrou Ibrahim, a US citizen who was aboard the FFC boat Adalah, told me they were violently beaten up three separate times while in Israeli custody. Pelegrini said his vessel was the second to last to be intercepted, about 90 nautical miles away from Gaza. He was then moved to a prison ship that detainees dubbed the “torture boat” (the GSF believes this is the US-built-and-funded naval ship the INS Nahshon). “After a passport check, they took me to a dark container,” Pelegrini told me. “There were five soldiers with flashlights on their heads and lasers. They asked me to sit. They started kicking me and punching me with guns. I felt my rib being broken, and I stood up instinctively. They asked me to sit again and started beating me again really hard, and then they asked me to stand up and pull my pants down, and they poured more water on me, and then they asked me to put my pants back on again, and they threw me inside.” Pelegrini said that Israeli soldiers poured water on him multiple times to keep him cold in the damp, dark containers of the ship. Many others had their warm clothes taken from them. Everyone was subjected to some level of cruelty. “We tried to sleep to get some rest, but it was a nightmare. There were 188 people divided in three containers. There wasn’t space for everybody, and also with the fractures, we couldn’t find a comfortable position,” he said. Pelegrini and others on board started to take a tally of the incidents that happened on this military vessel alone; they counted 35 fractures, 22 taser injuries on the head and neck, and 10 cases of sexual violence. “The harder people screamed, the more [the Israeli authorities] enjoyed it, and the harder and longer they beat you. If you didn’t react, they would eventually get bored,” Ibrahim, who was transported to Ashdod port on a second prison ship separate from Pelegrini, told me. “You could hear screams of torture all around you, and everything was meant to break you and degrade you.” “I have a fracture in my hand, my radius bone, because they zip-tied my hands until it smashed the nerves and broke my bone,” Telles told me. She said she thinks she was treated this way because she protested the violent assault of her comrades. When she saw Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, who can be seen taunting flotilla activists in a now widely circulated video, she screamed that he was a terrorist and criminal. “They are very sadistic. They enjoy the violence they are doing to us,” she said. Telles and Pelegrini said that the Israelis were particularly violent with people of color, people from the Global South, Muslims, and anti-Zionist Jews. After arriving at the Ashdod port, Pelegrini was violently beaten up once more, despite telling his tormentors that he had a broken rib. After being processed by Israeli immigration and transferred to Ketziot prison, where most of the flotilla participants were held, Pelegrini was beaten up again. This time, he said, the beating was not as aggressive, possibly because they were under official custody and more eyes were on the Israeli soldiers. At one point, he was taken in for a “medical evaluation,” but he did not receive care for his broken rib.

The Only Thing You Need to Know About the White House’s Aliens.gov Website

Sasha Abramsky — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

It’s an attempt to rile up the MAGA base over reforms to the immigration system 60 years ago. The White House recently posted an “Aliens” video, complete with spooky X-Files–styled music and an ominous voiceover. The green-lettered narration, designed like the text in a bad sci-fi prologue, explained how for 60 years “they” have walked among “us,” lived among us, sent their children to our schools, but how they aren’t really like us and they don’t belong here. The cheesy video, which directs viewers to a new Aliens.gov website, is, of course, another effort to dehumanize immigrants. What’s most striking about this Julius Streicher–like exercise, apart from the sheer racial and nationalist animus, is the timeline the video and site focuses on: 60 years. According to the White House, “they” have been corroding America for the last six decades. That timeline wasn’t chosen arbitrarily, and it signals exactly what is going on here. This has nothing to do with undocumented immigrants and everything to do with the millions of non-white immigrants who entered the country, legally, since the 1965 reforms to the immigration system that ended the nativist quota system put in place in the 1920s and allowed for family unification to be a prime goal of the American immigration system. The conflation here is stunning: It is allegedly about “illegals,” but is in fact designed to rile up viewers against all the different immigrant groups who have made the United States their home since Congress liberalized the immigration system 60 years ago. This bilious production is being brought to Americans’ screens by members of the US government. Those officials have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and to serve and protect all Americans, not just those with their preferred skin color and political disposition. The website was funded, presumably, by US taxpayers— of all colors, all religions, all cultures. Yet what it is saying, pretty much explicitly, is that America should be understood as a white man’s country, a white man’s project, a white man’s playground. It is a White House endorsement of the Great Replacement theory, the nebulous notion that liberals in Western countries have engaged in a meta-conspiracy over the generations to marginalize white men and Christian culture. That pretty much gels with “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth’s caricature-like understanding of the country. This most hypocritical of “Christians,” this man who dares to argue that he is implementing God’s vision by waging war on such “woke” ideas as respect for human rights and adherence to the Geneva Conventions, has been caught, for the second time this year, denying military promotions to a slew of women and African Americans, for no reason other than that they are women or African Americans. He is busily undoing eight decades of efforts to integrate the US military leadership, and is attempting to make sure that Black men cannot give orders to white enlistees, and that women, of any color, cannot be in positions of power over men. In Hegseth’s understanding, to exercise power legitimately one must have both pale skin and testicles. It gels, too, with ICE recruitment videos, which are now so overtly racist that, according to an Intercept investigation, some local police forces apparently fear they could incite white supremacist violence against non-whites and immigrants. And it gels with current DOJ investigations into a slew of top-tier universities, some in the Ivy Leagues, others top state universities, basically for their enrollment of Black and brown students. It’s in line, too, with EEOC explicit requests, in recent months, for white men to come forward with claims that they were discriminated against in the workplace because they were white men. This is the most clearly white supremacist political project in the United States since the end of Jim Crow in the Deep South. It has the stamp of approval of the Supreme Court, which just this week, in the wake of its destruction of the Voting Rights Act, upheld Alabama’s new voting maps that were created with the specific intent of disappearing the state’s one majority-Black congressional district. And it has the enthusiastic backing of the president and his top henchmen. Increasingly, Trump’s presidency is boiling down to a handful of revenge efforts: white revenge against all of these “alien” types; personal revenge against perceived political enemies (look no further than his primary-election-season destruction of Congress members Thomas Massie, Bill Cassidy, and John Cornyn); and institutional revenge against political systems and corners of the bureaucracy that he deems to be insufficiently loyal to his authoritarian vision. Trump regards the entire federal workforce as his subordinates. He views Congress as existing only to rubber-stamp his every whim; hence his reaction when the House of Representatives finally voted, on Wednesday, to rein in his war-making powers on Iran. Trump responded by calling it “unpatriotic.” Of course, it wasn’t. In fact, it may have been the only patriotic vote this feckless Congress has taken during Trump 2.0. What Trump really meant was something like, “I am the state. You oppose me. Therefore you are opposing the functioning of the state.” One can almost see him in his tricorn hat, his face beet red with rage, a power-crazed Napoleon, post-Austerlitz, demanding of his parliament ever-more unfettered powers.

Trump’s Disregard for International Humanitarian Law Won’t End When the Iran War Does

Michele Goodwin,Eric A. Friedman — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

As political pressure to end the war grows, Americans must not overlook the president’s blatant violations of the rule of law, abroad and at home. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution by a vote of 215–208 “seeking to halt Trump from taking further military action amid growing opposition to the war.” President Trump called the vote “meaningless” and lambasted the four Republican signers as “unpatriotic” and “GRANDSTANDERS” who “should be ashamed of themselves.” This comes after Trump’s various failed efforts to secure a deal and end the war. To be clear, with growing concern from Democratic and Republican members of Congress, worry from allied nations, and anxiety from business leaders, Trump is under pressure to end the war. However, even if Congress clutches the reins, Americans and the rest of the world should be alarmed by Trump’s dangerous bravado and disregard for the rule of law. The DOJ’s Shameful Abuse of Power Must Be Reined In Michele Goodwin The Escalating Nuclear Threat Finally Has the Public’s Attention. Now What? Katrina vanden Heuvel Trump Doesn’t Have the Authority. What Happens When He Does It Anyway? Michele Goodwin and Gregory Shaffer We think an investigation is needed to understand just how dangerous Donald Trump is not only on domestic policy, but also on global affairs. As president of the United States, Trump has consistently shown disregard and contempt for the separation of powers, imposing tariffs, ignoring the Constitution, starting wars, and claiming budgetary control not authorized for a president. His conduct has been so brazen that even the US Supreme Court, which has shown a mystifying level of solicitude toward Trump, smacked his hands in the tariffs case. As Chief Justice John Roberts made clear in the court’s ruling, the “power to impose tariffs” has been vested with Congress for over 200 years. However, neither time and tradition nor orderly governing appear to mean very much to a president who prioritizes corruption and cruelty over human rights, and war over diplomacy. For example, reaching a deal in Iran—or the attempt to—might obscure the many shocking ways that Donald Trump and his administration actively ignore international protocols, domestic laws, and trade diplomacy for violence. Early in the Iran war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reiterated his disdain for international humanitarian law. He said at a March press conference, “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.” In essence, the Trump administration has leveraged this “common sense” against the US Constitution, federal laws, and international treaties. This preoccupation with lethality has been a fixation of Hegseth’s since his confirmation hearing, during which he refused to commit to abide by the Geneva Conventions. These foundational legal instruments of international humanitarian law (aka the law of war) amounted to, in his words, “burdensome rules of engagement.” This has been a common thread throughout Trump’s second term and across his cabinet—from Kristi Noem to Pam Bondi—whether on the streets of Minneapolis or in other countries where it has launched unjustified wars. Notably, polls show that the vast majority of Americans oppose the war in Iran and Trump’s handling of it. Barely one-third are in favor. Yet the Trump administration’s “maximum lethality” policy in conjunction with a disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law continues unabated. And it looks like the heartbreak of the parents of Reza Habashian, Mahdis Nazari, and Liana Mohammadi—three 7-year-olds who were among the approximately 156 people, including 120 schoolchildren, killed in back-to-back US missile strikes on a primary school in Minab, Iran, on February 28, 2026. The strike was apparently the result of highly outdated intelligence that the school was part of an adjacent Iranian military base. It also looks like a 30-year-old Ethiopian migrant who lost his legs in an April 28, 2025, US attack on the Sa’ada migrant detention center in Yemen. He had come to Yemen to find work and help his family back in Ethiopia. “Now people carry me to the toilet,” he said to Amnesty International earlier this year. Another survivor of the strike, now living with one leg missing and a metal rod inside of his severely injured remaining leg, is in such pain that when he cannot take a painkiller, he wishes to die. Sixty-one African migrants, most or all from Ethiopia, did die in that April 28 attack. And it looks like Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo. Both had been working in Venezuela—Samaroo cared for goats and cows and made cheese—and were on their way home by boat to Trinidad on October 14, 2025, when they were among the six people killed by a US missile strike. Joseph leaves behind three children. According to the Trump administration, the US launched the boat strikes because those on board were trafficking drugs and “narcoterrorists,” members of designated terrorist organizations. Or at least the administration so asserted, without evidence. The attacks in Iran and Yemen violated international humanitarian law, which requires states to “do everything feasible” to ensure that the objects of their attacks are military objectives, not civilian infrastructure and populations. Between open-sourced satellite imagery, readily available information on the Internet (including the school’s website), and a UN investigation into a 2022 Saudi attack on the same detention facility, the nonmilitary nature of the school and detention facility (for 10 and five years, respectively) was readily discernible. The world’s intelligence superpower using information years out of date when current information is available to all is a far cry from the “all feasible precautions” required. While the attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean may not have officially violated international humanitarian law, they also are not part of an armed conflict. As such, they are human rights violations, extrajudicial killings that do not follow judicial or other legal processes. They constitute “arbitrary” deprivations of the right to life. As had been the practice for decades, suspicion of drug trafficking should lead to a law enforcement response—interdiction, arrest, and prosecution—not a military one. US military attacks on the Minab primary school, the Sa’ada detention center, and the boat carrying Trinidadian laborers do not constitute the only international humanitarian law violations and extrajudicial killings under this administration. Through the first week of May 2026, at least 190 people were killed in the boat strikes. And now by the time of the possible ceasefire with Iran, US and Israeli strikes on Iran have damaged or destroyed more than 1,000 schools and health facilities, according to the Iranian Red Crecent Society. To date, the United States and Israel have already killed more than 1,700 Iranian civilians. While each attack must be analyzed based on its specific circumstances to determine whether it has violated international humanitarian law, the sheer numbers are highly suggestive that some entailed violations. Indeed, “over 100 international law experts warn: U.S. strikes on Iran violate UN Charter and may be war crimes.” Simply put, the American government is at war abroad and also with itself. The Trump administration’s fetish with violence is not only at sea or with missiles landing on schools, hospitals, and clinics. His aggression is also at home with brazen violations of the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity. To address this, Congress must step in and restore and safeguard these quintessential values. And Americans must reject the cynicism being foisted upon them that violence equals strength and good judgment. Certainly, the Trump administration has disproven that.

Muhammad Ali Died 10 Years Ago. We Still Feel His Loss Today.

Dave Zirin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

He was a living sign, to paraphrase the champ, that we don’t have to be the way they want us to be—and his example matters more than ever. Incredibly, we are marking the 10th anniversary of the passing of “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali. The heavyweight boxing champion, military draft-resister, proud anti-racist, and champion of the Palestinian people was laid to rest in Louisville, Kentucky, in June of 2016. Being present for his funeral and the celebration of his incredible life was an indelible experience. I wanted to recall that day not only to commemorate the passing of a giant but also because it speaks to what we have all collectively lost over the last decade. This country is a more violent, more divided, more hateful, and more uncertain place than it was a decade ago. Then again, it’s not like 2016 was some kind of Shangri-la: Racist police killings were in the news seemingly every day. Income inequality was widening. Opioid abuse had become a full-blown epidemic. Environmental catastrophe was already a fact. The hoofbeats of authoritarianism were in the distance. Given all this, you could be forgiven for thinking we’ve always been on a toboggan ride down to our current hellscape. And yet, the future was not, nor is it ever, preordained. There were movements a decade ago, from Black Lives Matter to the push for a Green New Deal, that offered hope. As a country, we had multiple paths—we just took the most nihilistic one on offer. On that day in Louisville, though, it was possible to feel an optimism that today seems so elusive. When Muhammad Ali was laid to rest, the entirety of the city shut down. Thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black, overwhelmingly—based upon my hurried reporting as I bounced from person to person—living within driving distance of the small city lined the streets. It was the Black South, the very people currently seeing their voting rights destroyed by neo-Confederate politicians and a Jim Crow Supreme Court, who showed up for Muhammad Ali. School buses filled with children were part of the procession down the city’s main drag; you could hear them chanting Ali’s name as they slowly drove by. The throngs of people looking on joined them in a call and response version of “Ali, Bomaye,” the famed chant from Ali’s victory in the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then, sticking half of his body out of a hearse to do so, the actor Will Smith began slapping bystanders’ hands. Later, Smith explained to the media later why he gave a thousand high-fives that day. During the filming of the biopic Ali, in which Smith starred, Ali had taken him aside and insisted that they go for a ride on a public bus. Smith said that he was taken aback by the request—they were both too famous for that. Ali said back: “Will, sometimes you have got to let the people touch you so they know you are real.” (It hasn’t been the best decade for Will Smith, either.) Then there was the packed funeral service at Louisville’s basketball arena. Other than the international dignitaries who would be speaking, it was open seating, and people arrived hours early to be a part of it. The eulogists paid tribute to both the public Ali and the private Ali. Rabbi Michael Lerner spoke with gratitude about Ali’s solidarity with the Palestinian people—a speech that left Bill Clinton looking visibly uncomfortable. And Malcolm X’s daughter Attallah Shabazz pulled back the curtain on Ali’s relationship with her family after Ali’s famous falling out with Malcolm. She spoke of a relationship marked by a level of emotional and financial support that no one knew was taking place. Many of the speakers made it clear that Ali’s public persona would be with us forever. But his private persona, as Shabazz described, was revelatory: not because he was perfect, but because he understood the power of his fame’s effect on people while still holding a deep empathy for the most powerless among us. Muhammad Ali was robbed of his speech by Parkinson’s disease in the last several decades of his life. Many have remarked that it was only after he lost his radical voice that he was fully embraced by white America. What I am realizing, 10 years after his passing, is that we don’t just miss his voice. We miss his presence on the planet: a living sign, to paraphrase the champ, that we don’t have to be the way they want us to be. He was, is, and always will be the champ. But his legacy must be that we can all champion the deliberately unheard, and we don’t need a heavyweight title to do the work.

What a Week in the Hospital Showed Me About Our Broken Healthcare System

Gregg Gonsalves — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

My stay drove home one of the biggest problems facing us: a devastating shortage of primary care doctors. Two weeks ago, I was in surgery. Twenty-four hours later, I was released from the hospital and headed home. I felt much better and was happy to get to take a walk with the dog, hang out with my partner, chat over dinner, and watch an episode of an old British mystery series before getting my first real sleep in a week in our own bed. This was thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. But it was no thanks to modern American healthcare, which, as I know from my recent experience, is fundamentally broken. What I realized after leaving the hospital is that I was on my own. My care was coordinated while I was an inpatient, with primary care hospitalists managing a set of three different kinds of specialists; out in the real world, such coordination barely exists. My new condition is apparently chronic, so to get my ongoing follow-up care together, I am making appointments with specialists, arranging tests and scans, and generally being an “impatient patient” trying to fight my way to get what I need. But still, it’s an uphill battle. The system is sclerotic, and trying to get appointments, even for things I have been told are urgent, is a challenge. Getting the different specialists to talk to each other? That’s tomorrow’s struggle. And I’m someone who has it good. I encountered people during my week in the hospital who would be released with far graver medical complications, far fewer resources, and far more obstacles facing them outside of the ward, from housing insecurity to substance use. I also have a bevy of friends who are physicians in the same healthcare system that cared for me, who can help me when things go awry. My privilege is enormous compared to most people facing down American healthcare in crisis. When I mentioned all of this to other friends, the stories erupted from both sides of the patient-physician divide. Some of them mirrored mine, but many friends were dealing with more serious conditions like cancer, or juggling multiple diagnoses, requiring dozens of specialists. But every “patient” friend with ongoing complex medical issues was managing their own care or had an advocate in a spouse or partner to do the work, which was an extra part-time or full-time job for many. One primary care doc in my circle, Wendy Johnson, a family physician at El Centro Family Health in Northern New Mexico, said this: “Your situation is one of a hundred reasons our primary care system is so very broken. For me, as a primary care provider, to really adequately coordinate your care, I’d need an hour to see you and another hour to talk to your many specialists. I’d need a great support team helping with referrals and advocating for timely appointments. Of course, we never have any of that. Post-hospital visits are 30 minutes, support staff are overwhelmed, specialists are largely unreachable. So rather than address the issues with primary care by compensating us enough, so we could spend more time with patients and hire better teams to help us care for patients, the system instead pays for yet another Band-Aid workaround.” This is a cry for help that goes unheard and unaddressed year after year. No one in power pays any attention to these deep structural flaws in our system. While we battle over the future of American health insurance—which, to be clear, is a huge part of the problem—the rot deepens in the day-to-day foundation of American medicine, at the level of the physician-patient interface. We have a desperate shortage of primary care physicians (PCP) in the US; by 2038, we will have a projected shortfall of 70,610 PCPs, and rural areas will be hit the hardest. Already, as of 2023, 7.2 percent of counties in America did not have a primary care physician at all. And while residency slots have increased by leaps and bounds for vascular surgery (31 percent), neurology (23.6 percent), and psychiatry (22.9 percent) over the past four years, primary care specialties—internal medicine, internal medicine-pediatrics, pediatrics, and family medicine—have seen smaller increases in residency positions. The PCPs out there are also aging out—the specialty is greyer than other professions, so the pipeline is drying up. Meanwhile, PCPs are paid terribly compared to other specialists, while half of them report burnout on the job. This is a rolling disaster playing out in real time. We clearly need more PCPs in our country. But there are few incentives to go into primary care. Who wants to get paid terribly compared to their peers (particularly when saddled with tremendous medical school debt), and have little support for properly managing patients? No wonder new doctors often choose specialties that pay more and let them practice their profession more easily. And hospital systems aren’t exactly fond of primary care, since it is often a money-loser. A few years ago, the same hospital system I spent time in last month spun off its primary care efforts to the local federally qualified health centers, claiming that it was helping build a new primary care facility down by I-95 and the waterfront—not exactly a central location for anyone in our city. This move was roundly criticized at the time, including by me. (The hospital got word of my objections, and I was “invited” to the hospital C-suite to discuss my concerns. As a new assistant professor then, it came across as a warning rather than any true interest in engagement. I declined the chance to meet, sensing that this was about shutting down a conversation, not opening up an honest discussion.)

A New Documentary Shows How Paid Leave Gives Families a Lifeline

Regina Mahone — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The film reveals what’s possible when families can access supportive policies. Olympic champion Allyson Felix understands this issue intimately. Allyson Felix still remembers the beeping of the monitors in the NICU as her daughter was fighting for her life after her preterm birth in 2018. After developing severe preeclampsia, Felix had an emergency C-section and delivered her daughter at 32 weeks. But even in that critical moment, her daughter’s survival wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Years later, speaking on a panel after the premiere of the short film Lifelines in early May, “I was reminded…what that feels like,” she said, “and then thinking about work.” “It’s this time when you see your child fighting, and yet here you are thinking about your livelihood, and it’s such a horrible place to be,” said the Olympic champion, who co–executive produced the film. “Until people can really understand what that feels like, what that looks like, we have to continue to raise awareness because [paid leave] is something that everybody should absolutely have.” Running at just under 10 minutes, the short documentary shows how state paid leave programs can give families financial stability and a little breathing room when they need it most. Standing in the hallway of The Annex in Brooklyn, Felix explained to me that she joined the nonprofit organization Paid Leave for All in co–executive producing Lifelines after her eyes were opened to these issues and the way “that so many families don’t get paid leave, have to be thrust immediately back into their responsibilities and work, and just the effect and impact that has.” Felix, the most decorated female track-and-field Olympian athlete in history, wrote about her ordeal in a New York Times opinion article in 2019, explaining that “she felt pressure to return to form as soon as possible” after giving birth. Around the time of her daughter’s birth, Felix was negotiating her renewal contract with Nike, and the company wanted to pay her 70 percent less than it had in her previous contract. “If that’s what they think I’m worth now, I accept that,” Felix wrote. But she wanted Nike to agree that she would not lose pay if her performance suffered in the period during which she was recovering from her emergency C-section. “Nike declined,” she wrote, and when she went public with her Times op-ed they were at a standstill. After facing public pressure and questioning from members of Congress about the experiences of its sponsored athletes, Nike eventually updated its policy to create protections for pregnant and postpartum athletes. It is because of Felix, who ultimately separated from Nike and signed a deal with Athleta, and her fellow former Nike-endorsed athletes Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher that the new paid leave policy became possible. Felix was not alone. Just one in four working people have access to paid family leave through their job. With the fight for a federal policy effectively at a standstill during the current Congress, advocates are pushing a 50-state strategy, advancing progressive policies and winning at the state level. Earlier this year, Virginia adopted a new paid family and medical leave program, slated to take effect in 2028, guaranteeing workers up to 12 weeks of paid family leave. The program makes Virginia the first Southern state to pass such a policy. Felix said that she believes that “when people see these stories [in the documentary], it will affect them in a new way and they’ll have a deeper understanding” of the need for paid leave. The documentary follows two families whose lives are transformed by paid leave: in New Jersey, Habibah and Rasheed, who faced a life-threatening medical emergency three weeks after Habibah gave birth to their third child; and in Colorado, Lee and Elizabeth, who gave birth at 33 weeks and feared running out of leave by the time their new baby finally came home. Both families were able to receive additional time to care for their children through their respective state programs. “[Lifelines] shows us what is possible when we have supports and policies, like paid family and medical leave, that much of the world takes for granted,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, the founding director of Paid Leave for All. Huckelbridge told me that while the United States is the only country among its peers without a federal paid family leave policy, Paid Leave for All has tracked wins of various kinds in more than 40 states across the country, as well as more incremental positive changes at municipal levels. “Progress is continuing, particularly at the state and local level, where we are seeing strong leadership, but a federal opportunity could be around the corner,” said Huckelbridge. “It’s important that we keep trying to help people’s lives every day that we can with this state-level work, and that we also engage the advocates and the legislators at the state level in helping to push for a federal guarantee.” Felix took significant personal risks to become an advocate on this issue. She spoke out about the injustices she and other sponsored athletes were facing while she was negotiating with their sponsor. Asked what motivates her to speak out, she said: “It’s just really thinking about others and…realizing that it’s going to take us all coming together to turn things around.” “I really shied away from [doing things that are difficult] earlier in my career and stayed more in the safe zone,” Felix said. “And then you do one of the things and you’re like, OK. It doesn’t have to always feel good or you don’t have to always feel ready, but it’s important to try to push for change. You’ve got to put yourself out there.” In late April, the 40-year-old Olympic champion put herself out there in a big way once again, announcing that she is planning to return to running, with the goal of competing in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Initially, she planned to train without drawing a lot of attention to it. “But I was talking to my brother about it and he’s like, I think if you’re vulnerable and share [your experience], you’d be surprised how many others, especially women, are in this place where they’re 40 and not just doing what’s expected and what the world tells us [we’re supposed to do].” She has since gone public about her comeback and her goal of being the first American sprinter to make the Olympics in her 40s if she succeeds. But succeeding isn’t necessarily the goal. I asked Felix what she hopes her daughter will take away from the experience of watching her mom publicly document this experience. She told me, “I hope that she sees—we’ve even had some conversations already, at her level—you can try. It’s not always about winning, it’s not always about the outcome, but it’s really important to try things. And you don’t know how it’s going to end, and it can be scary. It can be hard. But it’s important to go for things that you want.”

Hasan Piker’s Ban Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Evan Robins — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The British government’s decision to revoke the leftist streamer’s visa is part of an ongoing, authoritarian crackdown against pro-Palestine speech. On Monday, the British government revoked the travel visas of leftist streamers Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, who had planned to speak at SXSW London and at other venues around the country. Both Piker and Uygur were told that their presence was “not conducive to the public good.” It is widely assumed that they were targeted for their vocal criticism of Israel and support for Palestine. Britain’s Israel lobby had campaigned for this exact outcome. Last week, a group of MPs and concerned citizens called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to ban Piker in particular, claiming he is an antisemite who would pose a threat to the UK’s Jewish community still reeling from recent attacks in northwest London. But it’s clear from the lobby’s convenient omission of Piker’s 2025 speech at the Oxford Union condemning antisemitism and the conflation of Zionism and Judaism that this travel ban has nothing to do with the safety of the Jewish community. Rather, this act of cowardly capitulation is part of the Labour government’s rapidly accelerating crackdown on expression that is critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine—an effort that is both facilitating the UK’s ongoing complicity in the genocide in Gaza and destroying the country’s own institutions from the inside out. Last July, the same government department that canceled Piker and Uygur’s visas made the unprecedented decision to designate Palestine Action, a group known for direct actions, such as spraying red paint on factories and offices associated with Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons firm with manufacturing sites and subsidiaries throughout the UK, as a terrorist organization—placing it in the same legal category as ISIS and neo-Nazi groups like National Action and the “Maniacs Murder Cult” (a group that was proscribed at the same time as Palestine Action). This decision was roundly condemned by human rights organizations and as a grave abuse of counterterrorism legislation. Many noted that the consequences of the ban go far beyond outlawing the group’s activities, as proscription places restrictions on everyone’s ability to express support for the organization and its actions, not only the group’s members. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned that the ban “limits the rights of many people involved with and supportive of Palestine Action who have not themselves engaged in any underlying criminal activity but rather exercised their right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.” In doing so, he said, it “conflates protected expression and other conduct with acts of terrorism and so could readily lead to further chilling effect on the lawful exercise of these rights by many people.” That future has come to pass. In the 11 months since, more than 2,700 people—including many pensioners and faith leaders—have been arrested under anti-terrorism laws for holding signs or otherwise expressing support for the group. In January, the UK’s High Court ruled that the proscription was unlawful, but the government immediately challenged the decision. While the appeal takes place, the law still stands; recently, around 500 supporters were arrested in London’s Parliament Square. The impact of the government’s crackdown on Palestine Action has not been limited to mass arrests. Over the last few months, we’ve begun to witness the deeply corrosive effect of this authoritarian turn on the broader justice system.

The Cruel Optimism of Being a Mets Fan

Will Harrison — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A new book by A.M. Gittlitz tells the story of a beloved baseball team. From his upstairs window, my neighbor Craig gestured toward the beige towers that had replaced Ebbets Field. For a moment, the ballpark seemed to rise again, its red-brick façade catching the sunlight as the grandstands filled with jobbers, true believers, and socialist teenagers. Craig’s father had been a National League man—not a Yankee fan, never a Yankee fan—so when the Mets came along, five years after the Brooklyn Dodgers had left town, the void was filled without discussion. Craig was 12. “I was always a Mets fan,” he told me. The only problem, in those early years, was that being a Mets fan meant being a “glutton for punishment.” This slightly sardonic, masochistic devotion is both the subject and the animating spirit of A.M. Gittlitz’s Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team. Gittlitz’s capacious history was published at the start of a season shrouded in uncertainty. The league’s current collective-bargaining agreement is set to expire in December, and a lockout in 2027 is seen as a likely outcome. The two-time defending-champion Dodgers have hoovered up enough talent to make their next victory almost inevitable, the logical end point of a free-agency system that was won through decades of labor struggle but has since made the richest teams nearly unbeatable. Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine today’s players caring about the state of the world like Mets ace Tom Seaver cared about Vietnam or reliever Tug McGraw cared about the Kent State shootings. The sport that Gittlitz celebrates—accessible, working-class, countercultural—has been devoured by oligarchs, and the Mets, now owned by hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen, are no exception. Gittlitz’s book begins well before the Mets existed; he follows mid-19th-century clerks decamping from gloomy Manhattan towers for the sun-drenched Elysian Fields of New Jersey, where they played a folk game that would eventually become what we know as baseball. The game spread through Union Army camps during the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century could safely be considered America’s pastime. The Marxist historian and cricketer C.L.R. James saw significance in the timing: Organized baseball emerged in 1869, two years before the Paris Commune, because the “same public that wanted sports and games so eagerly wanted popular democracy too.” Not long after, in 1890, the Brotherhood, baseball’s first players’ union, announced its secession from the National League on Bastille Day, built its own ballparks, and lost everything within a season when its backers turned out to want the real estate. The team that would eventually inherit something of this insurgent spirit earned its name from the act of survival most common among Brooklyn’s workers—dodging trolley cars during their daily commutes—and Ebbets Field became host to a raucous polyglot community whose shared dialect was shouting “Ya bum ya!” at stars like Duke Snider and Roy Campanella. The Dodgers rewarded that loyalty with the signing of Jackie Robinson, several pennants, and a championship in 1955, before leaving for Los Angeles after the 1957 season (as a kid, I always pictured them driving away in the night). A wrecking ball painted white and adorned with blood-red stitches reduced Ebbets Field to rubble, making way for the same beige towers Craig pointed at through his window. In Gittlitz’s telling, the Mets were the answer to that rubble, a franchise conjured into existence by opportunistic lawyers, real-estate men, and the city’s all-powerful planner, Robert Moses. Moses envisioned Shea Stadium as a final triumph of New Deal civic ambition, rising alongside the 1964 World’s Fair to link the deindustrializing city with the suburbs to which many former Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants fans had fled. (The baseball Giants, it should be noted here, decamped for San Francisco the same year that the Dodgers headed to LA.) The new team even dressed the part, stitching together Dodger blue, Giant orange, and a cartoonish logo that seemed to wink at the Yankees’ imperial self-regard. A new people’s team had arrived in town by 1962, or so it was said. It was owned by Joan Payson, a Whitney heiress who had opposed the Giants’ move west. Nobody planned for what happened next. The Mets proceeded to lose 120 games in their first season, the worst record in modern baseball history, and were all the more beloved for it. The actively decaying Polo Grounds, their home for two years before Shea was finished, became a cauldron that “stirred old-timers, hipsters, pinkos, drunks, sugar-high kiddies, and newly empowered losers into a singular witches’ brew.” Their cheers were, as Roger Angell put it, “yells for ourselves,” coming from the wry recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in the collective spirit of New York. Among the Mets faithful, who Gittlitz lovingly calls the “New Breed,” a farcical slogan was born: “I’ve been a Mets fan my whole life.” Then again, for some, like Craig, this was literally true. In April 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and baseball’s owners declared that Opening Day would proceed as scheduled, the Mets unanimously voted to boycott. When Robert F. Kennedy was shot, they did the same. By 1969, the Mets were ready to become something nobody expected. As Gittlitz puts it, their improbable season offered the left “an off-ramp as it sank into malaise following the election of Nixon and the prosecution of the Yippies and Panthers.” The miracle arrived precisely when it was most needed and most dangerous to need. That summer, Shea Stadium was a perpetual carnival, an amalgam of confetti and pot smoke, and when the Chicago Cubs came to Queens in late August with their pennant lead dwindling, on-deck Cubs hitter Ron Santo heard the crowd roar and told the batboy, “Oh man, we’re **** now.” And that was when the cat showed up, a black streak moving across foul territory as if it had always been there, heading toward the Cubs’ dugout to glare at manager Leo Durocher, who yelled at his players to remove it, before it turned, crossed home plate, and slipped back into the stadium’s underworld. Two weeks later, after they’d cursed the Cubs, the Mets clinched their division, and 20,000 fans stormed the field. That night, a hundred of them came back to break into the clubhouse, spray one another with hoses, narrate a fictional World Series from the press box, and chant “Shea belongs to the people!” After the Mets swept Hank Aaron’s Atlanta Braves for the pennant, Tom Seaver told the press, “If the Mets can win the World Series, then we can get out of Vietnam.” A skywriter spelled out “STOP WAR” above Shea during Game 4 while fans held signs reading “BOMB THE ORIOLES—NOT THE PEASANTS” and handed out zines plastered with Seaver’s face. When Cleon Jones caught the final out of Game 5, he crouched on the grass and thought of his ancestors, “enslaved people stolen from their homes by greedy, Godless people…guided only by profit and gain with no regard for humanity.” Fellow outfielder Ron Swoboda dedicated the victory to every loser in America. The Yankees had won the World Series 20 times but had never been honored with a ticker-tape parade. The hangover came fast. After the 1970 shooting at Kent State, Tug McGraw wrote in his diary, “I really don’t know in which direction to head or what to do…. I’m a people and I’m screwed up.” The movement retreated, and the Mets finished third in 1970 and 1971, despite hopes of a dynasty. Winning had somehow induced an identity crisis. Just two weeks before the start of the 1973 season, on Easter Sunday, manager Gil Hodges—who had quietly yet firmly backed his players’ political convictions—died of a heart attack after a round of golf. Meanwhile, New York itself was coming apart: During the ’70s, the city faced a recession, a fiscal crisis, rising crime rates, and a population decrease of nearly 1 million. By 1973, McGraw was pitching badly, and the Mets were in last place. A self-help guru told him to envision the result and believe, so McGraw stormed the clubhouse screaming the advice to his teammates. “Ya gotta believe” became, semi-ironically, the team motto, and it briefly did work, carrying the Mets to the World Series on fumes and faith before the Oakland Athletics extinguished both. A decade of misery followed. Marvin Miller, head of the players’ union, helped Catfish Hunter—then a star pitcher for the Athletics—win free agency; Hunter promptly signed with the Yankees for a then-record $3.35 million, ushering in an era that was great for players but also for the richest organizations. The Mets, under the penny-pinching reign of chairman M. Donald Grant, had become “a decisively unlovable team,” Gittlitz writes. When Joan Payson died in 1975 and her heirs sold the team to a group including Nelson Doubleday Jr. and real-estate developer Fred Wilpon, the franchise was in ruins—its attendance numbers dismal and its future uncertain.

What’s Really Behind Peter Thiel’s Panicked Move to Argentina

David Futrelle — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Some tech observers think that the Palantir overlord sees the end times coming, but his real motivation is likely much more mundane and self-interested. Historically, South America has proven irresistible to certain inhabitants of the northern hemisphere eager to escape the consequences of their terrible actions. Argentina was the favored destination for thousands of Nazis after the collapse of the somewhat-less-than-thousand-year Reich, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele; Klaus Barbie, meanwhile, ended up in Bolivia. On a somewhat lighter and more British note, the escaped “Great Train Robber” Ronnie Biggs fled in 1970 to Brazil where he lived large for decades, even recording a couple of tracks with the Sex Pistols, including one in which he asked God to save “Martin Bormann and Nazis on the run / They wasn’t being wicked, God, that was their idea of fun.” (Bormann at the time was thought to be hiding in Argentina; he was in fact lying dead, as all Nazis should be, in Berlin.) Now another terrible northerner seems to be readying his own ratline to Argentina: the tech-and-finance overlord Peter Thiel. Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that the vaguely reptilian billionaire investor was “decamping to the end of the world.” That meant that Thiel, a longtime connoisseur of doomsday scenarios, had bought a mansion and moved his family, at least temporarily, to Buenos Aires, where he has apparently been meeting with assorted powerful and influential figures, including the country’s anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei. Thiel also reportedly held a gathering for some of the country’s leading economists and intellectuals, treating his somewhat bewildered dinner guests to lengthy disquisitions on the Antichrist. Taking no chances, Thiel has also procured a backup to the Argentinean exit strategy, purchasing a potential future bunker site near Punta del Este, a city on the coast of Uruguay. This well-appointed getaway has been variously described as “The Hamptons of South America,” “The Monaco of the South,” and the “The Miami Beach of South America,” even though The Hamptons, Monaco, and Miami Beach are not even remotely the same thing. The big question raised by Thiel’s panicked peregrinations is why one of our country’s richest and most politically influential tech investors has decided to do a runner, as Ronnie Biggs might have put it, to locales some 6,000 miles away at this particular moment in history. Is it a reaction, as some have suggested, to a possible one-time 5 percent billionaire wealth tax in California? This seems hardly credible, given that Thiel had already more-or-less moved himself from Los Angeles to Miami Beach to escape the tiny and still hypothetical threat to his massive fortune; Florida doesn’t even have an income tax. With the tax-avoidance explanation out of the picture, the clear implication is that an aspiring cosmic prophet like Thiel must know that something is coming—something really, really bad, at least for those of us hapless Yanks deprived of the option of repatriating to a tony neighborhood in a historic city on another continent. It’s not unreasonable to think that those at the tippy top of the wealth pile may have access to insider information about impending unnatural disasters. Indeed, that’s the premise of a new Web tool called the ⁠Apocalypse Early Warning System, which tracks the number of private jets in the air at any one time. Its operating assumption is that if the world’s richest get tipped off early to, say, an impending nuclear launch, they’ll all hop in their jets at once and head for their private bunkers. Of course, by the time that our clued-in overclass got into the air, it would probably be too late for the rest of us to flee, assuming we have someplace to flee to; I would probably end up spending the last few moments before nuclear armageddon trying to wrangle my recalcitrant cats into their carriers. Or it would turn out that all these rich people were just flying to the Super Bowl and I once more provoked my cats into stubborn fury for no reason. And Thiel’s move probably isn’t any more a reliable signal of impending nuclear war than the number of private jets in the sky. Nervous billionaires have been building bunkers for years now; media theorist Douglas Rushkoff even published a whole book on the subject back in 2022, when our president wasn’t the sort of person who might launch a nuclear war on a whim. Thiel himself has been seeking what some have taken to calling “sovereignty diversification” for some time, obtaining New Zealand citizenship in 2011 and buying some land on the shores of Lake Wānaka on the southern island. (He seems to have lost interest in the New Zealand option, though, after the locals wouldn’t let him build a bunker there.) This is probably a good opportunity to remind any oligarchs out there that you can’t actually avoid the effects of a nuclear war by moving to Buenos Aires, or Lake Wānaka, or even the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The Times story mentions a tech entrepreneur friend of Thiel’s with a second home in Buenos Aires who “has hypothesized that Argentina would be completely unaffected if the Northern Hemisphere were wiped out by nuclear war.” So much for the mythologized genius of the tech power elite—their grasp of the devastation wrought by a global nuclear conflagration roughly corresponds to the implausibly heroic fables crafted by Hollywood disaster impresarios like Michael Bay. The Times suggests that Thiel might see Argentina as a possible refuge from the dangers of “runaway artificial intelligence,” though it doesn’t bother to explain what that means or why our potential future AI overlords would decide to simply bypass a country where 96 percent of the people are connected in some way to the Internet. Argentina isn’t Dune; its residents have computers and ChatGPT like the rest of us. OpenAI is planning to build a massive $25 billion data center in Patagonia.

How We Can Build an Alternative Future to Trump

William D. Hartung — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Trump’s ad hoc coalition is weaker than we think. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. Donald Trump’s America is a scary place in significant part thanks to an unholy alliance of MAGA devotees who don’t believe in science and see intellectuals as public enemy number one, and a gaggle of Silicon Valley militarists who think that they’re the smartest people in the room, if not the universe. Add in white Christian nationalists who abuse religious precepts to sow hatred and division and you have the foundations of the political base that elected Donald Trump (twice!). And worse yet, those groupings are likely to be with us long after our current president has gone off to that great cheeseburger stand in the sky. Still, it’s worth reflecting on whether such an odd coalition of allies can survive without Donald Trump, or even with a president whose policies have become so harmful and irrational that they’re doing severe human and economic damage even to his most loyal supporters (not to mention the rest of us). And it’s also worth considering whether the pillars of the MAGA movement can manage to stick together in the ever-grimmer Trumpian years to come, not to speak of the post-Trumpian ones, or whether the rest of us can organize a powerful, humane alternative to his politics of hatred and division that could transform this country and the world. The Know-Nothings Meet the Know-It-Alls As a start, we have the latter-day “Know Nothings,” a term borrowed from a nineteenth century political movement. It’s not that members of that group literally know nothing. Some of them are quite skilled in their given professions and astute at assessing certain kinds of situations. Some are intelligent but woefully misguided. Trump supporter and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, for example, is a brain surgeon. Members of the anti-science crowd are also often very good at communicating their messages, however wrongheaded or offensive they may be. The problem isn’t that they can’t take in information; it’s that they are distinctly anti-knowledge when it comes to, among other things, separating compelling conspiracy theories from well-documented facts. The results of their ingrained antagonism toward basic knowledge are profound, making them a threat to public health and democratic practices. After all, we now live in a country where millions of people are against vaccinating their children to prevent potentially deadly diseases and don’t believe that perhaps the gravest threat to continuing life on this planet—climate change—is caused, or even influenced, by human activity or perhaps is even happening at all. The dangerous delusions of Trump Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now have the stamp of government approval and the power of the US government behind them. There is no way to estimate how many people have already fallen sick or even died unnecessarily due to the implementation of his crackpot theories, but the numbers will undoubtedly be significant. The American Public Health Association captured the grim mood of our moment perfectly in an April 2025 press release entitled “Secretary Kennedy and His Policies Are a Danger to the Public Health.” On a different spiritual plane, tens of millions of Americans believe in the rapture—the notion that they and their kind will be called up to heaven in the end days, while the rest of us will be left behind, presumably to burn in hell (but not a climate-change version of the same). A 2022 Pew poll found that 39 percent of Americans believe “we are in the end times.” Already! And such a belief, of course, has an impact on how or even whether one wants to devote time and energy to fixing problems here on Earth. Such an amalgam of opponents of science and skeptics about basic reality bears a distinct resemblance to the “Know Nothing” movement of the nineteenth century that thrived on anti-immigrant sentiments and half-baked conspiracy theories. The anti-intellectual faction on the right has been propagandized for decades to believe that the biggest obstacle to a better life for them and their families isn’t the predatory corporations hollowing out our economy and manipulating our democracy, but a group of liberal intellectuals clustered on both coasts who allegedly want to replace this country’s bedrock beliefs with a set of “politically correct” prescriptions about how they should live their lives, especially when it comes to DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion. In such a rendering of reality, that “new class” is seen as sapping the country’s strength and undermining the basic values that would make America great (again!). The use of that “new class” as a political epithet emerged from the neoconservative movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as Andrew Hartman has explained at his blog on American intellectual history: Out of their political repositioning in the late 1960s and 1970s, neoconservatives developed a critical theory (co-opted from anti-Stalinist thinking) about a so-called ‘new class’ of intellectuals, broadly defined to include all professionals tasked with manipulating language—although more narrowly applied to humanists and social scientists. Members of this ‘new class,’ so the theory went, had turned their backs on the society to which they owed their high-ranking status.

An Uncertain Future for NYC Student Activism

Ilana Cohen — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A controversial bill is proposing that NYPD create a plan for instituting anti-protest buffer zones around many NYC schools. On February 3, 1964, hundreds of thousands of New York City children boycotted class and took to the streets to protest the de facto segregation of the city’s school system. Since then, city students have continued to speak out on local and nationwide issues, ranging from the Vietnam War and gentrification to the climate crisis, gun control, standardized tests, and ICE. Today, this kind of free expression lies at the center of a citywide political maelstrom. On May 20, City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced a revised version of the controversial Intro 175-B bill that would enable the New York City Police Department to establish so-called “buffer zones” around many K-12 schools during protests as a public safety measure. Specifically, the bill calls on the police commissioner to establish a plan to “address and contain the risk of physical obstruction, physical injury, intimidation, and interference, while preserving and protecting the rights to free speech and assembly, and protest.” The original version, which was vetoed in late April by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, would have included universities, all K-12 schools, all early childhood education centers, and, potentially, museums, libraries, and teaching hospitals in the plan, covering tens of thousands of city blocks. While more limited in scope, the plan under the revised bill could still have significant reach. The new bill covers all elementary, middle, and junior high schools, but only non-public high schools. According to a spokesperson at the City Council, the bill also covers early childhood education centers, except when located in private residences. Together with many city-administered and private nonresidential early childhood education centers, roughly 1,760 public elementary and middle schools, and at least 733 private K-12 schools span the five boroughs, including some located within blocks of common protest sites. The bill comes in the wake of city college campuses becoming ground zero for protests over genocide in Gaza, heated protests and counterprotests involving a real estate expo hosted by the Park East synagogue that included homes in illegal Israeli settlements, and a significant documented rise in antisemitic attacks and hate crimes. Yet the bill’s implications extend beyond this context, bringing into public focus a core tension: the trade-off between public safety and free speech, and who gets to decide how that trade-off is made. Bill opponents argue that curtailing protests does not make New Yorkers’ lives safer, while supporters, including Council Speaker Menin and the original bill sponsor, Council member Eric Dinowitz, see the bill as helping ensure that students can attend school without fear and as increasing police transparency. As these debates unfold between powerful political players, the constituency most affected—the city’s students—has its own concerns. For some student activists, the bill has created a sense of deep uncertainty around whether and how their ability to speak out and organize on a range of issues could be affected going forward. Although in the city, even elementary school students turn out to protests and rallies, the most likely impacted students are high schoolers, who led New York’s earliest youth climate march and school strikes. “The barrier to organizing an effective protest or demonstration of discontent in the first place would be so much larger” if the bill becomes law, said Lucas Phildor, a Queens borough organizer with the youth environmental advocacy organization Treeage. Even if Phildor, a senior at the public Townsend Harris High School, would not find his school directly covered by the plan, the prospect of student activists running into police barriers and feeling under surveillance felt like a high-stakes situation to him. Phildor also imagined this unease would trickle down to younger students. “I can’t imagine at least myself being back in sixth grade, knowing what I would want to do in organizing—the fear that that would instill in me…[around] taking any action.” He also feared that this bill would open the gateway to more buffer zones around public schools. Alma Adi, a Manhattan borough organizer with Treeage, was afraid the bill’s effects would limit spaces for students to gather without running into buffer zones, especially for citywide protests like May Day. A junior at Hunter College High School, she added that buffer zones would make mobilizing peers more difficult and complicate planning protest routes that would avoid possible security perimeters. J.P. Perry, a senior staff attorney at the NYCLU, agreed that the bill could have a “chilling effect” on young people. “This measure is really targeted at suppressing campus protest activity,” she said, raising concerns around the uncertainties of what enforcement of the bill would entail in practice. Students could fear possible arrest, disciplinary action, or even consequences in the college admissions process as a result of joining protests that run into a buffer zone, when, she said, “we should be encouraging our students to be standing up to participate in our multifaceted, complex democracy.” The NYCLU previously urged the City Council to sustain Mamdani’s veto of Intro 175-B in a letter signed by over 100 organizations, and has maintained its opposition to anti-speech legislation. Even if only indirectly, some college student activists fear being impacted by the new bill. For Hagen Feeney, a college senior at Columbia University who is an activist with Sunrise Columbia and a spokesperson for Student Workers of Columbia, and was involved in Gaza solidarity encampments, the bill’s existence functioned almost as a warning for student activists. As is common for a private university, Columbia already regulates protests and demonstrations on its private property, making the surrounding public streets a crucial alternative for student protests. Under the revised bill, the buffer zone plan could cover some of these streets because of their proximity to educational facilities. Supporters of the bill, however, contend that by outlining the NYPD’s considerations in “determining whether, when, and the extent to which security perimeters” around schools, the bill would provide a core measure of public transparency and allow for “community engagement in NYPD plans to respond to protests.” In testimony submitted to the City Council last February, Michael Gerber, deputy commissioner of legal matters for the NYPD, testified that the NYPD already “exercises its discretion, consistent with the law,” to both facilitate safe entry and exit of schools, and to let protesters exercise First Amendment rights, and that its initial concerns with the bill had been mostly addressed. The NYPD provided this testimony in response to a request for an interview and did not respond to follow-up questions in response to this testimony.

In the Race to Succeed Nadler, Micah Lasher Says Fighting Trump Is Not Enough

Joan Walsh — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The state assemblyman wants to go to Congress to take on MAGA, but says that Democrats need to show Americans that they are “gonna make their lives better. Quickly.” On a recent Thursday night, I walked into a Broadway Democrats meeting in a community room at Cathedral Parkway Towers, late, to hear New York Assemblyman Micah Lasher address a group of about 25 constituents. Lasher, who is running to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler in the recently redrawn “East Side/West Side” 12th Congressional District, was speaking animatedly about the importance of enforcing the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, a New Deal law intended to protect small businesses from large industry consolidators. The choice of topic seemed obscure. “Why is he talking about this to UWS Democrats?” I scribbled to myself. (This is my district, by the way.) It turned out this was a forum specifically to discuss grocery affordability, with active and smart West Side Democrats, which I’d have known if I’d been on time. Still, I marveled at how on-brand Lasher was that night, as a man who, New York magazine reports, brags, “Our brand is nerd.” He also told writer David Freedlander, “I can’t help but feel like I am going to emerge as a fairly boring character in your story.” He was right. Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator who for almost 10 years has run the States Project, a nonprofit dedicated to electing Democratic state legislative leaders, tells me that of all the 7,386 state legislators nationally, “not a single one has been more effective at pushing back on the Trump administration than Micah.” But Squadron is slightly frustrated by the media’s pigeonholing of Lasher as the wonk in the June 23 Democratic primary, rather than the one with the clear policy chops and accomplishments and the scads of local endorsements. “There’s a shocking number of people who are wildly enthusiastic about the possibility of Micah going to Congress who have known him for a decade or two or three,” he says. “And it’s actually really rare to have a candidate that excites so many people who they’ve known this long, professionally, or personally, for whom he has solved complex personal and political problems.” Voters’ choice in this primary, he says, “should be a no-brainer.” But he adds, “There’s a question [about whether] those qualities matter as much as they used to or should.” So far, there’s no clear front-runner in the race. Lasher might be getting more attention if he weren’t facing President John F. Kennedy’s under-qualified, over-handsome grandson Jack Schlossberg, 33, a smack-talking YouTuber best known for his rants against his brain-addled, anti-science cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. (a productive pastime for JKS) as well as shirtless videos where he dances on the beach (where he looks more like a close RFK Jr. relative than he might hope). Then we’ve got celebrity Republican turned rabid Trump opponent George Conway, ex-husband of Kellyanne, previously best known for his work behind the scenes with Ann Coulter setting the stage for the Clinton impeachment, now hoping to represent a district that has been represented by Nadler, Ted Weiss, Bella Abzug, and former mayor Ed Koch, when he was a liberal. Conway is personally wealthy, and he told New York magazine that if he loses the primary, he’ll “probably go skiing a little bit more.” NY-12 is an affluent district, but I don’t think that sat well for a lot of constituents. If they saw it. But while Schlossberg was leading in early polling, and Conway was coming on strong, recent polls have shown both of them losing support. Lasher’s strongest opponent is East Side Assemblyman Alex Bores, who might be emerging as the best-known candidate by virtue of having multiple political action committees on both sides of the artificial intelligence debate pouring money into his race—one side attacking, one side promoting him. (The two are effectively tied in the latest polling.) Leading the Future, a PAC affiliated with founders of Open AI, has poured millions into attacking Bores, ostensibly because he boasts of sponsoring New York’s AI-regulating RAISE Act (which Lasher cosponsored). A former employee of Peter Thiel’s Palantir, Bores is now getting millions in campaign contributions from PACs and other donors aligned with Anthropic, the AI firm that got credit for insisting that the Pentagon could not use its products for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance (but which is still working on a wide range of defense- and military-related projects). Anthropic and its allies are trying to pitch themselves as the “Good AI” titans, open to sensible regulation. The 12th district race has become a proxy war over whose version of AI regulation—which neither side wants to be particularly muscular—will prevail in Congress.

Stalemate or Escalation in Ukraine

Anatol Lieven — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

With the war in Ukraine grinding into stalemate, the danger is no longer breakthrough but escalation beyond anyone’s control. As the Ukraine war on the ground becomes bogged down in a seemingly unbreakable stalemate, and public discontent in both Russia and Ukraine grows, the governments in Moscow and Kyiv are escalating the conflict in the air in an effort to change the situation to their advantage. This will lead to increased civilian casualties on both sides. It also increases the risk of clashes that will draw NATO and Russia into direct conflict—though it is also quite possible that the war will end in an inconclusive ceasefire and a frozen conflict. Two developments in May emphasized the danger of escalation. In response to Ukrainian drones flying over the Baltic States to attack targets in Russia, Moscow accused the Baltic governments of complicity and threatened an attack on Latvia. NATO claimed (implausibly, and with no evidence) that the drones had been redirected over the Baltic states by Russian jamming; but it seems at least equally likely that Ukraine was using Baltic airspace, protected by NATO, to get as close as possible to its targets near St. Petersburg before encountering Russian air defenses. And in response to increasingly damaging Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on Moscow and Russian energy infrastructure (which Russia believes are aimed with the help of Western intelligence), the Russian government warned that it would start attacking Ukrainian headquarters in Kyiv, and warned Western officials and citizens to leave the city. This was widely taken as an indication that Russia is going to attack these targets with Oreshnik ballistic missiles—something that it has refrained from doing so far, presumably out of fear that casualties among NATO advisers would lead to drastic escalation by the West. For the moment, both sides have stepped back from the brink. NATO has begun to shoot down Ukrainian drones over the Baltic states; and while Russia has increased its attacks on Kyiv, it has not yet made good on its threat to launch strikes that would cause Western casualties. The danger however remains extremely serious. The Ukrainian air campaign against Russia is beginning to do serious damage (and of course the Ukrainians feel entirely justified, since their infrastructure has been under Russian attack for the past three years). As a result of this and tiny Ukrainian advances on the ground in the Donbas, Western official and unofficial figures are beginning to declare again that Ukraine can “win.” If by this they mean that Ukraine could fight Russia to a standstill and bring about a compromise peace, they are almost certainly correct. Indeed, Ukraine, with Western help, has already demonstrated its ability to do this. If, however, these supposed friends of Ukraine mean that Ukraine can defeat Russia and bring about the fall of the Putin administration and system, they are being profoundly foolish. Recent Ukrainian advances on the ground in the Donbas have been just as small as Russian advances in the opposite direction. Indeed, this is hardly a matter of “advances” at all. The omnipresence of drones has created a “killing zone” more than a dozen miles wide in which only tiny groups of soldiers can operate, occasionally occupying an individual building or ruined hamlet, and often then having to scuttle quickly back to their own lines. It is equally foolish to believe that limited aerial bombardment will lead to a revolt against Putin. Much heavier Russian bombardment of Ukraine over a much longer period has not broken the will of the Ukrainian people to resist. In fact, relying purely on aerial bombardment of civilian targets as a strategy has never worked, whether employed by the Luftwaffe, the RAF Bomber Command, or the USAAF. It is true that war weariness is growing in both Ukraine and Russia, and this is leading to increased calls on both sides for a compromise peace. The problem is that among hardliners on both sides this is leading instead to increased pressure to break the stalemate by drastic escalation. Pressure on the Ukrainian and Russian governments is increased by their increasing shortages of soldiers. Casualties on both sides have been enormous—higher for the Russians in terms of numbers, but higher for the Ukrainians in proportion to their much smaller population. In Ukraine, this is leading to demands both from the West and from the Ukrainian army finally to start conscripting men from the age of 18; in Russia, to pressure to abandon reliance on paid volunteers and launch mass conscription. Both moves would be bitterly unpopular with their respective populations. The risk is that faced with this impasse, hawks on both sides will enter into a de facto collusion to try to break the stalemate by dragging NATO into the war. Ukrainian hard-liners may believe that only direct NATO involvement can compel a Russian surrender. Russian hard-liners may believe that a direct confrontation with the West will both bring the Trump administration back into a peace process that it is walking away from and terrify the Europeans into agreeing to peace on Russian terms.

The Ghosts of Antonio Gramsci

Aditya Bahl — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Andy Merrifield’s Roses for Gramsci, a highly personal history of the Italian thinker and his work, examines his influence across generations. Fifty years after Selections From the Prison Notebooks was first published in 1971, the joke remains popular: Antonio Gramsci is a communist you can bring home to your parents. It wouldn’t matter if they were liberals or Maoists, social democrats or anti-imperialists, populists or pacifists—everyone gets along with Antonio. The reasons for Gramsci’s popularity, as well as his pliability, lie in the unique form of his oeuvre. His themes, for one, are startlingly capacious: serial novels and popular theater, factory councils and peasant estates, Catholicism and communism, newspaper design and comparative grammar, folklore and opera. There’s something here for everyone. At the same time, Gramsci’s prison writing—over 3,000 pages across 33 notebooks—is peppered with myriad “Aesopian” codes and terms. These ciphers were originally intended to confound Benito Mussolini’s Fascist censors, but their diffuse meanings have since triggered a series of heated polemics. And so, apart from attracting an unusually diverse readership, Gramsci’s work has also spawned diverse, frequently disparate, interpretations. Is “subaltern” a code for the working classes? Is “hegemony” an economic force or a cultural power? Are “organic intellectuals” inherently more progressive? The answers to such questions depend upon your choice of scholar—whether, say, you’re reading a Foucauldian literary critic or a Marxist sociologist, a subaltern historian or a posthuman anthropologist. Over the years, Gramsci’s writing has been polished by critics of such diverse persuasions that it has now become a mirror: One opens his books only to confirm one’s own beliefs. It’s no surprise, then, that when the English writer Andy Merrifield arrived in Rome, feeling “washed out intellectually,” Gramsci came to the rescue. In June 2023, Merrifield followed his wife’s new job to Italy. Having written a dozen books—about plagues, cities, donkeys, magic—he wasn’t sure if he had another book left in him. The “practical chores” of moving had left him burned out, prompting fears of an early retirement. A visit to the city’s Non-Catholic Cemetery, however, soon cured his writer’s block. A brilliant bloom of flowers, cicadas, birds, and cypresses: This “tropical” cemetery looked nothing like the rest of Rome. A 2,000-year-old Egyptian pyramid of Caius Cestius stood in the vicinity. The distant Aurelian city walls, equally ancient, towered above the graves. This “magical kingdom” was an appropriate resting place for the cemetery’s famous denizens: the English Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Shelley. But Gramsci? The lush serenity was at odds with the circumstances of the revolutionary’s life. Gramsci had spent his last decade on the earth rotting, quite literally, in Fascist prisons. He suffered from uremia, angina, gout, tubercular lesions, arteriosclerosis, and Pott’s disease. By the time he died in 1937, at the age of 46, Gramsci’s head was so swollen that it resembled the otherworldly granite stones that have littered the southern landscape of his native Ghilarza since the Neolithic age. In a fitting reversal, however, his grave has since become a totem for Italy’s freedom from Fascist rule. Merrifield, in recent years, has acquired a reputation for his stylish portraits of Western Marxists: the French Situationist Guy Debord; the English critic, poet, and novelist John Berger; the French philosopher and sociologist Henry Lefebvre; and, most recently, Marx himself. Roses for Gramsci is a welcome, if predictable, addition to this rogue’s gallery. What’s surprising, though, are Merrifield’s unconventional, playful methods. Previously, in The Amateur (2017), Merrifield had sketched out a stern critique of “professional intellectuals,” whose research remains detached from the world outside their campuses and offices. Appropriately enough, Roses for Gramsci isn’t interested in recycling academic exegeses of Gramsci’s texts. Instead, Merrifield seeks a living Gramsci, one no longer entombed in books or museums, much less in a cemetery. His trip to Gramsci’s grave wasn’t followed by a visit to the library. Instead, as befits an amateur, Merrifield instantly took up a new job at the cemetery. Gramsci is, by the numbers, an incredibly popular thinker: There are over 23,000 references to his work—pamphlets, dissertations, newspaper articles, academic essays, artworks—according to the informal biography maintained by the Fondazione Gramsci. In just the past two years, at least three new biographies have been published as well. Gianni Fresu has written an intellectual biography in broad strokes, while Jean-Yves Frétigné has affixed the revolutionary under a microscope (the appendices include family trees and a list of prison visitors). George Hare and Nathan Sperber, meanwhile, have extended the biographical scope by examining Gramsci’s legacy in a contemporary context of right-wing authoritarianism. Roses for Gramsci, however, isn’t a biography, at least in any conventional sense. It’s a slim book; one is tempted to describe it as a miniature portrait. Its eight chapters—with carefully curated titles like “Goblin” and “A Rose”—certainly give the impression of a refined belletrist at work. But on a closer look, Merrifield harbors a loftier aspiration: He wants to rewire our canonical, hallowed ideas of intellectual labor. Merrifield’s narrative consists of instinctual jottings of archival study, political analysis, travel, photographs, and personal memories. He takes to Gramsci the way a person might take to cooking or gardening. Not surprisingly, some of these diaristic notes were first posted on his blog. Merrifield’s prose is informal and, for that reason, inviting. And not just for general readers—even professional Gramscians will welcome the change of scenery. In the cemetery, Merrifield works at the Visitors’ Center. His job as a volunteer also inflects his portrait of Gramsci: Merrifield might be holding the brush, but it’s the visitors who command it. For instance, if the old man sitting on the “Gramsci bench” wants to talk about Antonio’s antagonists—the onetime Hegelians Benedetto Croce, who later became a liberal philosopher, and Giovanni Gentile, who later became a Fascist minister of education—then what choice does the caretaker have? He will have to hold his tongue this morning. These constraints serve Merrifield nicely. For one, they keep him from writing like a pedant or a preacher, roles otherwise so dear to Marxists of a certain vintage. Always by our elbow, Merrifield never gets in our face. Simultaneously, a circumstantial scatter of strangers enlivens the cemetery setting. Apart from the steady trickle of local devotees, who periodically tidy Gramsci’s grave, we also encounter a much larger, multinational crowd on key festive occasions (Gramsci’s birthday and Liberation Day). These celebrations also betray an unexpected political strife: It turns out that, outside the academy, Gramsci’s legacy is the subject of even more fractious quarrels. The International Gramsci Society and the Fondazione Gramsci, whose members don’t talk to each other, organize separate commemorations in the cemetery.

Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan Wins the DFL Nomination for a Senate Seat

Joan Walsh — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Her opponent, Representative Angie Craig, campaigned for the DFL nod for months, but declared she would no longer seek its endorsement two days before the party convention. Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan ran around the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention all day Saturday in a dark emerald-green suit, with matching Native-beaded earrings, trying to talk to everyone. Later that day, she won the DFL nomination by acclamation in her race to become the state’s next US senator, and the crowd roared. But Flanagan is still facing an opponent in her August Democratic primary. Representative Angie Craig campaigned for the DFL nod for months, but two days before the party convened in Rochester, she declared that she would no longer seek the endorsement, and wouldn’t attend the convention. Related Article Peggy Flanagan Is Running for the Senate to “Avenge Minnesota” Joan Walsh “It’s not really democracy when 1,200 people get to pick who our candidates are in America. It doesn’t allow every voice to be heard,” Craig said at a news conference Thursday, in front of a few dozen supporters. “If you can’t show up and face your own party, then you’re not ready to face Republicans,” Flanagan countered in a video posted to social media. This race isn’t over. Craig, a lesbian mother of four, has support from the state’s big LGBTQ groups, endorsements from many establishment Democrats and four times the funding of Flanagan right now (though the DFL endorsement will open party money and major campaign infrastructure resources for Flanagan). In 2018, Craig won a purple district on the outskirts of Minneapolis and she touts her centrist record as better preparation for a statewide race. “Minnesotans have always proved that organized people can beat organized money,” Flanagan countered at the convention. “Senator Paul Wellstone was famously out-raised seven to one,” she reminded me Monday on the phone. Heading into the weekend, local media reported that Flanagan could count on support from at least 75 percent of the convention delegates. In April her campaign told The Nation that she had won more DFL delegates than Craig in over 90 percent of the 117 local-unit conventions, essentially giving her a lock on the DFL’s endorsement. It turns out that was closer to 95 percent. And while Craig claims that only “1,200 people” made the DFL decision, in fact 40,000 people participated in precinct caucuses, and 57 percent of delegates were first-timers. Until recently, Craig herself was actively seeking the DFL nod, sending “Team Craig” representatives to 113 of the 117 unit conventions. But Flanagan was clearly winning all along, even in Craig’s own congressional district, where the lieutenant governor picked up 70 percent support. All of that seems to have led the congresswoman to pull out of the process two days before the convention began. Craig was beginning to change her tune about the DFL when I interviewed her in March. “I wanna respect the people who participate in this process, but it’s less than 2 percent of primary voters,” she told me. She went on to depict Flanagan as the insider, while she, the candidate with the big campaign fund, is the upstart. “I’m still the outsider in Minnesota politics,” she told me. “Peggy has been in the political class in Minnesota for her entire life.” That’s one way to depict Flanagan’s background. She was raised by her struggling single mother, Pat Flanagan, a DFL activist who relied on government programs to raise her daughter while she went back to college. Flanagan still describes herself as “the girl with the different-colored school-lunch ticket,” which tipped off classmates that she got free school lunches. She worked organizing for Paul Wellstone, the late DFL hero, while still in college, and then went on to a range of social-justice organizing jobs. A member of the White Earth Ojibwe tribe, she would be the first female Native senator in American history.

Bruce Springsteen Gave Us Exactly What We Need Right Now

Joan Walsh — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

His just-finished tour was a cleansing, healing experience—and a morale-boosting call to arms for everyone fighting for our democracy. I felt a bit glum when Bruce Springsteen launched his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, last year, and took it on the road across Europe. Not because I didn’t love what he was doing—I wrote enthusiastically about his scathing denunciations of Donald Trump—but because I really thought he should have brought the tour home to America. It wasn’t as much needed in Manchester and Milan as it was in Minneapolis and Washington, DC. Well, it turns out Springsteen knew that too. And so he scheduled a fairly impromptu US tour on February 17 to run from March through May, Minneapolis to DC. And I was there, from Minneapolis to Madison Square Garden to what was supposed to be the final concert in Washington. (Because of sports-team schedules, he wound up rescheduling a Philadelphia show to be last.) I almost chased him to Philly and then decided: Perfection is perfect. Leave it alone. You can read a lot of concert coverage that tells you what Springsteen played; I’m going to tell you how it felt. (Music writer Caryn Rose does both here.) I never tired of hearing Springsteen talk about the “racist, reckless, corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” president at these US dates (He embellished his European descriptions as things got worse here.) His Minneapolis show felt the most astonishing and devastating. Not least because people were crying all around me (I was crying contagious tears too). These were people who’d been on citizen protection alert for months already; who were bone tired from caring for their neighbors, but carrying on, standing for hours in that arena; who knew martyrs Renée Good and Alex Pretti personally, or who felt like they did after so much time in the fight together. Those folks felt so seen and so loved. And when we got “Purple Rain,” because Prince, the Beloved One, lived in that sacred city, we all felt blessed. But the Washington, DC, show was almost as transcendent. The sky opened up when Springsteen played “Streets of Minneapolis,” and the rain poured for a full hour. I kept thinking of his “Jungleland” lyric, “barefoot girls…drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain.” This was crushing spring rain, in sandals, in dirt. But it was baptism, it was cleansing, it was healing. Hearing the ode to Minneapolis that Springsteen wrote alone, now played with the mighty band, in place of his first stripped-down acoustic version, was galvanizing. There’s always a call and response in the song, when he says, “With our chants of ‘ICE OUT NOW,’” and waits for the crowd to join him, at least three times. We did this time. But we also took up the chant all by its lonesome, “ICE OUT NOW,” after the song ended. Bruce looked so happy. “Let them hear you at the **** White House!” he said more than once. Springsteen never changed up the set. Yes, he did add “Purple Rain” in Minneapolis, but we all knew that was coming at the first show. The band added The Clash’s “Clampdown” a few stops in, and it fit, and they never lost it. Almost all of his songs were tailored to rebellion and a regenerative spirit. “Wrecking Ball,” “Youngstown,” “Murder, Incorporated,” “My City Of Ruin,” “American Skin (41 Shots),” “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” They all tell the story. But so does one of my favorites, “Long Walk Home,” written for the 2007 Magic album, which was to my mind an elegy for John Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush in 2004. The song has always gutted me: “You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone / Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

Fascists Try to Write Trans People Out of the “Natural Order.” The Earth Disagrees.

Willow Schenwar — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The vast majority of life on earth exists outside of sex and gender binaries—despite what the right likes to claim. When California Governor Gavin Newsom recently proclaimed that Democrats should be more “culturally normal” as part of his ongoing attempt to position himself for the presidency by throwing trans people under the bus, I thought about whales. A few months earlier, Facebook’s algorithm had delivered a bioGraphic essay republished by Nautilus about a newly discovered intersex southern right whale to my feed. While intersex whales are nothing new, this was the first documented example from this particular species, and the author took the occasion to reflect on the creativity and fluidity of nature. “When scientists identify the next intersex animal,” the essay concludes, “that individual, whether a guppy or a whale, will offer another challenge to rigid definitions of sex. What society deems normal is a box carefully drawn around a wild and messy world, and each individual who can’t be contained offers a fascinating glimpse at nature’s true diversity.” The article came my way via the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the American Cetacean Society, whose posts usually garner reactions and comments in the single or double digits. This intersex-whale post, however, had reams of comments and more than 17,000 reactions. Against my better judgment—as a trans woman, and as a person with other things to do—I read some of the comments. While some maligned the “woke whale” as an “abomination” or “a freak of nature,” others insisted that the story was “fake news” and bemoaned the idea that “liberal idiots made up a transgender whale.” The Facebook turmoil over an intersex whale was, of course, about something even larger than whales. The post came at a time when efforts to enforce rigid definitions of sex and gender are front and center in public affairs. Evidence of gender and sexual variation in the natural world, such as this intersex whale, can help unsettle the myth that a rigid human gender binary is part of “the natural order” of life on what is indeed a wild and messy planet, as the author of the bioGraphic essay notes. On the one hand, we don’t need to turn to whales or guppies or any other nonhuman organism to challenge rigid definitions of human sex and gender, since our own species defies such narrow categorizations in its own right. There are many intersex humans, after all, and as a hapless Trump lawyer recently learned in court, the existence of intersexuality dismantles the notion that sex and gender are binary. Transgender and nonbinary people, in addition to intersex people, likewise dispel the notion of the gender binary as a matter of, as the Trump administration asserts, “biological truth.” The mere existence of trans and gender-nonconforming people now and throughout human history, in every culture and corner of the globe, is evidence of this. And anyone interested in actual “biological truth” might want to explore the decades of neuroscientific and endocrinological research on gender diversity, from studies showing that many trans people are born with brains that develop to resemble the brains of their experienced gender, to genetic research showing that trans people often have variations in the genes that process the sex hormones androgen and estrogen. This occurs along a spectrum, not in a binary. This is not to say that all trans experiences can be reduced to these neuroanatomical and genetic measures, or that scientists should give people trans tests with their brain-measuring machines. And trans people certainly should not be required to cite medical studies to prove that we exist as we do. But at a time when biology is being weaponized, it is important to recognize that human biology doesn’t adhere to a cis binary framework. Sexual and gender diversity is undeniably a thing that our species does, in any cultural environment. And we are certainly not alone in this. Nature is profoundly queer and restlessly inventive, trying out as many possibilities as form will allow. Ninety-four percent of flower plants are monoecious or hermaphroditic, meaning that individual plants possess both female and male reproductive organs. Among the remaining 6 percent, some individual plants that are either male or female can change their sex. Many species of willow trees, for example, exhibit this sex lability and can change from female to male, or to both, and back again. Excluding insects, 33 percent of all animal species are predominately hermaphroditic. Some of these animals start out as one sex and change to another. Clownfish are an iconic example: They begin their lives as male and have the ability to transform their bodies to become female when the alpha female of their social group leaves or dies. Other fish, such as wrasses, exhibit this same sequential hermaphrodism, but in the other direction. Many invertebrates—such as worms and snails—possess the reproductive structures of both sexes at the same time. Some species have more than two sexes; splitgill mushrooms have over 23,000 different sexes, or mating types. There’s a lingering misperception of the natural world as a place of uniform cisnormative gender orders and strict heterosexuality, with animals lined up as if on the decks of Noah’s Ark in neat, straight, binary pairs, two by two. But as the ecological-justice organizer Deseree Fontenot explains, “We’re on a planet full of immensely diverse forms of embodiment, sex and gender variations, kinship, care systems, and strategies for living and reproducing. They are expansive and complex and don’t fit into neat categories, and that holds many lessons for our species about adapting, surviving, and cooperating.” Our species has the ability to learn these lessons and respect this breathtaking diversity within which we are enmeshed. However, as the authoritarian repression of gender diversity intensifies, its erasure campaign has targeted other species. A reading series of the children’s book Wishtree was canceled at a Virginia school district after complaints from adults who took issue with the book’s oak tree character, who describes being monoecious: “Some trees are male. Some trees are female. And some like me, are both… Call me he, call me she, anything will work.” This scientifically grounded statement was enough to shut down the reading series.

“Amazon Is the New Slavery”: Chris Smalls on the Labor Fight of a Lifetime

Sara Franklin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A conversation with the labor organizer about his new book, When The Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class. In 2020, then 32-year-old Chris Smalls was fired from Amazon after organizing a protest at its Staten Island warehouse against the company’s unsafe working conditions in the early days of the pandemic. At the time, the supervisor had been at the company for five years, had helped open three Amazon fulfillment centers in the Northeast, and was one of the most productive warehouse employees in the company’s network. So productive, in fact, that company management shadowed Smalls, he said, building upon his methods to increase productivity quotas for all workers. In April 2021, Smalls helped found the Amazon Labor Union, the first union in the company’s history, at the Staten Island warehouse. He has since become among the foremost faces of a new generation of labor organizers, and was named one of Time’s most influential people in 2022, with ALU cofounder Derrick Palmer. In May 2026, Smalls made national headlines once again when he jumped a barricade at the Met Gala in protest of Jeff Bezos’s role as honorary chair and sponsor of the event, part of a broader “Ball Without Billionaires” campaign against extreme wealth concentration and worker exploitation. In his first book, When The Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class (Pantheon), out Tuesday, Smalls walks readers through his own harrowing journey to organizing for workers’ rights at Amazon, and details his hopes for the future of the labor movement, and for international solidarity movements on the whole. The Nation spoke with Smalls about the links he sees between Amazon’s labor practices and the institution of chattel slavery, why labor organizing is so important for young people coming up in the workplace today, and the current state of the “American Dream.” —Sara Franklin Sara Franklin: Early on in the book, you describe, in great detail, your experience working in warehouses. You draw clear connections between these workplaces and the system of forced enslavement and labor of Black people, who built this nation’s economy. You explain that in your warehouse, “pretty much every worker was Black or brown, but every supervisor or overseer was white. The place felt like prison. A culture of fear was firmly established.” No one risked “getting into it with management.” When did you come to understand how alive and present this history remains in American labor—especially those workplaces under corporate control—today? Chris Smalls: [The workers who assemble Amazon packages] are called “pickers.” We’re “the pick department.” They literally use this language for us. Once, a supervisor told me to “Whip your pickers back into shape.” I told him, “Don’t you ever say that to me again.” When I started in my first department in 2015, the hourly quota was 250 items per hour. Because we worked 10-hour shifts, I was touching over 2,500 packages per day. But I was so good at the job, I was doing twice that much. They never saw the numbers I was producing until I arrived. My building was actually the number-one building in the entire Amazon network. I was picking 500, 600 items an hour. That’s thousands of packages I had a hand in preparing every day. The company studied me. They’d literally have management come watch me. They called it shadowing. At first, I thought it was a good thing. I didn’t realize how valuable I was to the company. But then they began to implement what they saw me doing and increasing the quotas for all warehouse workers. It used to be 250 items an hour, then it was 275, 300, 325… Now, the average across all of Amazon is 400 items per hour in order to maintain our jobs. That means the average Amazon worker is picking over 4,000 items every single day. Doesn’t matter who you are—man or woman, old or young. This is the standard now because of [the company’s] focus on productivity and scale, on getting bigger and bigger. When it came to how slaves had to pick cotton, it was the same type of productivity metric; the same way slaves used to pick cotton in the field, where they had to produce or pick a certain number of pounds daily and weekly, by whoever kept tabs. Amazon is the new slavery, but with technology, mechanization, machinery, and AI. SF: What does it feel like to say those statistics aloud, and to have to keep rehashing those stats in your public appearances? CS: People keep saying to me, “You gotta say different things in your talks.” And I say, “This is what it takes.” Unfortunately, in this country, a lot of people hear you, but they’re not really listening. People just see the package show up at their door and they don’t know the process that goes on behind it. They don’t know how many people have touched that package. I’m hoping that I’m spreading the message that people’s lives are at risk, no matter how small the package is. It can be exhausting, but it’s important. I’m planting the seeds in people’s minds. Our kids, our children are going to work at corporations like this. We need to prepare them to make conscious decisions. Our fight is everyone’s fight. SF: From your perspective, what’s the cost of our culture’s obsession with perpetual growth and with our societal expectations of success—both for people and businesses? CS: In 2015, Amazon had seven warehouses in New Jersey. Now they have over 30. They’re not going anywhere, and they continue to build these warehouses every single year. Amazon owns 75 companies. In the next two to three years, one out of every four Americans is going to work at Amazon. Amazon has already hired and fired the equivalent of the entire American workforce in its 30 years of existence. There are so many costs. I mean, this company has affected all of us. I say this a lot: Did Amazon adapt to us? Or have we adapted to Amazon? This company, over the past 30 years, has completely changed the way we live. Our community used to be crossing guards and teachers and bus drivers. We all grew up playing together outside. I used to be able to borrow sugar and milk from my neighbors because we knew them. My mom was a single mom; we relied upon the people around us. We used to have to go out and go to the store. Now, we’re hitting “one-click-buy” and getting same-day deliveries. The mom and pop stores are mostly gone. The malls are ghost towns. Those stores that were fixtures of our childhood—the Toys ‘R Us, the JCPenny, the Barnes & Noble—[have] closed or, worse, Amazon is buying them up. “Nobody Heard Me at Amazon” Bryce Covert Why Jeff Bezos Loves Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill Sarah Anderson and Lauren Jacobs How Amazon Is Taking Its Union-Busting to New Heights Ella Fanger Throwing the Book at Amazon’s Monopoly Hold on Publishing Sandeep Vaheesan and Tara Pincock At Amazon, the workers are the ones who are being injured. We’re the ones who have ambulances coming every week, who are passing out from heatstroke, who are suffering miscarriages. Who are dying. I’ve literally seen someone sit down in the break room and never get back up. Kids now are tech savvy. They have to grow up a lot faster. They’re also paying a lot more attention to what’s going on because of technology. They know a lot more. They know how to use technology. Still, our way of life has changed. You shop online. It’s self-checkout at the grocery store. At the airport, you’re in a kiosk. Even at McDonald’s, you’re ordering on an app or screen. You know, at the rate we’re going, AI is going to [affect] 50 percent of American jobs in the next two to three years. We need to fight for the regulation of AI. We need to fight so our jobs aren’t replaced. Not just warehouse workers—we’re talking about teachers, nurses, cashiers at the stores with self-checkout, cashless stores, or the people at call centers. You’re not talking to human beings anymore. Even in the music industry, there are artists who are signed to record labels who are AI. AI is coming for all of our jobs. I just got back from this Big Tech conference in Vancouver. Of the over 20,000 people there, I was pretty much the only union agitator. [Corporations are] building all these data centers; this is the thing right now. Amazon just laid off 30,000 workers because they’re being replaced by AI. It’s gonna be quick, almost an overnight shift. These corporations want shortcuts. Billionaires want to save money. And if that comes at the expense of a worker, they’ll take it every time. SF: There are some passages in your “Union Busting” and “No One to Trust” chapters that struck me as chillingly pertinent to what’s happening in this country right now. By the 1950s, you tell us, nearly 35 percent of all American workers belonged to a union. “Income inequality was at historic lows; pension, health insurance, forty-hour workweek with overtime pay, and employee-provided health insurance became standard.… But the backlash was coming.… It’s almost like they wanted people to keep chasing the American dream so that we could keep believing in the system. But they didn’t want us to ever actually catch it.” And you write about how Presidents Kennedy and Johnson passed a fair amount of pro-labor legislation, but how Nixon’s election in 1968—the autumn after Dr. King was assassinated—set in motion the “dramatic rollback of civil rights and labor that laid the groundwork for everything we see today,” namely, the consolidation “of white voters under the Republican banner” by, above all, implying “that Black people were and Black liberation was, by nature, un-American…They wanted white people to feel like the country was about to be destroyed by these things and that, by extension, white people were about to be destroyed.” Can you comment on this history and its parallels with where we are right now? And what do you say to all the people who have been drinking, and continue to drink, the Kool-Aid of the so-called American Dream? CS: What is the American Dream? It’s really just smoke and mirrors at this point. After the Great Depression, there was a rise in labor unions. Labor unions in America were thriving. Since the ’60s, there’s been a huge decline because of regulation when it comes to legislation that hasn’t been touched. We’re talking about laws from the 1940s. We saw how Biden used 1926 legislation, The Railway Labor Act, against railroad workers because they wanted more sick leave. Trump, one of the first things he did in his first 10 days was to dismantle the National Labor [Relations] Board. Under the Biden administration, it was already $20 million in debt and understaffed. But Trump said, we’re gonna put Lori Chavez-DeRemer as labor secretary (you know, she just resigned), because they didn’t have enough directors on the board to make it a full board. It’s still [the case] as we speak. So now we have an ineffective national labor board. Whether it’s Trump or the next guy, we’ve got to understand that we have to reform labor in this country. One job should be enough; it used to be that way. Nowadays? Absolutely not. Both parents have to work, often multiple jobs. Check to check for 60 percent of Americans, and they’re one check out from being on the street. When I was fired in 2020 from Amazon, I had to face that full-on: Losing my main source of income and my healthcare during the pandemic was an eye-opening experience for me. I [had] put my blood, sweat, and tears into this company as an assistant manager for four and a half years, and they still didn’t give a **** about me. They still considered me replaceable. Nobody’s job is safe. The American Dream isn’t real anymore. You know, in other countries, labor has a say in government. Musk, with his ego, sent all these Tesla batteries to Sweden a couple years ago. Now, they have 90 percent union density in that country. They wouldn’t take them. They said, “We’re going to leave your chargers to rot.” They’re still on strike against Tesla. It’s been over two and a half years. Musk tried to sue the Swedish government. He didn’t realize that’s not how it works there. The Google tech-bros and Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos, they’re competitors. They’ve been at odds. But under the Trump administration, they’ve been united. They’re together, right now, on this one particular lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board, trying to roll back the rights of workers who want to unionize. This is moving forward right now with a federal judge in the state of Texas. Texas has some of the lowest taxes in the country. A lot of the tech-bros are setting up shop there. All of Bezos’s space programs are in Texas; this is on purpose. There’s no accountability for what they’re doing to the environment, and the governor of Texas is another billionaire corporate guy. [SpaceX v. National Labor Relations Board] has been way underreported in mainstream media for a reason. This is an administration that’s allowing these guys to get away with murder. SF: Following on that, at the end of your book, you say you feel strongly that workers at Amazon need to organize on an international level in order to enact real change and have broad-reaching, systemic impact. Based on your experience to date, what’s your sense of the appetite for organizing at this level? And, in a global culture that’s increasingly isolated, how do you help folks connect across such geographic range? CS: I got my first passport three years ago, and have been to 45 countries by now. I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, not that long ago. You know why? They just successfully organized the Amazon warehouse there. Was I a part of it on the ground? No. But they studied us and what we did, and then they pulled it off themselves. It’s not about being everywhere all the time. I can’t be. But I’m going to be there with them to celebrate their success. We used nontraditional organizing techniques to go up against this multitrillion-dollar, behemoth company and all their anti-union propaganda. And it worked. People see me and the things I put up on social media—they call me a content creator; I don’t see myself that way—and they can relate. They get ideas. They share them. They take it and make it their own. You know, for young folks today, if you ask them, “Do you want to be part of a labor union?.” they’re like, “Uh, no.” It doesn’t seem relatable to them. Or they don’t know what that means. That’s starting to change. The way things are trending in organizing right now is more and more about designing strategies and demands to meet basic human needs. Labor organizing can be hard as ****. Stressful. Extremely exhausting. You have to sacrifice so much time away from the things and people you love. So the best thing that you can do is make it fun, make it inviting. I think that’s something a lot of labor unions are failing to do. Traditional organizing methods work in certain sectors. But when it comes to the 21st-century and technology and the tools that we have, I try to make it fashionable, cool-looking. You know, a lot of people still assume that I’m rapping even though I haven’t rapped in over a decade. I still play around with it, though. I try to get labor into different conversations, different spaces, and make it appealing to the younger generations. They’re the ones that are gonna lead the way. Since I crashed the Met Gala, even those who weren’t aware who I was, now I’m hearing from people in the fashion industry, designers, NBA players, celebrities.… It’s good to see that, as rich as some of these people may be, they understand the power of labor organizing. That’s something that has been [missing] for a long time. Amazon says their number-one principle is, “Work hard, have fun, and make history.” We used to joke around, “You’ll work hard at Amazon, and the history is when you get fired.” And of course, it’s not really fun. We have to really uphold that principle and make it fun. And the history we’re making? That’s getting organized. SF: You write, “We also understand now that there are many people who have swallowed the lie that you’ll lose what you have if you care for others.” How do you try to convince people that leading with care is the only way forward in a culture that really encourages looking out for and protecting one’s own at the cost of others? CS: I tell my organizers, just because we’re radicalized, doesn’t mean that the next person is. I got radicalized six years ago. I had the fight in me my whole life, but I got radicalized in the sense of collective power when Amazon fired me. But that doesn’t mean other people are going to feel the same way. It’s important not to approach other people with the attitude that they should do this because you know better. It starts with befriending people. Build a relationship, earn their trust. Know what’s going on with their families, their loved ones, what schools their kids go to. You’ve always got to meet people where they’re at. Make it personal. How do you relate? Pay attention to the details, then show you care about them. That one person, that one story, might be the one that changes everything. One day there was a worker that had high blood pressure—a common thing at Amazon—and he asked Amazon to get him an Uber so that he could get to his hospital, which was 45 minutes away. Amazon refused. So he came out to where we set up shop at the tent across the street from the building. He told me what happened, and I said, “Let’s get you an Uber right away.” We didn’t have much money, but we did it anyway. Next day, when he came back, he said, “You guys saved my life.” The hospital took him right in because his blood pressure was so high. They told him if he hadn’t been seen right away, he might’ve had a stroke. He became our biggest advocate in the building, screamed at the top of his lungs every day that everyone needed to sign up for the union because we actually care about people. The best accountability is availability. If we weren’t available to have that conversation, that would’ve been a huge missed opportunity. There’s always something to fight for. And we’ve got to do it with love and solidarity.

From Universities to the Vatican, the AI Backlash Can’t Be Ignored

Katrina vanden Heuvel — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

If AI devours entire industries, who believes that the precariat’s newest members will receive more support than autoworkers and textile makers before them? Fresh from his dustup with President Trump, Pope Leo released an encyclical targeting a perhaps even more formidable foe: unfettered artificial intelligence. In the missive, he called for regulation of the tech industry, whose products have sparked an era that finds human dignity “threatened by new forms of dehumanization.” It’s an extraordinarily timely warning. Despite the carnival of corruption and disastrous policymaking unleashed by the sitting president, we may look back on this period not primarily as the Trump era but as the dawn of the AI age. Unbound by term limits, the technology is poised to remake our economy and society—at least, that’s what the guys who earn billions by hyping it say. But, like the pope, the public—which didn’t vote for any of this—is making its displeasure known. Commencement speakers striking an optimistic note on AI have been booed by new grads entering a workforce menaced by robotic takeover. In offices, employees are quietly sabotaging their bosses’ attempts to embed AI into the workplace. And data centers are so politically toxic on Earth that tech leaders are chasing long-shot efforts to send them to space. As AI becomes ever-more omnipresent, so does resistance to it. While AI skepticism is a global phenomenon, it’s particularly potent in the US: A poll of 30 countries found that Americans had the least faith in their government to regulate AI appropriately. That’s understandable considering that this nation has watched its business leaders offshore millions of jobs, while its elected officials prove willing to rescue Wall Street and leave Main Streets to painful economic decline. If AI devours entire industries, there’s little reason to believe that the newest members of the precariat will receive more support than autoworkers and textile makers before them. And that’s to say nothing of the environmental impacts of the water- and electricity-guzzling data centers that power AI computing, raising local utility bills and straining drought-prone regions. If all that weren’t ecologically hazardous enough, the Trump administration announced that it would lend $1 billion to the infamous, currently defunct power facility on Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident on US soil. It’s being resurrected to juice Microsoft data centers. All these potentially catastrophic risks are still part of the best-case scenario, which assumes that, despite its drawbacks, AI will perform the increasingly high-stakes tasks it is delegated as competently as the humans it replaces. Even darker outcomes are possible. A study at King’s College London had three AI models—versions of GPT, Claude, and Gemini—face off in a series of simulated war games. With a full range of tools at their disposal, from diplomatic de-escalation to all-out nuclear war, the models decided to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in 95 percent of simulations. And the use of AI in war-gaming is not merely theoretical. The US Air Force recently debuted an AI-powered system called WarMatrix with a press release claiming that it’s meant to “enhance” war-gaming, rather than replace existing approaches. Still, the military also touts the fact that these “advanced tools” can enable faster decision-making and provide “timely, credible insights to senior leaders.” For the past 80 years, humanity has benefited from a collective aversion to the use of weapons of mass destruction. Artificial intelligence feels no such repulsion. As the pope wrote, AI “can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data.” If any global power chooses to rely on this technology for strategic counsel when making legitimately existential decisions, then the 53 percent of Americans who think AI is likely to destroy humanity could well be proven right. Thankfully, the Four Horsemen haven’t left the barn just yet. With effective regulation, worst-case scenarios can be permanently prevented. To that end, Senator Elizabeth Warren published an op-ed last month advocating for taxing AI companies and data centers. And in March, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill that would impose a moratorium on data center construction. Like other AI skeptics, Sanders and AOC have been smeared as Luddites attempting to throw a wrench in the gears of progress. But, as John Nichols suggested in a recent article for The Nation, perhaps the designation isn’t quite the withering put-down AI boosters intend. The Luddites weren’t wild-eyed technophobes vainly trying to make the Industrial Revolution grind to a halt. Instead, they were skilled artisans aiming to save their livelihoods and preserve their dignity.

The Troubled History of Charlottesville

José Sanchez — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Deborah Baker’s Charlottesville: An American Story is history of the city and how its checkered past ultimately led to the Unite the Right rally. When Joe Biden ran for president in 2020, among the reasons he cited for his campaign’s very purpose was the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which culminated in the tragic murder of Heather Heyer. She was killed by the speeding car of a Donald Trump–supporting neo-Nazi named James Fields Jr. Then-President Trump refused to denounce the right-wing activists who’d held the rally, more or less, in his name and said that there “were very fine people on both sides.” Liberals were aghast. What was also shocking, according to the mainstream press, was that this hate-fest could have taken place in the genteel college town of Charlottesville. Nearly a decade later, the infamous footage from the rally—such as the tiki-torch-toting extremists chanting “Jews will not replace us!”—has faded into the background as the second Trump regime enacts its authoritarian agenda through ICE raids, attacks on the “DEI” boogeyman, and a wholesale dismantling of the welfare state. And yet while Charlottesville might seem like just one more awful spectacle among the many we’ve been forced to witness, it was arguably a key prefigurative moment of the 2010s, one that ushered in our current state of affairs. Yet its importance has been sidelined amid the quotidian exhibitions of violence and gleeful cruelty that the Trump administration has committed or permitted; the daily assaults on our collective dignity by the MAGA movement have made it difficult to remember the horrors of the recent past as well as the popular resistance to them. Deborah Baker’s Charlottesville: An American Story is an in-depth, forensic, and panoramic view of the long road to the Unite the Right rally. Through meticulous detective work and journalistic narrative, Baker shows us that the effort to unite the right goes back decades, incubated alongside Charlottesville’s history of harboring anti-Black reactionaries. After all, looming over the town is Monticello, the estate of the University of Virginia’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who spoke loftily about liberal ideals like reason and liberty, also (as we all ought to know at this point) owned enslaved Black people and, through rape, fathered children by an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. Baker looks at the self-satisfying glow of Monticello and the politesse it casts on the city below, revealing the sordid underbelly of the city’s legacy of racial hatred, segregation, and subjugation. There is something all too American, Baker argues, about believing that bucolic scenery and bourgeois pretensions can keep the repressed and foundational histories of this country’s utmost oppressions at bay. Though often weighed down by their encyclopedic density, the book’s numerous character studies untangle seemingly everything about Charlottesville through the four centuries of its existence, from the town’s colonial-era settlement, founded in racial enslavement, to 20th-century UVA professors espousing eugenics, to the small-town activists who violently fought against court-mandated desegregation orders. By doing so, Baker makes it clear that no one should be surprised that this town was the same place a murderous right-wing rally took place in the 21st century. The first and second parts of Charlottesville: An American Story deal with the historical backdrop, and the book’s third and final part concentrates on the days before and during the rally itself. Between the first and second parts is an interlude titled “The Heart of Whiteness,” which centers on a white Charlottesville resident who seems like an early-20th-century forerunner to Richard Spencer. Similarly, a final interlude before the third part, titled “A School of Backward Southern Whites,” is about a heroic and compellingly flawed white woman who resembles something of an earlier Heather Heyer. It is a curious narrative and structural choice to put the carts before the horses here, introducing contemporaries in the beginning before delving into the history and antecedents, back and forth, over and over again. A more linear and chronological argumentation could have been useful for readers. To her credit, Baker has centered the bulk of the book’s recurring characters not on the headline-grabbing, bumbling far-right nitwits like Spencer and other nationwide hate figures, but on a charming cast of little-known left-wing activists and organizers who call Charlottesville home. Introduced in the first part of the book are the likes of Wes Bellamy and Zyahna Bryant. Bellamy, a Black man, arrived in Charlottesville in 2009 to work as a computer science teacher before launching a quixotic campaign for City Council; he was sarcastically nicknamed “Fresh Prince” and mistrusted by the locals, who saw him as something of an attention-seeking carpetbagger, though he eventually did win public office. Bryant, at that time a high-school freshman, had called upon then–Vice Mayor Bellamy to take down the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in a public park. She was precocious and iron-willed, someone “sustained” by the Black church who was impelled to embrace a life of activism after the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Baker mentions dozens and dozens of others in this book, yet paradoxically, their moving biographies often get lost in the forest of names, dates, archival evidence, and so forth. Sometimes a discriminating eye has its noble uses—though thankfully, Baker does provide a helpful list of the book’s 105 characters. Baker devotes the book’s interludes to just one person each. The first, “The Heart of Whiteness,” traces the entanglement of the liberal intelligentsia and baldfaced white supremacism in the figure of John Kasper, a 26-year-old graduate of Columbia University. Kasper arrived in Virginia in 1956, months after the state’s “Massive Resistance” movement tried, and failed, to convince the state government to pass laws banning desegregation. Like so many young, alienated white men, Kasper joined the feverish politics of white backlash. Raised in New Jersey, he was an intellectual jack-of-all-trades, admiring tough-talking men of various politics, from Machiavelli to Stalin and, most prominently, Ezra Pound. The Mussolini-loving Pound, who advocated for Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany from an Italian radio station during World War II, was brought back to the United States and committed to an asylum in Washington, DC, in 1945. Kasper began aping Pound’s worldview in this period, combining old-fashioned European antisemitism with thoroughly American anti-Blackness, estranging former colleagues and friends in bohemian Greenwich Village. Possessed of a “smoldering charisma” and described by the New York Herald Tribune as a “Hollywood version of the All-American boy,” Kasper would team up with a UVA student to burn crosses on the lawns of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice Felix Frankfurter. Like the well-groomed and respectable fascists of today, Kasper had the looks and charisma that charmed audiences and disarmed elites. Kasper and his ilk chose to decamp to Charlottesville as a battleground because the NAACP had done so as well. Future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, then the chief counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, had sued Charlottesville’s school authorities over its segregated schools, recognizing the city’s importance. Baker writes, “On Marshall’s side were seventy students whose families were willing to risk their livelihoods for their children’s education.” The Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP had grown into the Commonwealth’s largest. Kasper’s far-right rabble-rousing earned him the loyalty of a notorious circle of like-minded racists, with one associate credited with writing George Wallace’s “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech, while others were involved, Baker writes, in “eighty-eight bombing incidents in the Deep South between 1955 and 1960.” Despite Kasper’s agitations, Charlottesville’s schools would become fully integrated in 1962. Still, as a figure, Kasper is interesting because he is emblematic of the type of person that Richard Spencer represents, which makes for one of Baker’s most convincing historical parallels: telegenic all-American men with educational pedigrees and preppy backgrounds who, alienated from the polite societies they were being groomed to join, fall from grace to become an uglier, less respectable type of white supremacist. “A School for Backward Southern Whites,” the book’s second interlude, is about Patty Boyle, a high-born and pious Virginian woman with a clergyman father who was raised on a plantation, a grandfather who was General Lee’s scout, and another grandfather who was a colonel under Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Boyle was “moonlight and magnolias” personified: In her 40s and married to a UVA professor, she began a campaign to welcome the law school’s first Black student, Gregory Swanson, believing it to be the Christian thing to do. Boyle wanted sincerely to greet him with open arms and argued in local newspapers about how Virginia’s best should treat “our Negroes.” (Her campaign, despite its good intentions, was still tone deaf.) Yet Boyle’s white upper-crust milieu soon began to turn on her. As Kasper stormed around town denouncing the “red-controlled Supreme Court,” posters appeared targeting Boyle and other local “homos, perverts, freaks” and “hot eyed Socialists.” Eventually, Boyle found a cross burning in her front yard and would be radicalized by her estrangement from the community. She was praised in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”; she participated in the March on Washington; her 1962 autobiography, The Desegregated Heart, became a national bestseller; and she was even jailed for the first time, for three days, in St. Augustine, Florida, in June 1964 for protesting against segregation at the Monson Motor Lodge. When desegregation came to Charlottesville, she began to be seen as a courageous rebel, and she joined a Black church that she tithed for the rest of her life. Patty Boyle led the kind of life that Heather Heyer was robbed of. The third part of Charlottesville: An American Story flows from a trove of citations, and it attempts, often deftly so, to express in writing what has been seen countless times in tweets and videos. Baker acknowledges the narrative difficulties of channeling thousands of social media posts into a neatly organized retelling: “To portray the multiple, nearly simultaneous, explosions of violence that took place in and around the park is a near impossibility,” she writes. One wonders if this is a methodological issue with doing historical work concerning a recent past that lives on millions of phones and in terabytes of ephemeral data.

Trump’s Fourth of July Fiasco Is Entirely His Fault

Jeet Heer — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

America’s 250th anniversary celebrations are falling apart because of the president’s tawdry display of narcissism. Ideally, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States would be an occasion for a thoughtful patriotism that merges gratitude with reflection. The quarter-millennium since the signing of the Declaration of Independence has been marked by tremendous achievements—most notably the abolition of slavery, the expansion of democracy—but also by horrifying wars and domestic strife. Coming to terms with the full complexity of the US, its successes and failures alike, would be a tremendous opportunity for enriching civic life. Unfortunately, our world is far from ideal. Donald Trump, a ridiculous caricature of the worst features of US culture, is president. He’s not inclined to introspective patriotism. In fact, any sort of sincere patriotism is alien to him, since it would involve acknowledging a reality larger and more important than himself. Not surprisingly, Trump is rapidly turning this year’s 250th events—in particular, a planned series of Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall—into yet another tribute to his own greatness. The story of Trump’s hijacking of the holiday (awkwardly dubbed the United States Semiquincentennial) is instructive. A big holiday party needs serious preparation. In 2016, when Barack Obama was president, Congress established a bipartisan organization called America250. Ever since, America250 has been laying the groundwork for a string of parades and block parties across the country. The plans are very much in keeping with earlier national anniversaries such as the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976. But a bipartisan group celebrating a widely shared form of patriotism was a poor fit for Trump’s rabid partisanship and desire to be at the center of every story. The president issued an executive order to create a rival organization that he could control called Freedom 250. Bypassing congressional control is a typical Trump tactic, as is the use of private donations to fund public events. Like his inauguration celebration, Freedom 250 is being financed through a murky private/public funding scheme rife with conflicts of interest. As the good government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington notes, “Many of the companies sponsoring Freedom 250 have business before the government or significant government contracts, including United Airlines, Palantir, Deloitte and Lockheed Martin.” One of the marquee events Freedom 250 had been planning was The Great American State Fair, which is set to run from June 25 to July 10 in Washington. Prominent musicians had been invited to the Fair, which they seem to have mistakenly thought of as a nonpartisan event. Once the Fair’s connections to Trump were publicized last week, there was a mass exodus, with nearly all the scheduled acts dropping out. As USA Today reports: A lineup of music superstars rounded up to perform has collapsed significantly in the last two days, with Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida among the remaining acts. The rest of the fair’s performers have walked back their involvement with the event. Among those who have dropped out are Bret Michaels, Martina McBride, The Commodores, and Young MC. With his big party rapidly turning into a fiasco, Trump responded with his usual good grace on Saturday, posting on Truth Social: I understand Artists are getting “the yips” having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate “Artists,” and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President! Two years ago, the United States was DEAD. Now we have the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. I don’t want so-called “Artists” that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy. I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN. So, by copy of this TRUTH, I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, D.C., same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited—It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America! President DONALD J. TRUMP This peevish post is at least honest. Trump isn’t pretending to be a president of all the people, a leader who offers a patriotic celebration that appeals to the majority. Rather, his vision of the nation is as narrow as can be. Trump thinks American greatness resides in himself and the people who appreciate him. This is the same shameless narcissism that gave the world Trump Tower, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Airlines, and so many other monuments to an insatiable hunger for fame. Any honest critique of the United States would acknowledge that Trump does represent part of the national culture. It’s hardly an accident that he was twice elected president and has dominated politics for more than a decade. Trump embodies the dangers of self-aggrandizement that grow out of American individualism. He is the worst-case scenario of the Jeffersonian dream of the “pursuit of happiness” curdling into nothing more than soulless accumulation and boasting. But if Trump represents one dismal part of America’s patrimony, he is far from the whole of the country. America also includes tens of millions, perhaps even a majority, that reject Trump and everything he stands for. This other America will do well to tune Trump out on the Fourth of July. Now more than ever, Independence Day will be a moment demanding more than mindless flag-waving. It’ll be a day for national soul-searching.

Trump Is Weaponizing Long-Standing Restrictions on Freedom to Travel to Cuba

David Montgomery — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The administration is targeting travelers who criticize US policy. The Trump administration has begun to weaponize long-standing restrictions on freedom to travel to Cuba, focusing on travelers who criticize the US policy of asphyxiating the Cuban economy and threatening a military attack. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)—the arm of the Treasury Department that enforces US economic sanctions against other countries—has sent a “request for information” to the advocacy group Code Pink about its participation in the international humanitarian convoy that brought 500 people from more than 30 countries carrying an estimated 35 tons of food, medicine, solar panels, and other aid to Havana in March. As part of the convoy, Code Pink chartered a plane for 170 participants that also carried 6,300 pounds of medical supplies worth $433,000 arranged by Global Health Partners. Treasury officials are demanding to know “everything you did while you were in Cuba, who went, how did you go, how did you pay for everything, all the receipts, the detailed description of everything you took for donations…what hotel did you stay in,” Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, told The Nation. Benjamin suspects the May 21 OFAC inquiry aims to quell dissent against President Donald Trump’s increasingly harsh approach to Cuba, which has triggered the worst humanitarian crisis on the island in memory. An American oil blockade imposed in January set off a chain reaction of daily blackouts, food shortages, water shortages, medical emergencies, and reported deaths. “I think it’s intimidation, totally, and we don’t want to be intimidated,” Benjamin said. “We’re telling all the people who went with us don’t be intimidated. Just use this as another spark in the fire to challenge this sadistic policy.” Code Pink has started to compile the information requested by OFAC, Benjamin added. “We think we didn’t do anything wrong.” Federal scrutiny of the trip has implications beyond one group’s mission to Havana. It’s another blow to Cuba’s already devastated hospitality industry—a major pillar of the economy—and represents an additional tool for turning up pressure on the Cuban government, according to experts in travel to Cuba. “This will certainly serve to chill travel to Cuba by well-meaning Americans who have every right under the current structures and categories to go to Cuba,” said Peter Kornbluh, co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, who has led tours to the island. “But it also is a warning to anybody that opposes the cruel and anti-humanitarian nature” of the current approach to Cuba. “The Trump administration is weaponizing a humanitarian trip to Cuba to persecute, not just to prosecute, those who are speaking out against the cruel and malicious US policy and trying to help the Cuban people.” The Treasure Department’s press office didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment for this story. The existence of the inquiry was previously reported by Fox News Digital, which also said others received a “subpoena,” including left wing influencer Hasan Piker who traveled to Havana on the Code Pink charter. As of last week, “your boy has yet to receive a subpoena,” Piker told his audience on Twitch. Official inquiries into American travelers’ activities in Cuba were not uncommon in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, since President Barack Obama sought to thaw relations between the nations and visited Havana himself in 2016, the assets control office has generally left travelers alone. “Obama basically decided that OFAC should be out of the travel curtailment business,” Kornbluh said. Even during Trump’s first term, US travel to Cuba continued to soar, reaching a record 638,000 visitors in 2018, according to the Cuban government, despite Trump’s tightening some categories of travel. There were few, if any, reports of the US government demanding the records of travelers to Cuba during Trump’s first term and President Joe Biden’s term, said Robert Muse, a Washington, DC, lawyer with long experience counseling clients on OFAC compliance issues. Americans can travel to Cuba for any of 12 authorized reasons, including “support for the Cuban people,” “humanitarian projects,” and “educational activities.” The Code Pink group traveled under the category of support for the Cuban people, Benjamin said. That means having a schedule of activities that yield meaningful interaction with the Cuban people, according to the regulations. Some members of the group spent all their time painting a mural with Cuban artists, as reported by The Nation from Havana, while others participated in a daily schedule of activities posted in their hotel, including visiting neighborhoods to meet residents, listening to speakers, and making art with children in a playground.

The Palestinian Authority Is Being Strangled to Death

Theia Chatelle — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Israel is engineering the collapse of the West Bank’s governing body—a key step on the way to full annexation. Ramallah—“I feel like I am going to work with zombies,” Lutfi said. “People who have had all of their hopes destroyed. They don’t feel like they’re going to get their money.” Lutfi works for the Palestinian Authority, the body that nominally governs the occupied West Bank. (He asked that his last name be withheld so that he could speak freely about his work.) But it’s unclear how long he will hold on to his job, because the PA’s ability to carry out basic public services, let alone employ people, is collapsing. The PA is currently facing a deficit of more than 4.5 billion shekels (about $1.9 billion). Amid the financial emergency, Palestinian youth are attending school only three days a week, as schools struggle to pay rising electricity costs and teachers go without salaries. Ministerial offices, even in the relatively insulated city center of Ramallah, are mostly empty. As of late 2025, civil servants were being paid only 60 percent of their salary, in a slow decline since October 7 that reflects the increasingly dire financial straits the PA finds itself in. To make matters worse, this crisis is not an accident. It is the direct result of Israeli government policy—specifically the policies of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has made no secret of his desire to eliminate the PA completely. “As far as I’m concerned, let the [Palestinian] Authority collapse. It is an enemy,” Smotrich told Israel’s Channel 14 in June 2025. “There is a systematic approach by certain members of the coalition to bankrupt the PA and to dissolve it.”Mouin Rabbani, senior fellow at the Middle East Council, explained. “They need to get the PA out of the way in order to exercise complete control over the occupied territories.” In the aftermath of October 7, Smotrich cited the PA’s failure to condemn the attack as justification for withholding revenue. He has also pointed to the PA’s “Martyrs’ Fund”—a program providing stipends to Palestinian prisoners, which critics call “pay for slay”—as further grounds for the freeze. The fund became the basis of a March 2026 US appeals court ruling finding the PA liable for financing attacks on American citizens. PA President Mahmoud Abbas ended the payments in February 2025 at the Trump administration’s urging. The distribution of the PA’s “clearance revenues”—which, per the 1994 Paris Protocol, Israel collects on behalf of the PA and is then supposed to distribute every month, to the tune of roughly $188 million—is still on hold. If Israel does not soon resume transferring the withheld revenue, it will be completely insolvent, “completely bankrupt,” said Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Lutfi has seen the impact of Smotrich’s crusade firsthand. He works for the PA’s land registry, documenting Palestinian claims to land in the West Bank. His job is one of the most basic prerequisites for any final settlement: quite literally, who owns what. But his team’s work is now on indefinite pause. Equipment that they use to assess land in the most remote areas of the West Bank is falling into disrepair, and Lutfi’s union, the Jordan Engineers Association, recently urged its employees to stop showing up to work entirely. The PA owes Lutfi 17 months of back pay, and, as he recounted to me, the consensus among fellow employees is that they’re never going to get it.

Trump’s Fickle Iran Policy

Michael T. Klare — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

He is now a rudderless potentate. More than anything, Trump has sought to project an aura of personal power and decisiveness. Whether through his ironclad rule over the Republican Party, condescending stance toward foreign emissaries, or ruthless exercise of military power, Trump is constantly reminding us of his extraordinary grasp of executive powers and his unique temperament to exploit them. Recent developments in the Middle East, however, have thrown into doubt his capacity to wield power effectively—with unpredictable and potentially perilous consequences. Trump’s obsession with the public display of personal power was notably evident in his announcement of the January 2 US kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, to face trial in New York on drug charges. “This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history,” he said the next morning. “The United States military is the strongest and most fierce military on the planet by far,” he asserted—a distinction he attributed to his personal initiative. “Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way,” he declared. “We had great dominance in my first term, and we have far greater dominance right now.” Evidently propelled by these fantasies of domination, Trump concluded—or was led to believe—that a full-scale air and missile assault on Iran would produce a similar outcome, with even greater rewards for Washington. According to an exhaustive investigation by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, Trump was persuaded to undertake the assault by assurances of unqualified success provided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad director David Barnea during a February 11 meeting in the White House Situation Room. An all-out US/Israeli attack, Trump was reportedly told, would almost certainly result in the collapse of Iran’s clerical regime, the destruction of its ballistic missile inventory, the elimination of its aid to proxy forces like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the permanent cessation of its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Any potential Iranian ability to retaliate by striking US allies in the Persian Gulf region or blocking the Strait of Hormuz—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply normally passes—was said by the Israelis to constitute a negligible concern. Although some US officials, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, warned of possible risks from an attack on Iran, Trump chose the path of promised glory, embracing the Israeli plan for a full-scale assault. The president’s overweening self-confidence and undiluted faith in American military power was on full display when he announced the assault on February 28. “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces,” he declared. “I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.” As events soon demonstrated, however, the Iranian regime was fully prepared to challenge the strength and might of America’s armed forces—and, in doing so, deprived Trump of success in nearly all of his priority areas. By firing one-way drones and ballistic missiles at US bases in the region and the energy facilities of US allies, the Iranians were able to inflict significant damage to US combat capabilities and to block traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, provoking a global energy crisis. Despite intense US and Israeli attacks, moreover, the regime did not collapse, nor was its ability to conduct drone and missile barrages fully eliminated. In countering those barrages, moreover, the United States consumed a large share of its inventory of advanced air-defense missiles, leaving US forces ill-prepared for any future confrontation with well-equipped Chinese or Russian forces. Most significantly, Iran’s supply of highly enriched uranium remained untouched, presumably still stored in canisters buried in a cave near Isfahan, whose entrance was reportedly sealed by US “bunker buster” bombs during a raid last June. Faced with these disappointments, Trump—egged on by Netanyahu and pro-Israeli forces in the US—threatened to escalate the fighting even further, attacking not only military and regime targets but also bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure—a severe threat to the health and well-being of Iran’s civilian population. Unless the regime bowed to his demands, Trump declared at 8 am on April 7, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” This was, perhaps, the last time it could be said that Trump exercised full control over the course of battle in Iran. Between 8 am and 6 pm Washington time on April 7, Trump was somehow persuaded by Pakistani mediators and other interlocutors to initiate a two-week ceasefire with the Iranians and to use that time to complete work on a lasting peace settlement, whose broad outlines the Pakistanis had crafted over the previous weeks.

Do We Live in the Age of “Hyperpolitics”?

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A conversation with the historian Anton Jäger about political polarization, the stagnation of the West, and the collapse of mass politics in the 20th century. In his new book, Hyperpolitics, the historian Anton Jäger offers an explanation for why contemporary life has become so polarized, so riven with political conflict, yet nothing seems to materially change. His explanation traces the collapse of 20th-century mass politics, and in particular unions, parties, and civic institutions that once gave ordinary people real collective power. As these structures eroded from the 1970s onward, what emerged in their wake was something far more disorienting: a public sphere overflowing with moral urgency and viral outrage. Jäger calls this condition hyperpolitics: extreme politicization without political results. The Nation spoke with Jäger about the idea of hyperpolitics, the historical context out of which it emerged, the intellectual influences that shape Jäger’s thought, and if we are now moving beyond hyperpolitics. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. —Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: What do you specifically mean by the notion of “hyperpolitics”? Anton Jäger: The book examines a mutation in political culture of what Branko Milanovic has termed the “political West.” It opens with a contrast. In the 1990s and 2000s, talk in political philosophy was of “post-politics” and a general disinterest in public affairs. Such a diagnosis appears out of date today. In the past decade, political activity has witnessed a steady return across the West: voter turnout, protest activity, public violence, discursive involvement are all up. This naturally invites comparisons with previous periods of high politicization, mostly the 1930s. As the book shows, however, such a similarity is deceptive: In contrast to the “wild” mass politics of the 1920s and ’30s, today’s politicization rarely takes on a durably institutional form—the hyperpolitics discussed, then, stands for a process of repoliticization without reinstitutionalization. It is in no way a totalizing style or master concept, of course. Hyperpolitics denotes an important and relatively new gravitational pole in contemporary political culture; yet it is not the only tendency around. DSJ: It seems like you are using it not just as a political concept but also to identify a particular historical moment. AJ: Indeed, the book is very much a history of a change in political culture, not just a shift in electoral patterns or party competition. It is also not a moral condemnation or indictment. Instead, it is about a new structural transformation of the public sphere, as Habermas would have it, which affects actors across the spectrum. As mentioned, the hyperpolitics discussed in the book is born in contrast: with the post-politics of the long 1990s that preceded it, and the mass politics which characterizes the short 20th century. The latter was marked by a type of politicization that tended towards institutional forms. The 1990s instead mark a decline on two axes: institutionalization and politicization. As turnout at elections declines and strike activity slumped, associational life also enters a secular crisis. This double minus offers an interesting entry point to the sensibility of the 1990s: a period in which citizens retreat from the public sphere and politics undergoes a privatization. The very idea that one would publicly share one one’s voting preferences becomes outré; politics becomes the province of specialists or junkies. The idea of collective action is philosophically suspect. Again, I wouldn’t want to pretend to grasp the entirety of an epoch with the concept. “All theory is gray, green is the tree of life,” as Goethe once said. . DSJ: So is this ultimately a book about populism? AJ: It would be dishonest of me to deny continuity with previous work—originality and self-reinvention are all too demanding standards by which we judge intellectual work. But I would make a distinction, which the book tries to parse too, between anti-politics, populism, and hyperpolitics. The year 2008, coinciding with the credit crunch, is the cutoff point for the repoliticization which the book registers in the last decade and a half. Yet the waves of politicization after 2008 in fact unfold in two distinct stages. First, there is the initial opening salvo of “anti-politics.” This mainly presents a challenge to the methods of crisis management after 2008, in which the Western political class is identified with a post-political stalemate. Such a criticism of post-politics can evolve into a questioning of representation itself, yet there is a fundamental ambiguity here. On the one hand, the slogan “They don’t represent us”—that of the Spanish Indignados—insists on a deficit of representation. On the other hand, it could also slide into a more radical position: “We don’t want to be represented.” Such a logic is patently visible in Occupy, and it reappears in the Gilets Jaunes.

Notes From an ICE Chaser

Amanda Moore — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

I followed agents from Illinois to North Carolina to Minnesota. To my surprise, they loved my coverage. We were in hot pursuit of the caravan that was chauffeuring Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who had just arrived in Minnesota the day before. In his wake were a dozen or so cars, some carrying journalists and others full of “commuters”—the term used by citizens who follow immigration agents around in an effort to alert community members to their presence. For months, I and a number of other members of the press had been following Bovino from Illinois to North Carolina to Louisiana, and now to Minnesota, documenting the impact of the Trump administration’s surges of federal immigration agents. We spent a lot of time in rental cars, driving like maniacs. When you do this kind of work, you walk a fine line: You don’t want to get in the middle of the commuters and agents, but you don’t want to lose the caravan either. In my rental car, I straddled lanes, riding the bumper of the car in front of me. When a BMW tried to cut me off , I held my ground. I locked eyes with the driver, expecting a random pissed-off person who wouldn’t understand why I was acting like a jerk. Instead, I saw a masked man behind the wheel, his eyes and the bridge of his nose immediately identifying him to me as one of Bovino’s guys. The BMW was full of Border Patrol agents, and we were keeping them from the rest of their pack. I slammed on the brakes, raised my hands, and shrugged. Oops, I mouthed. The driver shook his head and wagged his finger at us. When we ended up next to each other again at a light a few blocks up, the agents rolled their windows down and cracked a few jokes at my expense. Probably not the reaction a random civilian would have gotten. I never really intended to cover immigration in any capacity, especially not with video. I’m a writer whose work focuses on the far right. But when President Trump brought the National Guard and ICE to Washington, DC, I started recording as much of their activities as I could. This meant recording federal agents lurking around Metro stations, apprehending people for smoking weed, and overseeing roadblocks conducted by the local police. After a few weeks, a friend who had followed ICE in DC with me suggested I go to Broadview, a village outside Chicago with an ICE facility that was central to Operation Midway Blitz, the administration’s name for the surge of federal agents into Chicago, ostensibly for immigration enforcement. By 8 am on my first day there, agents had gassed the handful of protesters who had gathered outside numerous times and had drawn handguns. After one weekend in Broadview, I could not imagine caring about any other story. I spent the rest of Bovino’s tenure following the surges, creating videos for Mother Jones. The compulsion to stick with this story was not unique to me. A handful of us followed Bovino to the other cities, becoming increasingly obsessed with recording raids and abductions. How could anyone think anything else in the world mattered? People needed to see what we were witnessing. Going home for weddings, birthdays, or just a few days off was jarring. A Chicago-based journalist friend pointed out that if what was happening in Chicago had happened in New York City, it would be on the front page of every paper in the world. Until Renée Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January, most people did not have any concept of the scale of violence we were witnessing. Though Los Angeles was the first city to face a surge, many of the people, reporters included, who traveled around following immigration agents started in Chicago. Chicago, a city with 560,000 immigrants, has been one of Trump’s favorite targets. Trump has attacked its governor, JB Pritzker, as a “loser” and “fat slob.” And throughout his first and second terms, he has depicted Chicago as a lawless city; crime statistics in Chicago are a favorite refrain of MAGA. Federal agents guarded the Broadview facility during protests for the first few weeks of Midway Blitz. Their tactics, from tear-gassing the neighborhood to shooting pepper balls directly at protesters, resulted in an extreme amount of violence against a largely unprepared crowd of people. Agents often seemed to single out members of the press, routinely sniping at us from the rooftops of nearby buildings. On September 27, a day so violent and brutal that local police ended up taking over guarding the facility, photographer Dave Decker snapped a shot of an agent near the facility’s gate. “I bet that picture looks cool as hell,” the agent told Decker, who had been shot with pepper balls numerous times that day as he tried to take photos. “Can you tag me on Instagram?” We were all gobsmacked by the navel-gazing request. But the agent’s comment was a sign of the perverse narcissism that was to come. DHS agents might not like journalists, but they love being recorded and photographed. Weeks after this event, agents made small talk with another photographer I spoke with who had been following them around the Chicago area since the start of Midway Blitz. They asked if he had photos of them, and he replied that he wasn’t sure, because all the agents looked the same to him. Acting as though that was a ridiculous statement, they explained the differences in how they each wore their vests and uniforms. Eventually, the agents gave up and asked for the photographer’s Instagram handle to check for themselves. DHS agents routinely stole and repurposed videos and photos taken by journalists and used them in their own propaganda campaigns. In other circumstances this might have given us pause, but there was a stark contrast between the agents’ reactions to the footage and the public’s responses to it. We were documenting the agents to make sure the public saw their violence. The agents just thought they were in the eye of the paparazzi. At a gas station in St. Paul, I watched Border Patrol agents tackle and arrest a protester unprovoked. The agents then busted out the window of a car driven by a man who Bovino, without evidence, had declared was a Honduran national. Bovino dragged the man out of his vehicle with such force that he fell unconscious. He was hauled off in an SUV and was ultimately deported. The next day, a photographer and I were following a small caravan of agents from the Bureau of Prisons and BORTAC, the elite tactical unit of Border Patrol. During a stop at a gas station, they asked who we worked for. The photographer explained wire services to them, and I asked if they had seen the previous day’s gas-station melee on the news that morning. I told them it was my video and that the photographer with me had taken a perfect, clear shot of the car window as they broke the glass. Impressed, the agent asked which car was ours, giving us their blessing to follow them. Two days after I filmed the gas-station detainments, I recorded video as Aliya Rahman, a disabled woman who was driving by as a raid was taking place, was yanked from her car. I was not prepared for the response the video got. People messaged me to tell me it was the first thing they had seen that made them concerned about the immigration surges. News outlets around the world played the footage, and Rahman ultimately testified to Congress about her experience. A journalist from a major national outlet called me about it, expressing horror. They kindly asked me if I was shocked at what I had witnessed. Tired, hungry, covered in tear gas, and unable to regulate my response, I said that the only shocking part of this was that such a large media organization was calling me about it. And it wasn’t just media outlets that seemed surprised by the footage. Sometimes I would read about my videos in X comments and on Reddit, which reach an audience much larger than my written work does. Those viewers, unaware of who I was, would wonder how I was so close to the violence without being hurt myself. Some speculated that I was lugging around a large television camera and assumed that the agents avoided harming television reporters because of the optics. But I am just a writer who records video on an iPhone, and the truth about the agents was far more bizarre: They accepted our presence and welcomed the attention. Perhaps in their minds we were part of their official entourage. Early on in Minnesota, an agent I didn’t recognize got out of his car at a red light and yelled at my vehicle, telling us to stop following them. We explained that we were press, but he didn’t care. Less than a minute later, another agent ran up, apparently to do damage control. We were the ones who took a lot of video, right?, he asked us. We shouldn’t worry about that other guy—we were totally fine to follow them! Soon after, a few of us were following a lone commuter in Minneapolis who was honking while tailing a couple of Border Patrol cars. When the Border Patrol cars stopped abruptly and the agents hopped out, so did we. An armed masked agent prepared to pound on the commuter’s window and briefly looked back at us. “Oh, hey man, what’s up?,” he said, cheerfully greeting a photographer he recognized from Charlotte or New Orleans. Then he turned back and barked at the commuter: “This is your one and final warning!” The guy inside the car looked terrified. Though Bovino has said that the horns and whistles activists use to alert people that Border Patrol is nearby actually help agents, the reality is they irritate the agents and hinder their ability to conduct raids. In the online magazine Hammer and Hope, the photographer Ashley Gilbertson wrote that agents in Chicago recognized him from his time embedded in war zones in West Africa and Iraq. By the time Operation Catahoula Crunch—an action where law enforcement reassigned Border Patrol agents—kicked off in Louisiana, the Border Patrol agents assigned to Bovino had begun to address some journalists by name, which was startling. Bovino frequently replied to our videos on X, and it was hard to imagine they didn’t all know who each of us were. But to us, the agents were all interchangeable and nameless. Bovino showed up in Minnesota the same day that Renée Good was killed. The next morning, a fairly large crowd of protesters gathered outside of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, which houses an immigration court and an ICE processing center. Tear gas, pepper balls, and violent arrests ensued, and eventually a line of agents stood guard, keeping the protesters off the property. I started taking B-roll to kill time, but ran into a videographer I knew from other surge cities. We stopped to catch up, close enough to the agents they could have joined our conversation. As we chatted about our experiences in Chicago and New Orleans, the agents remained stone-faced, pretending not to listen or care. But when our conversation ended, one of them asked me what Broadview had been like. “Extraordinarily violent,” I told him, surprised by his question. I asked if he had been to any of the other surges, and he said no. As I described the obscene amounts of tear gas that had been unleashed on peaceful protesters and the targeting of the media, the agents nearby gave up the pretense of not listening. They were standing at their home base, where they have guns and some degree of authority, but here I was, telling them what their future deployment would be like. It was as though they were the outsiders at their own event. In fact, my time covering the surges has been a continued point of interest to immigration agents. When President Trump announced in March that ICE would be stationed at airports to “assist TSA,” I flew to Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport to see what it was all about. The agents were far more talkative than the ones I had met during surges: some right away, while others warmed up after I continued to show up every morning and stand around, or after they saw videos of themselves go viral or get picked up. (In my experience, people don’t like to read about themselves, but they do like to see themselves on television). On ICE’s second day at the airport, the subject of activist photographers came up. “Isn’t that you?” one agent asked. “An activist?” They hadn’t heard of Mother Jones when they met me the day before, but they had since looked up the magazine. I thought they might tell me to get lost, but for the rest of the week, they seemed to feel that my presence at the surges made up for my political stances. Perhaps they were just lonely, happy to have some female energy around. Some of these agents had been deployed to Minnesota and told me about their experiences there. A few had been stationed in DC, which surprised me, since the conversion of FBI, ATF, and IRS agents to ICE agents had led me to assume there weren’t many out-of-towners brought in. Some who had not been deployed before asked me what it had been like to be at the surges. One even said he was grateful that he hadn’t been deployed: Apparently, the experience was not alluring for everyone. All the agents who had been to Minnesota told me they never wanted to go back, for any reason. Some agents in Houston said they were likely deployed to the airport for optics. Many of them were upset that all immigration officials were branded as “ICE”—apparently they didn’t want to be associated with Bovino’s cowboy-style Border Patrol raids. Even so, when I took a video of agents handing out water to people in line, some rolled their eyes, saying it was embarrassing for them to be doing this. According to the crew in San Antonio, some of them had signed up thinking they would get to work the TSA machines, which could at least be cool. Instead, they were stuck being cart boys and girls. A weak and disappointing turn of events! But as unhappy as they might have been about the public perception of ICE, many agents also did not want to be the new TSA. I knew that they would not be leaving the airport anytime soon. (ICE stayed at the airports in Houston for several weeks). “It’s not my cup of tea, but I’ll drink it,” one agent told me about airport patrol. Another said he had declined the six-hour TSA training, knowing that learning to man the machinery would be a de facto career shift. After all, if he had wanted to be a TSA agent, he would have joined the TSA. These conversations were always peppered with questions about what I thought of the surges, from topics as benign as the weather in Minnesota to my take on Bovino, who had recently told me he’d love to see me “bustling around the kitchen, baking a pie” (a story that flabbergasted even the ICE agents). In New Orleans, I had a similar experience with a BORTAC team who, after inviting me and a photographer to follow them to a raid, asked us even more questions than we asked them. For now, the flashy raids that regularly poured tear gas into homes and schools have stopped. Some of the photographers have left for war zones, while others are now covering more routine aspects of life. I am struggling to finish writing an overdue story detailing the entire experience, worried I’ll fail to fully convey the horrors of things I witnessed. Almost all of us would drop everything in our lives and be on the next flight out if the “Papers, please” style of immigration enforcement returned. But for now, at least we have the videos.

The GOP Is Not a Political Party—It’s a Cult

Elie Mystal — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

In this week’s Elie v. US, our justice correspondent marvels at Trump’s enduring hold over the GOP mind. Plus: the dumbest CEO in the gaming industry. Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is absolute. In two runoff primaries in Texas this week, Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton beat incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn to become the Republican candidate for Senate. Cornyn has been a dutiful MAGA servant in the Senate, but Paxton, whose tenure as AG has been marred by corruption scandals and rank extremism, is an election denier, so he got Trump’s endorsement and eventually won. In the other Republican runoff, election denier Mayes Middleton beat Republican Representative Chip Roy in the race to replace Paxton as AG. Trump didn’t endorse in this race, but he once again seemed to favor the election denier over the dutiful MAGA servant. Clearly, the best way into Trump’s Republican Party remains falsely claiming Trump won the election he obviously lost. And once you’re in, you’re all but guaranteed victory. Across the primary spectrum, Trump-backed candidates are wiping the floor with Republicans Trump dislikes. GOP Representative Thomas Massie lost his primary last week, and all Massie did was call for the release of the Epstein files. (OK, he also opposed the Iran War.) Massie promptly hightailed it to Costa Rica, where he was spied this week vacationing with Marjorie Taylor Greene, another MAGA Republican who didn’t even bother to run in a primary after she also pissed off Trump by calling for the release of the Epstein files. I’ve never seen a president with this kind of control over his party, certainly not one with a 34 percent approval rating. Trump is a stunningly unpopular, lame-duck president (or should be, if the Constitution is to be believed), and yet Republicans who support every one of his awful and unpopular policies are getting thrown out of office for not showing enough loyalty to the Dear Leader. What really gets me is that the fealty demanded by Trump isn’t even being backed up by any overt acts of violence. Crossing Joseph Stalin or Maximilien Robespierre or Augustus Caesar would get you jailed and, likely, killed. Trump hasn’t needed to enforce party discipline using any of those methods. He threatens people with… mean tweets? And they all crumble before him. And the ones who don’t “self deport” to Costa Rica. The GOP is not a political party—it’s a cult. I don’t know what to do about that, or how to fight it—and I feel like anybody who tells you they do is lying. The Bad and the Ugly Speaking of Ken Paxton, the Texas AG is now coming after the popular online platform Discord, accusing it of being a “hunting ground” for child predators. For the uninitiated, Discord is a social-media app used primarily by gamers that is particularly useful for voice chatting during gaming sessions. It’s not a thing I let my teenager use (yet), but it’s also not the place where I am most concerned about child predators. That place would be Roblox, which I’ve tried to warn parents about multiple times in this space. But what’s really interesting about Paxton’s move is that Discord is one of those safe spaces for the troglodytes of the white-wing manosphere. (It’s safe for non-trolls too, as long as you join more thoughtful servers.) These are the kinds of guys who vote for Republicans because they hate “woke” Democrats, yet they never seem to care that it’s Republicans who consistently push the regulations that try to bring these gaming spaces under government control. They’re so obsessed with hating women and LGBTQ+ people that they don’t even recognize which political party supports free expression. South Carolina Republicans rejected a redistricting plan that would have erased the majority-Black district currently represented by Jim Clyburn. People have been calling this a rare post-Callais “victory” for Black folks, and it is, but it’s also very hard to draw a map in South Carolina that weakens Clyburn but still protects his congressional neighbor, Republican Representative Nancy Mace. Trump apparently wants to make federal workers sign nondisclosure agreements as a way to prevent leaks. I’d say the idea is flatly unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court won’t agree with me. It made staffers sign NDAs after the Dobbs leak. The lawyer representing a tourist from Washington State who was captured on video throwing a large rock at an endangered sea lion in Hawaii says his client was trying to protect sea turtles. I’ve seen the video. I don’t see any sea turtles. I do see a giant **** who I hope gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And then I hope they reform the law to make even more draconian punishments available. UC Berkeley’s law school has adopted what is probably the most restrictive AI ban we’ve seen in higher education. Students are prohibited from using AI even to check their grammar. While I am no fan of using AI in law, my gut tells me that Berkeley has gone too far. Inspired TakesGrace Ginsburg shared an intensely personal essay in The Nation about her decision to take GLP-1s. I don’t want to summarize her piece, as it’s a complicated struggle between a feminist rejection of body shaming and her own desire to like how she looks. Instead, I’ll share a little bit of my journey, as I’ve been on GLP-1s for over a year now, and between that and a lot more exercise, I’ve lost about 50 lbs. Unlike a lot of people who are “morbidly obese,” which is, somehow, the literal medical term for my weight class, I’ve never been particularly morbid about it. I’m fat (a word I much prefer over “morbidly obese”), which I view as unfortunate, but I have the body-confidence of a man half my size (and the general unwavering self-confidence of a mediocre white man). I’ve made my weight part of my “personality.” More important, I’ve enjoyed the lifestyle of a fat person: eating what I want, when I want, not obsessing about the mirror or the scales. Hell, I didn’t even own a scale until I started down this path. I look at people who spend hours at the gym every day and nibble salads for lunch with pity more than envy. But as I got older, my weight really started to negatively impact my health. Not in the “oh noes, heart attack and stroke” sense, but in a day-to-day “my knees can no longer support my massive frame” way. It was affecting my quality of life and my decision-making: I, like, wouldn’t go up the stairs to check on my kids because I didn’t want to walk up the stairs. Once your lifestyle starts preventing you from doing what you want to do in life, it’s time to at least consider change. So I started on the wonder drugs and hired a personal trainer out of concerns for my short-term health and quality of life, not because of societal pressure (admittedly, so much harder on women than men) to look different. Two years ago, I needed a cane if I was going to have to walk around for more than a few minutes. Last summer, I walked over 100,000 steps at Disney World without any form of assistance beyond comfortable shoes. My plan is working, more or less. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the benefits have been exclusive to my personal health and well-being. The feedback loop based on how I look has been… shocking and intense. Some people, both strangers and even friends, treat me better (even though I’m still objectively fat) just because I’m not as overweight. People are nicer to me. People smile at me more often. People say I seem “happier,” even though I am objectively despondent about trying to eke out a living under white-wing fascism. I feel almost as if I’m in the Eddie Murphy sketch where he pretends to be a white man. I don’t think it’s just in my head, as, again, my (high) opinion of myself has not changed. And I’m a guy! Male privilege means I can look like an ogre and still win a popularity contest and become the president of the United States. I can only imagine what this feedback loop is like for women. I was ambivalent about taking GLP-1s before I started. But I cannot deny that the social life of a slightly less fat person is better than before. I always suspected that to be true but, man, am I dismayed by how true it is. Worst Argument of the Week On Thursday, the Supreme Court released its decision in Rutherford v. United States, a case about the First Steps Act, which sought to address mass incarceration. The case involved two men who had been sentenced to 32-year and 57-year mandatory minimum sentences prior to the passage of the act. If they had been sentenced today, they would have likely received 14-year and 32-year sentences. They applied for compassionate release because of the disparity between their sentences and the current standard. You don’t need me to tell you that the six Republicans on the Supreme Court are “compassionate” only to white folks who use God as an excuse for their bigotry. The prisoners were denied compassionate release, 6–3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing the majority opinion for the Republican klavern. Barrett got stuck on the fact that the First Step Act was not made retroactive. Congress could have (and, I strenuously argue, should have), but it did not. Indeed, the fact that Congress could have made the act retroactive, and purposefully did not, is Barrett’s strongest point. But the First Step Act wasn’t really the issue in this case. Instead, the core legal issue was an opinion from the US Sentencing Commission, which found that courts could look at disparities between the First Step Act and sentences issued prior to its passage when considering applications for compassionate release. Barrett and the Republicans on the Supreme Court rejected this guidance and instead prohibited courts from considering such disparities when reviewing compassionate-release applications. Put another way, the Commission said judges could think about the gross hypocrisy of one sentence versus another, and Barrett effectively said, “No, judges are not allowed to think about reality.” Rutherford v. US is thus another case where practical realities don’t matter to Republican justices committed to their ideological obsessions. It’s also another power grab by the Supreme Court over the administrative state. An agency merely said that one issue could factor into a judge’s opinion, but Barrett and the Supreme Court superseded that guidance (which they’re not supposed to do) and ordered judges to stick their heads in the sand. One of the Federalist Society’s greatest victories has been convincing Republican judges that ideology should trump reality at all times. They’ve created an entire army of jurists who view facts as unimportant distractions—to say nothing of judges like Neil Gorsuch who just make up whatever facts they need to support the outcomes they prefer. If the Democrats ever reform the judiciary, it will be important for them to appoint judges who believe in such controversial ideas as “Black people and women-people are people-people and should get people rights.” But we also desperately need a new cadre of judges who think about how their decisions play out among real people and not in law review articles. What I Wrote Jim Crow suffered a temporary setback in Alabama this week when a panel of district court judges rejected an unconstitutionally racist map put forward by the Alabama legislature. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the ruling will last. That’s because the Republicans on the Supreme Court suddenly become very well acquainted with the real world when it comes to helping Republicans win elections. In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos In 2021, Krafton, a South Korean games publisher, bought the independent games developer Unknown Worlds for $500 million. Unknown Worlds was known for making Subnautica, a popular underwater survival game in which you basically crash-land on a water world and have to figure out how to survive and rebuild your ship while exploring the spooky ocean depths. It’s a good game, though hardly worth $500 million. But the purchase was made in 2021, and the thing about 2021 is that the entire video game industry was just coming off a Covid boom. People were locked inside, playing more games than ever before, and games were making more money than ever before. Even though the industry was obviously in a bubble, companies went a little nuts and spent like the inflated pandemic numbers would last forever. They did not. In any event, when buying Unknown Worlds, Krafton included a little carrot for the founders of the company and their core staff: It promised them a $250 million bonus if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets within five years. Unknown Worlds got to work on Subnautica 2. Fast-forward to 2025, by which point it’s clear that Krafton made a terrible deal. Again, Subnautica was a good game, but it wasn’t going to be worth the $500 million purchase price. That said, Subanutica 2 was probably going to hit the revenue targets needed to trigger most or all of the $250 million bonus. That’s when Krafton CEO Changhan Kim went to ChatGPT and asked how he could get out of his deal. No, I’m not making that up. When Krafton’s own lawyers told him that there was no way out of the contract, my man asked AI how to breach it. ChatGPT gave him an answer. Remember, AI is like that desperate kid in high school who just wants to be liked. ChatGPT told him to fire the founders and delay the release of Subnautica 2 to avoid having to pay the bonus. Which Kim then did. ChatGPT’s legal advice, however, was dead wrong. The makers of Subnautica 2 sued, and, after a trial during which all this ChatGPT stuff had to be disclosed, a judge ordered the founders reinstated and the game released. The judge also extended the timeline for the revenue targets through June 2026 (to account for Kim’s shenanigans) and ordered Krafton to pay a bonus amounting to $3.12 for every $1.00 in revenue, up to the $250 million cap. Subnautica 2 was released on May 14 for $30 on Steam. The game sold over 4 million copies in under a week. That far outpaces more expensive games you may have heard of, like the recently released Resident Evil 9. Subnautica 2 will almost certainly hit all revenue targets and force Krafton to pay out the full $250 million bonus, which the founders have indicated will be shared with the staff that helped make the game. And the judge still hasn’t ruled on what damages the Unknown Worlds founders are entitled to.The lesson, as always: Don’t take legal advice from ChatGPT. Well, don’t take legal advice from ChatGPT unless you’re a greedy CEO looking to screw over your partners. If you’re that guy, by all means, feel free to fail in whichever way seems best to you. *** If you enjoyed this installment of Elie v. U.S., click here to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday.

Trump’s Violent Threats Can't Hide the Truth: He’s a Humiliated Bully

Jeet Heer — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Under Trump, the United States is looking for weaker and weaker victims in order to mask its own fragility. Donald Trump is a rotten peacemaker for many reasons—but one of them is that he can’t even remember which enemy he’s fighting. For instance, during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump if the United States would accept a proposal to allow Iran and Oman to jointly administer the Strait of Hormuz. The president responded, “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that. They’ll be fine.” Trump’s opposition to any settlement that allows Iran partial control of the Strait is understandable, but his menacing words against Oman are puzzling. The Gulf state has, after all, been an American ally for decades, and the US maintains a strong military presence in the country. One supposed rationale of the current US war in the Middle East is to protect Oman and other Gulf allies against Iran. Oman isn’t the only ally Trump is seeking to intimidate, or the only country to feel the brunt of Trump’s bloodthirsty rhetoric. The president tried to browbeat Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan into joining the Abraham Accords by saying membership “should be mandatory.” And, as CNN notes, “Oman is at least the 15th country that he has either threatened to attack, left open the possibility of attacking, or actually attacked during his two terms as president.” While some of these countries are long-standing US foes like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, many are nominally allies of the United States (or at the very least, not hostile to it): Canada, Colombia, Greenland/Denmark, Mexico, Panama, and Oman. Trump is in effect using the war against Iran in the same way he exploited the Russia/Ukraine conflict: as a means of turning alliances into protection rackets by exhorting concessions from countries depending on the US military. It’s a mafia foreign policy that uses US military dominance as a tool of extortion to intimidate friends and foes alike. While violent rhetoric, often manifesting itself in violent action, has been endemic to Trump’s presidency, his lashing out at Oman comes at a particularly dangerous moment. The war against Iran has been a disaster, and the only way to end it is to make substantial concessions to the Islamic Republic. And Iran is joining the ranks of nations that have effective deterrence against the United States and therefore deserve conciliation. Trump’s actions suggest that he has come to see China, Russia, and North Korea in those terms as well. But a wounded predator can become more violent, lashing out to prove it still has the ability to dominate. This is the brute animal logic behind Trump’s threats against Oman and his increased aggression in the Western Hemisphere. Writing in The Guardian, columnist Owen Jones noted, With the US “humiliated” by Iran, as Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, put it, you might think Trump’s appetite for conflict would be diminished. But failure does not necessarily restrain declining powers. It can make them more dangerous. Trump and his team have surely convinced themselves that conquering the Caribbean island that has defied Washington for nearly seven decades might scrub away the defeats and restore the aura of US military supremacy. Jones plausibly suggests that Cuba might be the next US target, since Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been very open about their desire for regime change in the island nation. Cuba has long been in the crosshairs of the United States, and Trump has tightened the noose by brutally intensifying sanctions. Politico reported on Friday, “The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba—all it needs is a final go-ahead from Donald Trump.” Cuba is only one of several likely targets.

Tom Steyer Is Prepared to Take On the AI Billionaires

John Nichols — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The California gubernatorial candidate understands exactly what’s at stake, as he explains in an exclusive interview. Pope Leo’s groundbreaking encyclical on AI reminds us that the great debate of our moment is not really about technology. It is about the policy choices that will decide whether this new industrial revolution—which is destined to upend everything about how we work, communicate, organize society, and fight wars—will be made to improve the lives of ordinary people or the bottom-line interests of billionaires trying to become trillionaires. Leo is clear about where he stands, writing, “Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.… The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.” The pope is right to be concerned and to be engaged in the debate about whether a handful of tech-bro CEOs will determine the future of this planet. The question then becomes whether political leaders will challenge the rush by a few billionaires to both develop artificial intelligence and buy influence over the future of AI through massive political spending and lobbying efforts. So far, only a handful of elected officials and candidates have displayed the knowledge and the courage to join the debate on behalf of the many. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has stepped up in a big way, calling for a moratorium on the development of AI data centers to slow the AI-driven rush toward the robotification of workplaces, the amplification of disinformation, the elevation of surveillance, and the acceleration of weaponization. So has US Representative Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who has proposed smart strategies for regulating AI, taxing tech billionaires, and ensuring that working-class Americans have access to the education, training, and opportunities they will need to get by in a future transformed by artificial intelligence and robots. But they are the outliers in Washington, and it’s not much better in the states–except, perhaps, in California, where progressive philanthropist Tom Steyer is mounting a gubernatorial campaign arguing that “the people who stand to profit the most from this technology shouldn’t be making the rules about how it is used. Otherwise, the AI era will be another boom for billionaires—and a bust for everyone else.” Steyer, a longtime advocate on climate issues and a billionaire who knows his way around Silicon Valley, has emerged as the major progressive Democratic contender ahead of Tuesday’s intense open primary for the most powerful governorship in the nation. Polls show that Steyer, who has self-funded much of his campaign, has a good chance of being one of the two candidates who get through the primary and go on to face each other in November. And AI policy is a key part of his agenda. Steyer pulls no punches when he talks about taxing the wealth of the tech elite, holding the industry accountable, and using the power of the state so that working-class Californians are not left behind by the AI revolution. “Globalization displaced millions of workers, with no plan for what comes next,” he says. “We can’t allow that history to repeat itself in the AI era.” With this in mind, Steyer has developed a bold, comprehensive plan to “make sure that all Californians benefit from AI.” He wants to provide smart job protections for workers and to retrain those who are displaced by AI. He also wants to ask voters to approve the creation of the Golden State Sovereign Wealth Fund. As his campaign explains, the fund would serve as “a dedicated investment vehicle funded by a ‘token tax’ on corporate AI use—a fraction of a cent for every unit of data processed by Big Tech.” The resources in the fund would “help ensure everyday Californians share in the AI boom, through cash dividends, investments in education, training, and job opportunities to help workers succeed, and strategic investments to ensure broad-based economic growth so every Californian can get ahead.”

America’s Authoritarian Remodel Is Well Underway

Sasha Abramsky — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

There’s an ick factor to Trumpism that is getting worse by the day. Over the past few weeks, the Trump Department of Justice has been assiduously scrubbing press releases relating to the January 6, 2021, convictions. Hundreds of these documents announcing arrests, prosecutions, and convictions of people involved in the insurrection have simply vanished. It is an astoundingly Orwellian effort at erasing history, at the same time that the agency has created, with taxpayer money, a multibillion-dollar slush fund to reward these men and women who flirted with treason on that dark winter day. As Trump’s popularity continues to plummet, his authoritarian instincts have kicked into an even higher gear. Sixteen months into his presidency, Trump and his administration are not only corroding basic norms about what the public purse can be used for; they are also marshaling the entire apparatus of the federal government to retell the story of the past decade in a way designed to make the president and his henchmen—including his paramilitaries outside of government—look like anything but the traitors to democracy and decency that they so manifestly are. At the same time, the Trump regime is also putting extraordinary pressure on public officials to meet self-imposed authoritarian targets on everything from mass deportations to cult homages to Trump himself. When it comes to the deportations, perhaps no case better illustrates the Kafkaesque depths that the bureaucracy is now plumbing than that of Levi Mendez-Maldonado, a young Honduran asylum seeker in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mendez-Maldonado arrived, unaccompanied, as a 17-year-old, in 2022, at the height of the most recent surge of asylum seekers at the southern border. He spent a few months in Texas and then relocated to Charlotte, where an older brother lived. A little over two years later, Mendez-Maldonado was shot and killed. The young man’s immigration attorney, Becca O’Neill, codirector of the Carolina Migrant Network, only found out about his murder months later, when her office received his work permit and she tried to reach him to give him the document. Unable to locate him, she contacted his previous attorney, in Texas, who in turn reached out to his brother, who told the attorneys that Mendez-Maldonado had been murdered more than a year previously. At the next court hearing scheduled for Mendez-Maldonado’s case, O’Neill told the judge that her client was no longer alive, and she presented media accounts and police reports about his death. Given the circumstances, O’Neill asked the judge to dismiss the case. But, presumably under pressure to rack up as many deportations as possible, the DHS attorney in the courtroom urged the judge, Amy Lee, to instead sign a deportation order, using the impeccable logic that Mendez-Maldonado had failed to turn up for a mandatory court hearing, and that, therefore, under US law his asylum case would have to be denied. Judge Lee agreed. And in what must surely count as one of the more bizarre legal rulings in American history, Lee ordered the dead man deported back to Honduras. “It’s a case of ‘you can’t make this **** up,’” O’Neill told me. “I thought I’d seen it all.” For the immigration attorney, “it’s a demonstration of how crazy the whole system is. They care not whether some man lives or dies, and they don’t care about him after his death either. It’s just absurd. They have to strip people of their humanity to do what they’re doing.” While the Mendez-Maldonado saga is just weird, the saga of the Palm Beach, Florida, airport has far more concrete impacts. Earlier this year, Florida officials decided to rename the airport after one Donald J. Trump. Now local commissioners have gone one step further, giving Trump carte blanche to milk the airport for profit in pretty much any way he sees fit. In a branding deal almost as iniquitous as the fascist slush fund set up by the DOJ and IRS, Trump can now choose which vendors will be permitted to set up shop in the airport and what they can sell, including as much gaudy Trump merch as they can hawk. Trump and his family can monetize the airport name in any way they see fit. They will also have the right to choose exactly how his name, image, and likeness are presented at the airport. Imagine a hybrid offspring of fascism and hucksterism and you have the newly minted Trump international airport down to a tee. It’s yet another way that Trump has found to use his public office to generate private financial windfalls. And it’s yet another example of the craven ways that state and local officials are finding to curry favor with Trump. Of course, America’s authoritarian remodeling wouldn’t be complete without a tribute to the most violent and crude manifestations of American culture. As Trump’s 80th birthday nears, workers at the South Lawn of the White House are feverishly putting the finishing touches to an enormous United Fight Championship venue, where thousands will be able to watch cage fights on June 14—and a spillover area for tens of thousands of additional fans to follow the fights on big screens situated around the grounds of the White House Ellipse—while Trump and his minions sit like power-crazed Roman elites, their eyes glued on these 21st-century gladiatorial combats. It’s not exactly a huge leap to imagine the Trump crowd giving the life-or-death imperial thumbs-up or -down at the end of these spectacles. Some presidents invite top writers, musicians, artists, philosophers, scientists, and civil-rights icons to the White House; others, it seems, invite blood-and-guts fighters to ply their wares on the grounds of America’s temple to democracy. For Trump, America’s first postliterate president, these cage fights, the weigh-ins for which will occur on the hallowed ground of the Lincoln Memorial, are perfect manifestations of the caudillo’s relationship to the mob that he has so assiduously cultivated. There’s an ick factor to Trumpism that is getting worse by the day. This most malignant of men is making filthy nearly every public institution in the country. As the United States gears up to celebrate its 250th birthday, Trump and his sycophants are plotting ever more creative ways to pillage and to plunder, to besmirch the concept of America, and to mock the high ideals of democracy. There are reports of the Treasury planning to print as legal tender a $250 bill with Trump’s image on it. There are plans afoot to include Trump’s portrait on passports issued this summer of America’s 250th anniversary. One can only begin to imagine what the founding fathers, those men who were so adamant that the new country should never have a king, would have thought of this narcissistic little man and his lickspittle enablers.

How America’s Courts Fell for a Con Man

Henry Fernandez — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

In her new book, Catch the Devil, reporter Pamela Colloff traces the life and crimes of a mendacious jailhouse informant and exposes the systems that allowed him to walk free. The first time I saw Pamela Colloff, she was on stage at an overwhelmingly beige convention hall in a New Orleans Marriott. Colloff, a reporter at ProPublica and staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, was a headliner in one of the few places journalists are cool enough to headline anything: a professional conference for investigative reporters. In a packed, exquisitely air-conditioned room—it was New Orleans in the summer, after all—dozens of media workers sat knee to knee on carpet when the room’s few hundred or so chairs filled just to hear Colloff explain her writing process. Colloff has been a criminal justice journalist for decades. She developed her knack for that brand of reporting as a staffer at Texas Monthly—a job she landed fresh out of college when Austin rent was still $300 a month. In the years since, her work has focused on the wrongly incarcerated and the myriad institutional failings of the US criminal justice system. Colloff’s first book, Catch The Devil follows her reporting for The New York Times and ProPublica on Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant whose false testimony helped prosecutors across the American South secure the convictions of dozens of men, one of whom is still on death row. In exchange for his testimony, detectives and prosecutors awarded Skalnik—whose rap sheet included fraud, grand theft, and an arrest for child sexual abuse—sweetheart deals like sentence reductions, early release, and at one point, an unsanctioned conjugal visit. Catch The Devil traces Skalnik’s life, as well as those of his victims, who make up a diverse group of scammed ex-wives, molested girls, and incarcerated men. Colloff’s painstaking, comprehensive reporting is a scathing indictment of a country where prosecutors are so often politically incentivized to get a conviction regardless of a defendant’s actual guilt. Colloff sat down with The Nation to discuss her new book, the state of journalism, and why she’s fascinated with the decisions people make in the worst moments of their lives. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. —Henry Fernandez Henry Fernandez: After you won the Hillman Prize in 2020 for your initial investigative piece on Paul Skalnik, you said in a video statement, “I’ve come to the conclusion that jailhouse informants simply should not be in American courtrooms.” In the six and a half years since, has your opinion on jailhouse informants stayed the same? If so, can you explain to our readers how your reporting led you to this conclusion? Pamela Colloff: No, my opinion has not changed. If you look at how jailhouse informants function in the criminal justice system, the fact that they are what we call “incentivized witnesses” makes their use very problematic. Informants come with all sorts of complications and issues. But, I think people are most used to encountering an informant in an organized crime case, where you’re trying to penetrate a group of people and their activities, and there’s one person who flips and works with prosecutors. Obviously, there are issues with this, but at least that person was in the thick of the activity or a witness to the activity that’s at the center of the case. A jailhouse informant is someone in jail alongside people in pretrial detention. They have everything on the line, and they’re about to go to trial or decide whether or not to take a plea. The basic conceit of a jailhouse informant, I think, is very hard to buy. We’re not talking about people who’ve already been convicted and have been living alongside fellow prisoners for years. Jail is not a place where you’re talking openly about your crimes. But the supposed informant knows that anything helpful they bring forward to the prosecution will be beneficial to them. Jurors don’t know that, on the back end, the understanding is that the informant will be rewarded with a sentence reduction or tried on a lesser charge in exchange for their testimony. So when you put all those things together, the idea that this has a place in our system just doesn’t make sense to me. If you have a good case, you don’t need a jailhouse informant. When you see that a case has a jailhouse informant, it’s a red flag that something’s wrong with the case and that the evidence isn’t good enough. HF: Something I find fascinating about this book is the way it traces the failures of a variety of American systems—whether it be the courts, the American military, the school system or law enforcement. What did writing this book teach you about the systems that govern the US? PC: Skalnik, on his own, was just a small-time con artist. To cause all the damage he did, he had to be enabled by a larger system. That system was law enforcement, which wanted to close cases. It was prosecutors who wanted to secure convictions and get long sentences. It was judges who wanted to move cases through their docket and not ask the questions they should have asked.

Why the Brooklyn Courtroom Birth Was the Last Straw for Public Defenders

Sophie Mann-Shafir — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

“What occurred in that courtroom was not simply a failure of protocol or preparedness. It was….a devastating reflection of the cruelty embedded in our carceral system.” On a recent scalding Monday afternoon, hundreds of attorneys and advocates gathered outside the Kings County Criminal Court to protest the most recent violation of humanity to unfold in the Brooklyn courtroom. The previous Friday, May 15, minutes before midnight, someone waiting to be arraigned had given birth while handcuffed during open court. The woman, Samantha Randazzo, was afforded neither privacy, nor dignity, nor competent medical treatment—which was not surprising to the public defenders assembled. In a system that has all but normalized lives’ ending in custody, a person being forced to give birth there wasn’t so far afield. “This is not the first time that something like this has happened,” Olga Karounos, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, told me at the demonstration, which was organized by the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (UAW Local 2325). Three people have died from insufficiently treated medical issues in the 120 Schermerhorn courthouse since early 2025, all arrested for minor charges, and “no changes have happened from that,” Karounos said. “So I think people just really felt like [Randazzo’s giving birth] was the last straw.” Among the many professionals present during court proceedings, there are no doctors, the public defenders I spoke to noted. They have been trying to change that since last September, when the community of legal advocates issued a 10-step plan calling on the mayor and City Council to implement policy “to Address Growing Crisis of Deaths in NYPD Custody,” including staffing courtrooms with independent EMS personnel. Those workers would supplement existing correctional health staff who sometimes, at the behest of police officers, screen people waiting to be arraigned. The plan also calls for better mental health and substance use services, regular inspections of NYPD policy and central bookings buildings, and the end of custodial arrests for low-level crimes. So far, that 10-point plan is still just a list of unmet demands. Following the courtroom birth, the news media was quick to craft storybookish narratives about what had taken place, but the public defenders explained in a statement, “What occurred in that courtroom was not simply a failure of protocol or preparedness. It was a profound moral failure and a devastating reflection of the cruelty embedded in our carceral system.” “People in medical or psychiatric distress are chained to benches or are squashed together in filthy, unsafe holding cells while waiting for their most simple due process rights,” noted another statement. Low-level arrests have skyrocketed in recent years, according to a John Jay College of Criminal Justice report. Between 2021 and 2024, misdemeanor charges rose 70 percent. One attorney told me they had a client arrested for evading his $3 subway fare, which in his statement he explained was so that he could afford baby formula for his daughter. These arrests are generating a backlog in an already overburdened carceral system, according to Jane Fox, ALAA’s Legal Aid Society chapter chair. The crisis of accountability lies at every tier: NYPD officers could issue more desk appearance tickets (written notices of an upcoming court date) instead of holding people in custody; district attorneys could use discretion and decline to prosecute. Instead, people are being held in greater numbers and in filthy and deteriorating conditions, often for offenses as minor as shoplifting or evading subway fares. It’s a criminalization of poverty. Their medical needs are ignored, and sometimes they’re made to wait longer than the 24-hour legal limit to be arraigned. This can lead to deadly consequences. Deaths of people in NYPD custody have seen a drastic uptick in the past three years, with 43 people dying in 2023 and 2024 across the boroughs. When the attorneys’ 10-point plan was unveiled, nine people had died in NYPD custody in 2025. Their causes of death ranged from medical episodes including overdose to injury, to suicide, and their arrests were for as minor a crime as shoplifting food. Since last fall, the city’s watchdog Department of Investigation has been conducting an inquiry related to deaths in NYPD custody. Until that investigation was set in motion, the NYPD was monitoring its own practices. The DOI’s Diane Struzzi declined to comment for this article, citing an ongoing investigation. With standards already bucked and enforcement failing across the board, public defenders are advocating a sweeping change in approach. In February, Legal Aid filed an emergency petition accusing the NYPD and Brooklyn DA of violating the 24-hour arraignment standard—which is the court’s interpretation of the watershed Roundtree ruling from 1991. Following a snowstorm that temporarily shuttered criminal arraignment courts, more than 100 people in Brooklyn alone had been held for over 24 hours—more than in Manhattan and the Bronx combined. Public defenders sought court intervention, calling for the release of anyone who’d been in custody longer than 24 hours unless police could explain the delays. Officials snapped into action, adding stopgap arraignment shifts to help resolve the bottleneck. Months later, with new deaths and now a birth in police custody, that solution has proven “less impactful than a Band-Aid on a bullet wound,” Karounos said. Mayoral spokesperson Sam Raskin did not address the 10-step plan specifically but told The Nation, “What Samantha Randazzo went through was horrifying and completely unacceptable. No one should give birth in a courtroom, and New Yorkers deserve a criminal justice and healthcare system that responds humanely and ensures timely medical care for anyone experiencing a medical emergency. The Mamdani administration is reviewing the circumstances that led to this situation and discussing potential next steps, including reviewing the policies and protocols practiced by the NYPD, NYC Health + Hospitals, the courts, prosecutors, public defenders, and other relevant entities as we examine how to address the systemic failures brought to light by this incident.” In the meantime, legislation long pending in the statehouse could restrict enforcement officials’ ability to handcuff pregnant people in custody during various stages of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Randazzo’s experience reignited attention toward the bills. Randazzo had been arrested on low-level trespassing and drug possession charges and was hospitalized for more than 16 hours before her arraignment. It’s unclear why she was discharged so close to giving birth, but if she had been released earlier, she could have given birth in a hospital. Instead, once she went into labor, about 10 minutes went by before a piece of medical equipment was rolled into the courtroom, and about 10 more before an ambulance arrived. An NYPD spokesperson told The Nation that Randazzo “was wearing baggy clothes” and “did not inform officers she was pregnant” when she was arrested (one day before she gave birth). The spokesperson also claimed that Randazzo’s handcuffs were removed when she went into labor—an assertion disputed by attorneys who were actually in the courtroom. Reporting produced in the immediate aftermath also misconstrued the facts and mood of the courtroom. The New York Times claimed that “the courtroom had transformed into a labor and delivery unit” and quoted Randazzo’s lawyer saying “we saw it” about the birth of the “bouncing baby boy.” One account referred to the court officer’s having “delivered the baby.” But according to Hell Gate’s interview with public defender Jen Kovacs, as well as two Legal Aid staff members I spoke to, Randazzo’s lawyer hadn’t been in the room. Elena Beeley, an arraignment paralegal who typically works the night shift and was seated feet from the birth, told me that she wanted to correct the false information circulating without further violating Randazzo’s privacy. “The officer did not deliver the baby,” Beeley said. “She delivered into her pants.” Only on Sunday, two days after she gave birth in court, was Randazzo’s case dismissed. Attorneys described what transpired in the courtroom as within the realm of normal. “My last arraignment shift, a man was having a seizure on the bench,” Maggie Bergmann, a trial attorney at New York County Defender Services in Manhattan, told me. “Even I know that in a situation where someone’s having a seizure, they’re supposed to be on their side and their head’s supposed to be supported.” In that instance, the man was “eventually” laid on his side, once minutes had passed. Still he remained in cuffs. Public defender Amy Austern described a depraved cycle of sickness and custody, her clients being shunted between hospital and court, remaining in handcuffs at the hospital and still wearing their hospital bracelets in court. Attorneys witness such indignities all the time: clients sick and seizing, vomiting, urinating and excreting on themselves, all without a shred of concern from officials. Karounos said courtroom officials sometimes think defendants are faking their seizures. She believes EMS presence could help with that: “They could be the one to make the call and say, ‘No, this is a real seizure.’” Although Randazzo’s experience of giving birth in handcuffs exposed the rampant neglect that those in custody endure routinely at the hands of officials, attorneys are skeptical that without structural changes much will improve. Family court attorney Sania Chandrani’s clients regularly leave court only to have their children taken, so to watch a birth in a courtroom struck an especially horrifying chord. “It’s likely that she’s going to have to deal with family court after this, like her kid could be taken away,” Chandrani said of Randazzo. “People come to court to find justice, or they’re dragged into court to find justice, and that’s not at all what they receive.” Legal Aid’s criminal defense practice chief attorney, Tina Luongo, who co-authored the 10-point plan along with attorneys from the city’s other public defense offices, said implementing meaningful system change would start with a joint meeting between members of the NYPD, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the court system, and possibly the FDNY. “We keep saying, convene all the stakeholders together, so that we can work on these issues in tandem,” Luongo told me. “That meeting has yet to happen, or if it happened, defense counsel hasn’t been invited.” For close to 40 years, former ALAA president Michael Letwin worked as a public defender in the city. He remembers deplorable conditions, sickness, and filth, but no death. “I don’t know what it was like before 1985, but I’m sure it was horrible as long as anybody can remember, and I think it’s just probably gotten worse over the decades.” He called on Mayor Mamdani to order EMS presence in the courtroom. “The buck does stop with Zohran on all of this,” Letwin said. Lizz Winstead, founder of Abortion Access Front, told me as we waited for the picket to convene that “the reproductive justice aspect of what has happened to this woman is something that everybody who cares about full-spectrum autonomy should be alarmed about.” In the aftermath of the courtroom birth atrocity, attorneys, regular witnesses to the court’s broken justice feedback loop, were indignant but not desensitized. There were murmurs about renewed interest in the 10-point plan from City Hall. “Interest is one thing; action is another,” Luongo told me. “I have not seen any action.”

Rubio in Yerevan

Pietro A. Shakarian — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A neocon in the land of Nairi. On Tuesday, neoconservative acolyte Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew into Yerevan. Rubio arrived in the Armenian capital from India, where he was doing damage control on behalf of President Trump. While in Yerevan, he signed a series of documents with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, intended to deepen US-Armenia ties. He also endorsed the beleaguered government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, one week before the country heads to the polls in the June 7 parliamentary elections. Although Rubio’s visit lasted just one hour, it signaled the Trump administration’s outsize ambitions for the Caucasus, just as it launched a new attack on Iran, once again, amid diplomatic negotiations. “If nothing else, Rubio’s visit to Armenia shows the Trump administration’s continued addiction to election interference abroad,” notes James Carden, a former adviser to the Obama State Department. Meanwhile, tucked away among Yerevan’s bustling city streets, in a cozy studio apartment, two young guerilla activists—Hovhannes Ishkhanyan and Nare Navasardyan—contemplate ways to assist Armenian political prisoners. Both are self-described democratic socialists who supported the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” that swept Pashinyan to power. Since the 2020 Karabakh War, however, both have turned sharply against the Armenian PM, as have most Armenians. Ishkhanyan and Navasardyan also wear the hats of journalists and filmmakers and represent a rising independent activist scene in Yerevan. As they underscore, promises to bring true democracy to the post-Soviet republic have been betrayed. Instead, Armenians face a reality in which investigative journalists are silenced, political opponents are hounded, and the pillars of national identity are under attack. The election on June 7 is the first since Pashinyan’s controversial recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) as part of Azerbaijan in 2022, a declaration that paved the way for Baku’s ethnic cleansing of the majority-Armenian region. Rising discontent in Armenia over economic inequality and democratic decline have not helped the embattled PM. The poll numbers of the opposition forces have been rising—especially Samvel Karapetyan’s big-tent Strong Armenia party and the center-left Armenia Alliance led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Thus, with the election fast approaching, Pashinyan has become increasingly desperate to bolster his political standing. “This issue of self-determination and democracy is not just an Armenian issue. It’s a universal issue,” maintains Ishkhanyan. “When Pashinyan betrayed Artsakh, he betrayed democracy. He betrayed the right of Artsakh to self-determination. And today we see democracy in Armenia itself being dismantled by his regime. One day is a year in Armenia. Almost every day, there are violations—legal violations, constitutional violations, voting violations, international law violations. Every day, Pashinyan’s gang, masquerading as a ‘democratic’ government, violates my rights.” Between sips of Armenian coffee, Ishkhanyan sits back and muses: “What business does Rubio have here? Did he come to speak out for the Armenian churches in Artsakh now being demolished by Azerbaijan? Or did he come here to protect this traitor who violated, and promises to violate, the Constitution by threatening to overthrow the leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church?” Pashinyan has publicly clashed with the Armenian Church and its spiritual head, Catholicos Karekin II, over the latter’s efforts to keep the plight of the Artsakh Armenians in the public eye. The conflict escalated to a point where Pashinyan has inexplicably declared his intention to appoint a new head of the Armenian Church, in clear violation of Armenian law. The situation, the activists stress, is strikingly similar to President Trump’s recent clash with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran War. “By law,” Ishkhanyan notes, “Armenian clergymen have the same right to participate in politics as all other citizens. It does not mean that the church is part of the state, but it means that clergymen have the right to express opinions about politics like everybody else. So we stand for their rights. What Pashinyan is doing is unconstitutional.” “Rubio’s presence here is blatant election interference,” chimes in Navasardyan. “But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine in America having a whole network of organizations getting funding from China or Iran with no FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act], no limitation, spreading misinformation about all the candidates opposing their preferred one. This is what we see. It’s absurd, but only accepted because Armenia is perceived as a marginal post-Soviet country that cannot stand up for itself.” Referring to Rubio’s recent role in attempting to instigate a coup in Cuba, she adds, “Rubio is Cuban, sure, but look at what he’s doing to his own Cuba! He exemplifies US imperialism’s weaponization of ethnic diasporas against their home countries.”

The Legacy of Barney Frank

Richard Kreitner — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A look back through The Nation’s coverage of Frank’s long and storied political career suggests the late congressman was always a man containing multitudes. Former Massachusetts representative Barney Frank died this month at the age of 86. Most obituaries have emphasized Frank’s pioneering role as an openly gay politician first, and his legislative accomplishments second, among them the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform package, a valiant if imperfect effort to root out the abuses that had led to the financial crisis of 2008. Even from his hospice bed, Frank continued to dole out advice to Democrats. Mystified as to why his own preferred candidate for Senate in Maine, Governor Janet Mills, lost out to the insurgent outsider Graham Platner, Frank criticized the progressive left for combining a critique of economic inequality with an impolitic emphasis on “racial and cultural things.” A look back through The Nation’s coverage of Frank’s long and storied political career—admiring, at times sympathetic, but far from uncritical—suggests the late congressman was always a man containing multitudes; a brilliant, brash politician whose famous wit could be directed both at the left and the right. In 1987, Frank called up a reporter from The Boston Globe and asked her to visit his office with no stated purpose. During the interview, Frank did something that at the time was still unthinkable: he told the reporter he was gay. (The cartoonist Eric Orner depicted the scene in his 2022 graphic biography of Frank, Smahtguy, excerpted in The Nation.) “To anyone who’s been around Capitol Hill for more than a month,” the late journalist Nicholas von Hoffman wrote in The Nation at the time, “the news came as one of the year’s biggest unsurprises.” Frank, von Hoffman observed, was “one of the smartest men in national politics.” He had seen how reports of an extramarital affair had doomed Democratic Senator Gary Hart’s bid for the party’s 1988 presidential nomination. Frank wanted to avoid something similar happening to him, so he got out in front of it before one of those news organizations von Hoffman called the “gonad-seeking practitioners of sex-snoop journalism” outed him. The rules had changed: Politicians’ private sex lives were now fair game. Frank wanted to control the narrative. As Frank’s career continued, he became an occasional contributor to The Nation, starting with a letter to the editor in August 2000. The progressive left at the time was torn between supporters of Ralph Nader’s Green Party bid for the presidency and nose-holding voters for Al Gore. A Gore supporter, Frank took issue with a Nation article that quotes Nader dismissing the severe consequences that a George W. Bush presidency would have on social issues. Frank wrote that Nader had “never in his career paid any attention to the abortion or gay rights issues.” Frank was early to spot some of the key contradictions and hypocrisies in American life that have come to structure the very reality we live in, and he was a rare sitting legislator unafraid to name them. In 2006, he wrote in The Nation that he was skeptical of Democrats who wanted to change the focus of the party’s critique of Bush from specific areas of policy disagreement, like the destructive and illegal war in Iraq and worsening economic inequality, to more abstract charges that the administration harbored secret plans to overthrow democracy in America. Words like “authoritarianism” should not be “thrown around” or “used lightly,” Frank argued, seemingly anticipating the fascism debate that has divided the left in the Trump era. Yet Frank argued that while the United States under Bush remained a democracy, it was clearly in the process of a significant transition. Some of the fundamental pillars of the constitutional order were being eroded by aggressive executive-branch overreach. Frank argued that the country was turning into what scholars call a “plebiscitary democracy,” one in which “a leader is elected but once elected has almost all of the power.” Congressional Republicans seemed remarkably eager to give up their own powers in deference to a president claiming effectively limitless authority to do what he wanted. “Never in American history has Congress been so willing to give away its constitutional function,” Frank wrote. I am not charging authoritarianism. It still is a free country, and I encourage people to use that freedom and to be critical and to organize. But we are still talking about a very, very different mode of governance, the mode of governance in which, instead of the checks and balances and the collaboration and the input of a lot of people, you get one man making the decisions…. What we have is an Administration that is radically trying to change the nature of our democracy. In March 2009, at the dawn of the Obama presidency, when Republicans hypocritically began calling for budget cuts after years of giving Bush blank checks to fight wars on abstract nouns, Frank sarcastically proposed that anyone who called for budget restraint be required to also mention out-of-control military spending. Even liberal and progressive institutions sometimes called for reining in social spending like Medicare and Social Security, while refusing, Frank noted, to “talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good.” In his Nation editorial, Frank condemned what he called a “weaponized Keynesianism that says military spending is important because it provides jobs and boosts the economy.” There was always money available for a new war, Frank observed—but never for new programs to guarantee healthcare to all: “If we do not reduce the military budget, either we accustom ourselves to unending and increasing budget deficits, or we do severe harm to our ability to improve the quality of our lives through sensible public policy.” Somehow, in their infinite wisdom, American policymakers in the years since have elected to do both. Soon after drafting and passing the Dodd-Frank financial reform package in 2010, Frank decided not to seek reelection to Congress in 2012. At the time, The Nation’s John Nichols called Frank “not a perfect progressive on every issue but a steady liberal.” He noted that Frank’s signature bill “pulled punches that should have been thrown at the big banks and the Wall Street speculators.” Longtime Nation contributor Jon Wiener emphasized the point in 2015, taking Frank to task for an episode the retired congressman described in his memoir as the “stupidest” decision he ever made. The year was 1966. Frank was a student leader at Harvard’s Kennedy School when he invited defense secretary Robert McNamara to speak on campus. At the time, Wiener was a member of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, which protested McNamara’s appearance. Wiener wrote that Frank’s account of the episode left a lot out, such as that the student protesters wanted McNamara to debate an anti-war activist publicly rather than speak only to a select group of students in private. Frank wrote admiringly in his memoir about McNamara’s composure when he was surrounded by student protesters. He even praised students who initiated a petition to apologize to McNamara for his treatment on campus—rather than the students who protested McNamara’s senseless, destructive war. In concluding that the rowdy student protesters had hurt the Democratic Party in the 1966 midterm elections and thereby “opened the door to Nixon,” Frank took exactly the wrong lesson from the incident, Wiener argued: “Barney Frank is wrong about the ‘stupidest’ thing he did. It wasn’t bringing McNamara to Harvard—it was his failure to join the movement calling for an end to the Vietnam War.” Frank’s record, then, is one of a man who understood power clearly: how it worked, who had it, who was lying about it. But Frank was sometimes less reliable when it came to solidarity with the people who were trying to challenge power. He saw the abuses of the Bush years with unsparing clarity, named Wall Street’s pathologies and depredations with rare acuity, and came out as gay in an era when doing so took genuine courage. But when protesters surrounded McNamara’s car, Frank wanted them to apologize. That instinct to protect established institutions even as he criticized them runs through his career and still defines the Democratic Party he proudly served for decades.

Trump’s Texas Senate Primary Win Is Going to Backfire Spectacularly

Ana Marie Cox — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

While MAGA candidate Ken Paxton’s win isn’t an assured victory for Democrats, he’ll at least embroil the GOP in a nightmare of its own making. Ken Paxton’s resounding win over long-serving Senator John Cornyn in the Senate Republican primary runoff in Texas is yet more evidence of Donald Trump’s personal stranglehold on the party. That this elevates the unpopular and toxically corrupt Paxton into a contest with the charismatic and cherubic Democratic nominee, James Talarico, suggests that the stranglehold has become a death grip. I am less optimistic about Talarico’s chances in the fall than others, but I can assure you this: Paxton’s victory will blow a Texas-sized hole through Republican plans. It tears apart their Senate map, and it creates yet another disgruntled incumbent Republican with time in office on his hands and resentment to burn. Trump’s most significant boost to Paxton’s campaign was his long stretch of quiet after the primary failed to push Cornyn into a clear victory—a silence that echoed his refusal to endorse incumbent senator Bill Cassidy’s ultimately doomed campaign for renomination in Louisiana. His blessing withheld, Paxton and Cornyn both competed to make the only case that matters to Republican primary voters these days: I’m the one most like Trump. And on that front, Paxton had the showiest, if not the most quantifiable, case. Cornyn’s voting record actually set him above fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz in terms of supporting Trump’s policy agenda (99 versus 95 percent). But, unlike Paxton, Cornyn has been trapped by the slow and maddeningly collegial machinery of the Senate for decades. The structure of the institution makes it difficult to successfully avoid the taint of a bipartisan action. What’s more, Cornyn committed the offense of engaging in a little institutionalism, voicing tepid criticism of Trump as, you know, maybe bad for the party. (“Time has passed him by,” he whispered back in 2023.) Paxton, on the other hand, has been dedicated to using his capacity as state attorney general to offer slavishly Trumpian stunts and empty PR grabs as long as he’s been in office. (Too late, Cornyn tried his hand at such embarrassing ploys, only to give off the flop sweat of a perpetual tryhard.) Flip back through the press releases on the AG’s website and you’d be pardoned for thinking Paxton a Trump cabinet member or otherwise a direct flunky: He’s mentioned at least once every 10 releases or so, and not just in the context of well-known Trump pet projects. For every “Attorney General Paxton and America First Legal Join President Trump to Defeat California’s Attempt at Forcing Radical ’Green Energy’ Car Standards on America” there’s one touting a Trump agenda item you, and maybe Trump himself, didn’t know about: “Attorney General Ken Paxton and Trump DOJ Secure Historic Antitrust Settlement with Agricultural Data Broker to Lower the Prices of Meat Products.” Also no doubt attractive to Trump was Paxton’s singular obsession with suing Beto O’Rourke over O’Rourke’s Democratic fundraising operation, a campaign that allowed Paxton to call O’Rourke a “loser” in official state documents—and peevishly refer to him as “Robert Francis O’Rourke.” (O’Rourke ultimately succeeded in getting Ken Paxton’s suit dismissed.) Even Paxton’s historic and breathtaking level of corruption probably put him on Trump’s good side. Trump’s explicit if tardy endorsement of Paxton on May 19, a day after early voting started, was no surprise, but it undoubtedly pushed Cornyn’s loss into straight-up embarrassment territory. It also gave Paxton coattails: Two other statewide runoffs pitting a kind-of-Trumpy candidate against a more florid character both wound up tipping toward the more MAGA candidate. The race to fill Paxton’s seat saw Representative Chip Roy, who endorsed Ron DeSantis in 2024, go down to a state senator with no courtroom experience and lots of money who branded himself as “MAGA Mayes” Middleton.

Nurses Are the Backbone of US Healthcare—and They’re Getting Screwed

Gregg Gonsalves — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A recent hospital stay reminded me of the incredible work that nurses do. So why are we making it harder for them to do their jobs? I unexpectedly found myself in the hospital for six days last week, including a five-hour surgery last Monday. This was, to say the least, unusual. Though I work in public health, I don’t typically get anywhere near healthcare itself. Most of my experience of the healthcare system is in outpatient services to manage my antiretroviral drugs or deal with the chronic maladies of growing older. So, to find myself in a hospital room for almost a week was a new experience. I have lots of thoughts about my stay, but one thing stands out to me: Nurses are care. I did see doctors, but they showed up in the mornings for brief visits—my life in room 954 on the day-to-day and night-to-night was in the hands of a dozen nurses. For six days, they were in and out of my room constantly: to take blood, check my vitals, make sure I was comfortable, attend to my symptoms, help me get to the bathroom, and deal with an infernal IV pump which kept going offline and beeping an alarm at all hours. I was probably the least sick person on the unit, but the nurses took care of me with the same measure of attention and solicitude as the worst off among us. Nurses are the backbone of healthcare in America, and nursing is the largest healthcare profession, with more than 5 million registered nurses across the country. Yet, we still have shortages of nurses in the US and by 2035 these deficits will hit these states the hardest: Washington (26 percent shortage), Georgia (21 percent), California (18 percent), Oregon (16 percent), Michigan (15 percent), Idaho (15 percent), Louisiana (13 percent), North Carolina (13 percent), New Jersey (12 percent), and South Carolina (11 percent). Of course, the Trump administration will always do the wrong thing on most matters. Just this month, the government published a final regulatory rule lowering the amount that graduate students can borrow from the federal government. The caps are based on whether a degree is considered a professional or graduate program. Students in professional programs can borrow up to $50,000 a year and $200,000 total, while those in graduate programs will face annual limits of $20,500 and a lifetime limit of $100,000. The list of professional programs includes pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, and theology. See anything missing? Nursing has been tagged as a graduate degree, and advanced training in nursing can cost close to $80,000 a year—four times the new cap of $20,500. Nursing groups have rightly noted that this will force students to take on the burden of more expensive private loans or leave the profession entirely, endangering the future nursing workforce in America. Under this new regime, other key health professions—physician assistants, physical therapists and those in my profession of public health are also shuttled to graduate student status. This new definition of professional degrees is not the result of a congressional mandate or expert advice. It’s the work of Secretary of Education (and Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment mogul) Linda McMahon and the Trump administration. Their rationale for the move is to cut down on student borrowing and to get universities to lower tuition costs, but to many it seems arbitrary and capricious. Why can future podiatrists and clergy, veterinarians and chiropractors, borrow twice as much as those who are going into nursing? It makes no sense. McMahon and her cronies completely ignored the tens of thousands of comments opposed to the new definition of health professions and bipartisan concern by Congress. Moreover, 25 state attorneys general think the plan violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which has led them to sue the federal government to block this rule. The lawsuit also notes the impact on healthcare worker shortages, and in particular on rural communities, where master’s-level clinicians and advanced practice providers sustain access to care in these underserved places. McMahon is on the hot seat even with her own party, with Florida GOP Representative Randy Fine asking her two weeks ago: “Does it make sense for us to take a field where we have real shortages and create a situation where we may not be able to create the [healthcare workers] we need, where we already don’t have enough?” No, Randy, it makes no sense. I feel immense gratitude and affection for the nurses that took care of me last week. But if we all want to thank the nurses in our lives, getting this rule rescinded would be the real gift. The future of nursing in America depends on it.

Democrats Can’t Avoid a Reckoning With Gaza

Matthew Duss — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

We can’t defend democracy while upholding elite impunity As Democrats continue to struggle to coalesce around a shared message for the future, last week offered some troubling examples of their refusing, once again, to learn from the mistakes of the past. After a delay, the Democratic National Committee finally released the post-2024 election autopsy report that DNC chair Ken Martin had long promised. It was easy to see why he had tried to avoid making it public. In addition to being incomplete and a mess, the report was notable for not mentioning one of the most divisive and consequential issues in the party: Gaza. Even considering the report’s incoherence, it was a baffling omission, given that Gaza continues to be a real point of tension in the Democratic coalition, one that cuts to the core of what kind of party, and what kind of country, we really want to be. Unfortunately, that wasn’t last week’s only example of Democratic-aligned organizations trying to throw Gaza down the memory-hole. On May 19, the Center for American Progress, Washington’s largest Democratic Party–aligned think tank, held its annual “Ideas Festival,” featuring a panel on “The Future of US Foreign Policy.” Three of the four panelists were former Biden administration officials, and two of those—former secretary of state (now CAP board member) Antony Blinken and former UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield—were top decision-makers during Biden’s catastrophic handling of the Gaza war, which a growing consensus of experts has categorized as a genocide. Gaza was not even mentioned on the panel. (It’s notable that Blinken appeared at the event unannounced, possibly to avoid protests that now follow him everywhere.) The previous day, Foreign Policy for America (FP4A), which describes itself as a group “working to strengthen support for principled US leadership in the world,” held an event honoring Thomas-Greenfield with a lifetime achievement award. While Thomas-Greenfield had an admirable diplomatic career before joining the Biden administration, as UN ambassador she vetoed multiple UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions, measures that might have saved thousands of lives, to enable Israel to continue its assault. FP4A’s choice to honor her with an award was an insult to every Palestinian killed, maimed, or still suffering in Gaza, and a middle finger to everyone who tried to get the Biden administration to change course. Another Democratic-aligned foreign policy group, National Security Action, has also recently been in the news. Cofounded in 2018 by former Obama administration officials, former Biden administration national security adviser Jake Sullivan rejoined its board of directors, as he did with FP4A’s board shortly after leaving the government in 2025. I have worked with all these organizations. I spent six years at CAP as a national security policy analyst. I have been involved in numerous meetings and workshops with both National Security Action and Foreign Policy for America since their founding. I spoke at FP4A’s launch event in 2017 alongside Sullivan. All these organizations have many talented, principled staff—such as the recently relaunched National Security Action’s new executive director, Maher Bitar—and the potential to play a positive, constructive role in the future of the Democratic Party and of our democracy. Progressives need strong organizations to help build and mobilize our movement. But they cannot do that if those organizations facilitate impunity rather than accountability. Elite impunity is at the core of our political crisis. Far too often, the wealthy, the powerful, the well-connected pay no price, whatever their offense. They operate under a different set of rules than the rest of us. Anger at this impunity and disillusionment with a self-dealing establishment is what Donald Trump exploits when he rightly claims that “the system is rigged.” The fact that it’s rigged on behalf of the wealthy and powerful like Trump and his cronies doesn’t matter; his words resonate because they’re true. It’s no surprise that candidates who effectively channel this disillusionment are winning. Joe Biden declared in a 2022 speech that Americans were locked in a “battle for the soul of the nation.” Allowing those officials who assisted him in perpetrating the Gaza genocide to simply move past it and resume careers of respect and remuneration, and possibly eventually return to positions of government power, would be another loss in that ongoing battle. Democrats cannot hope to offer the American people a compelling alternative vision of governance while turning a blind eye to the previous Democratic administration’s abuses. Accountability for Gaza is both good policy and good politics. Democratic voters are motivated and energized to engage when they feel leaders are acting with honesty, transparency, and moral clarity. Recently, two leading Democratic senators, Hawaii’s Brian Schatz and Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, noted the need for a Democratic foreign policy housecleaning. “I’m not into blacklisting anyone from future work in their area of expertise but I do think it’s fair to want a whole new crop of foreign policy staffers in the next democratic administration,” Schatz tweeted on Sunday. Van Hollen was even more direct: “Primary voters won’t trust any Democratic presidential candidate who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues, especially if, as a legislator, he or she voted to send Mr. Netanyahu bombs even as his government imposed a total blockade on Gaza,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed calling for a course correction on Israel-Palestine. “Nor will they support a candidate who plans to re-enlist the senior Democratic decision makers who whitewashed the truth during the Biden administration and refuse to acknowledge their complicity.” A predictable argument against seeking accountability for former officials is that it divides Democrats and distracts from the threat of Trump and Trumpism now. Echoing Barack Obama in 2009, when he decided not to seek accountability for the Bush administration’s crimes, they believe we should “look forward as opposed to looking backward.” (If you want to know why Donald Trump acts seemingly without fear of consequences, just look at the guest list for Dick Cheney’s funeral.) But this is not simply “looking backward.” The Gaza genocide is not over. It is ongoing. Accountability is necessary to not just prevent future atrocities but also raise the alarm and hopefully stop one still being committed. Democrats cannot hope to credibly punish the Trump administration’s constantly mounting acts of corruption and criminality while absolving our own side for its own abuses and lies. If we are serious about restoring and strengthening our democracy, unrigging the system and the elite impunity it sustains is essential. This isn’t just about the past. It’s about the party and the country we want to build for the future. We need organizations that are genuinely committed to that struggle.

The Trump Administration Is Refusing to Follow the Laws Protecting Domestic Violence Survivors

Bryce Covert — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The administration has repeatedly failed to disburse funds for services for domestic violence survivors and blocked the enforcement of their rights. In a typical year, the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center in Dayton, Ohio, receives approximately $550,000 in funding from the federal government to enforce fair housing rights and educate the public about them. But like many similar housing nonprofits, during the second Trump administration, the organization has struggled to access congressionally appropriated money. Last June, the organization went to court to sue the Trump administration for failing to disperse fair housing funding. After an extensive legal back and forth, it finally caught a break at the end of last September: The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded it a $125,000 yearlong grant to conduct education and outreach on fair housing rights. But the money never arrived. Jim McCarthy, the organization’s president, heard from his assigned contact at HUD that higher-ups had questions about his organization’s activities, including an outreach event it was planning for victims of domestic violence. When the Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized in 2022 on a bipartisan basis, HUD was given new authority to pursue justice for victims of violence in federally supported housing whose landlords discriminated against them, and the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center wanted to make victims aware of their rights. Finally, McCarthy received an e-mail from his contact at HUD headquarters. “VAWA is not a activity [sic] that aligns with the current administration’s priorities,” the e-mail, which was shared with The Nation, said. Also by Bryce Covert The EEOC Is No Longer Protecting Federal Workers From Gender Identity Discrimination Bryce Covert HUD Is Refusing to Enforce Anti-Discrimination Law—and Won’t Let Anyone Else Do It, Either Bryce Covert Childcare Providers Around the Country Are Being Targeted by Vigilante Surveillance Bryce Covert “This is the law. So it’s like, what do you mean?” McCarthy told The Nation. “What the hell?” Despite his confusion, he resubmitted the grant application with the outreach event for victims of domestic violence removed. After that, the grant was officially approved. The e-mail that baffled McCarthy isn’t an outlier. It fits into a pattern in which the Trump administration has failed to disburse funds for services for domestic violence survivors that Congress appropriated and, through policy changes, has ignored or outright stymied the rights and needs of domestic violence victims. Some of the changes have been wrought by reduced funding and slashed staffing; some of them seem to stems from ideological crusades. All of the administration’s actions will almost certainly to lead to more violence and put victims’ lives at risk. The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, which was enacted in 1984, funds more than 2,000 domestic violence shelters and programs throughout the country. “It is the only federal funding source that is solely dedicated to domestic violence shelters and programs,” said Melina Milazzo, director of public policy at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and it’s especially critical because many states don’t spend their own money on such services. But to access the money, states must apply for funds, and the Trump administration hasn’t even released the notice of funding opportunity yet, which is the first step in the process. It takes about six to nine months, Milazzo said, from when the notice of funding is posted for programs to receive funds. “This essentially means that domestic violence shelters and local programs across the country will face at least three months, likely more, without this core funding that essentially keeps their lights on and their doors open,” she said. Most operate with “very limited reserves and cash on hand, which essentially means any funding delays are effectively funding cuts,” she said. “Programs will be forced to reduce services, lay off staff, or even, in worst case scenarios, close altogether.” The delay in FVPSA funding is compounded by other funding problems. About $200 million in discretionary grants from the Office of Violence Against Women from last fiscal year still hasn’t gone out, and so far there has been a “slight delay,” Milazzo said, in the notice of funding opportunity for that money for this fiscal year. “Cumulatively, this is all having a devastating impact,” she said. “Programs have been making cuts already and reducing services and are incredibly concerned about how long they’ll be able to sustain.” NNEDV has already documented a gap in services; last year, local programs and shelters weren’t able to fulfill over 13,000 requests for help in a single day. That’s concerning, because victims of domestic violence are often in emergency situations that require immediate help. When NNEDV asked programs how long they could sustain their services if federal funding was cut by 50 percent or more, over half said they wouldn’t make it past six months; almost a quarter could only last one to three months. If the delay in funding leads programs to cut back or close altogether, Milazzo expects more people who seek out services will get turned away. “It will mean more survivors and their children won’t have a shelter bed to go to, it will mean more survivors and their children won’t have legal assistance, safety planning, crisis counseling, the ability to get out of an unsafe situation and start to rebuild and heal,” she said. In worst case scenarios, she said, “you will see more fatalities, domestic violence homicides.” In other words, people will die. “The most dangerous time for a person in an abusive relationship is the time that they’re leaving,” she said. “If there’s no place for them to go, that means they have to return to an abusive relationship.” There’s been little to no information from the administration about whether and when all of the funding will flow, Milazzo said. At least some of the holdup seems to be lengthy reviews to make sure funding is in line with Trump’s various executive orders, such as the one trying to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion and another denying the rights of trans and nonbinary people. “We can’t really get any answer from any of the agencies with respect to where things are, when things will come out,” she said. Survivors of domestic violence are also getting caught up in the Trump administration’s crusade against immigrants. Immigrants living in the US who experience domestic violence—as well as trafficking, labor abuses, or other crimes—can petition for visas to stay legally, known as VAWA visas. Federal law says that these applicants generally shouldn’t be targeted for immigration enforcement. But Vanessa Alonso, CEO of law firm Alonso & Alonso, based in San Antonio, Texas, is representing clients who have pending VAWA cases who have received notices to appear before immigration judges—something completely outside of the VAWA visa process. “It’s really concerning,” she said. Some have even been picked up by immigration officials.

Why Does Pete Hegseth Have to Make His Desperate Need for Masculine Validation Our Problem?

Jasper Craven — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

America has been burdened with the unresolved issues of a man driven by his poorly disguised sense of embarrassment and emasculation by the utter failures of the wars he fought in. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump surveyed his top military brass on the prospect of making war in Iran. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine urged caution, presciently predicting that a ramped-up campaign against Iran could lead its leaders to close the Strait of Hormuz. However, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s self-styled “secretary of war,” jumped at the prospect of such a conflict. “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up,” Trump recently recalled at a press event. “And you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’” Americans join the military for any number of reasons: to serve their country, gain economic stability, or simply join a community. For Hegseth, a thirst for martial victory and a desire for a masculine metamorphosis seemed to surpass all else. Much to Hegseth’s chagrin, however, his career as an Army officer corresponded to a series of distinctly failed military campaigns. After graduating from Princeton in 2003, he deployed to two doomed military locales—Afghanistan and Iraq—and then relentlessly defended the Pentagon’s occupation of parts of those places in essays, speeches, and, ultimately, as a weekend host on Fox News. While Hegseth’s rhetoric on those wars long reflected mainstream Republican talking points—papering over chaos and death in the Middle East and beyond with pledges that stable democracies were close at hand—his zeal indicated something deeper: a desperation, it seemed, to wring some sort of personal validation from his time in uniform. “The rank and file, and even some of the officers, have accepted the gravity of the war’s failures,” Adam Weinstein, a Marine Corps veteran and deputy director for Middle East policy at the Quincy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on peace and diplomacy, told me, speaking of Iraq and Afghanistan. “There’s a deep sense of sacrifice and loss for nothing. And that can lead to fatalistic beliefs. It can lead to Islamophobia. In its healthier form, it can lead to questioning the principles of interventionism and the US foreign policy establishment.” Hegseth, for his part, chose to totally avoid any personal or geopolitical reckoning. Once the Global War on Terror became politically untenable to defend, he cast about for excuses that wouldn’t implicate his own career in the military. Rather than zero in on tactical or intelligence failures, his rhetoric took a dark turn, increasingly inflected by Islamophobia, misogyny, and a distinctly toxic version of masculinity. As his profile rose, Hegseth argued ever more forcefully that the Pentagon was weak-willed, insufficiently lethal, and overrun by incompetent and cowardly leaders, many of them women or minorities who (in his eyes) had been unfairly promoted. His proposed remedy was as blunt and dense as his diagnosis: America simply needed to fight harder in the Middle East until the mission was accomplished and “Islamic extremism” was eliminated. As one of his former coworkers told me, “I never got the feeling that he wanted to abandon the Middle East.” I asked Weinstein if, during his own 2012 deployment to Afghanistan, he saw Islamophobia bubbling below the surface. “It was right on the surface,” he responded. “But what do you think the World War II generation was saying about the Japanese? Dehumanization is a natural outgrowth of war.” “If You Want Something, You Go After It” As a boy growing up in Minnesota, Hegseth appeared to be a perfect version of the American male. He was religious, athletic, well-spoken, and remarkably handsome. He was ashamed, however, of his self-perceived softness. “I didn’t get in fights as a kid and shied from confrontation because, frankly, I was scared of it,” he wrote in his 2016 book In the Arena, Good Citizens, a Great Republic, and How One Speech Can Reinvigorate America. In it, he went on to hail his father, Brian, for his “integrity” and “Scandinavian work ethic,” before evincing thinly veiled resentment for not having been reared effectively in the masculine art of aggression. “My father was—and is—an incredible man,” he reflected, “but confrontation isn’t necessarily his forte.” Military service, Hegseth figured, would imbue him with some much-needed and previously missing manliness. It was also his best path to class mobility and prestige. When it came time for college, he applied to West Point, America’s most prestigious service academy, and Princeton, where he was gunning for a ROTC scholarship. He got into both schools and chose the latter, touching down on its verdant New Jersey campus in 1999.

Jim Crow Just Suffered a Temporary Setback—in Alabama

Elie Mystal — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

A federal district court struck down the state’s new congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The US District Court in Alabama has decided not to let the state go quietly back to the Jim Crow era as the Supreme Court would like. In a ruling issued on Tuesday, a three-judge panel, which included two judges appointed by Donald Trump, rejected Alabama’s latest attempt to gerrymander away the political power of Black people. Alabama has already indicated that it will file an emergency appeal. I’m forced to assume that this appeal will be granted and the white-wing Supreme Court will overrule the lower court. But the decision is still a striking and emphatic rejection of the racism Republicans wish to reinject into American elections. The case is just the latest in the long-running saga of Allen v. Milligan. After the 2020 Census, Alabama redrew its congressional map in such a way that only one of its seven districts was majority-minority. The map purposely diluted the voting power of Black people in Alabama, especially those living in the so-called “Black Belt,” which cuts laterally across the state. This map was challenged by voting-rights activists who asked the state to draw a second majority-minority district. Alabama is 26 percent Black and 6 percent Latino, so having two of seven districts be majority-minority makes mathematical sense. The voting-rights activists won in district court but, in February 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that it was too close to the November 2022 midterms to force Alabama to redraw its maps. The 2022 election went ahead with only one majority-minority district. In 2023, the Supreme Court once again took up the case—this time to rule on its merits, not just timing—and ruled that Alabama’s maps were racist and therefore unconstitutional. The Alabama legislature then put forth another map, which the district court calls the 2023 Plan, which was essentially the same as the 2021 map the Supreme Court had just rejected. The district court rejected this 2023 Plan as well, and ordered a special master to draw a new map. That new map had two majority-minority districts that kept Black communities intact across the state. The district court calls this map the “special master map.” The 2024 elections took place under this map, and the 2026 midterm elections were set to take place under the same map. But at the end of April, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. This case effectively killed the 1965 Voting Rights Act and allowed the states to resurrect Jim Crow types of voter suppression, including gerrymandering away Black voting power. Whites in Alabama immediately sprung into action. The state interpreted Callais as overruling Allen v. Milligan, and attempted to reinstate its planned 2023 map. That map is what the three-judge district court panel rejected, for essentially the third time, on Tuesday. The court found that, even after Callais, the remaining shard of the Voting Rights Act still prohibits maps that are intentionally racist, and Alabama legislature’s map intentionally seeks to take voting power away from Black people. This is a finding that the Supreme Court itself made back when Milligan was decided, and the district court saw nothing in the record to suggest a different conclusion. Instead, the district court ordered Alabama to continue using the special master map, which has two majority-minority districts, for the upcoming elections. Part of what’s happening here is that white Republicans in Alabama are being shiftless and lazy. Their map has been ruled intentionally racist by multiple courts on multiple occasions. Trying to ram through this particular map is the worst possible version of trying to make fetch happen. Could Alabama draw a map with only one Black district in a way that courts approve? Probably! Again, there are two Trump judges on this very district court panel, and it’s not exactly difficult to get Trump judges to give the go-ahead to racism. But trying again and again to get the courts to affirm an old map that has already been ruled unconstitutional borders on insanity. Then again, while Alabama doesn’t have a good legal argument for using its old, unconstitutional map, it does have something arguably more important: a Supreme Court that might be so desperate to crush Black voting rights that legal arguments don’t matter.

Dr. Harry Edwards on the NAACP’s Call to Boycott Gerrymandering States

Dave Zirin — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The 83-year-old sociologist and activist reflects on what is missing in the current effort to organize athletes politically. After the Supreme Court gutted the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, states such as Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana immediately moved to redraw and eliminate majority-Black districts, muting their political voices. What those states have in common—aside from revanchist politicians pining for a return to Jim Crow—is a social, political, and economic addiction to college football, an institution dominated by Black athletes. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, these are states that deify Black talent, love Black entertainment, and depend upon Black labor, but demean and politically silence Black people. In response, the NAACP dropped a political bomb last week, calling upon Black high school athletes to boycott universities in states that are gutting the voting rights of Black residents. Their call immediately sparked a series of debates: Can threatening the South’s obsession with college football produce positive political change? Will teenagers and their families being offered NIL (name, image, likeness) money accede to this? Is it even fair to ask 16-year-old Black kids to sacrifice these kinds of opportunities? Why should they have to deal with the failures of older generations, to protect what so many sacrificed to achieve? And shouldn’t this call extend to white athletes as well, in the name of solidarity, if nothing else? The NAACP’s new campaign has launched a thousand opinions—but there is one we should care about hearing above all others: that of Dr. Harry Edwards. Now 83 years old, the sociologist and activist has spent his career organizing Black athletes to see themselves as a community that can exercise power, make demands, and speak their minds. Dr. Edwards is perhaps best known as the lead organizer of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which led the attempted boycott by Black athletes and their supporters of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. For the past three decades, as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he played an essential role in establishing sports sociology as an academic discipline. His studies of sports through the prism of race changed how all culture—music, film, dance—has been interrogated. Unlike so many offering opinions on the NAACP’s boycott proposal, he is someone who has not only been in the trenches—he dug the trenches. When I reached out to Edwards about the NAACP decision, he replied with a long and thoughtful answer. Here is what he said. The NAACP needs some historical insight regarding their proposed Black athlete boycott and to consider their own potential contradictions as well as counterproductive outcomes. I want to make it clear from the outset that I am not averse to their proposal. I’m just pulling their coattails on the complexities of their proposed effort—not to speak of the fact that the athletes haven’t been heard from yet. There is better than just a possible chance that, as things now stand, many Black athletes will ignore or be outright opposed to the NAACP regarding a Black athlete boycott strategy, especially under circumstances of there being no “Black movement” in the broader society sufficiently influential and compelling enough to travel over stadium walls and through pavilion turnstiles to provide athletes with an ideological and definitional strategy, with political identity and ideological affiliation within a broader society-wide movement—one that informs, frames, and fuels their involvement and generates the popular political connection and support they need and deserve as they put everything on the line, their present and their future. The situation at this point should be about messaging—how many ways are there to get the message out to both Black athletes and the states targeted? And what determines what would be a suitably urgent and creditable range of responses—not just from the athletes and schools but from the states involved. Organized and politically educated Black athletes collectively, certainly, might be able in the short run to pursue some gains directly associated with their sports involvement: e.g., they might be able to drive up the NIL price of their participation in the SEC, and ACC, or be able to send a message to two or three states on a “targeted” school-by-school basis. (Of course, the schools targeted would enlist their former Black student athletes to speak against the NAACP effort and dissuade any current athletes from supporting the NAACP. ) But no organized Black athlete effort will be met with institutional acceptance: Here will be a price to pay principally by the activist athletes. Still, whatever the goals, clarity in messaging from the outset is critical. In September of 1967, in the run-up to the Olympic Project for Human Rights, I organized a boycott of the University of Texas, El Paso versus San Jose State season opening football game. Then in February of 1968 we sent a further “message” by organizing a total boycott of the NYAC indoor track and field classic. We “sent a message” during the most politically violent five years in America since 1860–1865. That was 1963–1968: a time that consumed a president, a presidential candidate, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and civil rights workers and leaders. In the end, our implemented strategy was a combination of boycotts and protests, highlighting the strategic need for flexibility and multiple options. It would appear to be more efficacious today for the NAACP to target two or three schools with the threat of others being singled out for targeting in the NEAR future. And it’s not too late for the NAACP to downsize and diversify its boycott effort in this fashion. But I’m still not convinced that the NAACP’s goals can be achieved in the absence of a broader, society-wide, Black popular political movement. Today there is nothing like the post–World War II civil rights movement, which gave us the social-political context for Major League Baseball’s “Great Experiment,” Jackie Robinson, the desegregation of professional football and basketball, and Wilma Rudolph’s post-1960 Olympics desegregation efforts. There is nothing like the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, which saw the Muhammad Ali Cleveland Summit, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, nor the Black Lives Matter movement, with Ariyana Smith, Colin Kaepernick, and countless others; nor the rise of women’s sports coinciding with Roe v. Wade, Title IX, and the #MeToo movement. In calling for today’s athletic boycott, the NAACP has not, to my knowledge, discussed the imperative of embedding any athlete boycott effort in a broader popular political movement context that would provide imperative political framing and scaffolding within a broader-based societal movement. As we look at the challenges strategically facing the NAACP today, with so much of the organization’s focus clearly on college football and perhaps, in some part, on basketball, we must also remember that in most past instances, it was Black women in sports who ignited the relevant movements. In 1959, at the Chicago Pan Am games, Rose Robinson sat on an ice cooler during the playing of the national anthem in protest of racial segregation—a year before Elgin Baylor, and nearly two years before Bill Russell boycotted participation in NBA games over segregated dining facilities at their team hotels. Ms. Robinson’s protest, staged during the anthem, was almost 10 years before Smith and Carlos [raised their fists at the 1968 Olympics]. After the 1960 Rome Olympics, it was Wilma Rudolph who refused to participate in racially segregated parades and dinners in celebration of her three gold medal performances at the games and who subsequently undertook to desegregate her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee, not Ali, who didn’t become outspoken on racism until after his defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964. In 2014, two years before Kaepernick took his knee in pre-game protest during the anthem, Knox College basketball player Ariyana Smith lay on the gym floor for four minutes and 20 seconds during the presentation of colors and playing of the national anthem at a game in Staten, Missouri, about 12 miles from Ferguson, in a commemorative protest of the four hours and 20 minutes that police blocked the family of Mike Brown from retrieving his body from the street where he was killed by a white police officer. In July of 2020, the women of the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA mobilized to drive out a member of their team ownership—also a US senator—who spoke derisively and condemned the Black Lives Matter movement, in the process leading a drive to elect two Democrat senators to the US Congress from Georgia for the first time since the era of the Dixiecrats. Sports recapitulates society, so don’t look for a leader such as a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to emerge and spark that imperative, broad scale movement in society. Rather, look for the next Claudette Colvin or Rosa Parks—if history is any guide, she is already on her way—and in this male-dominated, patriarchal society and sports institution, the leader will likely follow. So the question must be raised: Does the NAACP’s proposed boycott encompass women’s collegiate sports, or just revenue-producing men’s collegiate sports? If not, the effort will be denying the relevance of both women’s sports and the historic role-potential of women athletes in igniting protest movements in both sports and society. Clearly, then—and this is my broader and more basic point—a great deal of strategic analyses and a lot of groundwork must be done regarding the NAACP’s proposed Black athlete boycott of collegiate sports if there is to be any chance of even a minimally successful effort. Furthermore, we must not ask Black athletes—male or female—to squander their hard-won power resources for lack of thorough analyses and planning. As Trump attempts to distribute his $1.776 billion slush fund to the right-wing mob that trashed the capital; as 10,000 white South Africans are being given US citizenship while hundreds of thousands of people waiting for green cards are being told to leave the country; and as Black voting rights are being eradicated, this is a red-alert, wake-the-****-up moment for anyone who doesn’t think we should live under the heel of white supremacist violence. And while this kind of a boycott could have an incredibly positive effect, Edwards reminds us that “waking up” is insufficient. We have to organize “over the stadium walls and through the pavilion turnstiles” to actually see results. Or, as Harry Edwards said in 1968, “Activism divorced from thorough strategic analyses is conducive to nothing so much as contradiction, chaos and ultimately failure.”

Drones? Europe’s Automakers Are Taking Orders.

Harrison Stetler — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

French car company Renault seeks a foothold in rearmament. By early 2027, the first models of the “Chorus” will be rolling off assembly lines at the French car manufacturer Renault. It’s not a new emissions-free vehicle at an appealing price point—the elusive savior of Europe’s once confident automobile sector. Rather, the Chorus is the French brand’s first foray into the burgeoning market of military drones. Designed with weapons contractor Turgis Gaillard, the Chorus drone will be put together across two of the carmaker’s industrial sites. Engines manufactured at Renault’s Cléon facilities near Rouen will get final assembly at the group’s factory in Le Mans, a site usually known for its chassis frames. The final product, according to the manufacturers’ magazine L’Usine Nouvelle, is an ordnance with dual offensive and reconnaissance capabilities. Lauded in industry circles as a reply to Iran’s Shahed drones or compared to Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles, the Chorus will purportedly be capable of carrying a 500-kilogram payload with an estimated range of 3,000 kilometers (slightly over 1,864 miles), at a unit price of €120,000. Renault management denies that drone production could ever become a pillar of business strategy. The group “does not aim to become a major actor in the defense sector,” it said in a press release this winter, after its drone partnership was approved by employee representatives. For now, the scale of its agreement appears minimal: Renault is said to be broaching a 10-year pact with the French state valued at €1 billion. (In 2025, the group reported just shy of €58 billion in worldwide revenue.) For now, monthly output is expected to reach 600 Chorus drones when production hits full speed over the next year, compared to the many thousands of engines or car frames manufactured at the two sites in question. Yet these small steps are part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s calls to bring France to a “war economy” footing. Tony Fortin, of the Lyon-based NGO L’Observatoire de l’Armement, warns that Renault’s entry into the drone market has it starting down a familiar path. Denouncing “an extension of the military into civilian industry,” Fortin said that Renault’s deal “normalizes the notion that weapons are a market like any other.” It also comes at a time of mounting difficulties for European automakers, with the twin threats of US tariffs and rising Chinese supply in the strategic market for next generation electric vehicles. At the peak of the critical metals crunch last October, when European heavy industry found itself in the crossfire of Trump’s tug of war with Beijing, its chief automobile lobby warned that European corporations were “days away” from full work stoppages. With operating profit margins declining by a little over one percent in 2025, Renault is still faring better than some of its European competitors. On May 21, Stellantis, which owns brands like Peugot, Jeep, and Fiat, projected an estimated 800,000 decline in its European automobile output by 2030. Renault is also not the only automobile group leaning into military hardware. Volkswagon is reportedly considering a partnership with Israeli armsmaker Rafael over missile defense production. Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz, told The Wall Street Journal on May 15 that “Europe needs to strengthen its defense capabilities” and that “if [Mercedez-Benz] can play a positive role in that, we would be prepared to do so.” Historically, industrial groups like these are no strangers to arms production, even if the trend since the 1990s saw them divesting from military-linked assets. In 2001, the French automaker sold off its military vehicles division, Renault Trucks Defense, to Volvo. Rebranded as Arquus, the firm is now owned by the Belgian industrial group John Cockerill. Two decades after its sale, Arquus is reportedly back at work on an un unmanned land vehicle with its former parent company. According to Le Figaro, Renault is also expected to roll out at June’s Eurosatory expo a mobile command post model with the French arms major Thales. The drift toward rearmament has workers in a difficult bind, with traditional labor hesitation making space for acceptance at the prospect of new contracts. Weeks before abstaining at the social council vote held in February, the Renault branch of the left-wing CGT union wrote in a press release: “If there’s going to be weapons production, it must only serve the needs of national defense, be under strict public oversight, and can under no circumstances be driven by market forces, the search for profits, or as exports to fuel armed conflicts.” Force Ouvrière was the only union at Renault to approve the partnership, and its Renault delegate Mounir Mestari claims that among workers, “many, if not a clear majority, look favorably” on the drone plan. Renault management agreed that work on the military hardware would be on an exclusively volunteer basis and guaranteed special security measures at the industrial sites manufacturing the Chorus. The relatively mooted response at Renault is hard to dissociate from the crisis gripping the broader European auto industry. “Our position has been very clear: there’s no denying that car makers are struggling to really take off when it comes to electric vehicles, so any activity that could bring employment and industrial production is a good thing,” Mestari told The Nation. Though tapped as a site for producing engines for Renault’s electric vehicles, total employment at the Cléon facility is stagnant at around 3,000 workers, down by several hundred since the late 2010s. With Renault currently restructuring its Ampère electric line, Stellantis appears to be doubling down on partnerships with Chinese brands.

The Rise of the Sensitivity Reader

Kyle Paoletta — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! examines the emergence of a new job in publishing—secondary readers who comb through books for possible offenses. As a sensitivity reader, your job is to peruse novels in progress to ensure that they do not include any harmful depictions of people whose identity differs from that of the author. The source of your authority on the matter? Your own race, sexual orientation, disability, or other identity marker. There are Taiwanese sensitivity readers, Muslim sensitivity readers, trans sensitivity readers, wheelchair-using sensitivity readers, and even white ones whose expertise is the ethnic-Greek experience. This raises the possibility of the following scenario: Say you’re a Greek American whom an editor has offered $500 to take a look at a forthcoming novel, since its cast of characters includes the child of a Greek-diner owner who, the editor fears, might seem a little stereotypical. The author is more of a Mayflower type, so how much insight could they really have into the generational trauma of food service in suburban Detroit? Reading through the novel, you’re repelled by the procedural prose, but since your role is limited to performing a sensitivity read, you laser in on the 20 or so pages where the Greek kid appears. You note the thinly veiled references to his father’s “kalamata-stained fingertips” and his ultramasculine swagger. Your own parents were professors from Kolonaki (indeed, you’re quite looking forward to your next family trip back to Athens), so you can’t quite parse a reference to the character’s great-grandfather emigrating to Michigan from a town you’ve never heard of in Thessaly. Still, you dutifully make your notes, suggest a few changes (“I’ve never met a Greek named Harper”), and e-mail them to the editor. You hope, when your own novel in progress is ready for submission, you’ll be looked upon favorably. This scenario, however baffling, is an increasingly common feature of the publishing business. Sensitivity readers first came into vogue around 2016, when Jodi Picoult reportedly hired some to help her craft a depiction of a Black nurse in the novel Small Great Things. The Guardian and Current Affairs applauded her and other early adopters as refreshingly enlightened, with the latter publication proclaiming: “Bring On the Sensitivity Readers.” Since then, at least one publishing imprint, HarperCollins’s romance-focused Harlequin, has added sensitivity readers to its permanent staff, while the indie publisher Riptide, according to The New York Times, “has begun requiring authors writing outside their own identities to have their manuscripts reviewed by a sensitivity reader before it will accept them, submits all such manuscripts itself to a second sensitivity reader, and has promised to distribute a formal sensitivity guide among all of its staff and authors.” The Times report states that the use of sensitivity readers is most pervasive in children’s publishing, where they “have practically become a routine part of the editing process.” In That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing, the scholar Adam Szetela attributes the rise of sensitivity readers to the fear of publishing executives that a book from their list might be the next one to trigger outrage online. For this study, Szetela anonymously interviewed dozens of book professionals, including authors, agents, and C-suite denizens from the so-called Big Five publishing houses. Szetela critiques what he calls “the Sensitivity Era” of publishing and the counterintuitive toll it’s taken on what books can get published, with racial essentialism being prized over nuanced characterizations that seek to fully articulate the complexities of American identity across class and educational backgrounds. Szetela details several high-profile incidents in which a book became a whipping horse online, including when Jeanine Cummins, the white author of American Dirt, was pilloried for her depiction of Mexican characters, and when Ramin Ganeshram, a Trinidadian American writer of Indian and Iranian descent who wrote a children’s book called A Birthday Cake for George Washington, was excoriated for how her book “whitewashes slavery.” Borrowing a term from the McCarthy era, Szetela labels each burst of digital indignation a “degradation ceremony” and charts how they spiral predictably from social media to the highest echelons of corporate publishing. Publishers take very seriously even the most bad-faith campaigns to tar a book; a handful of posts on X or Goodreads can sometimes generate enough backlash to force a house to rethink its relationship with the author in question. “In some cases,” Szetela writes, “the degradation ceremony continues until an author loses their literary agent, has their book pulled from distribution, or otherwise takes a hit that will diminish their ability to provide for themselves and their families.” Initiated by chronically online crusaders, these degradation ceremonies serve no purpose beyond affirming the moral rectitude of their participants. More troubling, Szetela argues, is how attuned the publishing industry has become to this online coterie—so much so that the responsiveness of the liberal sectors of publishing to keyboard warriors ends up providing cover to the conservative wings of the same houses, which often flourish without critique. Even if acquiring a book by a demagogue or a controversial politician generates some consternation within a publishing house, that sort of internal dissent matters less to executives than taking the external chattering class into account when it might attack an author for misrepresenting one or another identity category. What could possibly explain the same group’s showering of opprobrium on allies and its continuing indifference to foes? For Szetela, it all comes back to the refusal of anyone involved in this toxic cycle to pay even the slightest attention to the working class. Tracking degradation ceremonies can feel like playing whack-a-mole. Szetela’s narrative begins in 2019, when Amélie Wen Zhao’s debut novel, Blood Heir, became a target for social-media rage because its jacket copy described a world where “oppression is blind to skin color, and good and evil exist in shades of gray.” L.L. McKinney was one of a number of fellow YA authors who shared that text with their followers, tweeting: “someone explain this to me. EXPLAIN IT RIGHT THE FUQ NOW.” Zhao issued a public apology on Twitter, and her publisher postponed the book’s release so it could be significantly revised. Two months later, an author named Kosoko Jackson, who had also criticized Zhao on Twitter, found himself in a similar situation when a Goodreads user wrote that “I have never been so disgusted in my life”—because the villain of Jackson’s forthcoming A Place for Wolves, a novel set during the Kosovo War, was an Albanian Muslim, the demographic targeted by Serbs for extermination during that conflict. The book was never released. Similar brouhahas have continued to break out on a regular basis. Last year, for instance, the romance novel Sparrow and Vine was withdrawn by its publisher because some Goodreads users were incensed that one of the characters was rude to undocumented farm workers and praised Elon Musk. It hardly mattered that the book’s author, Sophie Lark, had deliberately set out to create a “flawed character” whom readers were meant to view with skepticism; such subtlety is missed when literary analysis stops at the level of key words. Szetela argues that the willingness of publisher after publisher to cave in immediately to social-media pressure stems from a more enduring problem: the inequality within their offices. In 2023, a survey from the publisher Lee & Low found that the industry was 72.5 percent white, while the ranks of leadership were 76.7 percent white. Although the survey found that diversity in the overall publishing industry had grown over the previous four years, the leadership looked practically the same. When diversity is seen as a zero-sum game, it becomes harder for those from working-class backgrounds, regardless of race, to break into the industry: One agent observes that, because salaries for entry-level jobs at publishing houses are so low, “a lot of people have parental support. That cuts out a big portion of people who might otherwise be interested in the field.”

Trump’s Abraham Accords Fantasy Will Only Cause More Suffering

Jeet Heer — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Any expansion of the alleged peace agreement would lock the Middle East into endless apartheid, despotism, and militarism. Donald Trump is caught in a trap of his own making. The US-Israeli war on Iran has gone so badly that even inveterate war hawks, like the neoconservative strategist Robert Kagan, admit that defeat is almost inevitable. Iran’s ability to choke off trade in the Strait of Hormuz has turned out to be a powerful weapon, one that has forced Trump to scale back his initial agenda of regime change. The current period of ceasefire and negotiations might more accurately be described as a holding action. In truth, the ceasefire is more nominal than real. On Monday, the United States resumed bombing Iranian naval bases and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to intensify the ongoing bombing campaign in Lebanon directed against Iran’s ally Hezbollah. Netanyahu’s bellicose words are a reminder of one major hurdle to ending the war: Israel has no problem with scuttling negotiations by escalating hostilities. The prospects for long-term peace thus seem dim, and even if a negotiated settlement could be reached, Trump would face the political problem of dealing with the powerful bipartisan coalition of Iran hawks in Washington. The “bomb Iran” caucus has been strengthened in the Republican Party with the primary defeat last week of Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, a loud anti-war voice. Senators such as Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham have been stridently warning that a peace deal with Iran would be a disaster. Prominent Democrats such as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are equally vociferous in decrying any concessions to Iran as an abject failure. To placate the Iran hawks, Trump is trying to expand one of his signature foreign policy initiatives, the Abraham Accords. Originally signed in 2020, the agreement normalized relations between Israel and five Muslim nations: Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump pushed for a “mandatory” expansion of the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan. Trump even suggested that Iran could eventually join the Abraham Accords. With typical braggadocio, Trump argued that the expanded Abraham Accords, which would be sealed as part of a peace agreement with Iran, would “bring true Power, Strength, and Peace to the Middle East for the first time in 5,000 years. It will be a Document respected like no other that has ever been signed, anywhere in the World. Its level of Importance and Prestige will be unparalleled!” Even making allowances for Trump’s typically hyperventilating rhetoric, this is a crackpot scheme. Egypt and Jordan have no need to sign the accords, for the simple reason that they have had diplomatic relations with Israel for decades. And the Saudi government—which previously evaded Joe Biden’s entreaties to do a deal with Israel—has repeatedly said it won’t sign the accords unless there is a resolution of the Palestinian question. If Saudi Arabia is adamant on this point, it’s hard to see how Iran would be any more pliant. The renewed push for the Abraham Accords makes little sense except as an exercise in domestic politics. As The New York Times notes, “If more countries sign up to the accords, it could placate some Iran hawks who have criticized Mr. Trump for pursuing a peace deal.” Even if expanding Abraham Accords is being proposed largely for show, this gambit illustrates why Trump is unlikely to achieve any lasting peace. The Abraham Accords are immensely popular with the bipartisan foreign policy elite. Although launched under Trump, they were avidly co-opted by the Biden administration. In 2022, Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said, “The Abraham Accords are making the lives of people across your countries more peaceful, more prosperous, more vibrant, more integrated.”

How Trump Got His Tacky Arch Approved

Kate Wagner — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Neoclassical revivalists had to sell their souls. One of the less remarked upon reverberations of Trump’s disastrous rule of this country is that he has turned its architectural critics into exegetes of his sleazy plans for Washington, DC’s built environment. Instead of writing about the burgeoning (and often life-affirming) shifts in today’s architectural culture—from adaptive reuse to beautiful, functional affordable housing—we critics keep getting yanked back into the slopworld of ballrooms, arches, and faux gold leaf. It goes without saying that the proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch (one foot for every year the United States has existed!) is absurd and tacky. Modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it boasts gaudy gilded lettering and a 80-foot cake-topper statue—Trump can’t help but cheat, even on the height of his own precious arch. His McMansionized conception of what is monumental and “historic” is, much like his culinary penchant for McDonald’s itself, one of his most idiosyncratic qualities. The motivations behind Trump’s building frenzy are not exactly mysterious. “We’re building a valuable piece of real estate right back here,” he told attendees of an Easter lunch, gesturing to construction work on his infamous ballroom. “It’s going to be amazing.” Referring to the White House as “real estate” is a bit of parapraxis, letting slip that the executive branch, in more ways than one, is indeed for sale. He is also jonesing to build a kind of knock-off One World Trade Center (but this time, of course, with a hotel) as his presidential library (perfect for a man who probably hasn’t read a book in 30 years), driving home that he is, above all, a developer at heart. His understanding of power derives from this fundamental belief that to control the land is to control the world. As a true son of the 1980s, he believes in spectacle over quality. Arches, ballrooms, even queues for the White House, as though it were the fast-track lane at Disney World—all of these reek of what architecture critic Michael Sorkin warned us about way back when: the “theme-parkification of the American built environment.” Facing his impending 80s, Trump keeps spouting off erratically about his architectural plans. In a bizarre TruthSocial post, he bragged that the ballroom is going to have “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures and Equipment, Protective, Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams” (I should hope so), plus “Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic and Blast-proof Glass.” He clearly views these building projects—these displays of undemocratic and militaristic might—as crucial to his legacy. Those who realize what poor taste it’s all in have little recourse, given the extent of Trump’s capture of the rather complex and elaborate legislative framework that protects the historic built environment of the nation’s capital. In fact, many of them only have themselves to blame. This, more than anything else, is what interests me about the situation: architecture as a form of power. It is a case study in how ideologically invested architectural movements can secure power for themselves—and what can happen when the monkey’s paw curls. Before Trump circumvented or infiltrated them, various DC agencies, each with its own internecine processes, governed how new buildings are erected in the heavily protected historic landscape that forms the iconic backdrop of American power. These agencies and their extensive regulations exist to prevent exactly what is happening now from happening. The hard-right-wing architectural advocacy group the National Civic Arts Society, which wants all that ugly modernism out of public spaces and nought but classical refinement in its place, reportedly played a big role in Trump’s “make federal buildings beautiful again” executive order. Their acolytes now staff the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. Meanwhile, the Commemorative Works Act of 1986, which details a multistep process for authorizing and designing memorial works in DC (such an arch), mandates that all such work be approved by Congress. Oh, well! The White House has its own guidelines set by the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. The director of the National Park Service chairs this committee, which is staffed by federal officials and others selected by the president (many from the Commission of Fine Arts). Facing this total capture, the nation’s usual architectural gatekeeping organizations (such as the American Institute of Architects) can only make statements condemning Trump’s follies. At this point only the courts can step in. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to stop the construction of the ballroom with some success; construction has been paused as of writing. Meanwhile, a group of Vietnam veterans is in the process of suing to stop the building of the arch out of concern that it obstructs the view to Arlington Cemetery. Never has a president been in a better position to alter the shape of the city from which he governs. Similarly, with perhaps the exception of the New Deal, never has a group of architects with an explicit ideology gotten so close to realizing their political vision. This capture comes with a price. As Trump waits out the pause on the ballroom construction, his toadies in the Commission of Fine Arts (including his now-fired ballroom architect, James McCreary) are pretending that their actual vision and opinions on architecture matter. The New York Times reported McCreary remarking of the statues on top of the arch, “I wonder if you need those up there,” and that “[it would be] a better, more Washingtonian design” without them. Similarly, about the proposed lions at the arch’s base: “Work on the lions and find replacements for them…. As I said earlier, they’re not of this continent.” One can easily see how McCreary, with his overtly nativist views, ended up in the position he’s in. However, the Faustian bargain the so-called neoclassical movement within architecture has made with Trump in order to secure access to basically unlimited control over what gets built in the nation’s capital comes with the caveat that they are now beholden to someone bereft of taste. Not only that, they are and will forever be pariahs in their own field. Their complicity in the wanton destruction of DC will all but kill the nigh-50-year project of reviving neoclassicism in architecture. And for all their populist bloviating about speaking to the true aesthetic preferences of the American public, 58 percent of Americans do not approve of Trump’s changes to the White House. Art of the deal indeed.

Aren’t Billionaires People, Too? Yes, but…

Katrina vanden Heuvel — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

When ordinary Americans are forced to skip meals to afford healthcare, it’s vital that the Democratic Party resist retreating from small “d” populist policies. How much has anti-billionaire sentiment pervaded the Democratic Party? Even the billionaires are getting in on the action. In the ultra-competitive primary for California governor, businessman Tom Steyer has sold himself as “the billionaire who wants to tax billionaires.” He has spent much of the campaign touting the plutocrats and corporations who oppose him as a signal of credibility. And he has emphasized his commitment to the Giving Pledge, meaning he and his wife intend to give up most of their money while they’re alive; as he put it, “I will not die a billionaire.” (That makes 342 million of us.) Steyer and his team recognize where the energy can increasingly be found in progressive politics. In a nation reared on Horatio Alger myths of self-made tycoons, 18 percent of Americans see being a billionaire as “morally wrong;” that figure is one in three among young people. Over half of American adults now believe billionaires are a threat to democracy. And as more blue states consider wealth taxes, it’s clear the public is increasingly demanding a reckoning with extreme inequality. Yet right now, the person who may be best positioned to lead the charge against billionaires—in the state where the highest number live—is one of their own. It’s a reflection of a catch-22 that’s long challenged progressives: For the long-term health of democracy, the systems that have allowed the ultra-wealthy to exert unlimited financial influence over politics must be dismantled. But can those systems be toppled without the help of their billionaire beneficiaries? Excessive wealth inequality in the United States isn’t new; we’re not heading into season four of The Gilded Age for nothing. Yet it continues to soar to record highs. The top 1 percent of Americans now hold over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth; in no other industrialized country is that number greater than 28 percent. There are now roughly a thousand billionaires in America, with a collective net worth of around $6.9 trillion. Meanwhile, the median American’s wealth now lags behind their peers’ in countries like Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. No matter how you measure it, the richest Americans are jealously accumulating more wealth every day at the public’s expense. But the hoarders might finally be due for an intervention. As the political analyst and Pitchfork Populism author Bradford Kane has described, America has a long-standing split personality: “rugged individualists on the one side, and communal collectivists on the other.” Over the centuries, the tension between those two groups has boiled over, time and again, into populist movements. Kane argues that in 2016 and 2024, Trump successfully channeled this resentment into a kind of faux populism that empowered himself over the masses. (The true progressive populism of Bernie Sanders also energized broad swaths of the public but faced an uphill battle against the Democratic establishment.) Now, as Trump approaches his final midterm election as a historically unpopular president, he’s dropped the veneer and no longer even pretends to care about the economic struggles of everyday Americans. Progressives, meanwhile, are running and winning with platforms laser-focused on affordability and inequality. In states like California, New York, Washington, and Maine, lawmakers are pushing for new taxes on millionaires, ultra-millionaires, billionaires, and owners of pieds-à-terre. This has led to cries from some oligarchs that such taxes will cause the so-called job creators in liberal havens to flee to DeSantis Country.

An Alternative View of What’s Next After the Trump-Xi Summit

Jake Werner — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Hawkish rhetoric from the national security establishment isn’t grappling with the complex challenges posed by China’s rise. As Donald Trump arrived in Beijing last week for the first visit to China by a US president in almost a decade, it felt hard to remember the spiraling escalation of US-China economic warfare that could have easily ended in a permanent break between the world’s two most powerful countries. After all, it took place last year. So many other crises have kicked off in that intervening 13 months that the world’s most consequential international relationship now seems like an island of stability in a sea of chaos. But in judging the paltry outcomes of Trump’s summit with President Xi Jinping—some nice words and China’s promise to buy American soybeans and airplanes—it’s worth recalling that US-China conflict almost pushed the world into an out-of-control economic crisis last year. And because economic tension has provided cover to a US national security establishment pursuing confrontation with China, mutual economic aggression could have developed fairly rapidly into something more violent. Perhaps, then, it was enough that Trump and Xi agreed to pursue “constructive strategic stability” without offering much idea of what that would mean in practice. Yet the summit also demonstrated how unhealthy the relationship remains. The United States seems to be stuck between two diametrically opposed approaches to China that somehow both manage to exacerbate the pressures driving us toward conflict: unsound peace or unfettered confrontation. The first approach was crassly illustrated by Trump’s entourage of billionaires. Among the oligarchs who accompanied Trump on Air Force One were Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and a dozen of the other richest financiers and tech barons in the country. Trump’s “very first request,” he posted on the way to China, would be asking Xi “to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic.” It was precisely the entangled economic interests of elites in the two countries that, despite persistent tensions, kept the peace for decades before the US-China relationship collapsed starting in 2018. Yet this peace was built on fundamentally unhealthy foundations. The economic growth that enriched well-connected businesses and corrupt politicians in both countries also systematically decimated the power of labor—again in both countries. The outcome was devastating inequality and intense everyday insecurity achieved through the free-market form of globalization that bound the US and China together. Ultimately, symbiotic expansion of market society led to destabilizing populist politics in both countries. In the United States, populism took on an anti-China cast: The dislocations of the globalization era were associated with China because of its outsize role in the system. The American politicians and corporate leaders actually responsible for union-busting and offshoring jobs were happy to play on xenophobia to escape accountability. And in a global economy defined by cutthroat competition, even progressives had difficulty articulating a vision of growth that would benefit workers of all nationalities rather than pitting them against each other. Labor activists and nativists converged on vilifying China. By doubling down on inequality and corruption as the basis for great power peace, Trump could push this animosity deeper. If the capitalists are exacerbating the forces that drove the two countries apart, the militarists are exploiting the resulting discontent to move an agenda with a little popular support. For decades, the US foreign policy establishment saw its mission as orchestrating a global system that would institutionalize American power while privileging US business elites. As that system came undone in the populist passions of the 2010s—while China’s influence grew rapidly—status quo leaders sought to salvage their position by channeling popular anger against their main geopolitical competitor. They redefined China not as a part of their system but as its primary enemy and started to build the institutional and ideological apparatus for great power conflict. Raising the specter of a threatening foreign power, they hoped to reestablish social unity and the legitimacy of the ruling class. The new strategy came together under the first Trump administration, but it was systematized by Jake Sullivan at Biden’s National Security Council. Those officials who brought the US into the Gaza massacre were also committed to international conflict on a far larger scale.

Pierre Guyotat’s Moral Order

R.K. Hegelman — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

The French writer’s fiction engages in a radical egalitarian project aimed at negating the right’s nihilism. Pierre Guyotat has suffered that ambivalent fate haunting all great writers: to become more mythologized than read. Notwithstanding the legends surrounding his first masterpiece, 1967’s Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers—first scrawled on loose scraps, over three months, while in solitary confinement during the Algerian War for “morally corrupting” his fellow French conscripts—there is the brute fact of the text itself: a monstrous catalog of violence and sexual obscenity set during a colonial war in a thinly veiled Algeria (called Ecbatana) that unspools over 400 breathless, largely plotless pages into an apocalyptic prophecy, as immersive as it is unsparing. Guyotat’s next great novel, Eden, Eden, Eden (1970), focalized this delirium into a single 200-page sentence that was banned in France for a decade, albeit with endorsements by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Michel Leiris, and Philippe Sollers that anointed Guyotat as the foremost avant-gardist of his era. Across the following decades, in five more novels, three plays, and a series of memoirs, Guyotat continued to pursue his professed aim of remaking the French language by ripping it apart at the seams of syntax, then phoneme. Writing, for Guyotat, was a task of uncompromising physical intensity: There was The Book (1984), infamously written while masturbating, the manuscript plashed with his semen, and Coma (2006), where writerly monomania drew him into a semi-mystical torpor, starving himself nearly to the point of death. A glance at his last fiction, 2014’s Joyful Animals of Misery—a convulsing morass of gutter French, transliterated Arabic, and typographical abandon—attests that even age could not temper his zeal. Indeed, a prime reason for Guyotat’s relative unknown in the Anglosphere is that translation becomes a progressively moot concept when the original can hardly be said to have been written in French. Guyotat, who died at the age of 80 in 2020, is invariably epithetized as “the last heir to Sade.” He is a latter-day heretic in a tradition that runs from the Marquis’s cold despotism and Goya’s late thrashings, through Lautréamont and Baudelairean Spleen, to Jean Genet, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Kathy Acker. This lineage sees obscenity not as a bratty lashing-out against bourgeois mores but as an ethical program: that the extremities of eroticism or expressions of violence might augur the revelation of a novel moral order that radically renovates our own, so beholden to the sexual cant and staid platitudes that bely its structural violence. This is an eminently political project. In his public life, Guyotat was a vociferous advocate on behalf of veterans, immigrants, and sex workers; his art, meanwhile, was a vision of radical egalitarianism. Idiocy, recently translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty, is Guyotat’s most explicitly political work: his last book before his death and an account of that dark fulcrum of his life and career, his military service in Algeria. Guyotat’s memoirs are not supplements to his novels, but by contextualizing the quasi-cosmic vision of his art within the circumstances of his real life, they clarify that art not as some libertarian fantasy of freedom, but as an aesthetic of subversion. Idiocy proceeds from the friction of these two parallel registers—a biographical narrative of poverty, war, and dissent combined with the portrait of a young artist negotiating his bearings in language and desire—whose superposition of life and art, politics and poetry, form the basis of his aesthetic vision. Idiocy’s first third wallows in Parisian squalor. We first encounter a teenage Guyotat in 1958 sleeping rough under the Pont d’Alma, having run away from school in Lyon for reasons never specified: The book largely evades linear logic—characters sidle in and disappear; events are as summarily picked up in media res as they are left unresolved—embodied above all in its heady style of compounding semicolons and rhetorical questions, drawing us into the unimpeachable present and the uncertainty of lived experience. This chaotic flow enlivens Guyotat’s destitution as he haunts dank hovels and wanders the Parisian night; evades capture by an investigator hired by his father; and consorts with other phantoms of this grimy subalternity—the scabies-ridden Lice Girl, the rent boy Liba the Beautiful. Yet urban indigence is not a prelude to bohemian indulgence. On the one hand, Guyotat lavishes adolescent desire upon long montages of unwashed and exposed flesh, couplings glimpsed askance, genitalia momentarily grazed. Yet his perversion is exclusively voyeuristic, as Guyotat expends pages describing his body aquiver with desire, while nevertheless remaining pointedly aloof, even innocent—indeed, he remains a virgin throughout Idiocy. This intensifies when Guyotat steals money from his widowed father, which he elevates into a kind of ur-transgression: He inflates this petty crime into a mythological Fall, “older than original sin…every tragedy of the world, everything I see before me at this instant…marked by my theft.” Yet this breach of paternal authority does not liberate him from morality but instead tightens its bonds, afflicting him with an intense shame that impinges on his very sense of self, where the “attempt to find a vantage point upon myself…collapses as my inner eye approaches the moment of the theft.” Transgression precipitates not the superman but the subhuman, evicted from all sense of identity, time, and “humanity…from which I am excluded.” This prostration, however, is not a ploy for forgiveness; Guyotat knows that he is guilty. Adamant that “no remorse, no punishment can abolish the offense,” he refuses even “Christ, too inclined to forgive when my shoulder would resist his pierced hand.” But he is no blasphemer, at least in his telling: Guyotat speaks reverentially of God throughout Idiocy and has claimed that if he were not a writer, he would have been a priest. Like many heretics, his infractions are perpetrated in fidelity to a higher principle proscribed only by the worldly machinations of orthodoxy. Elsewhere, this recasts his obscenities as articles of antinomian faith: “Does God demand of the human, as proof of his submission to Him, that he profane what is purest in this world?” And here he does not reject grace—a mortal sin—but debases himself so deeply as to preclude it. His crisis throws him into a fugue state, starved and half-delirious, eventually ending up in a church where he is nursed back to health. Rather than casting off morality, Guyotat sees a possibility of escape in the opposite direction: that by masochistically making himself unworthy even of judgment, he might find exemption from the law—“my theft is beyond these two authorities: God himself, the Creator, cannot unbind me from this theft, tighten the cord of my life again.” He never attains this exemption, however, his dark night of the soul ending only when his older brother, recently returned from service in Algeria, laughs his guilt off as trivial. This mockery marks Guyotat’s induction into the nightmare of history: What are the persecutions of petit-bourgeois morality against the brutality of colonial war? Soon conscripted himself, he must modulate the internal ethical drama of the book’s first part—his intimation that freedom lies not in transcendence but in subaltern humility—into concrete praxis when set against the disciplinary institutions of the army and prison, the racism of colonial occupation, and the horrors of war.

Searching for Solidarity at the Train Station

Sara Krolewski — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Mattia Filice’s Driver, a poetic novel about train conductors in France, offers an empathetic vision of working for the public. At the end of Émile Zola’s 1890 novel La Bête humaine, a runaway train careens through the night, an “escaped monster” of astonishing force that advances toward “the future in spite of all, heedless of the blood that might be spilt.” Zola’s was one of the first novels to seriously consider the social and cultural ramifications of the train, which had yanked Europe into the industrial age and facilitated a great migration of workers from the country to the city. With this had come profound anxiety about the perils of modernity, incarnate in the hulking machines now roaring across the continent. What Zola saw in the train remains relevant: If anything, we have only become more apprehensive about our reliance on unfeeling technology—and the possibility that we might lose something of ourselves in the headlong race toward an optimized future. In Europe, the railway still reigns as a mode of transport: More than twice as many people in France alone travel by train each year as in America. But this is more than just evidence of a well-maintained intranational infrastructure. The railways that crisscross the continent are seen as a birthright and a site of contestation for the fragile social democracy that knits together much of Europe. An outsider might confuse the SNCF, the state-owned company that operates regional train service in France, for an entire branch of the French government, so omnipresent it is in the daily lives of millions, and so dispositive of national disorder. Persistent battles over wages and pensions lead to regular railway strikes—as much a part of the annual calendar as Paris Saint-Germain matches—that snarl the country’s matrices of commerce. Railway workers (or chéminots) are leading figures in the perennial struggle for workers’ rights, but also objects of misplaced ire: deemed tyrannical by the disgruntled commuters and scheming bosses for whom their demands for dignity are merely inconvenient, yet relied upon to to keep a nation smoothly functioning. It is this presumption of authority—and the suggestion of danger—that attracts the anonymous narrator of Mattia Filice’s verse novel, Driver (translated by Jacques Houis), to his calling. Waiting for a commuter train delayed by a storm, he is suddenly struck by the driver’s control of quotidian rhythms and the appealingly transient, adrenalized nature of his work: “no office or sedentary living.” A film projectionist by training, the narrator admits he has only “a rough idea” of who a driver might be—a cowboy of sorts, “a deep voice a cocky attitude / a guy who stands up for himself.” But this vague impression is motivation enough for him to undertake a series of grueling interviews and psychological tests, and to agree to a militant course of training with the SNCF, cloaked here in a secretive epithet: “the Company.” The narrator and his fellow trainees “are evaluated 24-7 / observed scrutinized peeled / like the orange” a colleague eats every morning. They attempt to memorize the 12,000 technical terms contained in their manuals, and to prove to the watchful Company that they won’t succumb to such intolerable afflictions as fatigue or nerves. So much for our John Wayne of the rails: Bruised from his hazing, he sees that what he has been initiated into is “an apprenticeship in kowtowing.” The driver, he quickly realizes, is a “hybrid creature,” one “invested with both power and submission.” His colleague puts it more simply: “You don’t thank an orange / You squeeze it.” The trains they operate are heirlooms from a bygone age of European prowess, to be defended and maintained with prideful care. But the drivers themselves are rendered nearly invisible to the public they serve. Sequestered in their train cabs—and asked to apply a kind of monastic focus to their work—they are the thankless guardians of a crucial institution, and Driver sets out to uncover the unique pressures of their role. But it also charts the enervating and even corrosive nature of work itself—and the means of resistance, however partial, that might be available to all of us. Like his narrator, Filice began driving SNCF trains in the early 2000s, and he started to write about his life as a driver around the same time. Writing, he has said, was “an outlet, a way to express myself when my company didn’t necessarily allow me to.” Indeed, Driver unfurls with a kind of breathless, confessional intensity, freed from the constraints that the Company places on language. Drivers must master a dense lexicon, its colorless phrases designed to be dutifully intoned: “I obey the signal passively and immediately / I perform a one-bar decrease and watch the manometers.” For Filice’s narrator, these locutions “form a chain and enchain the imagination,” forcing him to seek “a sensitive refuge” in the poetry he reads between training sessions. He also finds relief in the easy patter of his colleagues, ”a hodgepodge of society” from both the French metropole and its former colonies. Snatches of Bambara and Moroccan Arabic whiz by, followed by fragments of Rimbaud and Apollinaire. Hundreds of other dashed-off references suggest a cultural consciousness oversaturated by globalism—most of Filice’s touchstones are from the Anglophone world, from Star Wars to Kendrick Lamar—and geopolitical unrest: One Company manager is distracted, mid-drubbing of a trainee, by news of the Madrid train bombings. Crude technical jargon is also repurposed, somewhat defiantly, into figurative language. A particularly demanding trainer has “eyes shaped like smoothing coils”; an unusually brawny driver, “a world class Bro,” is “thick as a catenary support.” One student driver who wakes up late for the day’s session—a mortal sin in this world of rigid timetables—puts a “bridge rectifier in his voice / to seem serene” when he asks a Company functionary where his classmates have gone. Drivers are prone to merge with their environs, so thoroughly have they absorbed their training: Regarding one veteran driver, the narrator notices that the “the furrows of the tracks have formed” on his face. And if all of this might not be enough to juggle, Filice often indulges in the mythic register, which provides a narrative blueprint, laying out the Manichean terms of engagement. The novice drivers are vying to become “knights” and questing for a “Grail” (a sheet of paper authorizing them to control a specific route), while also revolting against an intractable “lord” (management) who fights “battles in the conference room.” (In a novel full of stylistic flourishes, this one works much less successfully.) Clearly, Filice means to overwhelm—to simulate, by way of a propulsive, cacophonous style, the head-spinning experience of commanding a 1,800-ton “metallic serpent.” One lurches, dizzied, from one stanza to the next, searching for the stability of a familiar reference, an unfractured sentence. Amid the deluge, certain unsettling details flash into focus, as when the narrator learns that the “absolute record” for fatal incidents experienced by one (still-active) driver is 16. “He took my share,” the narrator assures himself, a little hysterically. “No doubt about it. It’s settled. I settled it.” Or when one of those very incidents appears in frame, summarized with a swift, grim precision: A young woman uses a temporary walkway to exit a station in Normandy and “looks at the exact moment, both quick and cruel, when the alignment between the train leaving and the train arriving at 147 kilometers an hour produces a blind spot.” (The SNCF was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter in her death, having failed to adequately warn pedestrians of the danger posed by crossing—or to protect the driver who tried in vain to alert her.) This episode is one of many in the book that illustrate a certain disconnect between the political rhetoric that has long surrounded Europe’s nationalized rail networks and the reality of their management today. The trains, it’s often suggested, belong to and benefit the people; they complement the robust social protections—universal healthcare, retirement schemes—that underpin European life. But decades of neoliberal policy have chipped away at these welfare states, undermined unions, and prodded public companies into behaving more like private ones—which is why Filice’s narrator finds himself working for a Company stacked with “mass-produced” managers who possess the “capacity to be compassionate” to workers’ grievances but blithely rule out the possibility of actual reform. The result is a system that does not always privilege the human, contrary to its claims. Faced with one irksome situation after another—a fatality here, a malfunction there—the Company might produce a terse statement or gin up an investigation to locate a scapegoat. As the narrator observes, “it’s not in the Company’s interest / for us to die on the job / it’s a stain.” And though he is not immediately given to striking—fretting that “victory is out of reach”—he begins to grasp the purpose of collective confrontation: for these workers to make themselves starkly visible to a Company that would rather not deal with them at all. As Filice’s narrator earns his stripes and settles into his work for the Company, he encounters yet another alien vocabulary: the invective and doublespeak his bosses use to goad their subordinates into accepting ever more precarious conditions, and to root out dissidence before it flowers. These are “slippery words—smooth as a Photoshopped image meant to make scrollers salivate”; they are “instant words, syrupy, limp, and gelatinous words.” The drivers are told that they are “the last link in the chain”—the vital, galvanizing component—but also that they should stop “acting like spoiled brats falling out of love” with their “toys”: “we should even be happy about our situation.” That means a life lived in perpetual arrears, as the age of retirement rises. (“When I joined the company / I had thirty-two years left / Now I have thirty-four,” a chéminot laments.) To the Company’s representatives, to strike is to self-flatter, to dare to consider oneself above parsimony. “If it’s such a chore for them they should say so,” one mandarin sniffs at the picket line. “There are those who do public service and those who undo it.”

The Stupid Economy

Chris Lehmann — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Trump promised voters revitalization and growth. But he doesn’t know the first thing about economics. Remember the Golden Age? That was the main pitch behind Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign: On his return, he’d tame the inflationary legacy of the Biden White House, institute a new regime of tariffs to strengthen America’s standing in the global economy, pass yet more tax cuts for the wealthy, preside over a newly resurgent manufacturing sector and investment economy, and revive America’s hallowed extractive industries of oil and coal while mothballing federal subsidies for solar and wind energy. Cut to a year and a half into his second term, and Trump has accomplished almost nothing in his promised suite of Golden Age breakthroughs. Yes, there were sweeping tax cuts in his 2025 taxation and spending bill, but they have produced no real broadly distributed economic growth; the labor economy has stalled, and manufacturing continues to decline in a service-dominated US economy. Even before the Supreme Court found them unconstitutional, Trump’s tariffs yielded little more than higher retail prices for consumers. And his feckless war of choice with Iran has sent the costs of energy, food, and other mainstay products skyrocketing. Trump’s dismal economic record is more than an indictment of his policy agenda: It goes to the heart of the bogus public image he’s lovingly cultivated during his tour through American celebrity culture—the fable that he’s a Promethean business genius whose unerring instinct for exploiting market opportunities has vastly improved both his fortune and the world surrounding him. This was the origin story that launched Trump onto the bestseller lists with The Art of the Deal, landed him in the Rolodexes of a generation of TV bookers and producers, and fueled his mythic political image as an omnicompetent DC outsider who could “fix” all of the many ills besieging our once-mighty businessman’s republic. It was also complete **** from the word go. Trump’s fortune, like that of many self-aggrandizing business titans, was built on his father’s wealth—amassed in his case through a racist New York real-estate empire. Trump’s initial run of Manhattan development projects became profitable through the exploitation of tax abatements and other government subsidies; and in emulation of his political mentor Roy Cohn, Trump further padded his bottom line by stiffing vendors and contractors on an epic scale. The mediagenic image of Trump as a business wizard was rudely upended in the 1990s when his Atlantic City casinos flatlined, joining his airline and his United States Football League franchise in the dustbin of Trump-branded properties. Before the decade was out, the world-shaking dealmaker had filed for bankruptcy six times over. You’d think that anyone too clueless to turn a profit from a chain of casinos would have his business-genius credentials promptly retired. But Trump overcame the stigma of bankruptcy the same way he became a national real-estate brand in the first place—with massive subventions of public funds and family cash to leverage his debts. That he no longer owned anything capable of accruing actual economic value no longer mattered; Trump doggedly shilled out his name for licensing fees on a seemingly endless regress of aspirationally gilded consumer items, from vodka and health supplements to motivational lectures and his fraudulent eponymous university. As the New Yorker scribe Mark Singer wrote of this echt-American transformation in a 1997 profile, “Trump’s vaunted art of the deal has given way to the art of ‘image ownership.’” It was the NBC producer Mark Burnett who lifted Trump out of this welter of self-branding squalor by tapping him as the host of The Apprentice in the early aughts. The hit show was in many ways the perfect self-referenced gloss on Trump’s tour as a market demigod: He was pretending to be the boss on TV of a legion of fame-hungry cosplayers miming their own version of savvy market prowess for the cameras. The only genuine product on offer in the whole Kabuki spectacle was celebrity. Thus, when Trump makes a harried show of walking back his threats to commit more war crimes in Iran in order to calm the restive spirit of the stock market, it’s crucial to understand that this prime mover of the American political economy literally has no idea what he’s doing. The same goes for Trump’s fallacious zero-sum understanding of how tariffs and trade balances work. Trump’s fundamental economic illiteracy appears to be grounded in a breakdown of basic arithmetic. He’s often announcing his determination to send drug prices plunging by as much as 1,500 percent; he once vowed that he’d ensure the price of the weight-loss treatment Wegovy would plummet “from more than $1,300 to $199, a 578 percent difference.” There’s also strong circumstantial evidence that the man doesn’t understand what a trillion is—wildly inflating the estimated cost of last fall’s government shutdown by a factor of 100, while adding an additional trillion to his already bogus assessment of $2 trillion in estimated tariff revenues in the space of day, fueled by nothing more than MAGA-branded hopium. Many of Trump’s opponents cite these frequent numerical face-plants as evidence that the president of the United States is simply an oaf, but the truth here is more troubling. Trump’s understanding of numbers, like his understanding of the economy, isn’t steeped in rank ignorance so much as in the business pieties of positive thinking. That’s why the most revealing of Trump’s many court actions was his suit against his biographer Timothy O’Brien, for claiming that the ’80s-bred brand hustler was not, as he perpetually claimed, an actual billionaire. In his deposition for the suit, Trump argued that he was a billionaire for the simple reason that, on most days, he felt like one: “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with my feelings…. Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day.” The world is now captive in much the same way to Donald Trump’s ever-changing moods—only these days, instead of suing his way out of its obdurate unwillingness to play along, he’s sending the message with bombs.

GLP-1s and the Limits of Knowing Better

Grace Ginsburg — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

I agreed with every political argument against weight-loss drugs. I took them anyway. Strega Nona is an illustrated children’s book about an Italian witch with a magic pasta pot. One day, a young neighborhood deviant named Big Anthony learns the spells required to turn on the pot and accidentally makes so much pasta that he floods and destroys the village. His punishment is being forced to eat it all, which is supposed to be a terrible curse. Both then and now, however, this story just makes me jealous. I first read Strega Nona when I was 9 years old, and unlimited spaghetti was the thing I wanted most, as well as the thing I most needed to avoid. I love pasta to a ridiculous extent—I love how much bite it has, how it’s inherently rich and sweet and delicious and hefty even when served plain. It is impossible to know, though, whether I love it for its extraordinary taste and texture or if it’s a love born out of scarcity. I can never remember eating pasta without feeling as though I were doing something wrong. When I was a kid, my parents were terrified that I was fat and made their concerns clear. Food obsession runs in the family. My parents’ parents—both pairs—are also fixated on weight: I have never seen my maternal grandmother eat dinner, and her sister died of anorexia in her 50s. My dad’s parents drink only low-sugar wine. My parents always said their concern was for my health or, in my teens, my “body image”—a curious phrase, since worrying about someone else’s body image implies they must already be ashamed of it. And I was definitely a chubby kid. I’ve been approximately 30 percent fatter than I should have been—according to a handful of doctors, pseudoscientific BMI calculators, and the imprinting of modern Western culture—since I was 9. Still, it was obvious that my parents were terrified not about my diet, or my “body image,” but about my fatness. My sister, on the other hand, has always had extremely low (11 percent) body fat and eats 3,600 calories a day—1,200 of which are usually, say, Gushers—but instead of giving her the “eat less and slower” look in front of family friends at the dinner table, humiliating her as they did me, they would just laugh. But no one laughed when I ate sugar. My babysitter once pried my jaws open to see if I had any chocolate chips in there. It should be obvious by now that I have never had an intuitive, “natural” relationship to food, hunger, and fullness. My desire to eat always begot restriction, which begot desire, which begot more restriction. In the darkness of my parents’ kitchen, I made pasta for myself like Big Anthony—secretly, late at night. I was so paranoid they would find out that I made stove-popped popcorn directly afterward just to mask the smell, even though plain pasta is, for all intents and purposes, odorless. When your metabolism doesn’t operate at lightning speed, and your first understanding of your body is that it is somehow wrong and that what you eat should be carefully considered so as not to exacerbate your fatness, and you’ve begun to learn explicitly and implicitly that thin equals pretty, and you are an adolescent girl who wants to be pretty, because it’s the most important thing in the world—when all of this is true, food and exercise become all you think about. My general sexual invisibility for a lot of my teen and young-adult life was verifiable evidence that any whiff of fatness was enough to render me undesirable. I couldn’t, and still can’t, shake off the fact that skinny girls with plain faces and so-so personalities will almost always get male attention more easily than fat girls who are gorgeous and interesting. I never learned how to like, or even feel neutral about, my body. I have been in a constant war with it my entire life, squinting and posing and contorting in front of the mirror to avoid confronting the reality that I was a little fatter than I wanted to be, and I couldn’t think my way to feeling sexy the way all of the think pieces in women’s magazines told me I could or should be able to do. I couldn’t attempt weight loss without driving myself to insanity, unable to even go for a walk without thinking about how one mile would be 100 calories burned. That changed a little over a year ago. In January of 2025, I started using an off-brand compound of semaglutide, a GLP-1—cheap Ozempic. At the time, I was 24, single, the most depressed I had ever been, unemployed, spending my days watching Vanderpump Rules and playing Fruit Merge, an iPhone game where you combine fruits to make increasingly larger fruits. And devastatingly, disgustingly, my primary concern was what would happen if, on top of all of that, I also gained weight. I couldn’t handle that possibility, and I didn’t have the internal wherewithal to expend any emotional energy forcing myself to hit any sort of step goal; I couldn’t even get out of bed. I knew, largely due to my Instagram algorithm, that off-brand GLP-1s were becoming more widely accessible, and using them was a silver bullet at a time when nothing except maybe benzodiazepines would make me feel as good as losing 20 pounds. After spending a lot of time on Reddit, I came across Beauty With Bubbly—a medspa based in Northfield, Illinois—and requested a virtual consultation for off-brand GLP-1. The various direct-to-consumer companies that offer GLP-1s, along with a host of other peptides, have websites with portals, sans-serif fonts, and an interface that is inherently comforting to young people because it looks and feels native to an iPhone. Beauty With Bubbly’s website, on the other hand, was reminiscent of the early 2010s Internet: It was janky, with small white text over a black background, and I knew that if I called the number, I would immediately be connected to a real person and not a robot.

The American Revolution Was a Mistake

Elie Mystal — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

In this week’s Elie v. US, our justice correspondent dissects Ken Burns’s American Revolution documentary. Plus: the DNC’s autopsy report. The editorial board of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post dedicated an entire editorial over the weekend to criticizing Supreme Court reform and expansion. The piece is titled “The Court Packing Comeback,” which might make you think it will offer a balanced look at the surging popularity of court-expansion proposals, but the URL tells you what the editorial board is really after. It reads: “kamala-harriss-mindless-flirtation-with-court-packing.” The article isn’t really about Harris, beyond the fact that she recently said that there are “no bad ideas” when it comes to court reform. The fact that the editorial board used that offhand comment to go full sexism—Why is Harris’s statement “mindless”? How is she “flirting”?—tells me they’re scared that court reform is gaining in popularity. Beyond this base and gross sexism, the editorial board marshals, dare I say, mindless tripe to defend the current court set-up. Here’s the basic premise: “No matter how much someone disagrees with recent decisions by the high court, threatening to subordinate judicial independence to the whims of a political party befits a banana republic. Turning the court into a partisan plaything would destroy one of America’s strongest bulwarks against tyranny.” Let’s do a close read: “No matter how much someone disagrees” is a phrase intended to minimize the horror of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. I will stipulate that for your average cis-hetero white Washington Post editorial writer, the court’s decisions are, at worst, disagreeable. But for many of us, these decisions are matters of life and death. They certainly are for the trans people the Supreme Court is trying to erase. And for the women who live in states where their lives cease to matter the second they get pregnant. And while political representation is not necessarily a life-or-death issue, the demolition of the Voting Rights Act and the right of Black people to participate equally in the process of democratic self-government cannot be dismissed as a mere matter of disagreement. “Threatening to subordinate judicial independence to the whims of a political party befits a banana republic.” First of all, the current court is subject to the whims of a political party, the Republican Party. The Post’s editorial writers just happen to like it that way. And second, most functional democracies have high courts that are far less powerful than ours. Having nine unelected judges-for-life determine which laws we’re allowed to have is antidemocratic. Actual republics, banana or otherwise, do not cede the functions of democracy to unaccountable people with lifetime appointments. “Turning the court into a partisan plaything” is what Senator Mitch McConnell did. Court reform is a way to undo that, thanks for asking. “[O]ne of America’s strongest bulwarks against tyranny.” Is it, though? Is the Supreme Court a “bulwark” against tyranny? From where I sit, I see a litany of examples of American tyranny that were supported by the court. Slavery, segregation, internment of Japanese Americans—all of these atrocities came with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval. Police violence, gun violence, and ecological destruction all flourish in this country because of what the Supreme Court has allowed. More often than not, the Supreme Court is a bulwark against progress. After this inauspicious set-up, the editorial goes on to make all the usual arguments against court reform: It decries “tribalism,” agonizes about the possibility of tit-for-tat expansion, and recasts Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt at court-packing as a “failure,” even though the mere threat of it helped FDR get his New Deal policies through a hostile Supreme Court. It all boils down to this: The Washington Post editorial board thinks the current Supreme Court is working just fine and doesn’t want anybody to change it. And they’re not wholly wrong about the first part: The current Supreme Court is working just fine—for The Washington Post and the moneyed interests it now represents. So let me put it like this: If Jeff Bezos doesn’t want the Supreme Court to be reformed, that should be a sufficient reason for the rest of us to be in favor of it. The Bad and the Ugly The Department of Justice has filed an indictment against Raúl Castro, former president of Cuba, over the downing of civilian airplanes over international waters while he was defense secretary. The indictment is the usual “lawfare” the Trump administration carries out against non-whites the world over, but I want Democrats to notice something: Castro is being indicted for an event that took place when he was the defense minister. If Trump can do that to Castro, our defense secretary, other countries can certainly indict Pete Hegseth for his war crimes. Hegseth shouldn’t be able to step foot outside this country without winding up in The Hague for the rest of his life. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche continued his Better Call Saul impression this week when he apparently lied, under oath, about meeting with victims of Jeffrey Epstein. (He claimed he did, when he absolutely did not.) Blanche is another Trumper who should be prosecuted for his crimes when this is all over. I hope Jack Smith is keeping a list. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia sued the Department of Education for new restrictions it placed on loans for students attending professional schools. It appears Linda McMahon doesn’t think we need nurses. As clear as I can tell, McMahon hasn’t committed any crimes, so instead of prosecuting her I vote to set her adrift—put her on an ice floe while her students assure her that climate change isn’t real and she should be fine—when she is out of power. Jeff Bezos thinks that the bottom 50 percent of wage earners shouldn’t pay any taxes. I think Jeff Bezos should pay his workers a living wage. We are not the same. Waymo, the driverless taxi company, suspended service in Atlanta because its cars don’t know how to deal with flooding. A similar thing recently happened in San Antonio, and the company has also issued a general recall because its taxis keep driving into water. The idea of AI being flummoxed by the very climate change AI is helping stoke feels like a plot point in a Michael Crichton novel. Inspired Takes For The Nation, Kali Holloway dives into the new trend among always-online white supremacists: livestreaming their harassment of Black people with racial slurs and insults while threatening to shoot them. Holloway rightly points out that, while some people will see this as a new evil brought about by social media, Black people know this is an old evil brought about by white supremacy. Speaking of undesirable men, there’s a really interesting article from Planet Money about how there’s a shortage of economically stable men in today’s “marriage market.” It details how college-educated women are marrying men who lack a college education but are nonetheless doing well for themselves, leaving almost nothing left over for women without a college education who are increasingly choosing to parent on their own. Not gonna lie, the “marriage market” article sent me down a rabbit hole and, well, I ended up at Playboy—just for the articles, I swear! The piece that caught my attention was fascinating because it explored the case of undesirable rich men. It concluded that billionaires are so interpersonally odious as to be “unfuckable,” with the result that only rich women who are used to and complicit in their odious behavior want to have sex with them. These two articles led me to conclude that “nice guys” do not actually “finish last” (my editor points out that this is because guys, in general, rarely finish last) and the obsession with the “male loneliness epidemic” is just about granting victimhood status to assholes. Worst Argument of the Week On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee released its “autopsy” of the 2024 election—but don’t get too excited: The DNC has its head so far up its ass that we now need an autopsy for the autopsy. DNC Chair Ken Martin initially said he wasn’t going to release the report, then changed course as people, including Kamala Harris herself, demanded its release. Then, it released a report that was full of errors—like, it literally gets people’s names and positions wrong and cites figures that are provably incorrect.In addition to the report, Martin put out a statement. This paragraph stings: I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it. But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it—in its entirety, unedited and unabridged—with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified. It’s the most “I’m not a member of an organized political party—I’m a Democrat” moment we’ve encountered in a while. I could end this week’s “worst argument” section here. Martin’s “I put out a shambolic report riddled with errors that I am not proud of” is a terrible look. So, for that matter, is “Ken Martin should be the head of the DNC.” Martin is so obviously bad at his job that he should be playing for the Mets. Still, I’m not going to end this section on Martin, because there is one thing that’s even worse about the DNC report—and that is what is not in it: any mention of Gaza. Somehow, the Democratic Party did a 192-page review of what went wrong in 2024, and its response to the genocide in Gaza didn’t rate a single mention. I don’t know how you do that. I mean, I guess I do know because I know how cowardice and complicity translate into better jobs and power within the Democratic Party. But even for an establishment from which I expect so little, the decision to ignore Gaza really shocks the conscience. This report gives me no hope for the future. How can the party learn lessons when it won’t even acknowledge facts? I’m not normally one of the guys who thinks that the Democratic Party needs to be burned to the ground so that we might build something better from its ashes. But in moments like these, it’s hard for me to argue that anything could be worse than the current Democrats. …Except, of course, for the current Republicans. What I WroteDid you hear about the $1.8 billion white-grievance slush fund Trump created? I wrote about it. And I also urged Democrats to use it as a model for future reparations to those who have been victimized by the Trump regime. In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos I finally got around to watching the Ken Burns documentary The American Revolution, which came out in November. I had been avoiding it because, while I love Burns’s work, I wasn’t in the mood for a hagiography of this country’s founders. I’ve watched every one of his films, multiple times, and I know how he deals with atrocities. I don’t think it’s fair to say he sanitizes or whitewashes them, but he tends to put them off to the side. In his series The Vietnam War, for instance, My Lai gets about as much screen time as Jane Fonda. In his World War II documentary, The War, the Holocaust doesn’t happen until American troops are pushing into Germany. I understand this style of filmmaking: He’s trying to tell a story from 30,000 feet, and focusing too granularly on the atrocities would overpower the rest of the narrative. You shouldn’t watch his Civil War documentary for a historical account of American chattel slavery; that’s not the point of that show. And, in fairness, you don’t need to understand slavery to understand how Robert E. Lee screwed up at Gettysburg. Still, despite my initial reluctance, I finally watched the American Revolution series because, as we hurtle toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I wanted to refamiliarize myself with what most people have been taught. The American Revolution was, to my mind, one of the most hypocritical wars ever fought. It saw slaveholding whites demanding their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while running an economy based on human bondage—and poor, landless whites fighting so that they might one day steal land from Native Americans. The level of intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the project is something I’ve been aware of since I was old enough to memorize the dates of the battles. The film does surface all of these hypocrisies. It rightly characterizes George Washington as an inveterate slaveholder and Indian killer—and also the only person holding the revolutionary army (and thus the entire fledgling country) together. But, as I feared, it also largely lets the founders off the hook. Their disgusting treatment of enslaved Africans and Indigenous Americans is a side plot in the larger story about fighting the British. Those Brits, however, get an interesting treatment in this film. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the United States’s founding, but I don’t think I’ve been exposed to a more evenhanded treatment of the British perspective during the Revolutionary War. Burns was able to show me how the British thought about the uprising, and how the 13 colonies were, to their mind, small potatoes, compared to their incredibly lucrative slave-powered colonies in the Caribbean. It’s hard to imagine that Black people and Native Americans would have been better off if the British had won the war, but there’s no way they would have been worse off. The founding generation had an insatiable appetite for land—and for the enslaved people to work those lands. Once they were freed from England’s shackles, they unleashed a terror of genocide and suffering across the entire continent. All of which is to say, I left the documentary as I leave any contact with the history of the United States’s founding: firm in my belief that calcifying American constitutional law in the “original intent” of these slack-jawed, slaveholding, racist, sexist, genocidal, backwoods mouthbreathers is stupid. I reject orignalism in its entirety. *** If you enjoyed this installment of Elie v. U.S., click here to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday.

Why Losing Colbert Hurts So Much

Ben Schwartz — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Trump would have all his comedian critics fired if he could. But Colbert represents a particular loss. Last night, Stephen Colbert of CBS’s The Late Show joined a growing list of critics of President Trump who lost their jobs this week. Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost his primary for defying Trump on the release of the Epstein files. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his primary for voting to impeach President Trump in 2021. And Stephen Colbert lost his show for the far worse crime, the unforgivable crime, in Trump’s eyes, of laughing at him. Of the three, I’ll miss one of them. Eleven months ago, as the Ellison family sought final approval from Trump’s FCC to buy Viacom-Paramount, which then owned CBS, it was announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was to be canceled on May 21, 2026. CBS argued that even with high ratings, Colbert’s show was too expensive to make money for the network. Still, the timing of the announcement, alongside the FCC meeting, the $16 million 60 Minutes settlement paid to Trump, and David Ellison’s hiring The Free Press’s conservative editor and co-owner Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News, sent a strong signal that the Ellisons offered Colbert up to appease Trump. Of the late-night comedians, whether on weekdays or on Saturday Night Live, Colbert is hardly President Trump’s harshest critic. His jokes are not harder, meaner, or more piercing than Jimmy Kimmel’s or those on SNL’s Weekend Update. This week, Colbert’s monologue included a dissection of the absurd “negotiation” between Trump and his own IRS for the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. The Late Show did it with a series of clips from seemingly dozens of Trump interviews stitched together to create a “negotiation” to give himself that amount. It illustrated the brazen corruption of the fund in a clear and funny way, but it can’t be said to have had the viciousness of a South Park scene showing Trump nude. It can’t be said to have infuriated the Trumps, like Kimmel’s recent joke about how lately Melania Trump has “the glow of an expectant widow.” Also by Ben Schwartz Back when Colbert played his alter ego—Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report—he was a little more cutting. Then he played a spot-on parody of a right-wing Fox News host modeled in part on Bill O’Reilly. Colbert’s greatest moment in that era still remains his 2006 face-to-face monologue with then-President George W. Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That night, he presented himself as George W. Bush’s biggest fan, there to celebrate Bush and commiserate with his hero that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Twenty years ago was another world. One where a president could sit for a dressing down by a comedian and pretend to have fun. The president we have now demands that a comedian like Colbert be fired for his transgressions and Kimmel, too, in the wake of his joke on Trump’s insincere public grieving over Charlie Kirk’s killing. They suspended Kimmel, one thinks, only because, in the aftermath of the announcement of Colbert’s firing, public outrage over Trump’s silencing another comic led ABC to back off. So why Colbert? Colbert is the one comedian critic that Trump could get rid of because the new owners of CBS were willing to sell out their own talent to clinch their deal—as they did their news division. Trump would have all his critics fired if he could. What sets Colbert apart is what made him so unique for these times. More than any of his contemporaries, Colbert is openly philosophical about the purpose of his humor, and that philosophy is what makes him so vital to the moment. As he told James Kaplan in 2007 in Parade magazine, “Not living in fear is a great gift because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.” As Colbert told Playboy’s Eric Spitznagel in 2012, “Fear is an attempt to impose tyranny over someone’s mind. It’s an act of oppression.” Defusing that fear at the end of our day is what Colbert’s show tried to do. After his opening monologue, often laying into Trump, Colbert generally spent the rest of the show in an uplifting mood with his guests and comedy pieces. The Late Show band itself was called The Joy Machine. A bit twee? A bit corny? Yes, but Colbert’s show was meant as an antidote for the day’s Trump news, an attempt to disarm it, not out-snark it. No president in American history has used fear on the American public like President Trump. Fear keeps the Republican Party in line, although of late some do seem to fear losing their jobs more than they fear Trump. Trump threatens Iran, Greenland, TV networks—his threats alone often get him what he wants. It’s how Trump rules, and no matter how many times his threats prove to be empty or he himself backs down, every once in a while it works, and so we lost Colbert. Colbert’s final weeks brought some big-name guest stars to the program: President Obama, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, and last night’s sole interview, Sir Paul McCartney. The last shows have been peppered with cameos, featuring old friends from Jon Stewart and Amy Sedaris to Robert De Niro and Neil de Grasse-Tyson and Tig Notaro. A lot of it felt random. Who are these people to Colbert? He did not bother to explain. As Colbert prepared to sign off, his most interesting show, and most touching, was Monday’s “The Worst of The Late Show.” In that, he brought up several key writers and designers from his staff who got to present favorite bits of theirs that had been cut over the preceding 11 years. Were they overlooked gems, bad calls by Colbert? No, he was right about most of them. That wasn’t the point so much as the chance for Colbert to give them a moment to shine and say goodbye to his coworkers. Shows get canceled. Hosts get replaced. This matters so much because Trump made it happen, not because it wasn’t going to eventually happen. Today, few people can quote Lenny Bruce, but we remember that he was censored and thrown in jail for telling jokes powerful people did not like. Few can quote The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS from the 1960s and ’70s, but we remember that they were canceled for telling jokes powerful people did not like. Most of Colbert’s jokes about Trump are already forgotten with yesterday’s news, but Trump has assured Colbert a permanent spot in the pop-culture memory by canceling him. Trump has made sure that Colbert will be remembered as a comic who spoke truth to power, and that Trump will be remembered as a power that could not handle his truth.

Why the Park Slope Food Coop’s BDS Battle Is So Important

Tariq Kenney-Shawa — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Organizers trying to get the iconic store to ban Israeli goods believe in the power of tangible collective action at a moment when doing so feels increasingly difficult. Ask anyone these days, and they’ll probably agree that we’re living in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Wars in Iran and Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, a climate emergency rearing its head across the globe, and creeping inflation making more and more of life feel out of reach—and all the while, AI is churning out an endless flood of disorienting slop and threatens to render many of our careers obsolete. It can be easy to feel helpless, like we have no control over the tides of change that are leaving us in the dust. But even amid this atmosphere of tumult, people continue searching for places to exercise their own political agency and cultivate democratic power. And one place that search is playing out is in the aisles of the Park Slope Food Coop, a member-owned neighborhood grocery store in Brooklyn. This coming Tuesday, the coop is holding a series of crucial votes about an issue that has dogged it for years: whether or not to boycott Israeli products in protest of Israel’s ongoing policies of apartheid and genocide. For the members of Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine (PSFC4Palestine) who have organized around this issue for years, the campaign is about more than just holding Israel accountable. It is also about translating widespread moral outrage and a longing for democratic community into tangible collective action at a moment when doing so feels increasingly difficult. And it could serve as a model for those who continue to feel as if they are careening toward a less democratic future. The Park Slope Food Coop has never been just a grocery store. Since its founding in 1973, it has grown into an actual democratic institution with political responsibilities. The coop’s 16,700 members each volunteer to work a two-hour-and-45-minute shift every six weeks in exchange for discounted groceries and a vote on store policies. And for many coop members, the opportunity to collectively decide everything from what type of music should be played in the store to whether to stock alcohol is even more appealing than cheaper produce and healthier organic snacks. As coop member, board member, and PSFC4Palestine organizer Tess Brown-Lavoie put it, the coop functions almost like “a small city”—large enough to reflect broader public opinion trends, but small enough for members to still feel that their participation matters. It should come as no surprise, then, that a trip to the coop does not always feel like an escape from politics. That communal ethos—and the reality that economic choices carry moral and political weight—has long shaped what does, and does not, appear on the coop’s shelves. From its early years, members treated the store as a site of intersectional, global solidarity. In the 1970s and ’80s, the coop joined broader international efforts to boycott South African goods in protest of apartheid. Members also voted to boycott Chilean products under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and later took aim at corporations like Coca-Cola over allegations of complicity in violence against Colombian union organizers. These were not symbolic gestures so much as extensions of the coop’s core philosophy: that a democratic institution, however small, has a responsibility to reflect the values of its members in practice. Boycotts were debated, sometimes vigorously contested, but they were never treated as out of bounds. In this context, PSFC4Palestine’s years-long effort to bring about a boycott of Israeli products is neither novel nor particularly radical. Rather, it represented a continuation of a long tradition aimed at aligning the coop’s stated values with its everyday practices. But Israel’s defenders—as they so often do—insisted from the beginning that Israel should be treated as an exception.

No Mention of Gaza in the DNC’s 2024 Autopsy? Seriously?

John Nichols — Fri, 05 May 2023 03:19:45 -0400

Too many Democrats still refuse to acknowledge how gravely the party was harmed by a failure to actively oppose genocide. The whole debate about whether the Democratic Party would release its autopsy report on the 2024 presidential election—as it finally did this week—always seemed silly to me. How, I wondered, could a hastily prepared report by a party insider tell us anything we hadn’t already known for a very long time? The party’s many missteps in the 2024 election were clear before anyone cast a vote: too much time spent campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney and too little time spent rallying in the union halls of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; inadequate attention to core economic issues in a moment of intense anxiety over inflation; a failure to develop a steady and coherent critique of an increasingly cultish and corrupt Republican Party; and a stark refusal to recognize the depth of opposition to the genocide in Gaza. That the Gaza issue threatened to upend the party’s best efforts to defeat Donald Trump was evident months before the Democrats nominated Kamala Harris for the presidency in August of 2024. By April of that year, more than 500,000 people had voted “uncommitted” in primary elections across the country to send a message to Democrats to shift their Gaza policy. In late May of 2024, prior to the dismal debate performance that destroyed Joe Biden’s reelection bid, I met with grassroots Democrats in rural southwestern Wisconsin’s Lafayette County. Lafayette County is about as far as you can get from the urban centers and college campuses where protests developed in the spring of 2024 over the Biden administration’s failure to oppose Israel’s assault on Gaza. The county‘s biggest city is Darlington, population 2,462. The most notable political statement in that community is a reminder that the region stood on the right side of the bitterest conflict that defined America: a 56-foot high monument topped with the statue of a Union army soldier from the Civil War.” A plaque announces, “They died, the Nation lives.” The Democratic loyalists who gathered in Darlington that day were doing their best to convince voters in Lafayette and surrounding Wisconsin counties to reelect Biden—just as they would eventually work to elect Harris. Yet they faced a challenge. One of the first people who spoke up when I visited told me that, when she knocked on doors, she kept running into voters who were upset with the administration’s failure to act decisively to save Palestinian lives in Gaza. That was just one of many instances during the 2024 presidential campaign where it became clear that the Democratic strategists in Washington—who imagined that the party’s election prospects would not be influenced by anger over US complicity with the Israeli assault on Gaza, which had already killed tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children—were agonizingly out of touch. US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is precisely right when she says that Gaza was “very clearly a major dynamic and a major threat that was happening in 2024, regardless of how one feels about that issue.” Polling data would eventually confirm the harm done to Harris’s 2024 bid —which attracted 6 million fewer votes than Biden received in 2020—by the vice president’s failure to make a clear break with Biden on Gaza issues. A postelection survey conducted by the Institute of Middle East Understanding and YouGov “found that 29 percent of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 and didn’t vote for Harris in 2024 cited ‘ending Israel’s violence in Gaza’ as their reason for withholding their vote.” The IMEU assessment of the survey argued, “Vice President Harris lost votes because of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.” Indeed, according to the analysis, “That reason surpassed the economy, immigration, healthcare, and abortion, all of which have historically been major voter issues in past presidential elections.” When word spread that the Democratic National Committee was preparing an autopsy report on the 2024 campaign, it seemed obvious that, to be credible, any such document would have to tackle the failure by candidates, party leaders, and strategists to grasp the seriousness of the grassroots outrage over Gaza. Yet when the autopsy was finally published Thursday by CNN, the network analysis noted, “The report is silent on some of the biggest and potentially juiciest aspects of the 2024 campaign. That includes any judgment about Biden’s decision to run again, the impact of the war in Gaza (which split Democrats) and the fact that Harris was allowed to take over the ticket without anything amounting to an electoral process for choosing a replacement.” No mention of Gaza? Seriously?