Nostr notes by The New Republic

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2025-12-24T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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For the last year, the nation has witnessed President Trump’s rapid physical and mental decline. The 79-year-old president has repeatedly lost track of his thoughts, his whereabouts, and even his grasp on the English language.The New Republic’s breaking news team has put together a list of the president’s most senile moments in his first year in office.1. Trump falls asleep in front of the cameras 🚨WOW. Here’s a montage of Donald Trump struggling to stay awake during his entire meeting. So I guess Trump is lying about having peak stamina? pic.twitter.com/MJSUH2GMkd— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) December 2, 2025Since taking office his second time around, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times in public. It happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of his own bombastic military parade, at the U.S. Open, while meeting foreign leaders, and even during the Pope’s funeral. But the trend suggests that Trump’s bad habit is getting even worse.The 79-year-old president has scorned reports about his health, insisting that he’s in “perfect” condition—a paragon of health—with excellent stamina for the job. He has even suggested that negative reports about his health could be tantamount to “treason.” Yet for all his bravado, he has routinely appeared with strange discolorations on his hands, has received MRI scans, spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center, and, of course, keeps napping at some remarkably inopportune times.In December alone, Trump dozed off at least four times. The first was during a Cabinet meeting on December 2, in which the president was caught closing his eyes on several occasions, sometimes for minutes at a time. The second incident this month happened in the middle of a peace signing agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump readily took credit for resolving the countries’ feud, but couldn’t manage to stay awake for its historic closure.The third time Trump was caught falling asleep on camera this month was during an announcement unveiling a multibillion dollar bailout package for America’s farmers. The much-needed relief must have been an awfully boring topic for the president, who was spotted sinking in his chair and jolting awake several times. However, the “very stable genius” did stay awake long enough to make a snarky comment about lawnmowers, which he said “you need about 185 IQ to turn on.”The anti-woke president struggled to stay awake a fourth time the week before Christmas, when he seemingly drifted in and out of consciousness moments after signing a historic order reclassifying marijuana.— Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling2. “It’s an old term but it means basically what you’re buying, food.” — Trump, on groceriesTrump is obsessed with the term "groceries," but does he even know what they are? pic.twitter.com/oFjhW9luvh— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 19, 2025Some old men love to golf, others like to fish. Trump, meanwhile, enjoys few hobbies more than goading the media, a muscle that he exercises relentlessly. But one of his recent standbys to snag a headline is so absurd that it has sparked wonder as to whether the president has literally anything in common with a normal person.Trump, a silver spoon nepo baby that received a “small loan of a million dollars” from his dad to start his business, has publicly expressed wonder and fixation over the word “groceries” for more than a year now. His apparent awe has raised more than a couple eyebrows; it’s also raised questions as to whether he’s ever walked into a grocery store.It began on the 2024 campaign trail, where the everyman wouldn’t just mention the high cost of groceries—he’d also rhapsodize about the word itself, frequently repeating the phrase “very simple word, groceries.” Eventually, it made its way into his vocabulary.“Who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries,” Trump told Meet the Press with a completely straight face in December 2024.Since then, “groceries” has become something of an exotic fixture in Trump’s lexicon, a wondrous, alien find that he can take out of his Cabinet of Curiosities to wow his phenomenally rich associates like a 20th century explorer.“It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries,” Trump mused in April. “It sort of says a bag with different things in it.”But the grocery neurosis hasn’t stayed between Trump and his gang of sycophantic enablers. Instead, Trump has tried to share his fascination with world leaders, waxing poetic about “groceries” during a meeting with the United Arab Emirates in May while making himself look wildly out of touch in the process.“It’s an old term but it means basically what you’re buying, food, it’s a pretty accurate term but it’s an old-fashioned sound,” the very stable genius announced to our Middle East allies.— Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling3. “Nobody knows what magnets are.”Trump: Nobody knows what a magnet is. pic.twitter.com/4a1wp14zYF— Acyn (@Acyn) November 11, 2025Trump, who has obsessed about magnets for years, made a particularly wild claim last month: “Nobody knows what magnets are.”In an interview about the economy with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Trump suddenly began rambling about China and magnetic trains.“President Xi was willing to do the railroad things—that’s magnets,” he said. “Now, nobody knows what a magnet is. If you don’t have a magnet, you don’t make a car. You don’t make a computer, you don’t make televisions and radios and all the other things. You don’t make anything. It’s a 30-year effort to monopolize a very important thing. Now, within two years, we’ll have magnets, all the magnets we want, but we don’t—because of tariffs, I called, I said listen, you’re going to play the magnet, we’re going to play the tariff on you.” This wasn’t the first time Trump had waxed dramatic about magnets. In January 2024, he informed a crowd that magnets stop working if they get wet.“Magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this: give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets,” he babbled.— Tori Otten and Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani4. Sad Charlie Kirk died but look at my ballroomTrump on Charlie Kirk: "Oh, when I heard it? I was in the midst of building a great -- for 150 years they've wanted a ballroom at the White House, right? They have to use tents for President Xi when he comes over. If it rains, it's a wipeout. And so I was with the architects ...… pic.twitter.com/wBV5yz2nUC— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2025While describing his despair at learning that Charlie Kirk had been fatally shot in Utah, Trump took the opportunity to plug his $400 million White House ballroom while speaking on Fox & Friends in September.“I was in the midst of, you know, building a great—for 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House, right? They don’t have a ballroom, they have to use tents on the lawn for President Xi when he comes over, if it rains it’s a wipe out, and so I was with architects that were design[ing]—it’s gonna be incredible,” Trump rambled.Later, the president changed the subject from Kirk to construction yet again while taking questions from reporters outside of the White House.Q: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up?TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get… pic.twitter.com/Jrw4j2fnVZ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2025“How are you holding up over the last three and a half days?” asked one reporter, who’d also wished him condolences for Kirk.“I think very good,” Trump replied. “And by the way, right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House. Which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about 150 years, and it’s gonna be a beauty, it’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure.”— Edith Olmsted5. Trump reveals he thinks “medbeds” are realTrump tonight appears to have pushed the false "medbed" conspiracy theory, which has spread in the far-right internet over the years. https://t.co/L1MBPIU4ON pic.twitter.com/wWBQPDFbnb— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) September 28, 2025As part of a late-night posting spree on Truth Social in September, Trump shared a video of himself announcing a “historic new health care system”—only to delete the post just 12 hours later because the video was a clearly computer-generated hoax.In the video, a phony Trump sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, claiming that every American would receive their own “medbed card” which would give them access to facilities “designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.” Medbeds are part of a far-right conspiracy theory claiming that the so-called Deep State has access to futuristic medical pods that can cure any ailment.It’s entirely possible that the president posted the video by mistake, thinking it was a real news story—and apparently forgetting he never made such an announcement. Either that, or he was elevating a far-right conspiracy theory as a means of waving to his extremist supporters, or just trolling anyone who cares about the difference between truth and fiction.— Edith Olmsted6. “Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop”Trump: "One thing with Obama, I have zero respect for him, but he would bop down those stairs. I've never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop." pic.twitter.com/PwYeBUIzsr— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) September 30, 2025At a September speech to troops in Quantico, Virginia, Trump went off on a tangent about his fear of tripping and falling on stairs—and admitted that former President Barack Obama was better at walking down them. “I’m very careful, you know, when I walk down stairs.... I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that.… You walk nice and easy. You’re not, you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down,” Trump said, referring to how he scales the steps on Air Force One. But then, Trump brought up his old fixation with Obama and how he disliked the way the 44th president handled stairs better than him. “But don’t, don’t bop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president. But he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen, da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop,” he continued, singing and doing a little jig. “He’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on, I said it’s great, I don’t wanna do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are gonna happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president.”Why Trump felt the need to tell a room full of the country’s highest-ranking military leaders about this is anyone’s guess, although it probably has to do with how much he hates Obama, and he’s probably more than a little jealous.— Hafiz Rashid7. Trump wanders off while meeting the Japanese prime ministerBro has no idea what is going on. This is crazy. pic.twitter.com/Q6qHSMe6uZ— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🏴☠️🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) October 28, 2025 Trump’s visit to Japan in October began with a welcoming ceremony of that sort full of all the trappings and ceremony that he loves, but he was soon out of his element.As he walked into a room full of dignitaries and a Japanese military band, Trump seemed to forget where he was going, even leaving Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi behind while she respectfully acknowledged the troops assembled to meet them. Trump gets angry whenever media reports point to some kind of mental or physical decline. But it’s hard to argue with a video showing a 79-year-old person in a formal setting not knowing what he’s supposed to do and just walking away aimlessly.— Hafiz Rashid8. Trump goes for a stroll on the White House roofDonald Trump is on the roof of the White House screeching at reporters.If any one of us stood on our roofs yelling at people and making weird gestures, we’d be sent to the funny farm.25th this guy already. pic.twitter.com/4FSXb9T3jl— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) August 5, 2025On one sunny Tuesday afternoon in August, President Trump found himself on the White House roof. “Sir, why are you on the roof?” reporters asked. “Just taking a little walk. It’s good for your health,” Trump replied. Asked what he’s building “up there,” he made a vague gesture that clarified little, possibly in the shape of a dome, and said, “Something beautiful.”While this curious rooftop jaunt remained unexplained, it may have had something to do with the numerous architectural changes Trump has announced at the White House, including a $400 million ballroom and a Rose Garden renovation, both of which have drawn backlash for their extraordinary cost and their lack of reverence for the structural history of the White House.— Malcolm Ferguson9. “And then they said skedaddle!”Trump is ranting barely coherently to McDonald's franchise owners: "The one pilot said, 'skedaddle!' And that thing just turned on its side -- pppph. And it's so unbelievable. And that knocked out Iran nuclear capability." pic.twitter.com/zfwU90muzW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 17, 2025“And then they said ‘skedaddle!’ The word skedaddle, and that went psshh like this,” Trump said at the McDonald’s Impact Summit, for some reason believing that this was the appropriate audience to discuss Israel’s military strikes on Iran. Pantomiming a plane dropping bombs, he continued on undeterred.“And I mean, it’s so unbelievable. And that knocked out Iran nuclear capability. And all of the Middle East became a different place. And now we have peace in the Middle East. And at the United Nations today they approved the board of peace.... I think it’ll be a board like no other, other than perhaps the McDonald’s board. You have a very good board.”— Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani10. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???”We’ve all unfortunately grown accustomed to Trump’s incessant shitposting over the years. But occasionally there are moments that truly make you question if he’s sending his “truths” straight from his phone without a second look. His “tepublican” and “panican” musing was one of them. “There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone (GREAT POLICY IS THE KEY!),” he said last month on Truth Social. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???”While there is certainly an internal split between MAGA Republicans and traditional GOPers, both of these names pretty much suck. And they don’t instill any faith in his mental acuity either, especially given that the post came just one hour after an angry rant about how mentally and physically healthy he was.— Malcolm Ferguson11. “Everything’s computer”Trump: Wow… Everything’s computer pic.twitter.com/LjGoZD4Qk8— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2025Trump’s short-lived stint as a proud Tesla owner kicked off with a bang when the president was stunned to see just how automated the electric vehicles are.While staging a weird Tesla commercial at the White House in March for his then-best buddy Elon Musk, Trump announced he intended to buy one of the cars.“I’m going to buy because number one, it’s a great product. It’s as good as it gets,” he told reporters. “And number two, because this man has devoted his energy and his life to doing this. I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people.”Trump then revealed he had no intentions to drive his shiny new red car. “I haven’t driven a car in a long time,” he admitted. “I’m going to have it at the White House, and I’m going to let my staff use it, I’m going to let people at the place use it.”Upon getting in his car for the first time, Trump marveled at the interior and proclaimed, “Everything’s computer!”The love affair turned out to be fleeting. Amid his drawn-out breakup with Musk in June, Trump reportedly weighed selling the car that he never intended to drive in the first place.— Tori Otten
https://newrepublic.com/article/204740/trump-11-senile-moments-2025-year-review

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2025-12-23T17:44:42+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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No, JD Vance will not be our first “Chad” president. The vice president shared a series of photographs to X Monday showing himself valiantly running physical training drills with Navy Seals at Base Coronado, in California. Vance was photographed running down the beach, carrying a heavy log, climbing a large cargo net, and even rowing. Another set of photographs showed him speaking with officers, and posing for a photograph in front of a large American flag.“They took it easy on me and I still feel like I got hit by a freight train,” Vance wrote on X, recapping his 90-minute PT session. “So grateful to all of our warriors who keep us safe and keep the highest standards anywhere in the world!” Vance previously served a four-year stint in the public affairs section in the 2nd Marine Aircraft.Obviously, Vance’s critics were not impressed. “Cool, man—but when you’re done cosplaying, can you and your boss do something about housing and grocery prices? Thanks,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist, wrote on X. “It’s the middle of the workday. While Americans are grinding to make Christmas work, the vice president is burning taxpayer dollars pretending to be a Navy SEAL,” Christopher Hale, a former Democratic congressional candidate, wrote on X. Even Vance couldn’t help but make fun of himself. He shared an edited version of the photograph that included his bloated, meme-ified face. “Fixed it,” he wrote on X. It’s not entirely clear what prompted Vance’s recent cosplaying adventure. Perhaps it has something to do with his recent presidential endorsement from Erika Kirk, a closely-held friend of the vice president. Or maybe it has something to do with his slipping poll numbers. A recent survey by AtlasIntel found that while Vance was still the leading pick to become the Republican nominee in 2028, a majority of Republicans no longer support him. Only 46.7 percent of respondents said they would pick Vance over other figures, down from 54.6 percent in a September poll. Meanwhile, a straw poll taken by Fox News at Turning Point USA’s Amerifest this past weekend found that 84.2 percent of respondents said they would like to see Vance as the Republican nominee in 2028, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis trailing far behind him. In order to claim the full support of MAGA, it seems Vance may have decided it’s time to prove himself more than a sniveling debate kid.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204733/jd-vance-navy-seal-training-manosphere-poll-numbers

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2025-12-23T16:03:41+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The government found a photograph of Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Steve Bannon’s phone. So, why did they redact it?Buried in the latest trove of documents released by the Department of Justice Monday, one email appeared to be from a federal investigator who said they’d discovered something while digging through Bannon’s iPhone 7. “As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon’s phone,” the email stated, passing it forward “in case it was of any importance” to someone handling “both cases.”“Thanks very much for flagging—no need to do anything on this one,” the person responds.Despite the fact that the Epstein Files Transparency Act only required the Trump administration to redact identifiable information of survivors—something that the government failed to do—the photograph of Trump and Maxwell was redacted in its entirety in the DOJ’s release. The sender and recipients’ names have also all been redacted. So, what is it about this photograph in particular that warranted redaction? Over the course of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump was photographed several times with Maxwell. The two attended parties and fashion events, and even traveled together.It seems that Trump may be receiving some special treatment. In other photographs released as part of the government’s document dumps, former President Bill Clinton’s face remained visible while the faces of some other individuals were redacted. The DOJ even went so far as to release a statement to get ahead of the “untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump contained in their own release. The batch of files released Monday contained multiple disturbing revelations, including one email that suggested Trump flew on Epstein’s jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” and Epstein’s apparent suicide note that mentioned Trump’s love of “young, nubile girls.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/204730/feds-discovered-steve-bannon-photo-trump-ghislane-maxwell

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2025-12-23T15:22:09+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Epstein files leaked on Monday night confirmed what so many people already suspected: President Trump spent much more time with Epstein—and young women—than he’s said he has. An email from an assistant U.S. attorney from January 2020 reads, “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than has previously been reported.” “He is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was present,” the attorney continued, noting that Trump brought his wife, son Eric, and daughter Tiffany at times.On one flight, the only three listed passengers were Trump, Epstein, and a 20-year-old woman whose name has been redacted, likely a victim of Epstein and Maxwell. This email completely undermines Trump’s various stories regarding his friendship with Epstein, from saying that he viewed Epstein as some kind of creep to be kept at arm’s length, to saying he barely knew him. Regardless of how their relationship ended, the president was flying around on a private jet with a sexual predator who abused children—which explains the lengths the administration went to keep these files from coming out even as a notable portion of their voter base recognized it as an issue. It will be interesting to hear Trump and his helpers explain this one. Why would Trump fly on the sex trafficker’s plane multiple times? Did he just not know then too? “Trump was on Epstein’s plane, with Epstein victims,” one X user wrote. “Yet another reason why he was trying to keep the Epstein files from ever seeing the light of day.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/204727/trump-flew-epstein-jet-20-year-old-woman-doj-files

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2025-12-23T15:08:55+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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What do Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar, and Donald Trump all have in common? Buried in the latest trove of documents released by the Justice Department Monday, a postcard addressed to “L.N.” or Larry Nassar, the former U.S. gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of women and girls, mentioned Trump by name—and more. “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” Epstein wrote, appearing to reference his later death by suicide. “Good luck! We shared one thing… our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair,” he continued, signing off “J. Epstein.”The government also released an image of the envelope, which was addressed from Epstein to “inmate” Nassar, and was postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died at the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City. The letter, marked as return to sender, was addressed to Nassar at USP Arizona, where the high-profile pedophile had been held before he was transferred in 2018. It had previously been reported that Epstein attempted to reach out to Nassar, but that his letter had been returned. The government’s documents suggest that the letter was first discovered weeks later in September 2019, and was submitted for a handwriting analysis in July 2020. It’s not clear what the results of the writing test were. The latest batch of documents released by the Department of Justice mention Trump’s name hundreds of times. One 2020 email sent by a federal prosecutor asserted that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).”The previous batch of documents published Friday were heavily criticized for being incomplete. While the government made sweeping redactions to entire pages of documents, it apparently failed to redact the names of multiple survivors.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204724/epstein-trump-shared-love-young-girls-suicide-note-letter-larry-nassar

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2025-12-19T23:06:55+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Surprise, surprise: President Donald Trump was in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list. Buried in the massive trove of documents released by the Department of Justice Friday was Epstein’s 90-page contact book filled with names of high-profile celebrities—including Donald Trump and his family members. Contact information for “Trump, Donald,” now redacted, was kept separately from the information on how to reach Trump’s daughter Ivanka, his ex-wife Ivana, his brother Robert, and Robert’s wife Blaine. A handwritten note indicated the contact book was from Palm Beach, dated 2004-2005. There also appeared to be contact information for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where Epstein reportedly scouted young women to abuse and traffic, and from where he was supposedly banned in October 2007. In an extensive list of hotels, there seems to be no listings between the Four Seasons Restaurant and Myers of Westwick—a sizable chunk of the alphabet that possibly could indicate a missing page. Trump reportedly recounted his sexual conquests to Epstein over the phone, while the alleged sex trafficker invited others to listenin.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204692/donald-trump-family-epstein-files-contact-book

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2025-12-19T14:59:01+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thinks that the diversity immigrant visa program, commonly known as the green card lottery, was responsible for the Brown University shooting and is pausing the program.Noem announced on X Thursday night, “At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”The suspect of the Brown University and MIT shootings was identified Thursday as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. According to Noem, Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national and former Brown University student who entered the country through the program in 2017. He was found dead Thursday at a storage facility in New Hampshire, apparently having committed suicide.Targeting the entire visa program because of one crime is excessive, but fits into a Trump administration pattern of finding pretexts for drastic immigration restrictions. Much of it is based on racism, and comes from executive actions seeking to circumvent laws passed by Congress. Afghan immigrants, for example, are facing increased difficulty because of the shooting of two National Guard members last month.It seems the Trump administration is going to make the Brown University shooting all about immigration instead of focusing on the crime itself, showing that xenophobia is paramount in its concerns.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204633/noem-pauses-green-card-lottery-brown-university-shooting-suspect

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2025-12-18T20:05:38+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate Thursday, and in some of them, handwritten lines from the book Lolita are visible on the bodies of unidentified girls or women. One of the photos shows “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth” written on someone’s collarbone, above her chest. A passage on a foot reads “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.” “She was Lola in slacks” is visible on another person’s body, and a message written on someone’s neck reads “She was Dolly at school.” And visible, written vertically along a person’s back, is the line “She was Delores on the dotted line.The photos were released through a Dropbox account, and nothing in the upload indicates who the photos are of or when they were taken. Lolita, written in 1955 by Vladimir Nabakov, is about a professor who kidnaps and sexually abuses a 12-year-old girl, which seems on-the-nose for a convicted sex-offender and trafficker like Epstein. Other photos released Thursday include redacted passports from Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Russia, as well as new photos of New York Times columnist David Brooks. There are also additional photos of Noam Chomsky, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Woody Allen, and Bill Gates, following earlier releases of photos with them. This release comes just one day before the Trump administration is required to release its full archive of Epstein documents from its federal investigation into the billionaire sex trafficker. House Speaker Mike Johnson has sent legislators home a day early, probably to try and avoid negative attention. Regarding tomorrow’s release, however, there’s no telling how much of the files the White House will try to redact or keep hidden. View the latest batch of photos released by the House Oversight Democrats here.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204611/epstein-photos-lolita-girls-bodies

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2025-12-17T21:09:58+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The Federal Communications Commission website no longer reflects that the FCC is an “independent” agency after FCC Chair Brendan Carr testified to Congress on Wednesday that he didn’t consider it to be one. Axios’s Sara Fischer caught the change, and posted about it on X: “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing! See before and after screenshots below.”As of Wednesday afternoon, there is no mention of the FCC being an “independent agency” on its website, only a “U.S. agency.” (The last publicly available confirmation of the word “independent” appearing on the site was October 1.)During the hearing, Carr was pressed on whether he considered the FCC to be an independent agency: Though he had previously said himself that the agency was “long ago determined” by Congress to be independent, he claimed on Wednesday that his position had changed, and he now believes it to no longer be independent, since its members are subject to for-cause removal by the president. One senator even read from the FCC’s website. New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján said, “Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent.... This isn’t a trick question.”Unluckily for Luján—and for the American people—it doesn’t say that anymore. Whether the change was the Trump administration’s attempt to protect Carr from appearing to lie during congressional testimony, or just a mask-off moment about the sad state of the FCC, it’s clear that the agency can no longer be trusted to act independently of the president.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204560/fcc-removes-word-independent-website

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2025-12-17T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Some of the books we chose this year touched familiarly big themes: the place of the United States in the Americas; the weakness of democracy in the U.S. and what it would take to shore it up. And some are close-up, intimate studies of the subtlest changes in the relationships between just three people, as in Katie Kitamura’s Audition. What they all share is intellectual ambition and precision. These are books that contemplate motherhood in the digital age and motherhood amid grief, the machinations of private equity and the strange deterioration of the internet, the legacy of the 2000s and the future of democracy. Our critics didn’t always agree with the arguments of some of books below but found all of them worth arguing, and thinking, with.Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) by Colette ShadeDey Street Books, 256 pp., $29.99The new millennium promised a more peaceful, more stable, and more prosperous world. What happened? “Beginning in 1997 with the introduction of Netscape Navigator—a pivotal moment in the career of the internet—and ending with the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, the Y2K era seemed to bear out Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis,” Paul M. Renfro writes in his review. “Its rampant techno-optimism, evidenced by the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s and early 2000s, joined with hyper-consumerism and a steadfast belief that ‘the West’ had transcended politics to forge an ‘ecstatic, frenetic, and wildly hopeful’ decade. Yet as Shade persuasively demonstrates, this hopeful energy masked not only the failures of global capitalism … but also the political vacuity and cultural rot of the period.” While the New Democrats continued the “punitive, deregulatory, and market-centric policies” of the 1980s, the “bubblegum glam of Y2K pop culture … reflected and advanced the profound misogyny and fatphobia of the period. We are still living with the consequences.”Read our full review.America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg GrandinPenguin Press, 768 pp., $35.00“There is a tendency to draw sharp lines of civilizational difference between ‘North’ and ‘Latin’ America,” Patrick Iber writes. “People in the United States tend to think their peer countries—if they admit that they have any—are in Europe, not Latin America.” Greg Grandin’s sweeping history of the new world shows how richly intertwined the United States is with Latin America. They also share many of the same problems. “If you sort countries by level of present-day inequality rather than by per capita income, the United States does not look like Europe at all but falls somewhere between Bolivia and Chile,” Iber observes. “It may make sense to think of the United States as a wealthy Latin American country, rather than an offshoot of Europe mysteriously governed by cowboys.” Read our full review.Audition by Katie KitamuraRiverhead Books, 208 pp., $28.00“In Kitamura’s fictional universe, everyone is always watching and being watched, and adapting their behavior to fit the expectations of others. Even in our most intimate moments, this novel suggests, we are always onstage,” Maggie Doherty writes. No one knows quite how to react when a young man presents himself to the unnamed narrator as her long-lost son. It can’t be, she protests; she’s never given birth. Yet the characters quickly form an intimate grouping, acting sometimes exactly as if they are family, and leaving the reader reading between the lines to figure out the true nature of their relationships—as Doherty puts it: “Plays may have scripts and stage directions, but so, too, do restaurant dinners, intimate breakfasts, and exchanges between a mother and a son.”Read our full review.Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age by Amanda HessDoubleday, 272 pp., $29.00“As a longtime reporter on internet culture for The New York Times and elsewhere, Amanda Hess excels at connecting our private online encounters to wider cultural shifts. In her debut memoir of ‘having a child in the digital age,’ she skewers the fluttering trends and quirks of the internet with the gentle ruthlessness of a lepidopterist, whether she’s describing the TikTok spectacle of tradwives in kitchens ‘as white as a near-death experience,’ or escaping angry Reddit forums to ride the ‘pastel carousels’ of Instagram,” Joanna Scutts writes. “Rather than yearning for some lost Eden of unmediated parenting, Hess accepts that we are all, now, dwellers in ‘the digital age,’ and she navigates that landscape with humor and nuance.”Read our full review.Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun LiFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 192 pp., $26.00 Early on in Yiyun Li’s memoir, she lays out the stark central facts of the book: “My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home; James near Princeton Station, Vincent near Princeton Junction.” Li’s direct tone, Jane Hu writes, “exemplifies her approach throughout the book. Having lost both her children, the author is not interested in mincing words. Things in Nature Merely Grow is at once blunt and cutting—sparing no one, and least of all Li herself.”Read our full review.Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan GreenwellDey Street Books, 320 pp., $29.00 Private equity firms have bamboozled the public for years about their expertise in “fixing” companies. Yet they often—and sometimes deliberately—run them into the ground. Journalist Megan Greenwell was editor in chief of the beloved sports website Deadspin in 2019, when Great Hill Partners acquired the company and began to chip away at the site’s integrity, flooding web pages with intrusive ads, gutting the product and sales teams, and handing down bizarre mandates to editorial staff. Greenwell quit, along with much of her staff, and set out on an investigation. Her book, Molly Osberg writes, “seeks to answer the questions many people at the receiving end of a private equity takeover want to know: Who are these people, how did they get here, and what on earth do they actually want?”Read our full review.Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom by Rebecca GrantAvid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 480 pp., $29.99“The conversation about abortion politics in the United States often focuses on laws—on winning rights and taking them away—and on morals,” Jessie Kindig points out in her review. Rebecca Grant instead “focuses on access: getting people the reproductive care they seek.” Her book tells the story of activists who took often creative measures to direct women toward reproductive care: from the Janes, who operated an underground abortion network in Chicago in the 1960s and ’70s, to “abortion pirates” who converted a fishing trawler into a floating clinic in Dublin’s harbor in the early 2000s. “These activists show in practice that to put women’s need for abortion at the center of the story is to see that abortion is about democracy, autonomy, and the ability to participate wholly in civic society,” Kindig writes. “As such, Grant’s book should be required reading for every American.”Read our full review.The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding by Osita NwanevuRandom House, 384 pp., $31.00 What would it take for the United States to live up to the promise of its founding? Osita Nwanevu’s The Right of the People makes three bold claims: “that democracy is good, that America is not a democracy, and that America should become a democracy through the transformation not only of our political institutions but of our economy.” The United States is currently too unequal, and its political system too studded with anti-majoritarian features to enable self-rule. Major reforms—including the abolition of the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College—are needed, and enacting them will be a “complicated process,” Patrick Iber writes. “This is not just a Project 2029, but a Project 2049: imagining what a better country could look like and planning for how we could get there.”Read our full review.Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory DoctorowMCD, 352 pp., $30.00 The internet is awash with AI slop. Streaming services make you pay every month for albums and movies you used to own. Online stores sell ersatz versions of real items, and the software that keeps your car running might shut the whole thing down when you are in the middle of a trip in order to force a software update. The internet was meant to promise a better world. How did it end making so many day-to-day experiences just a little worse? Cory Doctorow calls this process of gradual decline “enshittification.” The resulting book “is a swift and entertaining, if frequently enraging, read,” Jacob Bacharach writes. “The most salient characteristic of Doctorow’s diagnosis is that the decline is neither sudden nor accidental, but that it is deliberate.” The platforms, Doctorow argues, lure users in with convenience and initially low fees, “before purposefully and incrementally sucking back all the value and profit in the system through decreasing or eliminating investment in services and support.… ‘Shit,’ as the Occupy Wall Street protest sign memorably proclaimed, ‘is fucked up and bullshit.’”Read our full review.Shadow Ticket by Thomas PynchonPenguin Press, 304 pp., $30.00 Thomas Pynchon’s new book “is a lively, amusing yarn, unfolding across the American Midwest amid the Great Depression and Central Europe under the sinister umbra of rising fascism. It may be Pynchon’s most purely comic novel to date,” John Semley writes. “Whatever its shortcomings, Shadow Ticket should still rightly be regarded as an artifact from a writer who is altogether sui generis: a rare, and perhaps final, gift—like getting a postcard from an old friend, dispatched from another dimension. Or a rambling crank call from a weird uncle you haven’t heard from in years.”Read our full review.
https://newrepublic.com/article/204113/new-republic-books-year-2025

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2025-12-15T22:46:34+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The editor-at-large of Christianity Today magazine on Monday sharply condemned Donald Trump’s deranged post about the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele.Russell Moore, formerly the magazine’s editor in chief, called out Trump’s post blaming Reiner for the murders “through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Moore called Trump’s comments “vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior.”“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation,” Moore’s post read in full.Though Moore has been a longtime open critic of Trump, he wasn’t alone this time. Even some right-wing supporters of the president took issue with his insensitive post, including commentators Raheem Kassam, Robby Starbuck, and Rod Dreher. Trump’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis also criticized Trump’s comments, writing, “This is NOT the appropriate response” on X.Moore resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, after breaking with other evangelicals on Trump. He has criticized the rise of the Christian right, alarmed at the fact that some evangelicals think of Jesus Christ’s teachings as “liberal” and “weak.” To Moore, Trump’s behavior just shows increasing moral rot, especially from those of his supporters who call themselves Christian.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204457/christianity-today-editor-trump-disgusting-immoral-behavior-reiner

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2025-12-15T22:27:18+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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CBS News just wouldn’t stop posting content of Bari Weiss’s weird photo op with Erika Kirk amid a weekend full of high-profile stories of bloodshed around the world.Kirk, who now leads Turning Point USA, her late husband’s conservative youth organization, appeared on a CBS News Town Hall Saturday moderated by Weiss. Shortly before the town hall was set to air, another story broke: There was an active shooter at Brown University, CBS News posted on X. Over the course of Saturday evening, CBS News’s X account posted 12 times about its town hall with Kirk, but only posted four updates about the deadly shooting in Rhode Island that killed two students and injured eight others. By Sunday morning, there was a tab at the top of CBS News’s website providing readers with a quick way to access crucial information about the shooting at Brown University—but right in front of it was another tab leading them to more content from Kirk’s town hall. That same day, a deadly mass shooting at a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach in Australia claimed 15 lives. After CBS News posted about Kirk’s interview three times in a row, users on X began to notice that a major news company wasn’t actually, well, covering the news. While the CBS News account posted on X 12 times about the shooting at Bondi Beach, it also continued to post about Kirk’s town hall six more times: the same number of times it provided updates on the investigation into the shooting at Brown University. So, over the course of the weekend, CBS News managed to publish a whopping 18 posts about Kirk, 12 posts about the Bondi Beach shooting, and only 10 posts about Brown University. By Monday morning, yet another major story had broken: the apparent murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. As of 3:30 Monday afternoon, CBS News posted about Reiner’s death 11 times. The network only posted once, however, about President Donald Trump’s heinous reaction, where he claimed that Reiner had caused his own death because his hatred of Trump angered those around him. CBS News’s X account wrote the president had merely “disparage[d] the political views” of the famous director. CBS News has continued to post about the Kirk town hall throughout the day, as well.In her first memo to CBS News employees when she took over in October, Weiss had proclaimed that she planned to report “on the world as it actually is.” But it seems that her rather boring tendency to gravitate toward right-wing commentators to help us understand our world will always come first.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204456/bari-weiss-cbs-mass-shootings-erika-kirk

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2025-12-15T18:33:18+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Right-wing figures, including many supporters of the president, are condemning Donald Trump’s deranged Truth Social post attacking Rob Reiner following his and his wife’s tragic killing. Trump claimed that Reiner and his wife’s deaths were “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” a comment that many conservatives are rightfully calling insensitive and disrespectful. Some of the president’s supporters replied to his post calling out his insensitive comments and telling him now was not the time to settle a political score. Right-wing commentators Raheem Kassam, Robby Starbuck, and Rod Dreher—all of whom have supported Trump—were also disappointed in hisTrump’s comments. Other conservatives who have took a stand against Trump in recent months were equally outraged. Representative Thomas Massie, a libertarian critic of the president, called Trump’s post “inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered.”One of Trump’s biggest supporters-turned-critics, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, pointed out Rob’s son Nick struggled with drug addiction, calling out Trump for making a “family tragedy” about politics and political enemies. On Sunday night, Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet posted a video of Reiner’s comments following Charlie Kirk’s murder in September in which Reiner said his gut reaction was “absolute horror.” Kolvet praised the Hollywood icon for responding “with grace and compassion to Charlie’s assassination.” Not even 12 hours later, Trump showed how much he is lacking in those two qualities. Dear MAGA — if you are cheering & posting disgusting comments celebrating the tragic death of Rob Reiner, here is a video of his gracious, unifying comments on the murder of Charlie Kirk. PLEASE WATCH: pic.twitter.com/vjwwFTN8O3— Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) December 15, 2025
https://newrepublic.com/post/204432/maga-reaction-trump-sick-rob-reiner-death

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2025-12-15T16:19:50+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Donald Trump has responded to the tragic death of director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele with an unhinged Truth Social post attacking Reiner for criticizing him in the past. Trump called Reiner “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star,” and made the wildly insensitive claim that the pair died due to Reiner’s “anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”Right now, police have not publicly confirmed any details as to the circumstances of the pair’s death, although People magazine reports that their son, Nick, killed them and is being questioned by law enforcement. This is a developing story.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204420/trump-reaction-rob-reiner-stabbing-death

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2025-12-14T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Lucy says she starts early because ICE starts early. It’s around eight o’clock one Thursday morning in late October, at a coffee shop in Back of the Yards, a neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Taped inside the shop’s glass door, a sign warns ICE not to enter without a judicial warrant. (The agents very rarely bother to get one.) More signs surround it: “Hands Off Chicago”; “Migra: Fuera de Chicago”; the phone number to report ICE activity. (These are all over town.) Free whistles sit at the register. Lucy buys a black coffee from the barista and joins me at a table, checking her phone for messages about potential sightings—not just of ICE, but also Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies, such as the FBI and ATF, tasked with arresting immigrants in neighborhoods like this one. She has dark hair and a few tattoos reaching past her shirtsleeves, and, even at this early hour, her eyeliner is precise. As we wait, we stare out the café window at a nearly empty street, toward a candy-colored mural of clouds over a desert sunset. “There should be a street vendor right there,” Lucy says. There should be more than one. “It shouldn’t be this quiet.”Volunteers like Lucy, doing ICE or migra watch shifts across the city, tend to work in their own neighborhoods. They are part of a network of rapid-response groups that have sprung up over the last few months to protect immigrant communities from the Trump administration’s brutal, far-reaching “mass deportation” program, led by Department of Homeland Security director Kristi Noem. It would easily take dozens of pages to provide a full accounting of the abductions, arrests, and protests that have taken place in Chicago as of mid-November. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, or ICIRR, posted verified sightings of federal immigration agents nearly every day in September and October. Shortly before I met Lucy, ICIRR identified federal agents in at least nine Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs on a single day: Melrose Park, Oak Park, Cicero, and more, as well as at the Kane County Courthouse and the O’Hare International Airport. At O’Hare, according to reports verified by ICIRR, at least 20 agents shut down exits at rideshare lots, demanded identification from drivers, and detained multiple people. All told, according to the Department for Homeland Security, more than 4,000 people in the city have been taken off the streets by federal agents and held in immigration detention facilities since September, in what the Trump administration calls “Operation Midway Blitz.”The crackdown is vast, the stakes could hardly be higher, and the response from Chicagoans has been profound and far-reaching. The mayor signed an executive order designating city-owned property as “ICE Free Zones.” A federal judge required some of those overseeing the operation, such as Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, to testify under oath, and set schedules for them to update the court on the operation. But neither political nor legal interventions have managed to meaningfully interrupt what’s going on. ICE-free zones, residents report, do not stop ICE. And the slow-moving legal system can’t prevent agents from violating residents’ constitutional rights; indeed, the system largely functions to offer redress after the fact. Even when courts have ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement or CBP to cease some violent action, such as lobbing tear gas into residential neighborhoods, agents ignored them. The scores of terrifying arrests continued.ICE, CBP, and others have violently retaliated against these groups in part because the agencies correctly understand what many do not: An organized movement is a formidable adversary.The one response that has been genuinely effective has come from community members—ordinary residents who have come together, trained one another, and connected across neighborhoods to form groups like the Southwest Side Rapid Response Team. They have eyes on the street, the trust of their neighbors, and the ability to intervene practically instantaneously, sharing information with the ICE-activity hotline that operates across the state. They can record evidence and pass it along in seconds to rights groups, news media, and social media. Blending protest and direct action, they are offering something concrete to Chicagoans who want to express their opposition to Donald Trump’s war on immigrants. This is true movement-building, a project that may endure after this particular threat to immigrant communities, even after this regime. ICE, CBP, and others have violently retaliated against these groups in part because the agencies correctly understand what many do not: Organized neighbors are mounting an effective defense, and an organized movement is a formidable adversary.On the far Southwest Side of Chicago, by Lucy’s estimate, hundreds of people have been working together since early September to defend their neighbors, joining thousands across the city. Just outside the parking lot of a nearby Home Depot on Western, a broad street dividing Brighton Park from Back of the Yards, one community group starts its shift at six in the morning: a couple of people with a table, folding chairs, and free coffee. Not far away, ICE uses the parking lot of a strip mall as a temporary base. Enforcement officers gather here, their faces covered in balaclavas, name badges stripped off their uniforms. They idle in their unmarked vehicles, some with the license plates removed. Then they caravan together to pick off people setting up food carts, taking their kids to school, or just out walking alone.That’s when the notifications will hit Lucy’s phone, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of other phones, passing messages within neighborhoods. “OK, let’s go to one spot,” Lucy says, grabbing her coffee and picking up a banana for later. She has a report of two suspected ICE vehicles nearby. Now she’ll try to verify the report before it gets shared more widely. If she can, she’ll trail them and report where they’re going, sending word through the network so that others close by can alert the neighborhood with their whistles, follow in their cars, and generally try to make ICE’s work as difficult as possible.It’s no surprise, then, that these efforts have been cast by Noem and other officials as violent and criminal. Almost all of the people to whom I spoke for this story chose to use pseudonyms, to ensure that they can keep doing community defense work in this environment of new and escalating legal threats. Some are also immigrants or have immigrant family members to protect. People are risking a great deal to defend their neighbors, their students, their co-workers, and their customers, while trying to withstand the chaos caused by armed, masked federal officers operating on Chicago streets with apparent impunity. “What they’re doing is an occupation,” Lucy says. “It’s lawless.” And anybody questioning this reality, she tells me, “is living in their own fantasy land.”The administration’s attack on Chicago began in early 2025, soon after Trump returned to the White House. Trump dispatched to the city his “border czar” Tom Homan, who belonged to ICE leadership under Barack Obama and was the architect of the family separation policy in Trump’s first term. With him, Homan brought along the television personality Dr. Phil McGraw, who was expected to broadcast the arrests as “exclusive” programming on his own streaming channel (launched when his long-running CBS show was canceled, reportedly for losing advertisers, after McGraw welcomed guests pushing far-right politics and conspiracy theories to his couch). The idea was to hit the streets with geared-up ICE agents and produce COPS-like online content along with terror. But the very public attack backfired: Although it generated news B-roll, it also galvanized Chicago residents, who shared legal resources with their neighbors and whose response may have helped drive down arrests. That’s what Homan seemed to believe. When he was asked about the operation on CNN, Homan complained that Chicagoans pursued by immigration officers were “very well-educated” on their legal rights. “They call it know-your-rights,” Homan said. “I call it how-to-escape-arrest.” It appeared that the agency had backed down on the operation. ICE instead focused on Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to hone its tactics, giving community organizers in Chicago a few months to prepare.While many of the rapid-response groups that formed during that period were new, and many people new to community defense work joined, the effort was “not our first rodeo,” as Lucy noted. Chicago is a big city, but the Southwest Side still feels like “an incredibly small town,” she explained, in which many of the community networks now involved in ICE watch already existed. Long before this wave of neighborhood organizing in Back of the Yards, immigrant workers at the Union Stockyards, Chicago’s meatpacking district, organized their own communities. Saul Alinsky’s famed neighborhood-based approach to community organizing took shape here. The European immigrant families are now mostly gone, but the Mexican immigrants who have lived and organized in the neighborhood since the 1920s remain, now joined by multiple new generations, most recently from Venezuela.Many of the Venezuelan immigrants were forcibly bused to Chicago from Texas by Governor Greg Abbott beginning in 2022. Their arrival increased stress in some communities on the Southwest Side, where work and resources were already strained. But it also tied some communities closer together, with “lots of mutual aid work,” Lucy said. These mutual aid efforts served as a safety net for new immigrants in the city, often before the city offered them resources. Over the years, many were able to establish themselves. “It was honestly very cool,” Lucy remembered, to witness Mexican and Venezuelan food vendors working right next to each other. “It was something that we hadn’t seen.”These are now some of the immigrants whose neighbors have come out to defend them from ICE. Even those who are at high risk of being detained have joined the rapid-response networks, whether to watch and report possible ICE activity or to visit with neighbors and document what happens after a family member is taken. By the time ICE launched its operation in Chicago in early September, neighborhoods were ready. Homan’s complaints were accurate: They were educated and they were trained. Now, when ICE arrives, “sometimes it’s not even the rapid-response team that starts with the whistles and the honking,” Lucy explained. “It’s the neighbors on the block.”ICE or migra watch is a practice that grew out of the community defense strategies developed by the Black Panthers in the late 1960s, which inspired cop-watching across the country. It is most visible on the streets, where pairs or teams document law enforcement in their own neighborhoods. Participants used to use handheld video cameras; now their cell phone cameras do the job. But the work extends beyond the moments the officers are recorded. Over time, through direct experience, cop-watch groups come to understand patterns of policing. Some track and request public records of law enforcement activities to learn more. They educate their neighbors about their rights when police stop their cars or come to their doors, and coordinate care and outreach to support neighbors harmed by policing.During the first Trump administration, immigrant rights groups in Chicago, like Organized Communities Against Deportations, were monitoring ICE and developing deportation defense, said Rey Wences, then a volunteer with OCAD and now the senior director of deportation defense at ICIRR. But it was after working alongside Black-led racial justice groups in the city, such as Black Youth Project 100 and Assata’s Daughters, that migra watch evolved. “We saw the connections,” Wences said, between deportation defense and cop watch, and OCAD asked if it could work with the other groups to build something tailored to watching ICE. The migra watch training ICIRR now leads drew inspiration from all those efforts. In September and October alone, Wences said, ICIRR trained more than 6,700 people. It feels like the organizing has reached “a critical mass,” they said. Indeed, ICIRR was only one of many groups training people up—“like a muscle we all flexed.” As with cop watch, ICE watch is not only a form of protest; it builds and demonstrates a kind of safety net that law enforcement cannot provide—that, in fact, law enforcement actively undermines.Contrary to the claims of Homan and many others in the Trump administration, federal agents drafted into anti-immigration enforcement operations do not protect residents from crime; they bring violence into communities, targeting not only the people they seek to arrest, but anyone whom they think stands in their way. They have shot tear gas onto residential streets, pepper-sprayed children and bystanders, pepper-balled clergy, and fired “less-lethal” weapons directly at press and protesters alike. In November, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction limiting immigration agents’ use of force in Chicago, saying from the bench that their behavior “shocks the conscience.”The injunction came as a result of a legal challenge filed by demonstrators, religious practitioners, and journalists (including the Chicago News Guild, which is part of the national NewsGuild-CWA, as is The New Republic’s union, the NewsGuild of New York). The challenge argued that federal agents’ use of force violated constitutionally protected protest and religious and news gathering activities. In her ruling, Judge Ellis singled out Border Patrol commander Bovino—who is often the only unmasked and clearly identified federal officer on the scene of ICE abductions and violence against community members—stating that Bovino repeatedly lied under oath about agents’ use of force. Hours later, Bovino was out with a caravan on the Southwest Side, as federal agents fired pepper balls at a moving vehicle in Gage Park and pointed rifles at people in Little Village. The operation, he told the Chicago Tribune, was “going very violent.”At the Back of the Yards parking lot where ICE and other federal agents had mobilized, community organizers and students at the high school across the street have been pressuring the property owners, Friedman Real Estate, to refuse ICE access to the lot. The volunteers kept showing up, as early as they could, staying as late as they could, to patrol the lot and send the message to ICE agents that they, too, were being watched. They took photos of agents and took down their plates. After their constant patrolling, Lucy said, they saw ICE less frequently at that lot. The empty plaza I had passed that morning was a sign of success.“I like to say they’re running from us,” Lucy said. “If we’re not already there, we’re coming in like two minutes.”That morning in late October, driving slowly past family homes on tidy, city-size lawns, we see very few people out. Lucy pauses to let an older person pushing a cart of groceries cross the street. We pass “No Trespassing/Private Property” signs, a warning to ICE, and jack-o’-lanterns on porches. We drive by a patch of yellow marigolds pushing through a chain-link fence, a few clusters of banana-leaf plants. Every few minutes, the car’s sound system broadcasts notifications from Lucy’s phone, a specific ringtone she set just for rapid-response messages coming in. She gets updates on the cars we’re looking for: a boxy, oversize Jeep Wagoneer and an extra-large GMC Yukon truck. Over the weeks, the kinds of cars ICE uses have become very familiar.Inflatable Halloween decorations wave in some of the front yards we pass. Outside of Gage Park High School, we pause to chat with a crossing guard in a yellow vest. Lucy rolls down the window. “I’m a neighbor in the area,” she explains. “We’re doing ICE watch, so just looking out for ICE vehicles.” New message notifications ding again. “We got reports of a Wagoneer, which, you don’t see too many Wagoneers around here, they’re long and boxy…. I figured I would let you know, just in case.” Before she is done, the crossing guard is already repeating, “Just in case. All right. Thank you,” like this happens all the time. It’s not her first rodeo either.“Operation Midway Blitz” is not merely an immigration enforcement operation; it is a monthslong offensive meant to break down people’s resistance, a deliberate campaign of political violence and social disruption. Such brutal anti-immigration policing itself is not new, even if it may be newly evident to people in Los Angeles, Washington, and elsewhere, who have not experienced their family and neighbors disappearing. But it is new that ICE and Border Patrol are rolling out daily in caravans; it is new that Border Patrol is unleashing tear gas and firing flash-bang grenades at bystanders. It’s also new that all this is happening at once to a whole city.ICE has also turned on those residents who dare document and track them across the city. On October 20, reported The TRiiBE, a local independent news site, an attorney named Scott Sakiyama, who had been following immigration agents in his car, was detained by them at gunpoint. Sakiyama had defended a man who had faced federal charges for allegedly assaulting a Border Patrol agent outside the immigrant “processing center” in Broadview, an inner suburb of Chicago. The government had already dropped the prosecution. But when Sakiyama spotted armed, masked immigration agents driving in Oak Park and blew a whistle to alert neighbors, agents stopped him. “Exit your vehicle, or we’re gonna break your window and we’ll drag you out,” one said. This all took place across the street from Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, where one of Sakiyama’s kids is a student. He was loaded into the agents’ vehicle and driven to the Broadview detention facility, where he was merely given a citation and returned to his car. “The federal government is intent on abusing its power to kidnap and violate the rights of our friends and neighbors,” Sakiyama wrote in an Oak Park neighborhood Facebook group, “and now, they say it is a crime to tell your neighbors this is happening.” He encouraged people to attend a rapid-response training and start their own whistle brigade. ICIRR now holds virtual trainings every week; the one I dropped in on in late October was attended by more than a thousand people from dozens of neighborhoods.As community-based defense projects have ramped up, some local elected officials have supported them. Some, like Alderwoman Jessie Fuentes, have been detained while defending their constituents. Others have ignored their constituents, or, in the case of Democratic Alderman Raymond Lopez, who represents part of Back of the Yards, welcomed Tom Homan and defended Operation Midway Blitz. On a night in late October when Lopez was scheduled to have open office hours, the doors were locked and the lights were off as community members announced a protest there. Jaime Perez said his girlfriend, a tamale vendor, was taken by ICE near 47th Street and Western, and his calls to Lopez for help were ignored. “He wouldn’t come to the phone,” Perez said. As the sun set, Leslie Cortez spoke about the raid she witnessed on 47th Street. “Our community deserves someone who will fight for us,” she said, “not against us.” Before they left, they taped a letter to Lopez’s office door demanding that he resign.But among even the more sympathetic government leadership, Chicagoans’ political efforts to protect immigrant communities have only gone so far. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has referred to the protection afforded by the city’s welcoming ordinance, which is meant to prohibit collaboration between immigration officers and Chicago police, but when ICE and Border Patrol roll through city neighborhoods, the police have been right there. Residents have been told that Chicago police are prohibited from engaging in immigration enforcement (unless ordered to do so by a court), when they can see with their own eyes that Chicago cops are clearing roads for the fleets of sports-utility vehicles and oversize trucks used by ICE and Border Patrol to haul people to Broadview. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has gained a national reputation as a leader who stands up to Trump and his mass deportation machine, but outside Broadview, where activists, religious leaders, and media gather, the officers firing tear gas and pepper balls at them are Illinois State Police, sent there, according to Pritzker, to “ensure people could safely express their rights.”Some of the time on migra watch, it can look like nothing is happening. We drive in silence, weaving between Back of the Yards, Gage Park, and Brighton Park, past bakeries and salons and auto body shops, looking twice at any oversize car we see. Suddenly, Lucy asks her phone for directions. “So they are here,” she says. “I’ll keep my distance.” More notifications are going off. Lucy sees what might be an ICE SUV, but as she puts on her blinker and turns to follow, a Chicago Police Department car pulls across her car’s path. Local cops are not supposed to be out here. We hear people honking, leaning on their horns, not that far off.“Is the honking because it’s—” I start to ask, and she says it is, as she grabs a few things in case she needs to hop out and starts dictating a message: “I’m pretty sure I saw that large white SUV, no plates in the front, but as I tried to turn, CPD kind of blocked me.” She gives the intersection where CPD still is. Regardless of the reason the police were there, now she’s lost sight of the SUV. She plays back a video from a few minutes ago on her phone, hoping it shows the direction of the SUV, and the honking fills the car speakers. A few other people saw the SUV as well; Lucy is following their directions now. “It seems like there’s a lot of people out right now,” she says, “which is nice.”As we drive, we see them, more and more people out on the streets, watching. On a corner at a gas station, a small group of people, some in KN95 masks, stand on the grassy strip at the side of the road, watching. At the Home Depot, Lucy parks and hops out to say “hi” to the people at the table near the parking lot, expecting them to shut down for the morning. A new shift of volunteers, however, has come to stay longer. Another small group is out on a side street lined with houses: four young people in hoodies and puffer coats. They repeat the ICIRR hotline number on a megaphone as they walk. Lucy tells them about what she saw, and they head right back out on foot. “Small town, small town,” Lucy says to me, and we drive off.We loop around a few more times, checking out a nearby park. We’ve been out for 40 minutes; to me it feels like five. The adrenaline, even at this distance from the action, warps time and attention—every siren might be something. A helicopter looms overhead. When we drive past the crossing guard again, she and Lucy exchange friendly waves.It can feel like ICE agents are everywhere. That, presumably, is how they want it to feel. At the same time, more and more people who have never engaged in anything like these actions before are purposefully running toward the trouble. As much as their resistance can appear organic and spontaneous—and some of it is—it’s supported by deliberate effort, an infrastructure working to help them expand their tolerance for taking risks.There’s the know-your-rights trainings, which, like ICE watch trainings, long predate this moment. In the past, however, those were typically offered within a smaller community made up mostly of other organizers. Since Midway Blitz, the groups ramped up because ICE ramped up. They had to scale up know-your-rights trainings to work for mass audiences. They needed to do more than just arm people with information about their rights; now they had to teach “what do you do when an agent is right there,” Lucy said, “right outside your door or right in front of you.” Learning that, she said, enables them to walk out the door and “blow their whistle the minute they identify a car.” Once people know how to defend their own rights, in other words, they don’t stop there—as the last months in Chicago have shown, they turn to defending others.Intentional or not, this way of spreading rapid-response work ensures that there’s no one point of failure. Multiple groups are employing multiple communication platforms, and generating new methods as they go. New people join them, “just coming up with their own ideas on how to defend Chicago,” as Lucy put it. It turns out that you can’t just gas and detain everyone in the streets. There will be more people tomorrow.On her phone, Lucy sees that Customs and Border Protection are a few neighborhoods away, in Little Village. A video from the scene plays over the speakers as we drive, birdsong and car sounds and a man calling, “Hey, how you doing!” and what might have been someone else yelling “Fucker!” We can’t join; Lucy’s shift is done, and she has to go to work. By the time I could get there, it will likely have ended. She offers to drop me at the train station. On the platform, I watch a Facebook Live video from the scene, streams of hearts and sad crying emojis floating up over an intersection flooded with Chicago police.Baltazar Enriquez had been recording ICE for almost an hour by the time I tune in. He was following the federal agents’ caravan at the same time that, a few neighborhoods away, we were driving around Back of the Yards. Witnesses hopped out of their cars, turning their phones toward the agents and yelling, “Shame! Shame! Where’s your warrant? Why are you terrorizing us? Why? Why?” They walked toward the agents, phones up. One woman had a megaphone. The agents kept their faces fully covered with black and camo balaclavas and reflective sports sunglasses. They pointed their long guns at the ground as they paced. “Leave! Leave!” A few agents got back into their white SUV. There was Gregory Bovino, standing next to an agent in a gas mask holding a weapon with a tear gas canister. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it, Bovino.” Overhead, a helicopter buzzed. “ICE go home. ICE go home.” Chicago police formed a line as the feds retreated behind them. The people clustered at an intersection. Someone wore an inflatable pink axolotl costume, Mexican and American flags flew, whistles were distributed. I was still on the train when Baltazar, streaming on Facebook, asked some people to walk with him to another neighborhood to patrol—“Gage Park,” he said, where Lucy and I had just been—and logged off. It was hard to reconcile the violence on the live stream 15 minutes away and the quiet around us. No one was taken from any street we passed. It could feel like nothing happened, except for all the people we saw as we were watching, watching, too.
https://newrepublic.com/article/204225/chicago-neighborhood-resistance-ice-immigration

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2025-12-12T17:11:16+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and other prominent figures can be spotted in a new collection of photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee. At least three of the photographs showed Trump, who has come under immense scrutiny for his reported ties to Epstein, and his efforts to prevent the release of the government’s files on the alleged sex trafficker.One black-and-white photograph featuring Trump shows the president smiling as he posed with six women wearing leis, whose faces have all been redacted. Another photograph showed Trump sitting on a plane next to a blonde woman whose face has been redacted. Another photograph showed Trump listening to a glamorous-looking woman, as Epstein stood, smirking beside him. Yet another photo showed a pile of Trump-branded condoms.These photographs, plucked from a trove of 95,000 images and redacted at the discretion of members of the committee, are just the beginning. “Committee Democrats are reviewing the full set of photos and will continue to release photos to the public in the days and weeks ahead,” the release said. Representative Robert Garcia told reporters Friday that some of the photos that were not released were “incredibly disturbing.” MAGA architect Steve Bannon also made multiple appearances in the photographs released Friday—including one that was particularly disturbing. One photograph showed Epstein sitting behind a desk, while Bannon sat opposite him talking. On the desk between them sat a framed photograph that appeared to show an at least partially-naked woman laying limp on a sofa or bed. Bannon had reportedly assisted Epstein in navigating the political and legal quagmire that was the last year of his life, conducting a series of interviews with the alleged sex trafficker between 2018 and early 2019, totaling about 15 hours of unreleased footage.Another photograph showed Epstein and Bannon of them taking a mirror selfie, and another photograph showed Bannon speaking with director Woody Allen, who has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor.Former President Bill Clinton appeared to have signed one photograph, which showed him smiling beside Epstein, and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. Other prominent figures who appeared in photos were Bill Gates and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Three of the photographs showed sex toys, including a “jawbreaker gag.”This story has been updated.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204353/epstein-photos-donald-trump-steve-bannon

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2025-12-12T16:59:41+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The White House’s propaganda is getting sketchier.The official X account for the executive mansion released new figures about the economy Thursday, proclaiming that 91 percent of Americans noticed “gas prices were dropping.” The source of that information, however, was from a White House email survey.Meanwhile, practically every American has felt the ramifications of Donald Trump’s rattling economic policies. The Drudge Report, the most heavily trafficked conservative news aggregator, topped its site Friday with the headline: “POLL: ‘TIS THE SEASON FOR INFLATION.”The AP-NORC poll found that large shares of American shoppers are dipping into their savings to afford buying presents this holiday season, with half of polled Americans reporting that it’s harder than usual to afford the things they would typically try to buy.Roughly the same percentage of U.S.-based shoppers said they were cutting back on nonessentials or big purchases in order to afford their needs, according to the poll.The findings make sense: An analysis by the Groundwork Collective of popular holiday gifts found that prices skyrocketed by a whopping 26 percent this holiday season. The disparity between the White House’s messaging and what’s actually happening boils down to the president, who has repeatedly insisted without evidence that there is “no” inflation, that the word “groceries” is an “old fashioned” term, and that the issue of affordability is a “con job” and a “fake narrative” invented by Democrats to trick the public into not supporting him.“When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country? When will people understand what is happening?” Trump whined Thursday on Truth Social. “When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?”Inflation has been accelerating since April, when Trump first announced his “liberation day” tariffs. Eight months later, practically everything on the U.S. market is more expensive than it used to be, as companies pass off the cost of the president’s tariffs onto consumers. Food and energy costs are up compared to figures from last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even American-made goods have taken a hit by the tariffs, since more often than not they are created with parts sourced from other areas of the world.But the commander-in-chief seems to be completely out of touch with that reality. In an interview earlier this week with Politico’s Dasha Burns, Trump remarked that he would rate the current state of the economy “A+++++.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/204347/white-house-trump-economy-poll

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2025-12-10T22:44:24+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Et tu, ChatGPT?On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled his department’s new AI chatbot for military personnel, GenAI.mil. Almost immediately, the bot called a “hypothetical” situation where the government orders a strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat and then double-taps said boat to kill the survivors, “unambiguously illegal.”A military source who spoke to Straight Arrow News Wednesday pointed reporters to a Reddit thread that featured the alleged interaction with the bot. The source said that military personnel wasted no time in testing the bot’s capabilities. Hegseth has spent recent weeks ardently defending the legality of a situation just like the one described to the chatbot. Backed by President Donald Trump, Hegseth has ordered at least 22 (likely illegal) airstrikes against numerous boats in international waters under the guise of stopping “narcoterrorism,” which have so far killed at least 87 people. After the very first strike on September 2, he ordered a double-tap attack on an already bombed boat in order to kill two survivors. The outright killing of shipwrecked survivors has sparked bipartisan outrage, though many Republicans claim to still need more information before they abandon Hegseth. Trump is distancing himself from the situation, saying he’s “not involved.” At least someone—or something?—in the Trump administration has moral clarity.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204266/pete-hegseth-ai-bot-boat-strikes

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2025-12-10T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The Trump White House’s desire that government-funded art “remove divisive or partisan narratives,” to quote a letter sent last August to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, is nothing new. At the dawn of the Cold War, that same fatuous sentiment was directed against Ben Shahn’s New Deal frescoes The Meaning of Social Security, the most visually arresting of many murals and sculptures decorating the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C. Gray Brechin, an architectural historian and founder of the nonprofit Living New Deal, described the Cohen to me as “a kind of Sistine Chapel of the New Deal.” It and all the art inside could soon be rubble.The Cohen lies two blocks west of the United States Capitol and across Independence Avenue from the National Mall. Its principal tenant is Voice of America, which President Donald Trump has been trying to liquidate. A couple of months ago, I broke the story that the Trump administration was racing to sell the Cohen with no regard for the art inside (part one; part two). I now see that I was insufficiently alarmist. A December 8 story by Bloomberg’s Suzanna Monyak reported that, according to a former official of the General Services Administration, the agency in charge of federal real estate, Trump is already bypassing legally required GSA procedures and soliciting bids to demolish the Cohen, along with three other federal buildings in Washington—the Marcel Breuer–designed Housing and Urban Development headquarters; the building housing the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, built in 1919; and the GSA’s own Regional Office Building, which, like the Cohen, is a New Deal–era building housing social-realist murals, in this instance by Howard Weston (though these are on oil and removable). Once the four buildings are demolished, the land will be sold to developers. It won’t likely fetch a high price, because these buildings are all in Washington’s southwest quadrant, where the vacancy rate is above 15 percent. (Anything north of 10 percent is bad.)The threat to the Cohen is the most urgent because The Meaning of Social Security is probably the most significant work of New Deal public art in Washington. Last week, I finally got to see it up close. Its colors remain astonishingly vibrant eight decades on. (Everybody, I’m told, has that reaction.) Small wonder that, on completion, Shahn called this “the best work I’ve done.” I also saw Philip Guston’s lovely mural Reconstruction and Well-Being of the Family, in the Cohen’s auditorium—a triptych whose panels open up and slide away ingeniously to make way for a movie screen—plus two handsome Seymour Fogel murals, Security of the People and Wealth of the Nation, that stand sentry in what was once the Cohen’s entranceway on Independence Avenue. (Today you enter from the other side, on C Street.)In the event of demolition, removing the Guston would be a cinch; removing the Fogels more difficult; and removing the Shahn extremely difficult and costly, and perhaps impossible. Painfully aware of this, the GSA recently discussed with Olin Conservation Inc., a private contractor that for decades has done preservation work on the Shahn frescoes, preparation of “feasibility studies for potential removal of some of the art work,” David Olin, the company’s senior conservator, told me. One salient question is whether either of the walls on which the Shahn frescoes are painted is load-bearing. (To my untrained eye, one of them might be.) The GSA press office told me it was not yet able to answer this question, and Olin told me that he also didn’t know.When I wrote my earlier pieces, the Trump administration had designated the Cohen for “accelerated disposition” (i.e., sale) in 2025. I subsequently learned that—barring Trump flouting several laws and/or bulldozing the Cohen—the timeline was more like two years. That gives preservationists more time to act. Much progress has been made already. A campaign is underway to save the Cohen, led by Mary Okin, assistant director of Living New Deal. An online petition has collected nearly 2,000 signatures; various art and architecture publications and a couple of podcasts have weighed in; and Heather Cox Richardson, The Guardian, and National Public Radio have reported on this threat to New Deal art and architecture. But now it appears the Trump White House doesn’t want to give preservationists time to mobilize. Its plan to bulldoze the Cohen is described in a court filing in a lawsuit against Trump’s harebrained plans to whitewash the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In the filing, Mydelle Wright, former D.C.-area director of the Office of Planning and Design Quality for the Public Buildings Service, which is part of GSA, said that on December 5 she was told (presumably by former GSA colleagues) that “the White House, acting on its own and not through GSA, has solicited bids and/or is finalizing a bid package (the last step prior to solicitation) to analyze and recommend for demolition [the] four historic buildings in D.C.” Wright continued:Key GSA personnel have only just learned of the White House’s activities.… For the first time of which I’m aware, a president is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the [GSA]’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him “no”?This is of course outrageous, but from Trump’s point of view it makes a certain amount of sense because the more you learn about efforts to sell the Cohen, the clearer it becomes that doing so will be very difficult if the federal government follows various legally required procedures, as the GSA currently shows every intention of doing. The same is likely true, though to a lesser extent, of the other three federal buildings Trump wants gone.Trump’s first commissioner of the Public Buildings Service was a MAGA loyalist named Michael Peters. Peters came in pledging to unload 50 percent of the federal government’s real estate portfolio. But the White House concluded Peters was all bluster (“too many unforced errors,” an industry source told the Federal News Service), and he left GSA in July. Peters’s acting replacement, Andrew Heller, is a civil servant who’s served in multiple administrations, and he’s playing it by the book. That likely displeases White House budget director and “Project 2025” architect Russell Vought, who exercises a large and growing influence over Trump’s domestic policies. Vought posted a memo on December 8 recommitting the administration to offloading “unnecessary leases and buildings.”The ultimate wild card is Trump. Thus far, we don’t know that Trump himself has demonstrated any interest in this demolition, but we do know he has an ungovernable passion for bulldozers. When I posted my previous two articles on the Cohen, the White House still had an East Wing. Now it’s gone. A lawsuit brought by a Virginia couple after the demolition began argued persuasively that Trump was violating, among other statutes, the National Capital Planning Act of 1952 and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. But the plaintiffs withdrew their complaint five days later, presumably because the demolition was completed before the court took any action (except to notify them that they’d neglected to pay a filing fee and furnish a required cover sheet).A May 2025 report by the federal government’s Public Buildings Reform Board recommended the Cohen’s sale “within the timeframes established under” the 2016 Federal Assets Sale Transfer Act, or FASTA, and Vought immediately approved that. But despite the name, FASTA isn’t that fast. It requires three rounds of review by the Public Buildings Reform Board, and the Cohen has been through only two; the third is due next year. Also, as I’ve noted previously, the Cohen is on the National Register of Historic Places and therefore requires GSA to engage in consultation over any potential “adverse effects,” of which the loss or damage of the New Deal art would seem pretty significant. A series of court decisions, including a district court ruling from last March, has established that even if a building containing New Deal art is sold, the art remains the property of the public. I’ve explained previously at some length why no buyer of the Cohen building would likely wish to renovate the building; any real estate value lies in the location of the land on which it sits. In brief: The Cohen has never been renovated going all the way back to 1940, and renovating it now would cost (according to a GSA analysis from earlier this year that has not been made public) about $1 billion. The government can afford to perform such a renovation (and that unreleased GSA report offered sound suggestions to refurbish the Cohen that remain by far the best option). But not many private real estate developers would be willing to spend $1 billion on a renovation. (For a more modest example of private investors rehabbing a New Deal building about one-third the Cohen’s size and making its art available to the public, see my October report on some fine Shahn murals at the former Bronx Post Office.)Ergo: Privatizing the Cohen is virtually synonymous with demolition, if not before the Cohen is sold, then after. If the federal government performs the demolition itself, the Cohen will sell more quickly.But again: That would be illegal. We haven’t even discussed the preservation laws of local government. Contrary to popular belief, Washington, D.C., possesses one! Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, told me by email that the Cohen is separately landmarked by the District of Columbia government and therefore protected by the DC Historic Landmark and Historic District Protection Act of 1978. So even though the National Historic Preservation Act ultimately allows demolition of a building on its register once it passes into private hands, D.C. law poses a much more serious obstacle. Demolition, Miller explained, “could only take place … by going through D.C.’s rigorous Mayor’s Agent process, where the new owner of the building would need to prove that the public benefit of a project outweighs the preservation loss. The process is lengthy, and very few buildings are razed under the law.” The Cohen sale is a bit unusual because Congress authorized it last January; usually it’s the executive branch that makes such decisions, consulting Congress along the way. That may, I’m sorry to report, give the Trump administration some legal leeway to skip a few steps, though certainly not all of them. All the more reason to consider that the crucial laws to protect the Cohen will be the local ones.Congress enacted the Cohen’s sale through a provision tucked last January into a water resources bill by Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, and signed by an unwary President Joe Biden days before he left office. Ernst was so eager to demonstrate loyalty to Trump after declining to endorse him before the 2024 Iowa caucuses that she didn’t wait for Trump to assume office to found a DOGE Caucus, and she’s pushed to sell off multiple federal buildings. Still, I can’t tell you why Ernst started with the Cohen, because her staff has been ducking my emails and phone calls for months. I finally sent two of her press contacts the following five questions:1) Why did Senator Ernst choose, specifically, the Wilbur J. Cohen federal building to sell off in last January’s water resources bill?2) Did Senator Ernst, or any of her staff, visit the Cohen building before introducing her amendment to sell off the Cohen to the water resources bill?3) Is Senator Ernst aware that there is New Deal art in the building, including frescoes by celebrated artists such as Ben Shahn and Philip Guston? Does she have any notions about what to do with it?4) Does Senator Ernst know any prospective buyers for the Cohen building, and what their plans might be for the building?I’ve yet to receive a reply. I’m especially eager to get an answer to (2) because, as I’ve already noted, the Cohen is all of two blocks from the Capitol. If Ernst or an Ernst staffer ever ambled over to the Cohen, I can’t find anybody at GSA who remembers it. I asked Olin, who probably knows more about the present condition of The Meaning of Social Security than anyone, whether he heard from Cohen or her staff. He said no.The language in Ernst’s amendment to the water resources bill gave the GSA two years to sell the building after it’s vacated. I presumed it would be vacated by now, but it isn’t entirely, and even Trump wouldn’t likely demolish a building with civil servants still working inside it. A small number of Voice of America employees remain there, along with some employees from the Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General. So (assuming it’s still relevant), GSA’s two-year clock has not yet started ticking.But I promised to tell you about the last time The Meaning of Social Security was at serious risk—due not to indifference, as today, but to the very Trumpy-sounding complaint that it’s insufficiently upbeat.“Critics Want Art to Be Appropriate” announced a Washington Post headline in June 1947. In a letter to the Public Buildings Administration (a division of the Treasury Department that had commissioned this and other New Deal artworks), tenants in what today we call the Cohen building complained that Shahn’s frescoes depicted people who “look pathetic” and “are in poor circumstances.” The strangest part of this story is who these tenants were: employees of the Federal Security Agency, an early precursor to the Health and Human Services Department. Like emergency-room doctors unnerved by the sight of blood, pioneering architects of America’s welfare state took offense at The Meaning of Social Security and wanted it removed. Politics likely played some role. This was the same year President Harry Truman established his notorious loyalty oaths for federal employees; Depression-era leftism was very much out of favor.The complaining Federal Security Agency employees didn’t want all the Shahn murals removed; they just wanted half. Shahn likely modeled The Meaning of Social Security on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s two fourteenth-century frescoes, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. Along a 70-foot corridor, Shahn’s update depicted on one wall life without Social Security (a destitute-looking child on crutches; unemployed men sitting idly by a railroad track) and on the opposite wall, life with Social Security (men building a house; men driving rivets into girders, and yes, the working class in New Deal painting is mostly male). The Federal Security Agency workers didn’t object to the happy side. But the unhappy side, and most especially that child on crutches, really bugged them.The controversy drew in Duncan Phillips, founder of Washington’s Phillips Collection. A week after the Post story ran, Phillips wrote in alarm to Museum of Modern Art curator James Thrall Soby, who was then preparing a major MOMA retrospective of Shahn’s work. “I am shocked to hear for the first time that Ben Shahn’s murals in the [Cohen building] are in danger of being covered over or destroyed,” Phillips wrote. “I will write a letter of protest since I agree with you that Shahn is one of our most distinguished artists and his murals among the best executed under the Treasury project.” After much to-ing and fro-ing, a compromise was struck, in which the unhappy side of The Meaning of Social Security was covered with a heavy curtain that remained in place through the 1970s. (I’m indebted for most of these details to Laura Katzman, professor of art history at James Madison University, who wrote a 1995 brochure for GSA’s rededication of The Meaning of Social Security.)Now Trump is scheming to blow the whole building to smithereens, along with three others. Preservationists may have to secure a court injunction to stop it. Remember the East Wing! Save the Cohen! And if you have a moment, please sign this petition.
https://newrepublic.com/article/204201/trump-bulldoze-new-deal-murals

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2025-12-09T18:15:22+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rollout Tuesday of the U.S. military’s new AI platform just fell flat on its face. “The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled A-I,” Hegseth said in a video on X, announcing GenAi.Mil, the new “American-made” AI platform that will allow military members to “conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed”—and all without using their brains.Unfortunately for Hegseth, his post presented a slight problem. The name GenAi.Mil automatically produced a link to an empty website. So X users thinking they were about to get a sneak peak at the military’s new chatbot were greeted by a message reading: “Upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: connection termination.” Predictably, the platform can’t actually be accessed from external networks, but the wonky rollout triggered eyerolls across the internet. One popular post on R/Army, the Reddit forum dedicated to military matters, suggested that service members had all received surprise invitations to use the new platform on their work computers. But having never heard about it before receiving the invite, the user deemed that it looked “really suspicious.”“Is it real and safe,” the user asked.The invite features a logo and short link, but no indication of what the invitation is actually for. “Victory belongs to those who embrace real innovation not antiquated systems of a bygone era. It’s time to deliver efficient, decisive results for the warfighter,” the e-vite reads. “I want YOU to use AI.”The platform will house Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government, using a retrieval-augmented generation to connect the large language model chatbot to Google Search “to ensure outputs are reliable and dramatically [reduce] the risk of AI hallucinations.”The Trump administration has been eager to embrace the AI industry, and in July, it awarded Google a massive $200 million contract to support AI solutions at the DOD.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204181/pete-hegseth-ai-artificial-intelligence-tool-american-warrior

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2025-12-09T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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In 2017, the urban planner Bruce Appleyard asked 9- and 10-year-olds from two Bay Area suburbs to draw maps of their neighborhoods. The first group lived in a community with heavy traffic and little bike infrastructure. They created maps lacking in detail and dominated by red and orange, colors that Appleyard asked the children to use to indicate zones of danger or dislike. The second group, from a community with light traffic where children could safely walk or bike to school, drew very different maps. These maps were full of details like houses, trees, and play spots. They featured lots of green and blue, the colors used to indicate positive associations. They had more labeled destinations. After the first suburb added new pedestrian infrastructure, Appleyard compared maps drawn by children before and after the upgrades. The new maps more closely resembled the second group’s: They reflected the day-to-day experience of the neighborhood.Appleyard’s study revealed the hidden psychic cost of car dependency. Its methodology followed the cognitive mapping approach associated with the MIT planner Kevin Lynch, whose work emphasized the legibility of urban environments. In the 1960s, figures like Lynch, the journalist William H. Whyte, and the writer Jane Jacobs drew attention to the negative effects of the car. They critiqued the highways that ripped through U.S. cities in the name of urban renewal, calling instead for intimate, walkable neighborhoods. This romantic urbanist tradition influenced generations of city officials and planners whose touchstone remains The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s epic biography of New York City’s midcentury planning czar, Robert Moses. Caro placed the blame for the city’s planning failures at the feet of Moses and his six-lane Cross Bronx Expressway (Moses was recently played off-Broadway by the actor Ralph Fiennes, famous for his role as archvillain Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise). But can the fight against cars win support beyond a technocratic elite? Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek, authors of Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, certainly think so. Goodyear and Gordon host the podcast The War on Cars and Naperstek is a former co-host. They are winningly self-aware about the optics of a trio of podcast hosts from Park Slope, Brooklyn, lecturing middle America on the evils of personal car ownership. Accordingly, Life After Cars seeks to appeal to a wide swathe of readers, from public transit nerds to the congenitally bike lane–averse. The authors marshal a compelling blend of history, statistics, and anecdote in support of a quietly radical argument: that mass car ownership, far from natural and inevitable, is a historical blip that can and should be reversed. They are quick to make some exceptions: emergency workers, residents of rural areas, and people with mobility disabilities, among others, have good reasons for driving. Their lives would be easier if everyone else got off the road. The authors begin their chronicle of car culture’s ills in 1899, when a man named Henry Bliss stepped into the path of an oncoming taxi, becoming the first victim of a car crash in the United States. The advent of mass automobility in the 1920s generated fierce backlash from citizens outraged by the number of people being killed by cars. Just as cities were on the brink of regulating the automotive menace, however, the auto industry stepped in. Industry allies persuaded voters to reject proposed speed ordinances that would have significantly reduced the chance of dying from being hit by a car. Local governments reinforced the message that wayward pedestrians, not cars, bore the blame for collisions. In the postwar period, the Eisenhower administration subsidized the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, creating endless suburban developments that took car ownership as a given. As a result, the authors argue, we have accepted the massive costs of car dependency rather than questioning a way of life centered around personal vehicles. Some of these costs are obvious. Cars kill 40,000 people a year on American roads, a toll so ingrained that other risks—the chance of being a victim of gun violence or an opioid overdose—are assessed relative to your chances of being killed in a car crash (one in 95 over a lifetime). Some are borne by animals, not people. Advocates have successfully campaigned for wildlife crossings, concrete corridors that help animals safely navigate deadly highways. But there is no feel-good solution for the toxic chemicals that leach from tires into bodies of water, poisoning fish and disrupting fragile ecosystems. Equally insidious is the hollowing out of social space as people retreat into cars that resemble armored vehicles, shuttling in isolation between home, work, and soccer practice.The authors make a quietly radical argument: that mass car ownership, far from natural and inevitable, is a historical blip that can and should be reversed.That last destination is significant. As Appleyard’s 2017 study underlined, car dependency prevents children (as well as anyone else who can’t drive, from seniors to disabled people) from autonomously navigating their environments. Among the many revealing anecdotes in Life After Cars is the artist Sean Kenney’s tale of moving from the U.S. to the Netherlands. Arriving in Amsterdam, Kenney is surprised when their landlord apologizes for only handing over three sets of keys for his family of four—Kenney, his wife, their 9-year-old, and their 6-year-old. “A key for the 6-year-old?” he asks in disbelief. The landlord is equally bewildered. Of course a 6-year-old would be exploring the neighborhood independently and letting themselves in and out of the family home.The authors anticipate the response that inevitably follows charming tales like this one: The U.S. isn’t Amsterdam. They counter by showing that Amsterdam wasn’t Amsterdam until the 1970s, when new policies favoring cycling pushed cars out of Dutch city centers. In 1975, the Netherlands’ traffic fatality rate was 20 percent higher than that of the U.S.; it is now 60 percent lower than the U.S. rate. This rebuttal isn’t entirely convincing. Amsterdam, like many European cities, is centuries old and was built to be navigated on foot, or, later, by horse-drawn conveyance or trams. Its dense, narrow streets naturally favor bikes and pedestrians.There are plenty of examples of this kind of compact urban development in the United States, from colonial-era cities like Philadelphia to streetcar suburbs like Shaker Heights, Ohio. But we also have a lot of twentieth-century planning based around cars, as the authors note: sprawling Sun Belt cities like Houston and Phoenix; low-density suburbs strung out along freeways; nightmarish street-road hybrids, or “stroads,” lined with parking lots. Adding infrastructure like sidewalks and bike lanes, rezoning for density, and investing in transit represent a start. Yet the stubborn legacy of car-centric growth means that not all U.S. communities will be able to emulate Ghent, Belgium, Paris, or Emeryville, California, the cities the authors single out for their pedestrian- and bike-friendly upgrades in the face of concerted opposition. If we’re stuck with car-centric built environments, at least for now, what about electric cars? The authors concede that electric cars are undoubtedly a better option than their gas-powered counterparts—they’re quieter, don’t produce tailpipe exhaust, and, assuming the gradual decarbonizing of the electricity grid, have the potential to be zero-emission. But they kill just as many people in collisions as gas-powered cars, take up space in cities, and fail to solve the social problems that cars have caused. Life After Cars urges a more radical reexamining of the design of our cities and our lives. The authors acknowledge the extent to which the promise of the automobile—mobility, freedom, power—is intertwined with the American dream. Decentering the car means rethinking the good life.In January of this year, New York City’s congestion pricing plan finally went into effect. The rollout of congestion pricing, which requires drivers to pay a fee to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, hit plenty of bumps along the way. Governor Kathy Hochul of New York initially shelved the plan in June 2024, just weeks before its planned launch. She cited the cost to working-class New Yorkers—even though only 4 percent of outer-borough residents commute into Manhattan by car, and more than two-thirds of this number have moderate or higher incomes. Local lawmakers came out in opposition, describing the plan as a shadow tax on hardworking commuters—even though drivers are already heavily subsidized through free on-street parking. Behind the rhetoric is a set of facts that points to congestion pricing’s success: lower rates of traffic congestion and air pollution; quieter streets and fewer crashes.The promise of the automobile—mobility, freedom, power—is intertwined with the American Dream. Decentering the car means rethinking the good life.The frenzy around congestion pricing reflects what Goodyear, Gordon, and Naparstek call “bikelash”—an irrational aversion to anything that threatens to topple the car from its sacred place in American life. Knee-jerk defenses of cars can be found across the political spectrum. In April 2024, the City Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts voted 5–4 to delay the completion of the city’s 25-mile protected bike lane plan by 18 months. Cambridge is one of the most bike-friendly cities in America; walking to work through the city’s Inman Square neighborhood last year, I passed streams of bike commuters whizzing down Hampshire Street. Yet the city’s commitment to cyclists has triggered bikelash, with a vocal constituency claiming that bike lanes hurt small businesses and pose a risk to pedestrians. A far bigger risk to pedestrians is, unsurprisingly, cars. Moreover, as the authors point out, when cyclists break the law—by riding on sidewalks, for instance, where they can endanger pedestrians—their behavior is typically motivated by safety concerns stemming from poor infrastructure, rather than the urge to go faster.Listen to any city resident complain about cyclists, and delivery workers on e-bikes inevitably come up. (I have advocated for e-bikes through my involvement with the E-Mobility Project). Missing from Life After Cars’s analysis are the ways in which rising demand for last-mile delivery is exacerbating the pressure on roads. Gig workers face intense pressure to complete deliveries while navigating heavy traffic and limited bike infrastructure. At the same time, last-mile deliveries on vehicles generate 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in cities and 40 percent of fine particle pollution. Trucks take up more physical room on roads than cars; they are heavier and wear down roads more quickly. Tackling car culture also means reckoning with the ripple effects of next-day delivery. Of course, most people don’t drive delivery vehicles. Most people drive cars. Life After Cars concludes by listing steps readers can take to reduce car dependency in their communities. These range from tactics like setting up flowerpots to create a visual barrier between bike lanes and traffic to learning to see cars by walking through an area where people usually drive. There is hope, they argue, even for places that don’t resemble Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Life After Cars shows us how different, how enriching, a car-free world could be. Until then, we can only echo the theorist Marshall Berman, surveying the shattered landscape of the South Bronx in 1982. Looking out at acres of blight, Berman reflected on both the devastation caused by the Cross-Bronx Expressway and the extent to which the area’s old residents had hastened its decline by moving to the suburbs. “We fight back the tears, and step on the gas.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/201910/surprisingly-convincing-case-cars

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2025-12-05T17:07:38+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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California Governor Gavin Newsom has reason to be optimistic about congressional redistricting in his state after a Supreme Court ruling. On Thursday, the court ruled 6-3 that Texas can use a new legislative map that was redrawn to benefit Republicans, with conservative Justice Samuel Alito saying in his concurring opinion that rather than racial gerrymandering, which would be illegal, “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”This seems to suggest that the conservative majority on the high court that approved Texas’s map will also approve California’s, which is being redrawn to give Democrats possibly five more congressional seats. When Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the Supreme Court ruling on X Thursday, Newsom’s press office eagerly chimed in, asking if the Justice Department would drop its lawsuit against Newsom and the Golden State. The DOJ’s official account didn’t seem to think the ruling applied to Democrats, posting in response, “Not a chance, Gavin — we will stop your DEI districts for 2026.” But that statement may not be how the Supreme Court sees it.President Trump began the partisan gerrymandering wars earlier this year when he urged Texas to redraw their maps, hoping to avert Republican losses in the 2026 midterms. His efforts to get other Republican-led states on board has not gone as well. Meanwhile, California isn’t the only Democratic-led state replying to Trump: Virginia is now beginning plans to redraw its maps.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204028/supreme-court-texas-map-redistricting-ruling-california

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2025-12-05T16:05:59+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Hardly anything pisses the president off more than hearing criticism of his mental and physical health.Donald Trump—the oldest person to ever be elected president—was reportedly irate after he was caught dozing off during a Cabinet meeting earlier this week, fuming over the fact that his drowsy habits earned him some comparisons to his predecessor “Sleepy Joe” Biden.“He is sensitive to being compared, even if not explicitly, to Sleepy Joe,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo Thursday. “Especially if it’s coming from a reporter he already hates.”Trump has recently been spotted falling asleep during meetings in the Oval Office and public events. Just one scandal irks him more than reports about his ailing body and mind: the Epstein files.Trump’s health has been a topic of concern since he was on the campaign trail, when reports circulated that he couldn’t remember the contents of cognitive exams he claimed to ace. Since then, the president has been spotted with odd discolorations on his hand, routinely appears discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders, and had a drooping expression during 9/11 ceremonies in September that onlookers suggested could be a result of a stroke.The president also received MRI scans at Walter Reed Medical Center in October. Those tests are used by doctors to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. Former White House physicians questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Nonetheless, Trump said the tests came back “perfect.”One adviser that spoke with Trump about the renewed focus on his health recalled that Trump complained the press was back on “this bullshit again.”White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has repeatedly brushed off concerns regarding Trump’s health. In a statement to Zeteo, she insisted that Trump was in “excellent overall health,” and blamed journalists reporting on his aging body for creating an environment of media distrust.“President Trump’s relentless work ethic, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in sharp contrast to what we saw during the past four years when the failing legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people,” Leavitt said. “Pushing these fake and desperate narratives now about President Trump is why Americans’ trust in the media just fell to a new all-time low.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/204021/donald-trump-freaking-out-stories-mental-decline

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2025-12-05T15:00:52+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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As the public deliberates on whether he committed a war crime, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on X bragging about dropping more bombs on alleged “drug boats.”“Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean,” Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet posted Thursday afternoon in response to Senator Chuck Schumer calling on Hegseth to resign. Hegseth responded eagerly to the bloodthirsty remark. “Your wish is our command, Andrew,” Hegseth replied a few hours later. “Just sunk another narco boat.”It’s abundantly clear at this point that Hegseth couldn’t care less about the mounting pressures around him. There’s the question of his his complicity regarding the second strike killing two men clinging to the wreckage of their already bombed boat, as well as the Pentagon’s inspector general report that his use of Signal to plan a March strike on the Houthis in Yemen “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” And yet the defense secretary would rather keep up with this strongman act, gloating proudly as the weight of the U.S. military unilaterally and violently comes down upon boatmen, often with little evidence they’re trafficking drugs. To him, killing random people in the Caribbean Sea is “owning the libs.” “This is the complete moral collapse of America—juvenile man-boys who claim to love God and value human life, but not brown lives,” one user wrote. “Secretary of Defense used to be a job occupied by serious and accomplished adult men,” writer Tom Nichols said.
https://newrepublic.com/post/204013/pete-hegseth-brags-bombing-another-boat

Nostr event nevent1qqsrpn24ynjggya2uru30fsvzhp9ewus6hxql2g6r9cwp97seumzywqzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjsj5r80

2025-12-05T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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They came to Beijing because they had dreams of making a better living, because the fields back home no longer yielded enough to live on, because a cousin had found them a bunk and a lead on a factory job, because they wanted to send money to parents still hoeing the same narrow strips of land, because they were young and restless and wanted to see what the city looked like at night, because they had failed the gaokao and this was the next best route to a future, because they had debts, because they had heard that couriers could make more in a month than they could in a season of farmwork.By 2015, an estimated 277 million people had left their rural hometowns in China for jobs in cities. China’s internal migrants—also known as the “floating population” (liudong renkou)—build the country’s skyscrapers, guard its gates, sweep its streets, and deliver its parcels. Yet they remain largely excluded from its welfare and residency benefits, a gap reinforced by China’s hukou, or household registration, system. Created in the country’s early central-planning era, hukou still links access to public services to the place where a person is officially registered. Migrants whose hukou is in a rural county can work and rent in Beijing, but without a local hukou they are typically shut out of subsidized housing, public schools, and many forms of health care and social insurance. Confined to the fringes of the urban labor market, many rural migrants live in settlements where rooms are partitioned into windowless cubicles or in so-called “snail households,” portable container units no bigger than a parking space. Working life is defined by long hours, short-term contracts, and the knowledge that a missed delivery or workplace injury could wipe out months of earnings.Hu Anyan was one of these migrant workers. His memoir, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, was written from within the churn of the gig economy and was an instant hit in China upon its publication in 2023. It drew more than 50,000 reviews on Douban, one of China’s most popular apps for sharing reading and film recommendations, and even received praise from The People’s Daily, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party, which hailed it as part of the “fine tradition” of Chinese literature in chronicling “ordinary and meaningful moments” of labor. The book’s positive reception, as the Financial Times recently pointed out, was facilitated by a political moment: Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” campaign, which included criticism of tech-sector excess. Hu’s memoir was seized on as an example of a work written from the perspective of one inhabiting the di ceng (“bottom rung”) without being read as oppositional to or overly critical of the CCP. What makes Hu’s book especially striking to an American reader is the way it eludes comparisons to exposés of low-wage work such as Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment or Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. If a subtle aim of books like Ehrenreich’s was to reveal the myriad forms of exploitation under capitalism and to transmit a sense of moral indignation, Hu’s book strikes a quieter, almost Daoist, tone. Aggrieved as he may be at being baited or shortchanged by employers, there is no sustained rhetoric of outrage, no appeal to fairer working conditions. Hu’s concern is instead to document, with painstaking precision, the texture of gig work—the small, unremarkable moments in which a day’s labor consumes the body and erodes the self. The book’s latter half especially reads far less like a polemic than a proletarian Pillow Book—a record of fleeting impressions, irritations, and passing thoughts gathered from the edges of exhaustion. Its patient, diaristic attention to the toll of labor in a society where discontent seldom finds public language can be read as a form of quiet resistance.The boom of the express-delivery industry forms the backdrop of much of Hu’s story. By the 2010s, the sector had become one of the country’s fastest-growing industries, with couriers nationwide moving billions of parcels a year. The job’s low barrier to entry appealed to new arrivals from the countryside, but high attrition was built into the system: 10- to 12-hour days, punishing speed quotas, customer ratings that could dock wages. Few lasted long.Hu’s concern is to document, with painstaking precision, the texture of gig work—the small, unremarkable moments in which a day’s labor consumes the body and erodes the self.Hu did, at least long enough to make a book out of it—a dispatch from the street level that shines a light on the ways that couriering and assorted forms of gig work yield what Lauren Berlant has called “slow death,” or “the physical wearing out of a population in a way that points to its deterioration as a defining condition of their experience and historical existence.”Now 46, Hu was born in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province located near the Pearl River Delta, and cycled through 19 jobs in half a dozen years. Before becoming a courier, he worked for brief periods as a hotel waiter, a popsicle hawker, a fast-food deliveryman, a convenience-store clerk, a security guard, and an apprentice for a comic-book publisher, among a succession of other roles that he recounts in his book. The comic-book gig was uncompensated—it came with only free room and board. One employer at a restaurant allowed him gratis meals, though “the food was always past its shelf life.”Poor working conditions contributed to an overly deferential attitude and “inferiority complex.” Reflecting on his first few jobs after graduating from secondary school, he writes: “If someone gave a compliment, I reflexively jumped to denial and scrambled to lower myself. I feared that, sooner or later, they would discover I wasn’t all they had made me out to be. I preferred that they thought very little of me, from the start.” Incredibly, when he’s chosen as one of five employees at a clothing store to receive insurance despite being the “worst performer,” Hu declines the offer. His reasoning? “I noticed that this galled some of my colleagues. Knowing I needed to keep working alongside them, I decided the insurance wasn’t worth the potential trouble.” Looking back, he regrets the decision, which he chalks up to a lack of knowledge about individual rights and the idea, instilled in him by his conservative parents, that he should “be kind to others. They failed to mention I also had to stick up for my own interests.”Not all of Hu’s jobs were in customer-facing roles. In 2017, he worked at a logistics warehouse for D Company, where the pace was grueling and the tasks—moving pallets, breaking down shipments, stacking and restacking parcels—monotonous in the extreme. He averaged only four hours of sleep each day, often leaving his night shifts with his “mind slowing down, my reactions becoming duller, my memory fading.” Many of the precarious positions he held forced Hu to budget rigorously, applying the same logic to time and money. “If a minute was worth 0.5 yuan,” he calculated, “then the cost of urination was 1 yuan—that is, if the toilet was free to use and I only took two minutes. Eating lunch needed twenty minutes—ten minutes of which were spent waiting for the food—and had a time cost of 10 yuan.” To economize, he skipped many lunches and “hardly drank any water in the mornings to reduce the frequency of restroom breaks throughout the day.”Days off were rare; when they came, Hu would stroll in a park or join a low-cost group tour to a Shanghai suburb. He also indulged in an activity that has no measurable value: reading. Over many months, he paced himself through Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities and James Joyce’s Ulysses, and found kindred spirits in Raymond Carver, J.D. Salinger, and Kafka. He absorbed lessons about economy of style from the work of Ernest Hemingway. Citing the author’s “iceberg theory” of writing, Hu notes that “the unwritten part is where the enormity and weight of a story should reside; and the art of story writing is in expressing with as few words and images as possible limitless thought and feeling. This is what I spent my time practicing, whenever I put pen to paper: how to leave empty space and silence, and knowing what not to write.” But some silences in the book, the reader suspects, are not purely aesthetic. In an interview with the Financial Times, Pu Zhao, a Chinese editor who worked on Hu’s original manuscript, recalled that a scene about a worker’s death by suicide—jumping from his company’s office building—was present in an early draft but absent from the published book. The English edition, translated by Jack Hargreaves, also invites questions about what’s been quietly excised. While Hu has a seemingly photographic memory of the cost of every single dish he has consumed, he professes to not remember details of seemingly greater salience, like the monetary award that came with him being chosen as “employee of the month” at a gas station, the details of a work contract that “violated the current labor laws,” the names of some former colleagues, and the reason he was not completely honest with a work supervisor about quitting one job (to attend night school). Sometimes, he outright contradicts himself, as when he writes, about the book we are reading: “Every choice I made over those years is laid bare—the lead-up, the motive—and I examine my feelings and mental state myself, and give more context about the settings and environments,” only to follow this up with “I can hardly recall the major reason I chose a course of action in some cases, since this all happened so long ago now.” These lacunae hint at their own icebergs, masses of facts submerged from view.While neither Hu nor his editor has publicly acknowledged working with a censor, it’s worth remembering that in China, editors often serve as proxies for censors. As James Palmer has noted in Foreign Policy, publishing houses don’t have in-house censors, but senior staff will often vet politically sensitive manuscripts. In practice, censorship in the country is a kind of dance between writer and editor—a negotiation over what can be said, and how, without inviting trouble. The results can be mixed. “Chinese books are more poorly edited than in the West, not due to a lack of ability but because the editor’s prime concern is whether the writing will cause problems, not whether it’s good art,” observes Palmer. Writing 10 years ago in The New Yorker about going on a book tour with his Chinese censor, Peter Hessler recalled the “capricious” and “strangely unenthusiastic” editing of his book River Town. At Shanghai Translation, each book manuscript passed through multiple levels of review—editor, supervisor, company head—with editors handling “the vast majority of censorship.” “Rather than promoting an agenda or covering up some specific truth,” Hessler wrote, “an editor tries to avoid catching the eye of a higher authority.”The book’s longest sustained narrative covers Hu’s parcel-delivery years, beginning in 2018 with S Company. The pre-work gauntlet began with out-of-pocket medical exams and an unpaid trial period—a reminder that the company’s time was valuable but the worker’s was not. Sent from one depot to another to process paperwork for onboarding, Hu was eventually advised to try S Company’s headquarters 20 miles away in Shunyi District, only for H.R. there to discover that a different depot had failed to upload his ID scans. When he finally faced the financial administrator in charge of onboarding—a woman whose smile for colleagues hardened to a mask of contempt when she turned to the waiting recruits—he learned that a manager never even entered his application into the H.R. system. The administrator also claimed he had “failed” his physical due to a blood-test irregularity. A doctor later confirmed that the test result was trivial—likely caused by minor inflammation—and called the company’s rejection “ridiculous.” It would be weeks before he could clear the paperwork hurdles, secure a delivery trike, and begin deliveries.S Company, the “bellwether of the [delivery] industry,” prided itself on prioritizing “high-quality service” over speed. Hu frequently worked 26 days a month for a daily pay of 270 yuan. Eleven hours a day were spent unloading trucks, sorting parcels, loading his motorbike, and covering his assigned neighborhoods. He describes how customer service could subtly game the system: In slow seasons, they would encourage complaints to pressure drivers to improve; during peak times, “they would do everything in their power to defend us and avoid risking the stability and efficiency of order fulfillment.” One manager—who, like several others in the book, is only identified by an initial, perhaps to avoid retribution—“wanted to beat into us that we owed our every success to the success of the company. We were only cogs in a machine, and could be swapped out at any moment.” At meetings, this taskmaster would even exhort workers to “help customers by taking out their trash.” Hu’s irritability is not mere crankiness; it’s the sum of humiliations great and small.Jack Hargreaves’s English translation of I Deliver Parcels in Beijing generally preserves Hu’s pacing—the alternation between compressed bursts of incident and slower, more reflective passages—and carries over much of his clipped directness. What holds the book together is Hu’s sensibility: his blend of self-critique, wry observation, and quiet rage. The irritability is not mere crankiness; it’s the sum of humiliations great and small. In one scene, a fellow driver is ordered to read a letter of self-criticism aloud at multiple depots after a customer complaint. In another, parcels arrive missorted, and drivers must scramble to fix the errors on their own time—or pay out of their own pocket. The absurdity is distilled in a line flicked at Hu by an unsatisfied customer—“The customer is king”—to which Hu defensively replies: “But there should only be one king. I have to serve hundreds every day.”By 2020, as China and the rest of the world ground to a pandemic-induced halt, Hu was let go from a courier job with Pinjun Express. His severance—two and a half months’ salary plus a returned deposit and final paycheck—totaled roughly 30,000 yuan, enough to tide him over for a while. For nearly a decade now, he has cycled between periods of writing and being gainfully employed. In his profile of the author for the Financial Times, Edward White noted that Hu has frequently been grouped with the yesheng zuojia (“wild writers”)—or self-taught authors from working-class backgrounds who ply their trade outside the official literary establishment—in addition to other literary camps like “pu luo (proletariat), da gong (migrant worker) … and zuo yi (leftist).” For his part, Hu has largely rejected these labels and sees himself as a writer foremost rather than an activist or Marxist. On the government’s endorsement of his work, he has said, “I did not ask for this and, judging from the content of my book, its value to the authorities must be very limited.” In 2024, Hu followed I Deliver Parcels in Beijing with a more introspective work, Living in Low Places, published by Shanghai-based Insight Media. In the preface to his new work, Hu invokes an idea attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi—“All men know the advantage of being useful, but no one knows the advantage of being useless”—to defend reading and writing as ends in themselves. Waking in a rented flat at dawn, reflecting on an old photograph, immersing oneself in The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina, watching ants hunt earthworms: None of these activities promise practical value. Hu has traded a life spent in constant motion for one in which he can be still and gape at the world’s beauties.
https://newrepublic.com/article/201589/bard-china-gig-economy-hu-anyan-parcels-beijing-book

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2025-12-04T18:59:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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JD Vance hit up his buddies in the Signal chat used to coordinate bombing Yemen with a late-night plea for companionship—hours after the chat’s existence was revealed to the public by Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg. “This chat’s kind of dead,” Vance texted at 2:26 a.m. “Anything going on?” A report from the Pentagon inspector general released Thursday reveals new details about what the chat’s members did in the days and hours after March 24, when Goldberg published that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had inadvertently texted him classified information about the Trump administration’s war plans. The vice president’s “u up?”-style message, which we are generously reading as a joke, was sent in the wee hours of the morning of March 25. Where Vance chose to make light of the possible treason, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared to have another aim: to cover the group’s tracks. According to the screenshot, Bessent shortened the time it would take for messages to disappear from the chat to eight hours. Goldberg reported that the messages had previously been set to disappear after either one or four weeks, already a potential violation of federal law. Other officials changed their profile names: Secretary of State Marco Rubio changed his screen name from “MAR” to “MR,” CIA Director John Ratfcliffe shortened his name to simply “John,” and deputy chief of staff Sephen Miller, “S M,” changed his name to “SM 76.” It’s unclear why these obviously identifiable (and already identified) officials would change their names, or attempt to make their messages disappear faster—the photo of the chat from the report was taken on March 27, leaving only a day for fast-deleting messages to be sent and then erased—but they obviously were scrambling.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203976/jd-vance-2-30-am-text-signal-messages-cover-up

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2025-12-04T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Gertrude Stein had no doubt that she was a genius. “I have been the creative literary mind of the century,” she once boasted. “Think of the Bible and Homer think of Shakespeare and think of me.” Some years earlier, she informed a baffled magazine editor who had rejected her writing that she was producing “the only important literature that has come out of America since Henry James.” She knew her work was unconventional—repetitive, hermetic, its apparent crudeness belying immense psychological and literary sophistication—but was supremely confident that, in time, it would be recognized as something of enduring cultural value. “For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause everybody accepts,” she observed in 1926 about the reception of avant-garde art. There was no question in her mind that her own contribution would eventually be accepted: She simply had to wait.But what do you do while you’re waiting around to become a classic? And how can you help the process along? Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife is an attempt to answer that question. The book is a biography of Stein, but an oddly structured one, in which the subject dies about halfway through. “Biography, like detective fiction, tends to begin with a corpse,” Wade writes (a killer line), “but Stein well knew that a writer’s life does not end at death, if their work has the power to survive them.” Stein, she contends, was unusually concerned with her posthumous reputation: Having accepted that her work wasn’t destined to be appreciated in her lifetime, she put her faith in posterity. “Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead,” Stein once wrote. Accordingly, she spent a good portion of her life making arrangements for her afterlife.The first half of Wade’s book is a detailed but necessarily compressed account of Stein’s remarkable, if already well-chronicled, existence. In its second half, though, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife becomes something trickier and more original: a narrative about literary scholarship, and the discomforts it can cause those left behind to tend a legacy. Stein—whose work was a mystery to so many and yet encoded facts about her personal life that would have been unspeakable during her lifetime—turns out to be the perfect case study for such an investigation.Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1874, the child of well-heeled second-generation German Jewish immigrants. When Gertrude was five, the family relocated to Oakland, California, where her father made his fortune investing in the nascent public transportation industry. (The adult Stein’s famous pronouncement on Oakland—“There is no there there”—is one of several Steinisms that has achieved proverbial status.) Gertrude, the youngest of five children, was called “Baby,” a nickname she retained for the rest of her life. She was cosseted and indulged by her parents and siblings, establishing a lifelong pattern of contented dependence on the ministrations of others. “It is better if you are the youngest girl in a family to have a brother two years older,” she wrote of her early bond with her brother Leo, “because that makes everything a pleasure to you, you go everywhere and do everything while he does it all for and with you which is a pleasant way to have everything happen to you.”Gertrude showed early signs of intellectual distinction—she was a strong student, and spent much of her free time at the public library consuming vast quantities of eighteenth-century literature—and in 1893 she was admitted to the Harvard Annex, soon to be renamed Radcliffe College. There she studied with the famed psychologist William James, who called her his “most brilliant woman student,” and began conducting research on automatic writing that presaged her later literary experiments with documenting consciousness. James encouraged her to attend medical school at Johns Hopkins, which she briefly did, but she soon grew bored and decided to join Leo in Europe, where he was pursuing a career as a painter. By the fall of 1903, Gertrude and Leo were living together in Paris on the rue de Fleurus, where they hosted a glittering salon that attracted avant-garde artists such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.Seeing the astonishing innovations in painting of the time encouraged Stein, who was already writing fiction, to experiment more radically in her own work. Cézanne, she later remembered, “gave me a new feeling about composition … it was not solely the realism of the characters but the realism of the composition which was the important thing.” Her formal breakthrough as a writer came in 1909 with Three Lives, a trio of novellas that adapted Cubist aesthetics to fictional portraiture, making a first, decisive break with literary realism. From there Stein was off and running, moving on to the exhaustive character analysis and intricate repetitions of The Making of Americans—a monumental novel charting the “History of a Family’s Progress” over the course of nearly a thousand pages—and the playful abstractions of Tender Buttons (“A shawl is a hat and hurt and a red balloon and an under coat and a sizer a sizer of talk”). More than a century on, these works are still bracingly strange, written according to an internal logic that is as implacable as it is inscrutable. And yet they are also, as Wade emphasizes, deeply pleasurable, if one gives oneself over to the experience: by turns funny, sexy, touching, and deeply bewildering. “The way to read Stein is to trust her,” Wade assures her reader early on. There’s no other way.Though Leo scorned her work—while she was writing The Making of Americans, he would pluck pages of the manuscript at random and mock them in front of their mutual friends—Stein soon found other true believers. One of them was the New York heiress Mabel Dodge, who, after reading a draft of The Making of Americans, was “convinced” that it was “the forerunner of a whole epoch of new form & expression.” She poured her energy into drumming up publicity for Stein—“I am working like a dog over you,” she wrote in 1913. Another early acolyte was the novelist Carl Van Vechten, who talked her up in smart literary circles and published one of the first critical articles on her work, “How to Read Gertrude Stein,” in 1914. He often wrote to Stein to tell her of her burgeoning reputation in her home country: “You are as famous in America as any historical character,” he reassured her in 1916.Stein and Alice B. Toklas became so closely entwined that Stein merged their names in the margin of one of her notebooks: “Gertice. Altrude.”Stein’s most important early supporter, however, was Alice B. Toklas, who first entered her life in 1907 and quickly became her secretary, muse, lover, and “wife.” (Though the two were not, of course, legally married, Stein consistently used this word to refer to Toklas in private.) A native of San Francisco who, like Stein, had grown up in a well-to-do Jewish family before immigrating to Paris to sample la vie bohème, Toklas was immediately taken with Stein. Recalling their first meeting in her 1963 memoir What Is Remembered, Toklas wrote that “it was Gertrude Stein who held my complete attention, as she did for all the many years I knew her until her death, and all these empty ones since then.” Toklas did everything for Stein—whom she called “Baby,” as her parents and siblings had—from typing up her manuscripts to cooking her meals to organizing her social life. Stein quickly became completely reliant on her; Van Vechten observed that Stein could not “cook an egg, or sew a button, or even place a postage stamp of the correct denomination on an envelope.” Toklas believed completely in Stein’s genius and did everything she could to cultivate and protect it, subsuming her ambitions into her partner’s without remainder. The two became so closely entwined that Stein merged their names in the margin of one of her notebooks: “Gertice. Altrude.”All of this rich biographical material is covered at a breakneck pace, because Wade’s primary concern, as her subtitle intimates, is not Stein’s life but her afterlife. By the time Stein died of stomach cancer in 1946, her campaign for literary immortality was still unfinished. She had had one unqualified commercial success—The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a lively memoir, written in a more accessible prose style, which became an improbable bestseller in 1933—but was otherwise a cult figure, infamous for her eccentricity but hardly regarded as “the creative literary mind of the century.” She envied the acclaim that her male modernist peers, such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, were beginning to receive, even as her own work seemed on the verge of slipping into oblivion. Her published books were little read and much derided; even more frustratingly for the prolific Stein, who regarded everything she wrote as worthy of attention, many of her texts had never been published at all.It was in the 1930s that Stein began preparing for her posthumous career. Via her friend Thornton Wilder, she learned that librarians at Yale University were beginning to assemble archival collections related to contemporary American literature, and that they were interested in acquiring her papers. Such acquisitions were then highly unusual: Modernism was just beginning to be canonized, and the notion that academic institutions would play a central role in shaping literary history was a relatively novel one. Building an entire archival collection around a still-living author, now a commonplace curatorial practice, was then entirely unheard of.Stein immediately saw the possibilities. “The idea of an archive fascinated Stein,” Wade writes. With “immortality” in mind, she made the decision to donate her papers to Yale. It meant she no longer had to worry if she could not find a publisher for some of her works during her lifetime:Through packing her texts into boxes, Stein was able to imagine a reality in which they would be received with pleasure, not derision: recovered, examined, celebrated … This was Stein’s chance to create a paper trail: to project a version of herself into the future.The latter half of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife is largely the story of scholars following that paper trail and uncovering various aspects of Stein’s life and work by exploring her vast archive. One secret hiding in plain sight was Stein’s lesbianism. It must have been apparent to most interested observers that Stein and Toklas were more than bosom friends, but the fact was rarely acknowledged explicitly. Anyone who spent time digging in Stein’s archive, however, would quickly come upon evidence of her homosexuality, which she made no effort to conceal. Among the texts she donated to Yale were frankly erotic works like Lifting Belly (which has since become a classic of lesbian love poetry) and “As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story.” (“Cow,” Stein scholars soon worked out, was Stein and Toklas’s code word for “orgasm.”) She also sent along private notes to Toklas, using a panoply of whimsical pet names: “darling wife,” “birdie,” “boss,” “little ball,” “little Jew,” “Baby precious,” “Sweet selected sovereign of my soul.” Though Toklas was mortified by the inclusion of these personal documents and insisted that Stein must have donated them to Yale by accident, Wade thinks that “it was just as plausible that Stein wanted future readers to witness the fullness of the relationship, for her archive to anticipate a moment when lesbian sexuality would be more broadly accepted, even offer future lesbian readers a sense of their own history.”There was more than gossip at stake here. Stein’s sexuality, and the suppression of it, turned out to be crucial to the story of her literary development, as well as to the future of her reputation. One of the first major discoveries in Stein’s archive was an early autobiographical novel called Q.E.D., which told the story of the young Stein’s tormented love affair with a woman named May Bookstaver. The book, written in a much more conventional realist style than her later works, was subsequently reworked into Stein’s story “Melanctha,” the centerpiece of Three Lives, which transposed the characters from white lesbians to a black heterosexual couple. That story had been much praised, including by many black writers and intellectuals, as a nuanced portrait of “Negro psychology,” but before Stein’s death no one had suspected it had any kind of autobiographical basis. Wade speculates that Stein “saw a certain affinity between her own outsider status”—as a lesbian, and a Jew—“and that of the mixed-race Melanctha—that in changing the characters’ races, she had wanted to think through the experience of otherness without being immediately identifiable as the protagonist.”Whatever the case, when Q.E.D. was published in 1950 under the title Things as They Are, it brought Stein a whole new audience. Edmund Wilson reviewed the book for The New Yorker, calling it “a production of some literary merit and much psychological interest” and proposing that the inordinate difficulty of much of Stein’s mature work might be attributed to “the problem of writing about relationships between women of a kind that the standards of that era would not have allowed her to describe more explicitly.” Wilson’s review, Wade tells us, was “the first time that Stein’s work had been discussed in the context of her sexuality,” and it put her on the path to her eventual reclamation as a queer icon in the 1960s and ’70s. Shortly after the New Yorker review appeared, the small press that had published the novel began receiving orders “from practically every girls’ college in the country,” the publisher Milton Saul reported. “I have an unparalleled mailing list of lesbians by now.”Q.E.D. had other significant consequences for Stein’s oeuvre. She wrote the novel in 1903, while still in the throes of her youthful infatuation with May Bookstaver. Almost three decades later, in the summer of 1932, she came across the manuscript again. Toklas, who had not previously known of the Bookstaver affair, was gripped by jealousy, resentment, and insecurity. According to Wade, Stein embarked on The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas around this time “as a form of reparation”: Her intention was “to compose a work that would affirm her commitment to Toklas once and for all, uniting their names, publicly, for ever.”A further bizarre repercussion of Q.E.D., which demonstrates the intensity of Toklas’s feelings, was discovered by the scholar Ulla Dydo in the late 1970s. Examining the handwritten manuscripts of Stein’s long poem Stanzas in Meditation, composed around the time of Q.E.D.’s resurfacing, Dydo noticed that every instance of the word “may” had been struck out and replaced, often with words that made no grammatical or contextual sense: “may be they shall be spared,” for example, became “can they shall be spared.” Toklas, Dydo hypothesized, had been so madly jealous of May Bookstaver that she had forced Stein to eliminate May’s name from the text she was composing, even at the risk of disfiguring its meaning.Though Wade’s discussion of such scholarly intrigues is deft and will be fascinating to connoisseurs of literary history, it can’t be denied that Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife loses some narrative momentum in its second half. The decision to bifurcate the book into a conventional, if truncated, full-life biography followed by a posthumous reception history is a clever one, but the book inevitably suffers from the absence of Stein as charismatic main character. To some extent, Toklas fills the vacuum, becoming the narrative’s de facto protagonist. In Wade’s telling, she is indeed a compelling, albeit tragic, figure. After Stein’s death, she was utterly bereft. Her friend, the journalist Janet Flanner, called her “the most widowed woman I know.” “Without Baby,” Toklas wrote to another friend in 1948, “there is no direction to anything—it’s just milling around in the dark.”What purpose Toklas had she found in tending to Stein’s legacy: overseeing the posthumous publication of her unpublished writing, vetting would-be biographers and scholars, and, in Wade’s words, “cementing a narrative in which Stein was a saint, an angel, a genius.” She continued to dwell at the rue Christine, where she and Stein had settled in 1938; when visitors arrived, she would say, “Welcome to Gertrude Stein’s home.” “Some disconcerted visitors compared the apartment to a shrine, or a mausoleum,” Wade writes. “Toklas, distraught and hollow, seemed almost to fade into the furnishings.” “A more enslaved woman would be hard to find,” the writer Max White, who briefly worked with Toklas on her memoirs, reflected. “And when Gertrude was dead, she continued as the slave to a legend.”But without Toklas, would the legend of Stein have existed at all? Genius takes work, with only a small portion of that work done on the part of the genius herself. Without Toklas—and Mabel Dodge, and Carl Van Vechten, and Thornton Wilder, and dozens of other willing helpmeets—there would be no “Gertrude Stein”: Her achievement was the work of many hands.Almost 80 years after her death, it seems safe to call Stein’s strategy to secure her posthumous fame a success: She is now a canonical American author, central to the histories of modernism, of queer literature, and of twentieth-century culture writ large. If not quite at the level of Shakespeare or Homer, she is at least as famous as Joyce and Pound. “Stein didn’t believe in an afterlife,” Wade comments. “Her fervent desire for posthumous recognition was her bid for immortality.” Toklas wasn’t so sure: At the age of 80, she converted to Roman Catholicism, largely because she had become fixated on the idea of reuniting with Stein in heaven. Her belief in Stein’s genius was inextricable from her love, just as her life had been inextricable from her devotion. As Toklas put it in a letter to Van Vechten in 1958: “I am nothing but the memory of her.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/202766/gertrude-stein-afterlife-book-review

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2025-12-02T23:28:29+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Sorry, JD Vance—while ridiculing a former vice presidential candidate Tuesday, President Donald Trump seemed to accidentally admit to having an “incompetent” number two. After barely being able to keep his eyes open during an hours-long Cabinet meeting, Trump appeared to perk up long enough to deliver an incoherent rant about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.“I think the man’s a grossly incompetent man,” Trump said, referring to Walz. “I thought that from the day I watched JD destroy him in a debate. I was saying, ‘Who was more incompetent? That man or my man?’ I had a man, and he had a man—they were both incompetent.”Based solely on the structure of Trump’s statement, the president appeared to assert that “that man” and “his man” were “both incompetent.” But surely Trump would go on to clarify what he meant, right? Wrong.“I had a man and a woman, I thought she was very incompetent too. But now she’s leading the field and I think she’s leading the field in the nomination,” Trump continued. Trump on Tim Walz: "I think the man is a grossly incompetent man. I thought that from the day I watched JD destroy him in the debate. I was saying, 'Who's more incompetent, that man or my man?' I had a man and he had a man. They were both incompetent." pic.twitter.com/uPTayZjLx6— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2025If reading loathing in Trump’s confused comment feels like a stretch, just take a look at the president’s glowering face when it was finally Vance’s turn to speak. For most of his Cabinet members, Trump merely kept his eyes shut. Setting Trump’s apparent slight aside, his garbled response is not exactly a promising sign for the commander in chief, who appeared to be struggling to stay awake during the meeting. Trump’s comments were incoherent. Who was “he” and who was “she?” Was the president even actually conscious while he was speaking? Earlier in the meeting, Trump joked that “generally speaking,” his Cabinet had many “high IQ” members. “A couple of them I’m a little concerned about,” he said, looking around the table.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203884/donald-trump-lets-slip-hates-jd-vance

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2025-12-02T15:57:24+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The publisher of Franklin the Turtle has completely denounced Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s AI depiction of the children’s character launching missiles at “drug boats,” which made light of his own potential war crime. “Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity,” Kids Can Press publishing house wrote on X Monday. “We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.” Hegseth’s post—another installment in the GOP’s AI image fetish—was an imitation of the cover of the Franklin children’s books, and reads “A Classic Franklin Story: Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.” It shows the turtle in full U.S. military combat gear, launching a missile at brown-skinned men in their boats from a helicopter. “For your Christmas wish list …” Hegseth captioned the post.The Trump administration has killed at least 80 people in its attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea, claiming they are trafficking drugs to the United States. The most recent attack saw someone from the Trump administration order a boat to be bombed off the coast of Trinidad, and then bombed again once it was known that two people had survived—which may constitute a war crime. The White House has recently shifted blame onto Admiral Frank Bradley, but a Washington Post report noted that Hegseth made the initial order to leave no survivors. It’s a bleak situation when the administration’s cruelty and lack of seriousness has Franklin the Turtle’s publisher reminding us not to use him in posts about extrajudicial bombings and warfare.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203843/franklin-turtle-publisher-slams-hegseth-sick-boat-strike-post

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2025-12-02T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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As a producer of sentences, paragraphs, and pages worth reading, John Updike was voluminous. Over the course of his life he steadily, industriously, and almost magically produced several dozen big (and even when small, dense with imagery and intelligence) volumes—novels, collections of short stories and poetry, several large blocky compendia of his book reviews and occasional pieces (most of which originally appeared in his literary home from home, The New Yorker), two books of art criticism, a surprisingly diffident and unlikable memoir, and even a few books for children. From the time John Updike awoke to his career, as a young man, he never seems to have passed a day without sketching friends and family, writing books, reading books, and writing books about reading books.In this huge attractive new selection of his letters, Updike’s appreciative readers can now pass amiably through the corridors of prose that Updike wrote to friends and family when he wasn’t writing books. Unsurprisingly, the most common topic of discussion in them is either the books he’s writing or the detailed things that happened to him in life that, eventually (if they tested well enough on the rudimentary epistolary page) could eventually be turned into more books.One of the most enjoyable and absorbing qualities of his fiction was the way Updike could transmute every mundane common human event—sexual activity, news bulletins, weather patterns, and all the diurnal seethe and pop of collective American life—into something elegant and entrancing. To his mother alone, Linda Grace Hoyer Updike (whose youthful failures to sell her own fiction had inspired Updike both to write and to never be dismayed by the possibility of failure), Updike wrote more than two thousand notes and letters—and this was to a woman who lived so close by that Updike could drop by every year to put up her screen doors and windows.James Schiff, the editor of this doorstop-size book of happily burbling letters and postcards, estimates Updike produced upward of 25,000 letters and missive-like jottings over his lifetime. Collectively, they don’t express urgency so much as a blithe acceptance of almost anything that could be transformed into finely detailed prose, as in most of the letters he wrote to his family back home in Plowville, Pennsylvania, in the early years of his marriage to Mary Pennington:Such an action-packed week I can’t believe I forgot to write you yesterday. Last Monday I went up on the train to Cambridge, Ann Karnovsky drove me out to Ipswich, and a tall, fur-coated, initially austere lady name of Madeline Post drove us around to look at apartments and houses. Only one apartment; huge, but richly furnished, and the nervous owner wanted $200 per month. Next, we looked at Little Violet, a 5-room house, with barn, carport, study, and 2 acres, for $150. We never got inside Little Violet, it being locked and the real estate agent lacking keys. I just looked into the windows. I couldn’t see much except the little room with white shelves and white marble floor that I envision as my study. The barn seemed very pleasant too. Then we looked at some houses to buy, all of them full of young pioneer women raising dozens of children in the midst of more litter and television sets than I ever saw. We are taking Little Violet; the lease should arrive soon, and we’ll move around April 1st. Seems scarcely credible. Updike’s longest letters, especially those to his family, don’t respond to problems, or attempt to resolve conflicts, or even address the practicalities of replacing screen doors; rather they are replete with Updike’s accounts of things seen, actions completed, memories recalled, and, in the case of letters to his lovers (there appear to have been a lot of them), recollections of trysts past and greedy anticipation of trysts to come. The letters are almost exhaustive accounts of one man’s pleasures—a man who seemed to enjoy every good meal, every conversation, every dalliance, every book publication and correction of proofs, every cocktail at the neighbors (whether the husbands were home or not), every excursion as a family man or a literary ambassador, and the birth of every son, daughter, grandson, and granddaughter. Updike didn’t simply compose books, letters, and essays; he recorded the accumulation of pleasures that could themselves be turned into pleasurable sentences and paragraphs. Updike was born and raised in Berks County, Pennsylvania. His early life was modest, but he received lavish encouragement for his gifts as the only child of two intelligent parents, with two sets of intelligent, attentive grandparents. After graduating from Harvard, he spent a year at the Ruskin School at Oxford University (a period beautifully portrayed in his early short story “Still Life”), and later spent another year in London with his family.A talented visual artist who grew up adoring the newspaper comics pages, Updike often wrote youthful fan letters to the likes of Milt Caniff (writer and artist of Steve Canyon and Terry and the Pirates) and Harold Gray (writer and artist for Orphan Annie). These letters are filled with compliments and often request free samples of their artwork. (“Milt Caniff is the best cartoonist in the world.” “Orphan Annie is, and has been for a long time, my favorite comic strip.”) This unreservedly admiring approach to writers remained an aspect of almost all Updike’s letters to friends and family when commenting on their stories and novels. (Both Updike’s mother and his eldest son, David, would eventually publish stories regularly in The New Yorker.) And most of Updike’s many hundreds of fiction reviews for The New Yorker were rarely, if ever, mean, harsh, or vindictive. When Updike started working for The New Yorker as a young man just out of college, he was considered far and away the magazine’s best composer of short, observational pieces for a section called “Talk of the Town”—and the experience was perfect for exercising his innate, on-the-periphery, always-whimsical-about-human-nature viewpoint. As Updike’s biographer, Adam Begley, described it: Updike remembered three types of Talk story: “interviews, ‘fact’ pieces, and ‘visits’” … and visits became his specialty. He preferred them because they required “no research and little personal encounter.” He developed the knack of planting himself in a particular place—Central Park, the cocktail lounge of the Biltmore Hotel—and simply looking and listening, making himself utterly receptive to sensory impression, noticing everything. Having soaked up the ambience, he put his writing skills to work: “An hour of silent spying” was followed, as he put it, by “two hours of fanciful typing.” (The average Talk piece was seven hundred to eight hundred words.) He made the job of translating his perceptions into “New Yorker-ese” look effortless. At one point, early in his tenure as a commissioned writer with his own desk and typewriter at the magazine, he produced so many pieces that he wrote home: “I’m way over a month ahead on my salary.” Finding subjects was never a concern for Updike—everything he saw, encountered, and did seemed perfectly useful material; and when he eventually came up with his alter ego, the self-involved and always about to put his foot in his mouth Henry Bech, Updike could do an interview about one of his books, produce a story about Bech giving a similar interview, and then shoot off several letters about the process of turning Updike into Bech and back again. A little life went a long way for John Updike.Finding subjects was never a concern for Updike—everything he saw, encountered, and did seemed perfectly useful material.Updike was such an easily oiled and productive prose machine that his work never grew stale or tired; instead, as the decades rolled on, he even got better, publishing his best novels in the 1980s and ’90s, such as the last two Rabbit books, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, many of his best short stories, posthumously collected in his emotionally moving My Father’s Tears, and even his finest poetry.After abandoning the Manhattan life and the “nicest job I ever had” at The New Yorker in 1957, Updike relocated his family to the less conspicuous pleasures of suburban life. Moving to Ipswich, Massachusetts, with his wife and growing family, he wrote several hours a day, continued selling regularly to The New Yorker, and spent his remaining free time going to parties with neighbors and sleeping with the neighboring wives. Like many young men after the war, he found that the most adventurous life available to him turned out to be an ocean of bedrooms. He slept with so many local wives, in fact, that one woman made the bold claim that she was probably the only woman in the area he hadn’t slept with.Soon the adolescents and young men he wrote about in his early fiction—who suffered a surfeit of faithfulness to the neighborhoods they grew up in, as in the elegiac Olinger (pronounce “Oh, linger!”) stories—gave way to married men with kids who weren’t faithful to anyone. And at the end of this personal road of sexual experimentation lay the start of one of Updike’s richest fictional veins—Rabbit, Run, which begins with the central character, Rabbit Angstrom, running away from his too-sedate and ordinary young family, seeking to regain the always-new pleasures of his youth. Many of Updike’s midlife letters delineate how his early interest in sex developed into an excessive one, up to the point where he is writing several current lovers simultaneously, while trying to arrange trysts with former lovers and beginning a long passionate affair with Martha Bernhard (soon to become his second wife) at the same time he is considering invitations to sleep again with his first wife, Mary. The letters include passages such as this one to Martha Bernhard: “My fingertips smell of you; how can that be? And a taste, remotely minty … I wonder, will I ever be able to suck hard enough to please you?” Or this to one of his Ipswich lovers, after catching up with her several years after he moved away: “I loved being able to drive your Mazda and able—please don’t find the parallel insulting—to elicit pleasure from your body and mine.” As he argued to one lover in the mid-1960s, recreational sex had the advantage of establishing the sort of clarity and focus that usually got lost in family life; it blocked out competing interests and concerns (yard work, school fairs, mortgage) and became entirely about itself: It occurred to me last night, in bed by 10:30, that our sex is so important, my incompetencies bulk so large, because it’s what we do; in a marriage these ups and downs are easily absorbed in the business of making a household and being a couple in public.… Oh Joan, you put it so beautifully, saying that if we don’t make each other happy we should end it. Why did my heart quail at such simplicity? Perhaps because I am unhappy away from you in rough proportion to how happy I am with you, which is very; that I, who formally believe that life is dialectical, and lived in tension, seem to be the one having difficulty with our existence in secret, surrounded by blind gossip, interwoven with our spouses and their libidinous and physiological ups and downs, and now with our intermixed children—how strange and sweet and yet disquieting.From these samples of Updike’s sexual correspondence (they appear to have been mercifully truncated and selected), Updike wrote some of the most detailed, reasonably thought-out, and unromantic letters ever composed by a major writer; and placing them against those of, say, Flaubert or even Chekhov might make it seem as if he were both colder and more intrepid in his infidelities, as if he were simply punching out numbers on bingo cards. The biggest disappointment of the letters is that the writer himself is never quite so endearing as the many wonderfully selfish characters he created from his own cloth, whether it’s the candy-chomping Rabbit Angstrom or the sexually uninhibited witches of Eastwick. He managed to create memorable, even likable characters who suffered from the worst human frailties, from gluttony, selfishness, and unfaithfulness to a failure to live up to the best ambitions they harbored for themselves. While Updike’s life and creative work focused on the people, living rooms, bedrooms, and streets of the middle American towns and country clubs where he lived, he steadily reviewed for The New Yorker hundreds of books on a wide variety of subjects while spending more time and attention than any normal reviewer could normally afford. He turned down a request from Philip Roth to provide a few thousand words of introduction to a slender volume of stories by the great Polish writer Bruno Schulz, on the grounds that, as he wrote Roth in 1978:To do it right, I would have to read all of Schulz in English and maybe acquaint myself with the Polish/Eastern European scene far better than I am.… I introduced Henry Green a while back out of love, paying an old debt; with Schulz I would have to work up the debt, the love, and at this moment, feeling harried and fragmented, I don’t want to commit myself to such a working-up. Please forgive me.For Updike, writing prose about anything (especially other books) seemed commensurate in terms of energy with the actual living of life; and yet for all his attention to details, Updike’s interest in the political world was limited. He rarely offers much in the way of pronouncements about national or international politics (though he is a constant critic of the visual ugliness of American landscapes and culture), and on one of the rare times he did offer a political opinion, it embroiled him in the sort of conflict he most hated—one that distracted him from his work.As his novels and poetry got better, his letters grew less concerned with arranging sexual calendars and more concerned with keeping in touch with fellow writers.In 1967, Updike contributed a brief “position” paper to a book titled Authors Take Sides on Vietnam, in which he credited “the Johnson Administration with good faith and some good sense,” and seemed surprised that such a mild position could inspire so much outrage. (Of course, what he didn’t seem to understand was that any “mild” position on such a ridiculous and violent war would certainly piss off anybody who was paying attention.) At the same time, his most controversial (and least interesting) novel, Couples, was inspiring similar levels of a different type of outrage. Like that novel’s suburban sybarites and partner swappers who blithely carry on their bedroom games through the Kennedy assassination and civil rights demonstrations, Updike rarely shows much concern for life as it is lived outside his limited social orbit; and he was always a bit dismayed to find himself being observed by the world as acutely as he observed it. “Dear Plowvillians,” he wrote to his family back home in 1968:The appearance, today, of my somewhat fat and evil face on the cover of Time, with the attendant chunk of Timese inside, has produced in me a strange physical reaction; I feel quite weak, drained by these weeks of attention, and rather nauseated.There was certainly something about Updike that upset many readers (especially women), but the person who always seemed the most “nauseated” by Updike was probably Updike himself—who rarely seemed to inhabit any male, middle-class characters without exposing almost every one of their unenviable traits. From Updike’s self-obsessed, careerist-author Bech to the always prepared-to-bolt Rabbit Angstrom, to his numerously and obsessively philandering husbands, Updike rarely (if ever) created characters who could be called heroic, upstanding, or admirable, and yet as he grew older and strayed less often from his second, apparently happier marriage, his literary imagination grew more adventurous; he depicted sex-driven suburban cabals (in Witches of Eastwick), wild rich passionate jungle adventures (in Brazil), and one of the most sympathetic pictures of a homegrown American terrorist (in Terrorist) that probably could have been published in the increasingly righteous post-9/11 America. As his novels and poetry got better, his letters grew less concerned with arranging sexual calendars and more concerned with keeping in touch with fellow writers, such as Philip Roth and Ian McEwan, and arranging visits to the grandchildren. His cancer diagnosis came, sudden and surprising, near the end of 2008, when he was 76, and he died—still writing and reading and correcting book proofs—only a couple of months later. Perhaps he never stopped writing because when he was writing he never grew old; and it is that ageless (and never at all “upstanding”) Updike who comes back to life again in this voluminous, Updikean-size collection.
https://newrepublic.com/article/201598/john-updike-wrote

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2025-12-01T15:04:24+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted an AI image of popular children’s character Franklin the Turtle extrajudicially blowing up “drug boats,” just days after it was revealed he potentially committed a war crime of his own. Hegseth’s post—another installment in the GOP’s AI image fetish—is modeled after the cover of the Franklin children’s books, and reads “A Classic Franklin Story: Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.” It shows the turtle in full U.S. military combat gear, launching a missile at brown-skinned men in their boats from a helicopter. “For your Christmas wish list…” Hegseth captioned the post.The Trump administration has killed at least 80 people in its attacks on boats in the Caribbean sea, claiming they are trafficking drugs to the United States. On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that on September 2, Hegseth gave a direct vocal order to kill every single person on an alleged drug boat off the coast of Trinidad. After the smoke cleared from the first strike, two people were left hanging on to the burning wreck of the ship, fighting for their lives. To comply with Hegseth’s instructions, the Special Operations commander ordered them to be bombed again, a “double-tap” attack that is widely considered a war crime. Hegseth spent the weekend defending his attack on a boat that posed no military threat to the United States whatsoever. “As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” he wrote on Sunday. “Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.... Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”This isn’t a great defense of using wartime tactics to kill people the U.S. is not currently at war with. “I think it’s very possible there was a war crime committed, of course for there to be a war crime you have to accept the Trump administration’s whole construct here—which is we’re in armed conflict, at war,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told ABC News on Sunday morning. “It’s either murder from the first strike if their whole theory is wrong—and I think the weight of the legal opinion here is that they’ve concocted this ridiculous legal theory. But even if you accept their legal theory, then it is a war crime. And I do believe the secretary of defense should be held accountable for giving those kinds of orders.”Hegseth’s bizarre post on Sunday was rightfully met with outrage. “Shouldn’t they be hanging off the boat asking to be saved and then you killing them anyways?” one user asked.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203770/pete-hegseth-war-crimes-chldrens-book-ai-meme

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2025-12-01T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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When Americans think of the civil rights movement, we may think of the bridge in Selma or the boycott in Montgomery or the march on Washington, but if we remember a single image, it is likely Birmingham, 1963: the protesters battered by the propulsive spray of the fire hoses, the snarling German shepherds, the children in their high-tops and bobby socks, the policemen with their billy clubs aloft. Photos of these scenes shocked the nation. They are widely credited with securing the Alabama city’s swift agreement to desegregate and hastening the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act the following year.The story these photos told was one of passive resistance: of protesters putting their bodies in the path of state violence without resorting to force. They remain at the center of the standard-issue narrative of the civil rights movement, that in the face of brutality and injustice, a dignified perseverance will ultimately prevail. Today, this version of the story has been told and retold by so many parties that it’s become completely severed from the spirit of the struggle: Republicans citing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “color blindness” to scorn affirmative action, liberals waxing poetic about nonviolence while shrinking from the provocations of more militant leaders, older Black politicians lecturing young people about the right way to protest. In this version, the FBI wishes MLK a happy birthday each year, pledging to “reaffirm our commitment to Dr. King’s legacy of fairness and equal justice for all.”A popular counternarrative to this story tends to pay most attention to the activist groups that embraced violent direct action: less ballot, more bullet. During the summer of 2020, as police abolitionism entered mainstream left discourse, the Black Panther Party’s open clashes with police and radical critique of the white power structure appeared far more applicable to the moment. Former BPP member Angela Davis, one of abolition’s earliest and most prominent theorists, appeared at protests and civil rights events and was interviewed widely, including for a special issue of Vanity Fair guest-edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (In popular culture, too, the BPP has received sympathetic portraits in recent years: Black Panther deputy chairman Fred Hampton was the hero of the Oscar-nominated 2021 movie Judas and the Black Messiah, which also shows him as a victim of the FBI’s war on Black activists.) In both versions of the story, though, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor’s all-out attack on the crowd that May afternoon in 1963 is remembered as the main way law enforcement interacted with the early civil rights demonstrators—in the streets, suppressing protest with naked brutality, Jim Crow style.Joshua Clark Davis’s Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back excavates a more nuanced story. Instead of focusing on the most visible and well-known crackdowns, his account traces the police repression of Black Americans in its more insidious, day-to-day form, showing how civil rights activists identified that repression—and how they responded.At the center of his narrative are the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, the two more radical movement mainstays. By 1963, CORE had adapted its civil disobedience playbook, honed during the fight against segregation and disenfranchisement in the South, to demand an end to police violence across the North and West. Even before the Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966, both groups helped run community patrols to guard against white mob violence and monitor police abuses. The violence that SNCC’s and CORE’s organizers encountered in Birmingham and beyond led them to understand law enforcement not just as one brick in the wall of state-sponsored racist oppression but as something more like the keystone. Those dogs and hoses were a particularly blunt manifestation of official power, but not its only manifestation. Equally important, Davis shows how law enforcement across the country systematically surveilled, harassed, and repressed the movement—with local detectives on the front lines. The FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO operation targeting Black and antiwar radicals, he argues, can be better understood as “federalizing efforts that local police departments had already undertaken to disrupt the civil rights movement.”For Davis, the movement’s constitutive battle is not Birmingham but Albany, Georgia, or Danville, Virginia. Albany’s police chief, Laurie Pritchett, had read up on civil disobedience. When the desegregation campaign came to his city in 1962, he realized the freedom riders were foregoing bail as a tactic, and so he conspired to pay King’s bond, releasing him from jail and taking the wind out of the movement’s sails. His goal was to “out-nonviolent” the protesters, Pritchett told interviewers later. His canny approach won him national praise: The New York Times depicted him as an “outstanding example of the new breed of Southern policeman.”In the summer of 1963, after initially using the same playbook as in Birmingham, police in Danville switched course and began to fight back—“not with clubs and fire hoses but with mass arrests, felony indictments, and unrelenting surveillance,” Davis writes. They transferred detained activists to more conservative rural jurisdictions and constantly monitored local organizing; some town residents active in the struggle were kicked out of public housing or lost unemployment benefits. “Mass brutality was abandoned…. Less dramatic and more corrosive tactics were adopted,” the movement lawyer Len Holt recalled in his book An Act of Conscience.Davis has another term for this: “slow violence.” Slow violence is harassment, spying, infiltration, and undermining; it is the weaponization of the criminal justice system. Bit by bit by bit, it makes the already hard work of fighting for change too exhausting, too maddening, too costly, or too dangerous to continue. And it doesn’t photograph well.Davis opens his book with a scene that took place in 1933, but which registers as uncannily familiar: mourners gathering to remember yet another Black man killed by the cops. At the service, a young attorney named Benjamin Davis tells the assembled: “the funeral of Glover Davis, whose body lies down there, is the funeral of every Negro in this city unless the murderous brutality of the Atlanta police is stopped!”Benjamin Davis was a Communist. Facing serious state retaliation for his involvement with the International Labor Defense and activism against police violence, he fled to New York, where he would eventually become a City Council member representing Harlem. He consistently used his position to raise the issue of law enforcement misconduct, working with the nascent organization Civil Rights Congress and even using his office to put out a report called “Police Brutality: Lynching, Northern Style.” CRC, a Communist Party–affiliated group that grew out of the ILD, would go on to appeal to the United Nations to intervene in the U.S. government’s crimes against its Black citizens, submitting a formal report in 1951 entitled “We Charge Genocide.”Police Against the Movement brings “communists and socialists back into the history” of civil rights. Davis elevates less widely remembered figures like the “unmitigated radical” Fred Shuttlesworth, who clashed with King over strategy in Birmingham and was the lone voice of dissent when more cautious movement leaders persuaded a young John Lewis to edit the speech he would give at the March on Washington, softening the tone and excising his denunciation of Kennedy’s civil rights legislation proposal for its lack of protections against police brutality. The characters Davis sketches—their clear-sightedness, their defiance—are among the pleasures of this otherwise somber book. “I’m not crazy,” the Bronx chairman of CORE tells a judge who wants to remand him to Bellevue rather than standard pretrial detention. “I’m black.”Anti-communism provided the framework for later police surveillance and repression of Black activists. The NYPD first established a unit to combat political radicals and organized crime in 1904, which it sometimes referred to as the “Italian squad.” Cops in other cities followed suit: Chicago, Detroit, L.A. “Red squads,” as these operations came to be known, cropped up across the South, too. Bull Connor didn’t just crack skulls; he also presided over a formidable political policing unit that raided and arrested suspected reds, bolstered by municipal ordinances against criminal anarchy and radical literature. (In Birmingham, such an ordinance apparently included a ban on this publication.)As the civil rights movement flourished in the 1950s, red squads shifted focus. They dispatched detectives to observe protests and gather as much intelligence on the other attendees as they could. They developed informants in the community, and even sent in their own men. The scene was absolutely crawling with undercover cops; remarkably, a red squad officer was standing next to both King and Malcolm X at the moment of each man’s assassination.For police leaders, tarring activists as reds was also a rhetorical strategy. Black communities’ fury over yet another state killing couldn’t possibly be an organic reaction to intolerable circumstances—it had to be a Commie plot. Sometimes these allegations were thinly veiled: “Birmingham does not need outside agitators coming into our city and dabbling in our affairs,” Connor told reporters in 1958. Other times, they were quite explicit. Using scare quotes, a NYPD red squad memo on a 1964 uprising in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant dismissed “the ‘police brutality’ theme” as just “a long-term expression of communist groups in America.” After officers brutally attacked and almost killed a Black truck driver playing dice with his wife and friends in 1952, officials even lobbied the Department of Justice to let the NYPD investigate civil rights complaints in-house, on the grounds that these investigations were fodder for bad-faith Communist denunciations of the department.Sometimes, slow violence and overt violence complemented one another. By 1966, Houston’s revamped red squad had an informant in the local chapter of SNCC who reported on gatherings and demonstrations at the historically Black Texas Southern University—where students were demanding, among other things, the disarmament of campus security guards. Soon, local police arrested a young student leader named Lee Otis Johnson and two of his comrades, hitting them with retaliatory charges like blocking access to public buildings. A month later, after students occupied the university and a police riot left one officer dead, very likely by friendly fire, 52 students were expelled, including every known member of Friends of SNCC. Even more disturbing, the local district attorney indicted five demonstrators, also SNCC members, for murder—not because anyone thought that one of these five men had pulled the trigger on the gun that killed the officer, but because, under a state anti-riot law, they could be held criminally liable regardless.“Police and city officials seemed content to leave the murder indictments hanging over the five men as long as possible,” Davis writes. In the year and a half it took for the first case to go to trial, all five were kicked out of school; at least two lost good federal jobs. Two more years after that, a judge dropped all felony charges against the five men. But their lives had been upended. So had Lee Otis Johnson’s. In 1968, just after King’s murder, he was arrested for felony marijuana distribution, tried, convicted, and sentenced—to 30 years in state prison. He had passed a joint to an undercover red squad officer.Police Against the Movement deftly shows how police departments neutralize movement demands and make even mandated changes work in their favor. No matter how many times they get struck, they mostly manage to reconstitute their power. For instance, a 1963 CORE memo on policing included a list of goals that members should push for in their respective cities: more Black officers, better cultural sensitivity training, and the creation of civilian review boards to evaluate accusations of misconduct. But wherever these reforms were enacted, police found ways to defy them, or to harness them for their own gain.New York’s red squad began to hire more Black detectives—people like NAACP member William DeFossett, who served as a liaison to the city’s activist groups and was treated as a “community pillar” by Black papers like The New York Amsterdam News. Yet all the while he was spying on the NAACP and the Nation of Islam: sending back detailed reports to his superiors on rallies and sensitive internal meetings alike, noting down members’ identities and license plate numbers. Or Raymond Wood, who infiltrated CORE’s Bronx chapter, wormed his way into more radical groups, and entrapped a few rightfully frustrated young men into an absurd plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Though the defendants were hardly key organizers in the fight to rein in police misconduct, the widely publicized trial allowed bad-faith critics to paint the rest of the movement with the same extremist brush.At a 1963 meeting of law enforcement leaders, the San Francisco chief of police boasted about his force’s requirements for racial relations training and counseled his counterparts to establish community relations departments. “But how different were community relations and intelligence work, really?” Davis asks. “While police promoted dialogue with activists as a recipe for improved relations, those communications also lay at the heart of efforts to collect intelligence on the movement.” These political policing units understood that knowledge was power. As James Baldwin wrote, sometime later: “A Black policeman could completely demolish you. He knew far more about you than a White policeman could.”The surveillance practices of local police have never faced a public reckoning the way the FBI’s spying did.Davis’s retelling is, of course, a narrative like any other, and in seeking to advance it he sometimes overstates his case. His contention that the surveillance practices of local police have never faced a public reckoning the way the FBI’s spying did is enough to make the case for his focus on local law enforcement. It is confusing, then, that he sometimes minimizes or obfuscates the central role the FBI did play in all this. For instance, his discussion of the reprisals Benjamin Davis faced mentions the NYPD red squad’s infiltration of the Communist Party around the same time, while neglecting to mention that the Harlem council member was investigated by the FBI and tried in federal court. Other consequential instances of law enforcement infiltration of Black activists are covered only glancingly because they don’t fit his focus on local police surveillance of CORE and SNCC members: Fred Hampton’s undoing was the work of an FBI informant, while one of the most consequential NYPD red squad targets was not SNCC or CORE but the local Black Panther Party chapter.It may be a pedantic distinction, but Davis tends to exclusively reach for the term “police violence” even when he is talking about, say, retaliatory prosecutions or judicial bias. U.S. courts and district attorneys’ offices are also weighted in favor of the status quo, but not in exactly the same way the police are; Davis draws from examples of both to bolster his thesis without pausing to tease out the distinctions. In seeking to cover civil rights battles and police repression throughout the South, North, and West over a period of nearly 20 years, he can spread himself thin, which may be one reason for some of these slippages. But his choice to give a broader overview is useful in another respect: It offers readers a clear blueprint for decoding the narratives and tactics that have, over the past five years, sprung up in response to the biggest mass uprising this country has ever seen.If the “outside agitators” charge levied by Bull Connor all those years ago sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the sort of language bandied about by politicians during the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd, and again, more recently, during the Cop City fight in Atlanta. Really, there is no more fitting contemporary example of “slow violence” than the RICO case the state of Georgia brought against 61 individuals who protested the construction of a massive police training facility. This September, a judge finally tossed the racketeering charges, but the damage was already done: The case’s glacially slow dissolution over two and a half years following the initial mass arrests and detentions in March 2023 has cost its defendants work, disrupted their education, and provoked endless anguish and uncertainty.Without ever quite saying it explicitly, Police Against the Movement makes the stakes plain. The backlash against Black Lives Matter following 2020 should be understood not as the inevitable pendulum swing of public opinion but as a fierce and coordinated campaign waged by cops across the United States desperate to claw back power after modest losses: minor funding reallocations, a few officers held to account for killing civilians, the election of a handful of reform prosecutors. (Police departments were, of course, aided by their allies in real estate and big business, a bump in crime rates during the pandemic, and, notably, a credulous press that swallowed and regurgitated their narratives.) Why didn’t the millions of Americans who marched in 2020, who got kettled and arrested and beaten up by the cops, get anything they asked for on qualified immunity, on reevaluating municipal budgets, on alternatives to law enforcement? Why didn’t the civil rights movement achieve more of its demands on policing? Why, in other words, is it so hard to change anything about the police? Davis makes it blindingly clear: because they fight like hell to prevent it from happening—and the law is mostly on their side.
https://newrepublic.com/article/202810/police-infiltrated-civil-rights-groups-cointelpro

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2025-11-26T20:06:56+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…pyzj)

MAGA Republicans accused a Democrat running against Vivek Ramawamy for Ohio governor of posting an AI-generated video of the DOGE czar-for-a-day pitching a truly terrible policy idea. Too bad for them, because the video was actually real. Former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, a Democratic primary candidate for governor in Ohio, shared a clip on X Monday that showed Ramaswamy pitching an outrageous idea to lower the cost of childcare.“Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going to four o’clock instead of three o’clock, so you don’t have to pay for childcare,” Ramaswamy said in the video.That proposal was so blatantly bad that Republicans immediately started to accuse Acton of sharing a fake video. Far-right commentator Tim Pool claimed on his show Tuesday that the video Acton shared was AI and that the audio had been “replaced.” He aired an edited version of the video pulled from Ramaswamy’s social media that appeared not to include the Republican’s proposal to extend school hours. “If we are playing this game, we are done,” Pool said, arguing that Ramaswamy ought to sue his opponent. MAGA influencer Austin Padgett claimed in a post on X that the video was “probably the most successful example of a political deepfake I’ve seen so far.” And Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republicans Federation, also railed against candidates sharing manipulated videos. “If you’re a candidate and you share AI-altered videos of another candidate and pass it off as reality, you should be fined a lot of money,” Guidarini wrote on X.But they couldn’t have been more wrong—as Acton noted in a reply to Guidarini. “Agreed. The bad news for Vivek Ramaswamy is that his plans for Ohio are so backwards, his own party is convinced they’re AI,” she wrote on X. “Spoiler alert: they’re not.”It turns out, the only one manipulating the video was Ramaswamy. The full video was originally posted to Ramaswamy’s social media accounts before being removed. Another version of the video was later reposted without the Republican’s plan to extend school hours, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Some MAGA accounts backed off their claims that Acton’s video was fake. “Never mind, this does not appear to be AI. It seems Vivek did post this, then reposted it with the year-round school part removed. However, he forgot to re-edit it on his Threads account (forgot that site existed),” America First Insights wrote on X. “Year round school is such ‘only GDP going up matters’ thinking.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203721/vivek-ramaswamy-video-ohio-governor-ai-generated

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2025-11-25T22:59:45+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…pyzj)

Donald Trump is already making light of his administration wrongfully deporting immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador.Speaking from the newly paved Rose Garden Tuesday, Trump delivered a ghastly joke while he passed out pardons to two turkeys, Gobble and Waddle.“Instead of pardons, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork straight to the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador,” Trump said. “And even those birds don’t want to be there, you know what I mean.”Unlike his many other groan-worthy jokes, this one didn’t seem to elicit the slightest laugh from the White House audience.Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s CECOT, which is notorious for human rights abuses, even though the vast majority of those immigrants did not have criminal records. Despite the administration’s claims that the deportees were brutal gang members and “the worst of the worst,” only 32 of the deportees had actually been convicted of crimes, most of which were minor offenses such as traffic violations. The Trump administration has continued to refer to CECOT as part of a barbaric propaganda campaign to scare immigrants. Since that scandal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only continued its trend of targeting immigrants who aren’t criminals. The latest disclosure from ICE revealed that 40 percent of immigrants detained at agency facilities had no criminal record at all.Trump also cracked multiple jokes about presidential pardons, saying former President Joe Biden had “used an autopen last year for the turkey’s pardon.”“So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid,” Trump continued. He also claimed he’d wanted to call the birds Chuck and Nancy, after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “But then I realized I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people,” Trump said. It seems that Gobble and Waddle should count themselves lucky. They’re probably the first recipients of Trump’s presidential pardons who didn’t have to help make him rich.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203677/donald-trump-jokes-deporting-turkeys-el-salvador-megaprison

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2025-11-25T18:46:41+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The Department of Government Efficiency is claiming that they are still operational despite reports that the agency has disbanded. In a post on X Monday night, the account called a Reuters article reporting that the agency “doesn’t exist” with eight months remaining on its charter “fake news.” “As usual, this is fake news from @Reuters,” the post read. “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335M. We’ll be back in a few days with our regularly scheduled Friday update. 🇺🇸”DOGE has not posted since then, or offered any proof of the cuts. They also didn’t refute a key piece of information in the Reuters article: that DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity.” Its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, is now an official adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as she makes jokes on LinkedIn.Many of DOGE’s functions have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management, and many of its employees have moved to other agencies within the government. So, what does the X post mean? Maybe DOGE is still a tool in the hands of Elon Musk and Russell Vought, or a scapegoat whenever the Trump administration wants to make massive cuts. Whatever the case, the massive damage DOGE caused to the federal bureaucracy will live on and probably continue for the rest of the Trump administration. Whether the name lives on is another story.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203665/doge-is-back-kills-shutdown-rumors

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2025-11-24T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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The Holocaust happened. George Washington was the first president of the United States. Vaccines do not cause autism. Climate change is real. The earth is round. There is no life on the moon. The 2020 election was not rigged.I have no direct evidence to support any of these claims, but I believe all of them. I do so for one reason: I trust the people who have told me that they are true. I can see for myself that dropped objects fall, that babies cry, and that birds fly. But the number of things I can see for myself is a tiny subset of the number of things that I believe to be true.For all of us, this is inevitable. It is also highly adaptive. If you believed only those things for which you have direct evidence, you would not be able to function in the world. At the same time, the fact that our beliefs often depend on the claims of trusted others can create a lot of trouble.The Martians, David Baron’s riveting exploration of the Mars craze of the late 1800s and early 1900s, is a case study in the formation of unfounded beliefs. The tale begins on August 23, 1877, when the distinguished director of Milan’s Brera Observatory, Giovanni Schiaparelli, took advantage of the fact that Mars was making an unusually close approach to Earth. Schiaparelli maneuvered his telescope in such a way as to get clear looks at Mars, with the goal of producing a detailed map of the planet’s surface. As it happens, Schiaparelli was color-blind, which may, Baron suggests, “have enhanced his perception of shape and contrast.” During the fall and winter of 1877, Schiaparelli made his map. He found dark and light areas, as others had; at the time, these were widely taken to be oceans and continents, and Schiaparelli saw them as such. But he also saw, apparently for the first time, a large number of straight “narrow streaks,” hundreds or even thousands of miles long, “that appeared to connect the seas to one another,” Baron reports. Sometimes the streaks disappeared. Sometimes they were as “strongly marked as a pen line,” Schiaparelli observed. Sometimes they seemed to double; Schiaparelli called that process “gemination.” Incredulously, he asked a colleague: “What could all this mean?”Because the lines seemed to connect Martian oceans, Schiaparelli referred to them as “canali,” a word that means “channels” in Italian, but that was mistranslated as “canals” in English. In 1882, The Times of London ran a dramatic headline: “Canals On The Planet Mars.” Astronomers around the world tried to confirm Schiaparelli’s dramatic findings. Most of them saw no lines in 1884, 1886, and 1888, when Mars was also close to Earth. But in 1892, astronomers in Peru, California, and France did indeed see the lines. The world was intrigued. Were there living creatures on Mars, constructing canals? The New York Herald wondered: “Are the so-called ‘canals’ really signals which are being exhibited to us, or are they made to connect all the big seas with another?” The Boston Daily Globe speculated: “Who shall say that some day a delegation of Marsonians will not visit the earth.” (The term “Martians” came into widespread use a bit later.)Percival Lowell, scion of the famous Lowell family (and brother of Lawrence Lowell, later to become president of Harvard), was intrigued. Born in 1855, Lowell was looking for direction in life. He turns out to be the hero, or at least the protagonist, of Baron’s story. He asked the director of Harvard’s Observatory to help him find the “most modern charts or drawings of Mars,” including Schiaparelli’s. He wanted to explore Mars on his own. Having procured an advanced telescope (he had a ton of money), he started to do so in earnest. In his late thirties, he relocated from New England to a pine forest in the Southwest, where the view of Mars would be better.Before he left, he spoke to an audience in Boston about his plans and Schiaparelli’s fascinating canals. Though he had not seen them himself, he declared that “the most self-evident explanation from the markings themselves is probably the true one; namely, that in them we are looking upon the result of the work of some sort of intelligent beings.” In Arizona, he created his own observatory and hired his own team. But initially he failed to see canals: “To look for the canals with a large instrument in poor air is like trying to read a page of fine print kept dancing before one’s eyes.”He stared at the planet for hours, hoping that the dancing would stop and that the image would become stable. At times he began to see “faint threads that stretched across the bright surface,” Baron writes, but lamented that he couldn’t be exactly sure they were canals. Before long, however, he became more certain, writing his mother, “The number of canals increases encouragingly,” and eventually seeing them “in profusion.” At one point, he almost gasped at what he saw. Some of the lines were twinned; they looked like railway tracks! Lowell telegrammed the press: “The canals of Mars have begun to double.”From there, things moved quickly. In the winter of 1895, Lowell returned to Boston, where he delivered four lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He proclaimed that “the telescope presents us with perhaps the most startling discovery of modern times—the so-called canals of Mars.” He urged that the canals were, in fact, evidence of a global irrigation system, designed to bring water to the planet’s inhabitants. He believed that the dark spots were probably settlements, where Martians grew crops. Lowell claimed that what he observed suggested a culture that was far older than our own, and also more advanced. “A mind of no mean order would seem to have presided over the system we see—a mind certainly of considerably more comprehensiveness than that which presides over the various departments of our own public works.”I am aware that this brief summary might suggest that Lowell’s lectures were wild or preposterous, and that the audience must have thought that he was deluded. But if you read his works in their original form, you will be in for a big surprise. Lowell speaks calmly and patiently. He seems painstaking. He offers some wise statements about belief, noting that “proof is nothing but preponderance of probability.” He offers an impressive number of details about Mars: its relative path around the sun as compared to that of Earth, the length of its year (686.98 days, he reports, compared to 365.26 days for Earth), its size (about 4,215 miles in diameter), its mass (10/94 that of Earth), its average density, and much more. On some of the central details, Lowell’s claims are identical, or nearly so, to current understandings. When Lowell gets to the supposed canals and to the apparent irrigation system, he veers back and forth between confidence, amazement, close attention to detail, and occasional caution. “The canals,” he reports, “are very remarkably attached to one another. Indeed, the manner with which they manage to combine undeviating direction with meetings by the way grows more and more marvelous, the more one studies it.”Having read some of Lowell’s writings on Mars, I can report a dizzying feeling. Much of the time, the author seems to know exactly what he is talking about, only to disappear into a rabbit hole. If you read him, and then listen to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines, you might see them as twins: intelligent, eloquent, learned, confident, fixated, charismatic, frequently charming, selling snake oil, and living in a fantasy land.At the time, Lowell’s lectures got a ton of favorable attention. To be sure, some scientists were skeptical. The distinguished astronomer Edward S. Holden, for example, lamented “that the conclusions reached by Mr. Lowell at the end of his work agree remarkably with the facts he set out to prove before his observatory was established at all.” Eventually scientists sorted themselves into two camps: the canalists, led by Lowell, and the anti-canalists, originally led by Holden. Obtaining a more powerful telescope, Lowell made new observations of Mars in both Arizona and Mexico and became even more confident: “I have no doubt that there is life and intelligence on Mars,” he proclaimed. H.G. Wells, the great novelist, was convinced by Lowell. So was Nikola Tesla, the inventor, who believed that he had himself “observed electrical actions” of “planetary origin,” and who added, “Inhabitants of Mars, I believe, are trying to signal the Earth.” Holden thought that was nonsense.In 1902, opposition to the canalists, and to Lowell in particular, came from an unlikely quarter. Inventors and others were becoming intrigued by optical illusions—by the tricks that the human brain plays on itself. Edward Walter Maunder, a British astronomer, wondered whether Lowell and others were not seeing lines but instead concocting them. “Maunder suspected,” Baron writes, “that the eye and brain, trying to make sense of detail too small to be perceived, might impose straight lines on the chaos.” He thought canals might be just an optical illusion.To test that hypothesis, he did a study with a number of boys, aged 11 to 15. He wanted to see if he could trick them into seeing canals. To do that, he showed the boys a map of Mars created by either Lowell or Schiaparelli. The map showed actual features of the planet’s surface, but Maunder erased the canals that had been found and marked by the canalists. He asked the boys to try to copy the map as best they could. Sure enough, many of them “saw, and drew, straight lines where none existed,” Baron notes. Maunder claimed that the canalists were like the boys; they saw such lines where there weren’t any. Maunder presented his findings to the British Astronomical Association, most of whose members were persuaded. In response, Lowell ridiculed Maunder. “It is not me who makes lines on Mars, it is the Martians.” Sure, he conceded, “it is quite possible to perceive illusory lines,” but “the whole art of the observer consists in learning to distinguish the true from the false.”In the face of Maunder’s objections, Lowell continued his work and became even more obsessive. In the first half of 1903, he made no fewer than 372 drawings of Mars. The drawings were elaborate, and each of the many supposed canals had its own name: for example, the Thoth, Amenthes, the Styx, Ulysses, Cyclops, Titan, the Ganges. Aiming to make sense of what he thought he saw, Lowell contended that Martian farmers were fighting to survive on an arid planet, and that they worked hard to shift the flow of water from one agricultural district to another. Lowell claimed that Mars’s waters were being pumped, which meant that Mars had advanced technology and thus a civilization. Maunder responded that Lowell’s theories were “an excursion into fairyland.”In 1905, Lowell went further. He sent a telegram to the Harvard Observatory, claiming to have photographed the canals of Mars. The New York Sun quoted him: “To-day we can state as positive and final that there are canals on Mars—because the photographs say so, and a photographic negative is nothing if not truthful.” He presented his new photographs, which were indeed of Mars, as unmistakable proof of a Martian civilization. In 1906, he delivered eight lectures in Boston (published in The Century Magazine and later in book form, under the title Mars as the Abode of Life). Emphasizing that he had found proof of life, he insisted, “we have been careful to indulge in no speculation.” Though the photographs were opaque, many people believed him. Surveying the entire year of 1907, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial in which it said that “the most extraordinary event of the twelve months” was “the proof afforded by the astronomical observations of the year that conscious, intelligent human life exists upon the planet Mars.”Things started to unravel in August 1909, when the American Astronomical Society met in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, at the Yerkes Observatory. Astronomers at the meeting did not see any lines on Lowell’s photographs; they thought that he “was using his imagination.” An American scientist replicated Maunder’s experiments, not with schoolchildren but with experienced astronomers, who drew lines when copying sketches seen from a distance, even though those sketches had no lines. The society’s president, Edward C. Pickering, spoke skeptically about the whole Mars craze. But Lowell responded to his critics vigorously. As Baron puts it, “Few combatants could match his wit and skill.”He finally met his match, his nemesis, and ultimately his conqueror in Eugène-Michel Antoniadi, an ingenious Greek French astronomer who, as a card-carrying canalist, had drawn his own maps of Mars before the turn of the century. By 1903, Antoniadi described himself as “agnostic,” only to be convinced by Lowell’s 1907 pictures of the red planet, which he called “truly splendid photographic results.” But in late 1909, he engaged Europe’s most powerful telescope. He was able to see Mars pretty clearly—and there were no lines! What Lowell identified as the Amenthes, for example, did not exist at all; where Lowell saw the Thoth, Antoniadi found only “a succession of a few very faint and diffused knots.” He wrote directly to Lowell, with careful and precise drawings showing that there were no canals on Mars. Lowell wrote back, saying that Antoniadi’s telescope had too large an aperture to see what was there. Antoniadi politely disagreed—and proceeded to embark on a vigorous campaign to discredit Lowell.In that campaign, the brilliant and agile Antoniadi engaged prominent astronomers, insisting that Lowell’s findings “are doomed to become a myth of the past.” He also went public, writing in newspapers and magazines in Greece, France, England, and the United States. In December 1909, astronomers met in London to discuss the controversy. Maunder spoke, repeating his claim that there was no basis for the so-called canals. Antoniadi’s masterful drawings were displayed, and he also had new photographs of the planet, taken through a massive telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Those photographs were far bigger, and much clearer, than Lowell’s ever were. They showed the surface of Mars without any straight-line canals, and only with the natural streaks and splotches that Antoniadi had sketched. Antoniadi maintained that the bogus findings emerged from “a disregard of the dangers of pressing too closely the evidence of our senses.”Responding haughtily to the critics, Lowell once said, “I am very sorry for them.” Another time, he quipped, “The difficulty in establishing the fact that Mars is inhabited lies not in the lack of intelligence on Mars, but rather in the lack of it here.” But his day was over. Schiaparelli himself, now in his mid-seventies, acknowledged that what he had seen back in the 1870s might have been entirely natural. To make things worse, he insisted that the “name ‘canal’ should be avoided.” Lowell continued to make elaborate maps of Mars, but he appeared delusional. He died in 1916, right after a series of bizarre lectures on the canals of Mars and its inhabitants.Baron is a terrific storyteller, and he has a sensational story to tell, replete with a host of memorable characters (and more than a few romances). As he is keenly aware, the Mars craze cries out for some kind of explanation. Lowell was no con man. He believed what he said. Baron emphasizes “confirmation bias”: people’s tendency to credit evidence that supports their preexisting beliefs, and to dismiss evidence that seems to undermine those beliefs. Lowell certainly showed confirmation bias, big time. But he also suffered from something different. He engaged in “motivated reasoning,” which means that he believed what he wanted to believe.From the beginning, Lowell really wanted to believe that he saw canals, and that they were clear evidence of intelligent life. His attention to detail, his care, and his obstinacy were all products of motivated reasoning. The same is true of his obsessiveness, which seemed to border on the pathological. In Mars (1895), for example, he lists no fewer than 183 canals, each with its own (weird) name, alongside a notation of the number of times that it appears on one of his drawings. Agathodaemon appears in 127 drawings, while Araxes appears in 93, Daemon in 118, Styx in seven, and Ulysses in 33. It’s quite a system. But there are no canals on Mars! All the while, Lowell was playing with creations of his own imagination.For a time, Lowell was able to succeed because he helped spur what economists call an “informational cascade,” which occurs when people learn from what others seem to think, and eventually put their own uncertainty or doubts to one side. Confronted with Lowell’s credentials and convictions, many people thought that he must be right, and many of those who might have been doubtful were influenced by the signals sent by the number of trusted people who seemed to think that Lowell could be trusted. When large numbers of people believe a falsehood about anything at all (vaccines, climate change, election fraud), it is often because an informational cascade is at work.But all this is, I think, missing something important about Lowell, the canalists, and the Mars craze. In much of his writing, and especially in the parts on which he seemed to labor hardest, Lowell seems like a fanatic, and a particular kind of fanatic: a conspiracy theorist. True, he did not point to any conspiracies. But like conspiracy theorists, he promises to open your eyes. He connects a lot of dots (literally). He insists on patterns where they do not exist. He describes a plausible counterfactual world (again literally), with its own internal coherence and logic. He knew more about Mars than almost anyone (even if much of what he knew was false). He was earnest, precise, specific, and attentive to skeptics: “For the canals to come out in all their fineness and geometrical precision, the air must be steady enough to show the markings on the planet’s disk with the clear-cut character of a steel engraving. No one who has not seen the planet thus can pass upon the character of these lines.” He was also intriguing: “That Mars seems to be inhabited is not the last, but the first word on the subject. More important than the mere fact of the existence of living beings there, is the question of what they may be like.” He was seductive, but somehow also nauseating. His writing makes you feel claustrophobic.The tale of the Mars craze has immense contemporary relevance. There may be no Martians, but right now, science and scientists are under extraordinary pressure, and many researchers are losing funding. Canalists are everywhere, and there are plenty of Percival Lowells out there. Some of them have something like his erudition, charisma, confidence, and sophistication; some do not. Some of them hold positions of authority. They identify patterns. They have radio shows or podcasts. They create informational cascades. They are here to tell you that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, that climate change is not real, that vaccines cause autism, that election fraud is rampant, and that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was staged. Having connected so many dots, those who hold such theories tend to know a ton—far more than you do. No one is likely to be able to convince them that they are wrong. Like Lowell, they probably feel sorry for those who try.On the subject of Mars, astronomers found themselves in a state of epistemic turmoil back in the 1890s and 1900s. Fortunately, the stakes were not that high. Lowell did not do much harm. The epistemic turmoil in which we now find ourselves is much more acute and far more dangerous. Some people sincerely believe damaging falsehoods. Others do not believe them, but are happy to push them for fame, profit, or power. Who are the modern-day equivalents of Eugène-Michel Antoniadi, willing and able to show what is true? And how can we get sufficient numbers of people to pay attention to them?
https://newrepublic.com/article/202815/martians-book-review-man-believe-life-mars

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2025-11-20T16:31:52+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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On Tuesday, multiple congressional Democrats made a video reminding the members of the military and intelligence community of their duty to the Constitution, not to President Trump. On Thursday, Trump called them “TRAITORS” and shared a post calling for them to be executed. The fairly milquetoast video that drew Trump’s outrage featured Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan—all former military or intelligence veterans. “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” the Democrats said. “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.” We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025The clip set Trump and MAGA off. “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT.” “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” read another post retruthed by Trump.The person who posted that had a “deus vult” profile picture, a symbol commonly associated with the neo-Nazi movement.“Get these people out of office!! They aren’t doing their jobs, they are looking for ways to be rebels, and take others with them. They need to go!!!” yet another said.“Why aren’t they under arrest for sedition......thrown out of their offices...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH…” read another.It’s rich to hear the January 6 crowd who wanted to hang Mike Pence now whine about sedition, treason, and conspiracy. Trump absolutely has pitted the military against normal American citizens. From releasing them into the streets of American cities, to the possibility of sending them to polling stations in blue districts to “monitor” elections, there is a clear attempt from Trump here to make the military his personal army rather than a body beholden to the rules of the Constitution he has so much disdain for. This story has been updated.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203438/trump-suggests-executing-democrats-told-troops-obey-constitution

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2025-11-19T20:52:46+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration produced yet another moment that felt more fever dream than reality.Legendary (and, more recently, embattled) rapper Nicki Minaj addressed the United Nations at a special event, titled, “Combatting Christian Violence and the Killing of Christians in Nigeria.” The event, led by Ambassador Mike Waltz, came just days after President Trump named Nigeria a “country of particular concern.” Alleging “Christian genocide,” the president has since threatened U.S. military intervention in Africa’s most populous—and most oil-rich—country.“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” the president wrote earlier this month amid a series of posts on Nigeria. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!” Trump threatens to go into Nigeria ‘GUNS A-BLAZING’47 says he’s instructed the Pentagon to prepare for ‘possible action’ against Islamists‘If we attack it will be fast, vicious, and sweet’ https://t.co/rID692XIjU pic.twitter.com/nxdeIqR9mE— RT (@RT_com) November 5, 2025Minaj, who has been shifting rightward for some time now, publicly supported the president’s crusading rhetoric.“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other. Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice,” the addled rap star wrote on X earlier this month. “Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” The post was met with disdain, confusion, and blind devotion from her “Barbz” fandom—which is still mostly made up of women of color and LGBTQ folk.But before we talk message, why this messenger?Minaj has had quite the fall from grace since Cardi B threw that shoe at her in 2018. Her accolade-laden career has been marred by spiteful, nasty feuds with other, often younger, women rappers, many of which have ended with public, alarming manic episodes on social media. Her husband, Kenneth Petty, is a registered sex offender, and in 2021, the woman he assaulted when she was just 16 alleged that Minaj “directly and indirectly intimidated, harassed and threatened [her] to recant her legitimate claim that Defendant Petty raped her.” In 2020, Minaj’s brother was sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping an 11-year-old. She publicly and financially supported him during his trial. And just last month, Minaj was on X claiming rival Cardi B had fertility issues, calling her boyfriend gay, and claiming Cardi had surgery to look more like her.At 42, Minaj has struggled to find her footing and age gracefully as an artist, and her legacy is actively suffering for it. So perhaps it’s no surprise she has a sudden affinity for MAGA—and is willing to be the PR face of a right-wing evangelical push for U.S. intervention in Nigeria.“Today, faith is under attack in way too many places. In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted, driven from their homes, and killed,” Minaj stated. “Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart, and entire communities live in fear constantly, simply because of how they pray.... It demands urgent action.” Grateful to @NICKIMINAJ for standing with me today at the UN against the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. pic.twitter.com/xJiDnVlOZW— Ambassador Mike Waltz (@USAmbUN) November 18, 2025“America is a Christian country,” Alex Bruesewitz, the Trump adviser and content creator who reportedly booked Minaj, said at Tuesday’s panel, which was organized by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. His comments echoed common malicious, revisionist Christian nationalist points. “It was founded as a Christian country and it will always be a Christian country, and we are not ashamed of that. We are proud of that. And President Trump is doing incredible work here in our country to defend religious liberties and I’m very proud of him. But I’m also grateful that he uses his platform and his powerful voice to raise awareness about the atrocities that are happening to Christians all across the globe.”Minaj was joined by other speakers who focused more on Islam as a whole rather than specific extremist and militia groups, and alleged the violence is solely religious to justify their own evangelical intentions.“Is this about a caliphate? Why do they kill Christians? Or is it a religious, spiritual warfare that we’re seeing now waged on one side?” Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked the speakers.“I believe it absolutely is. And we’ve talked about the [Islamic State] ideology or the Al Qaeda ideology, and that sense that anybody who stands in the face of a totalizing and violent extremist view shouldn’t be allowed to exist,” said Sean Nelson of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom. “Climate change doesn’t cause people to behead each other, right? These different excuses when the attackers themselves say … ‘We will kill all Christians,’ the Christians who see that and experience that every day, they believe them, because they know what’s happening.”There is no consensus that this is what’s happening. The Nigerian government has stated, “Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.” Just days before the panel, 25 mostly-Muslim schoolgirls were abducted by gunmen in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi. Waltz mentioned the horrific incident at the event, but conveniently left out that they were Muslim—because he wants to handle this on U.S. terms. Nigeria is having issues with Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, and other militant groups. But if the country thinks the situation merits military intervention, it needs to be the one to decide that. This unilateral decision from Trump, a bunch of white Christians, and Minaj reeks of classic imperialistic tropes. Other Nigerian cultural leaders have called the Trump administration’s argument a blatant attempt to foment violence.“[President Donald Trump] said he enjoys war. And it’s clear he’s dying to make war,” Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka said this month. “He says he wants to help Nigeria. Of course—anybody, any leader, any nation, would gladly accept assistance from anywhere to get rid of this vicious fundamentalist group, whose principle, whose understanding of their religion is just to butcher others who happen not to follow them.... At the same time, there has been partnership, partnership between Nigeria, other regimes for weaponry, equipment, training to deal with these well-organized and transnational killers under the name of Islam. They exist.... But to use language like ‘invading’ ... ‘guns-blazing,’ ‘sweetly,’ ‘viciously.’”“This is not a Christian genocide, because the facts don’t support it,” Good Governance Nigeria researcher Malik Samuel has also said. “If you look at the areas where this conflict is rife, even in the—even if you take Borno state alone, you look at northern Borno, many of these communities are Muslim-dominated. So most of the victims of Boko Haram violence are Muslims.”But the facts don’t matter to the Trump administration. As Minaj’s role suggests, Trump wasn’t just suddenly compelled by the plight of Christians in Nigeria. These recent developments are the result of a long-standing evangelical campaign to shape Nigeria—and the greater African continent—in the evangelical image. Multiple white evangelical groups like Focus on the Family, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and the Fellowship Foundation have poured millions into a concerted effort to push U.S.-branded right-wing ideologies on African countries like Nigeria, Uganda, and others. Paula White-Cain, Trump’s own spiritual adviser, has been taking trips to Nigeria and other African countries in the name of Jesus for years.This current campaign is driven by those same forces.We’ll have to wait and see just how far Trump’s threats of intervention go. It seems obvious that the attacks from Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen should be handled in tandem with the Nigerian government in a way that preserves the sovereignty they’ve been historically robbed of, not this all-out, “guns-a-blazing” effort. But the current rhetoric, along with sanctions and the addition of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” could potentially make a flailing rapper the face of a military campaign that further destabilizes the country.“The Barbz are really famous. In like real life lmfaooooooo wow,” Minaj later posted on X. “What a day.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/203395/nicki-minaj-trump-christians-nigeria

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2025-11-19T12:00:00+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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It’s perhaps fair to observe that Ian McEwan has entered the elegiac phase of his career. It happens to us all eventually, I suppose, whether one makes donuts or novels; eventually pondering what came before takes up most of your dwindling time. He looked back at the past in his last two novels: Machines Like Me (2019) is set in a 1980s England depicted through an alt-historical lens (the Brits lost the Falklands war to Argentina, but, in a version of the country where Alan Turing still lives, flying cars already exist), and Lessons (2022), a portrait of a feckless boomer born the same year McEwan was, 1948, spans 70 years of its protagonist’s unremarkable, faintly gilded life, one that never quite escapes the shadow of a sexual assault at the hands of his piano teacher, Ms. Cornell, when he was 14. McEwan’s fiction has always been about the need to make meaning from catastrophe, to awaken or shield the moral imagination through the intellect, and in his new book, What We Can Know, the catastrophe is the future and the elegy is for our species, as the oceans rise and prospects grow dour.The book concerns a literary scholar, Thomas Metcalfe, in a diminished England, one McEwan imagines as half-submerged and wholly disillusioned by 2119. The country’s green fields have turned into inland deltas, the southern coast has been eaten by what survivors call The Inundation—erosion of the coasts and rewriting of the world’s topography by the onrush of salt water, spurred not just by climate change but also by a catastrophic tsunami in the Atlantic caused by an errant Russian nuclear missile that landed short of America—and what remains of civilization has reorganized itself around an archipelago in which travel is hard and the only growth industries are data recovery and atmospheric management.McEwan sketches a scarily plausible dystopia, in which Civilization hasn’t ended; after decades of hanging by a thread it has stabilized, salvaged by our weary successors who are forever bound to pay for our excesses. People move through the future quietly, their lives bracketed by scarcity and the faint hum of desalination plants. Interracial love has rendered most people honey-colored, just as the 1998 movie Bulworth predicted would become a necessity, and those with pale skin now face discrimination and othering; there was no stopping those from the global south from moving north to seek higher ground and cooler climates, especially after Pakistan and India’s nuclear exchange.In this world the humanities have become an archival curiosity and Metcalfe, a professor at the underfunded University of the South Downs, teaches to near-empty rooms. He is a relic of the humanities in a world that no longer values them, “a poor cousin to the water scientists,” as he puts it. His colleagues envy the grant money that still flows to the climatologists and biotechnologists in the new “Renaissance of Necessity.” His own work of retracing the biographies of dead poets and their spouses from an archive of the entire internet, made possible only by Nigerian ingenuity, is a ritual of mourning, an act of faith performed in the ruins of meaning. The old moral questions persist, but without the luxury of conviction. McEwan’s novels have grown more austere, more haunted by the sense that the moral and narrative architectures that once defined Western civilization have finally given out.When Metcalfe refers to the twenty-first century as the “century of hubris,” he’s not sneering, he’s nostalgic. His generation has a life expectancy of 64. Electronics are scarce, plane travel nonexistent. Those born into collapse can no longer imagine progress, only curation, it seems. Amid this landscape of loss, Metcalfe begins his excavation of Francis Blundy, a prominent early-millennial poet who once read a cycle of sonnets called “A Corona for Vivien” to a coterie of literati at a dinner in 2014. The poem is ostensibly about his life with his wife, but comes in later years to achieve widespread and enduring fame largely because of the controversy surrounding its nonexistence—no copy of it exists—and the persistent belief that it was a suppressed masterpiece containing profound truths about a changing world during the years of what twenty-second-century citizens have come to call “The Derangement.” That is the time we the reader are living through now, when the world is on a collision course with ever more calamitous climate change–powered disasters. We are promised a future that is One Battle After Another with the elements, in which no political solutions seem possible. Over time, McEwan’s novels have grown more austere, more haunted by the sense that the moral and narrative architectures that once defined Western civilization—its faith in reason, progress, democratic governance—have finally given out.The world of What We Can Know is one of threadbare survival and epistemological doubt. It’s a book about the failure of understanding, and it reads like the work of a man who has accepted that no form of mastery, literary or otherwise, will save us. Yet the mastery is there for all to see: McEwan’s prose has never been looser or more humane. Gone is the mechanical precision that once made his moral contraptions click. What remains is an older writer’s acceptance of disorder, an embrace of the fog. The sentences are warm even when the world they describe has cooled due to nuclear dust settling into the atmosphere as The Derangement faded. The mystery of the poem’s disappearance and the suggestion that it might have been suppressed, or bought off by oil interests, or simply burned, drives the narrative as Metcalfe digs deeper into the moral archaeology of Blundy’s life. Blundy is vain, brilliant, intermittently tender, and wholly convinced that his intellect confers moral immunity. Vivien, a scholar of the Romantic poet John Clare, has allowed her own academic career to calcify in service of her husband’s as a poet. McEwan renders the contours of her domestic life—the long dinners for “the Barn set,” the ironing, the peeled potatoes for the poet’s birthday—as both parody of how much information those living through The Derangement collected digitally about their lives and as a lament for where it was all headed. Hers is a mind turned servant to another’s ambition, the life of the highly educated housewife whose tragedy is self-knowledge.The revelations in her confession arrive with the deliberate rhythm of memory loosening its hold. Vivien recounts her earlier marriage to Percy Greene, a kind craftsman and luthier whose mind begins to fray with Alzheimer’s. It is while caring for Percy that she meets Francis, who charms her, seduces her, and eventually persuades her that the sick man’s death would be merciful—an event he brings about himself, with a mallet. Francis, having inherited both his widow and his violin, begins the slow work of absorbing the dead man’s life into his own art.That theft—and its moral, emotional, and artistic dimensions—forms the novel’s true moral crisis. When, years later, Francis reads “A Corona for Vivien” aloud at a dinner table thick with smoke and brandy, she recognizes its falseness immediately. The poem, a lush meditation on love, mortality, and the natural world, is the inverse of everything the man believes. “I don’t like country walks,” he once told her. “I don’t know the names of flowers and I don’t give a damn.” In that moment she understands that he has not only stolen her husband’s essence but forged a counterfeit of her own devotion. What Metcalfe finds is not the poem itself but explanation of its absence, made manifest in the form of Vivien’s confession. Her memoir, retrieved from a sealed container beside her first husband’s violin, rewrites the story entirely. It reveals a marriage rooted in exploitation, a literary myth built on cruelty. Francis, a self-anointed genius who dismissed climate change as hysteria, depended on Vivien’s labor and intellect even as he erased them. That night, after the guests have gone, Vivien rolls up the poem’s vellum scroll and feeds it into the dairy stove. The act is both vengeance and mercy: the burning of a false idol. Her decision to destroy his work, committing it to the fire on the night of its triumph, is both punishment and release, the act of a woman reclaiming the one power left to her: the right to silence him.Climate change here is not backdrop but the lens through which all the characters must see the world. It muddies everything: the meanings of guilt, of authorship, of love. The irony that Metcalfe’s entire project—his attempt to reconstruct a bygone world from fragments—is perhaps animated by the same delusion that animated Blundy’s poetry does not escape McEwan. The belief that language can fix what nature destroys, or at least allow us a way past it, lives in both the protagonist and the object of his obsession here. He pores over Vivien’s letters, texts, and shopping lists as if they were fossils, “tokens of vitality” in an era when vitality itself has become an endangered condition. McEwan uses that obsession to mirror our own digital archiving of catastrophe, the endless documentation that substitutes for action.Francis’s climate denial, meanwhile, is more than characterization; it is McEwan’s indictment of the twenty-first-century elite class that refuses to imagine the crisis as worth sacrificing our decadent comforts and entitlements for. The poet’s failure to perceive the natural world except as metaphor becomes, in hindsight, a metaphor for civilization’s failure to perceive its own ending. McEwan, who turned 77 this year, writes with the lucidity of a craftsman who knows he’s constructing his own monument to a future he will never know. If Atonement asked whether fiction could redeem guilt, What We Can Know suggests that the very possibility of redemption might be foolhardy.Like McEwan’s most famous novel, Atonement, What We Can Know has a nested structure—beginning with Metcalfe’s frame, then Vivien’s confession, and the recovered fragments of Francis’s correspondence—and it recalls Atonement, too, in its fascination with the ethics of narrative control. Francis Blundy, in his climate-denying, classicist arrogance, is an emblem of the old order, one that governs our world today: male, murderous, self-mythologizing, possessed by delusions that are driving us all off a cliff. Vivien’s corrective isn’t enough to save her first husband, or the world, from Francis’s harm. There is no justice to be found. If Atonement asked whether fiction could redeem guilt, What We Can Know suggests that the very possibility of redemption might be foolhardy. But continue we must; the future McEwan envisions is grim but not loveless. Metcalfe, trudging between the archives and his coastal home, finds an unexpected companion in his colleague Rose Church, and their late-blooming affection, growing into an on-again, off-again literature department romance—halting, courteous, tinged with exhaustion—gives the novel its fragile heartbeat. When Rose reveals her pregnancy near the end, McEwan resists sentimentality. The child’s birth is not salvation; it is continuation, “the next link in the chain of futility and care.” Still, that flicker of human persistence feels like grace.If 2011’s Solar was McEwan’s comic treatment of environmental hubris, What We Can Know is its deeper, more tragic echo. Here, climate change functions as the novel’s moral solvent, dissolving the old binaries—guilt and innocence, art and theft, preservation and erasure—until all that remains is entropy. “The imagined poem triumphs over the real,” Metcalfe concludes, “because the imagination is all we have left.” In that single sentence lies both McEwan’s despair and his faith: despair that human artifice has supplanted the natural world, faith that it might still bear witness to the loss.
https://newrepublic.com/article/202036/ian-mcewan-haunting-vision-future

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2025-11-18T17:06:10+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump snapped at a reporter late last week when she asked him about the Jeffrey Epstein files, appearing to insult her appearance.The president was asked on Friday aboard Air Force One about his name showing up in many of Epstein’s emails and correspondence released by the House Oversight Committee, and how Epstein said Trump “knew about the girls.” Trump tried to deflect, saying that reporters should be looking into how much time Larry Summers and Bill Clinton spent with Epstein. When a reporter asked him “If there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not…” Trump shut her down. “Quiet! Quiet piggy!” Trump said to the Bloomberg reporter. Trump is known for insulting reporters, usually calling them “fake news,” but it seems the Epstein revelations have pushed him into schoolyard territory. After months of calling the Epstein files in the government’s possession a hoax and trying to delay or block their release, Trump is now faced with the fact that Congress is expected to vote for their disclosure. If Epstein stays in the news cycle much longer, Trump may resort to even more childish antics. But then again, it’s not really a huge departure from his usual self. One thing is for sure: The files must contain some damaging material to provoke this kind of reaction.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203339/quiet-piggy-trump-female-reporter-epstein

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2025-11-18T14:40:05+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 18 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is the Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. A civil war has erupted inside the MAGA movement over Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and President Donald Trump just made it worse. In an interview, Trump defended Fuentes in a way that will boost his standing inside MAGA in a big way. Yet it occurs to us that this is terrible news for JD Vance. The Vice President has tried to avoid taking sides on Fuentes, but it’s now clear that Fuentes represents a big constituency inside MAGA. Vance and everyone else who’s thinking about what MAGA will look like after Trump will have to take this very seriously. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has a really good piece digging into the developing MAGA civil war about all this, so we’re talking to him about where the American right is going in the wake of it. Zack, great to have you on. Zack Beauchamp: Hey, Greg. Good to be talking to you again. Sargent: So to quickly recap, Tucker Carlson recently gave Nick Fuentes as a long, largely fawning interview. That caused some on the right to lash out at Carlson for platforming a “well-known Nazi sympathizer,” as one put it. Another called it “sick and despicable.” Trump finally broke his silence on all this. Here’s what Trump said about Tucker’s interview with Fuentes. President Donald Trump (voiceover): We’ve had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can’t tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it. Get the word out. Let them. You know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide. So there you have it. Sargent: Trump is just fine with platforming Nick Fuentes. Your response to all that, Zack? Beauchamp: I don’t find this surprising at all, what Trump just said, to be clear. It’s consistent with his pattern of a very long time. You know, back as far as Charlottesville he said, there are very fine people on both sides. And then he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by during the 2020 presidential election and then he went on to defend the January 6 rioters, right? Trump’s attitude towards extremism is very consistently not to condemn and to play this sort of dance around it, where he’ll never say, basically, no, or he will in the most oblique terms. And if he does try to criticize it, he’ll walk that back sometime soon in some other way. Sargent: So in addition to that, Zack, I want to flag something else because Trump in that exchange sort of tried to say, I don’t really know what Nick Fuentes stands for, but Axios just asked the White House if Trump condemns Fuentes’ racism and anti-Semitism, and the White House pointed Axios back to Trump’s remarks, which didn’t criticize Fuentes. So Trump and the White House can’t even claim ignorance anymore. They were given the explicit opportunity to condemn Fuentes’ racism and anti-Semitism and declined to do so. Zack, can you talk about what that means and what Fuentes really believes and who the Gropers are? Beauchamp: I mean, the thing about Nick Fuentes is if you actually watch his show as opposed to his more sanitized public appearances on like sort of center-right or more mainstream-right podcasts, he’s not subtle about what he thinks, right? This is a man who says that he admires and loves Hitler. He said at one point the Holocaust has never happened and made fun of it. And while at the same time, calling for the execution of “perfidious Jews,” that’s his term. This is as explicit anti-Semitism as you could imagine. This isn’t any of this coded stuff that you’ve gotten in the past. And so when the White House is refusing to condemn that, they’re not, it’s not just like refusing to condemn it, right? It’s saying it’s an acceptable part of our discourse, that this man should be somebody that Tucker Carlson can be friendly with without suffering social consequences or professional consequences, which is like how you maintain norms in a society, right? You maintain boundaries that there are consequences for engaging in particular kinds of behavior. And when you say Nick Fuentes gets a pass, you’re saying there’s no limit. I mean, we’re talking really explicit, violent eliminationist anti-Semitism. At one point, he called for Jews to be forced to convert or leave the country, right? It really is that bad. Sargent: Well, in your piece, you dug into how there’s a genuine fear among some on the right that Fuentes has become, I guess, too big to exile might be the way to put it. His constituency is too large at this point for him to be marginalized. And of course, some of the institutional players inside MAGA agree with that constituency anyway, to some degree or other, and want to embrace and utilize it. Can you take us inside that dimension of it? Beauchamp: Yeah, here’s the problem. So Fuentes has this very large following among young conservatives. There is a raging debate about how large that following is. It’s not clear. It depends on different ways you look at measuring it. There is an estimate that only 30 to 40 percent of staff in D.C.—Republican staff—are followers of Fuentes. I think that’s overstated. That estimate is not scientific. It’s based on one conservative pundit who has a tendency to exaggerate things. But people who I trust have said that it’s plausible. Right. I don’t know if I’m to go so far as to say it’s likely, but it’s plausible.And so let’s say, like, that’s the upper bound. That’s a huge percentage of young Republican staffers in Washington, D.C., right? And then extrapolate that out to the broader world of young conservatives—whose survey data shows, by the way, are the single most anti-semitic group in the United States. Right. There’s a very good study on this by two professors, Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden. They’ve done this very clearly and shown that the epicenter of anti-semitism in the modern United States specifically is among young conservatives.So what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that this is a part of the constituency that many, many, many Republicans feel is the future of the party, right? And it’s where they’re going. And there’s a deep fear among more establishment-minded conservatives—even people who were once Tea Party radicals—of being left behind the way they were in 2016, where they all lined up against Trump, thought that the primary voters would reject him for being a fake conservative, thought that he would lose the general election to Clinton. And when none of those things happened, they saw themselves out cold in a MAGAfied party and had to embarrassingly grovel or else self-exile from the party.So nobody wants to do that again. And there’s a lot of fear that if they vocally condemn Fuentes or vocally try to marginalize him, that they’ll end up on the losing side of another one of these factional fights.Sargent: I think it’s a reasonable fear. I hate to say it. I mean, we saw all this crazy stuff come out from the young Republicans on on listservs and so forth. You wrote about JD Vance’s role in all this. Vance has his eye on the post-Trump MAGA movement and how to harness it for his own purposes. He’s gonna be the presumed nominee, I guess, but it’s not necessarily a lock. It occurs to me that Trump really, whether intentionally or not, shivved Vance in the back in a way here. So Vance has an Indian American wife. He’s gonna want a free hand to do his anti-immigrant appeals while also presenting himself as non-bigoted. Vance wants to get away with what you might call a soft or veiled white nationalism. But Fuentes actually mocks Vance and makes racist comments about his wife. He made he makes the white nationalism extremely explicit. As you said, I think Vance would have preferred it if Trump sidelined Fuentes, but Trump basically dumped Fuentes on Vance to have to deal with later. Can you untangle all that for us? Beauchamp: It’s hard to know what’s going on without really knowing the interior mental states of any of these people, right? I’ve got a personal theory that Trump has mostly checked out of the succession fight at this particular moment in time. There’s a lot going on with him, a lot of things to wrangle. And the question of, like, how to deal with someone like Nick Fuentes is just not at the top of his agenda. He’s just answering it the way he would any other question. I don’t know him. I’m not involved in this, I don’t know, Tucker’s business is Tucker’s business.That abdication, though, does put Vance in this position because he wants to—as you say, it’s very clear—be the Republican standard bearer in 2028. He wants to create a sort of very ideological version of MAGA. I think MAGA right now is not ideological beyond a few very specific points that Trump is adamant on, because Trump himself is so protean. He’s willing to take on whatever policy agenda or ideas, except on a few core issues like trade and immigration, he feels like in the moment. Right. So that’s—that’s Trump’s role in this.But Vance is trying to turn it into a disciplined ideological cadre. But then you have to answer questions, right? Questions: if you really stand for something, what do you do about this guy who’s gaining popularity? Who hates you, right? Who will demean you in the grossest of possible terms—and your family—and you’re supposed to have honor, and you’re supposed to stand there and say, look, I can be a leader, and you’re gonna let this guy take pot shots and be a platform by your friend, like Carlson. And Vance and Carlson are friends. But, like, Carlson pushed very hard to get Vance nominated and was reportedly instrumental in securing that role. Right.So there’s—it’s not just that there are these—there’s these ideological goals that are locked in here. There’s a lot of personal stuff that’s wrapped in here. I suspect—again, speculation, somewhat informed speculation based on knowing some of the people involved—but speculation is that Vance doesn’t want to condemn Tucker because he sees him as an essential ally going forward for the nomination. And if he goes too hard on Fuentes, that can be seen as going after Carlson. So he’s stuck. Right? I think that if Vance were left to his own devices, he probably would try to kick Fuentes out of the coalition. He has said negative things about him before, but at this point it’s like a little bit of a World War One-type situation, right? Where different alliances are being activated by virtue of different people taking actions at different times.And Vance is part of the Carlson alliance network. And now him staying silent is de facto an endorsement of what Tucker is doing. And that’s where he’s stuck at this moment. And that’s bad for him. That’s not where he wants to be in a world where he’s trying to sort of consolidate across the conservative movement core support ahead of people who are going to try to outflank him on the we-don’t-like-Nazis side, which is still popular even among some mainstream conservatives who have MAGAfied themselves.Sargent: So it seems very clear that Fuentes knows that he’s got Vance in a real pickle here. Let’s listen to what Fuentes said about Vance recently. Nick Fuentes (voiceover): He’s getting squeezed. Because the Groypers are on the one hand saying, ‘hey, listen, fat boy, we want America First.’ You want to run for president? We want to hear you say ‘America First.’ And on the other side, he’s got his donors and they’re saying, ‘they’re horrible antisemites. You have to disavow them. You have to forcefully condemn them. Condemn Tucker, condemn the Groypers.’ Now, if Vance condemns the Groypers, We are deploying to Iowa. Raise your right hand. I swear I’m going to move to Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina. People will drive there for free and they will follow Vance around and ask him, ‘When will you put America First? Why would you condemn the young white men of America and sell out to our elites?’Sargent: So Zack, what interests me about that is the use of the phrase America First. Fuentes is basically saying, you know what, fat boy, as he put it, you don’t get to get away with soft peddling what America First actually means. You don’t get to do soft or veiled white nationalism anymore. You gotta go all the way. And I think that that is gonna, at some point at least, maybe not as part of this round, but maybe the next round, because it’s all going to come up again, especially when 2028 rolls around—at some point, Vance is going to be cornered into saying whether he finds Fuentes’ view of what constitutes “America First” acceptable or not.Beauchamp: Yeah, look, I think the strategy right now from Vance—again, speculation, right, based on his public presentation—is that he’s trying to ride it out. I think he does have to at one point try to push back against Fuentes. I don’t think there’s an alternative here. He really does need to do that because of the vitriolic and personal way in which Fuentes attacks him. Plus he’s just electoral poison with those positions. But he can’t do it too aggressively now without getting roped into shooting at his own allies.And here I don’t just mean Tucker Carlson, though they’re very close. There’s also Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation—which is, you know, they wrote Project 2025. Roberts is the president, is the most… is the leading, or at least most prominent, think tank on the right. And he’s in a lot of hot water right now based on his defense of Carlson, which he has sort of walked back, but not really.You know, there was recently a leaked staff meeting at Heritage where some of his own senior scholars—very, very right-wing people—are screaming at him because there is, again, this faction of the Republican Party that’s MAGAfied but not okay with open Nazism. They’re willing to deal with the sort of veiled white nationalism of someone like Vance, not, like, straight-up eliminationist Nazism. The sort of thing that Fuentes does is a red line for them. And Vance doesn’t want to alienate those people.Roberts has alienated them people just by defending Carlson. Right? And now Roberts is in a lot of trouble. And there’s a lot going on in Heritage. In the piece that you mentioned that I did earlier, I got a Heritage insider to tell me about some of the nastier stuff that’s going on there. And it’s quite bad, right—the internal culture that’s been fostered under Roberts is the sense that I got from that source who would know.But all that being said, the point is that Vance is in a position where his own allies are at risk if he shoots at Fuentes. So my guess is he wants to take that shot but wants to do it at a better time. Not right now, because right now in doing so he’d be stabbing people who he’s close to personally and who he needs politically in the back.Sargent: Well, I don’t think it’s ever gonna get easy. And I thought your piece really captured the broader crossroads that MAGA is at right now or the bigger civil war that MAGA is devolving into. Let’s just go through some names. Ted Cruz recently slammed Carlson as “complicit in evil” over the Fuentes interview. Ben Shapiro called Carlson dishonest and a coward. But Zack, what happens with all those figures, the broader MAGA world, now that Trump said, what Carlson did is fine. Trump is telling these people in effect that the white nationalists and the white supremacists and the Gropers and the far-right anti-Semites do have their place in the MAGA coalition. It’s all just a big debate is the basic idea. How does MAGA process that from Trump in particular? Beauchamp: So look, I think that what we’re seeing, and I referenced this a little earlier, is that MAGA is kind of an empty signifier, right? Like what it stood for was a broadly populist nationalist far-right reorientation of the Republican Party around the personal figure of Donald Trump. Right? That’s it. I’ve maintained consistently throughout this and I think the evidence is bore it out that the policy commitments of MAGA are very, very loose. And it’s ideological orientation, very flexible. Sargent: MAGA is what Trump says it is, as Trump said. Beauchamp: Yeah, and he’s not wrong. I mean, there are some bounds here, and he could run into conflict from his own movement, as we’ve seen during this whole Epstein saga. But the point is that it’s not really about ideology so much as it is this kind of broad orientation against the Republican establishment, towards a certain level of extremism, and certainly towards a kind of nationalist reorientation of what the party is about—with an intense focus on immigration, culture war, and hostility to foreigners. But there’s so much room within those broad confines. And it’s included all sorts of different kinds of conservatives, people like Ben Shapiro, who were initially very appalled. Right.So was Ted Cruz. Remember how viciously Trump went after Cruz, and that Cruz himself declined to endorse Trump during the 2016 Republican National Convention and had been really holding out. Eventually, he caves and starts working the phones for Trump because he wants to stay in the Republican Party. Right. But Cruz and Shapiro are very different kinds of conservatives than Tucker Carlson is now, than J.D. Vance is now, than Kevin Roberts is now—and those are just two factions.I happen to think that Shapiro and Cruz are sort of more closely aligned, but they’re one kind of sort of nationalist, post–Tea Party but still interventionist-on-foreign-policy strain of republicanism. There’s others, right? There’s hardline libertarians who are sort of also cultural warriors. Those are the kinds that are left there. There’s Trumpy nationalists. There’s these kind of trade, economic-populist types oriented around Oren Cass and the American Compass think tank. All sorts of different broad strains of the American right. We haven’t even gotten into some of the more abstract intellectual subtypes, of which there are many.So the point is this is a movement that has tons and tons and tons of different factions. And there’s one guy holding it together to prevent this open civil war from breaking out, and it’s Trump. And the issue on which there was most likely to be pressure on this coalition was anti-Semitism and Jews and Israel. That pressure is now real. Fuentes has kind of forced the issue due to his large following. Trump doesn’t seem interested in weighing in to stop it. And I’m not even sure he could, given that he’s going to pass from the scene at this point.Maybe if it seemed like he really was going to be a dictator, he would be able to override a third-term limit—as he suggested he wants to be—he’d be able to stick the movement together. But the fact of the matter is right now that seems unlikely. And with his political fortunes in the toilet at this moment, there are some rats who are starting to flee the sinking ship, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, that indicate some real discontent.Sargent: So what happens in the end? JD Vance inherits a movement that is absolutely splintering after Trump, right? Beauchamp: Yeah, I think Vance may or may not win the Republican nomination coming forward. do think is that the movement is going to be at each other’s throats. Now maybe a hatred of liberals and whoever the Democratic nominee is in 2028 will be able to unify these people again. That’s possible, right? That is the core unifying force aside from Trump, right? And sort of this broad nationalism. The third critical prong has been shared horror, anger, and distaste at the Democratic party and sort of the broader left in the United States. Maybe that’ll work. If there’s anything that can save them from their pickle, it’s that. And it’s the power of partisanship and ideological polarization. But that’s the thing, right? That is the only thing at this point, aside from Trump turning around his political fortunes. Sargent: Well, you know, I said on the pod a little while ago that they thought the assassination of Charlie Kirk was going to unite the right. It really basically lasted about a week. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Zack Beauchamp’s work. He has a great book called The Reactionary Spirit. His writing at Vox is essential for understanding all this crazy stuff. Zack, thanks so much for coming on, man. Beauchamp: Thanks, Greg, man. This has been awesome. As usual, love talking to you on the show.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203334/transcript-trump-accidentally-shivs-jd-vance-maga-civil-war-erupts

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2025-11-18T14:40:05+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

A civil war is unfolding inside the MAGA movement over Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and President Donald Trump just made it worse. In an interview, Trump defended Fuentes in a way that will boost his standing inside MAGA. As it turns out, however, this shivs Vance in the back by creating a surprising and unwelcome problem for him. The vice president has tried to avoid taking sides on Fuentes, hoping he’ll go away. But Fuentes has mercilessly attacked Vance, and Trump’s comments make it clear that Fuentes represents a constituency inside MAGA that’s too big to exile. That means Vance, who’s hoping to harness the MAGA movement for his 2028 presidential run, will have to tread carefully around Fuentes, and Trump’s intervention has only made all that harder for him. We talked to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who has a great new piece digging into all this. He explains Fuentes’s growing influence inside MAGA, why Vance’s Fuentes problem has gotten worse thanks to Trump, and what all this says about today’s right and MAGA’s future. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203333/trump-accidentally-stabs-vance-back-maga-erupts-civil-war

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2025-11-18T14:40:05+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

As I thumbed through the trove of Jeffrey Epstein emails released by Congress last week, I thought often of John Adams. The nation’s second president was not without his flaws, but they were typically outshone by his perceptive understanding of what republics like the early American state need if they are to endure.Republics are so normative that it is easy to forget how rare they were when Americans broke away from the British Empire. When early American statesmen imagined their new republic, they had only a few examples to draw from: ancient Greek city-states, pre-Augustan Rome, the Italian merchant republics, and so on. A country without a king was an unusual thing.Adams and his associates knew that these republics rarely endured. Sometimes they were simply conquered, as any nation might be, but more often than not they collapsed from within—typically felled by corruption and oligarchy. The Greeks elected tyrants. The Romans, who had seized power from kings, surrendered it to emperors. The Italians fell under the sway of wealthy nobles who treated public resources like family firms.The United States could avoid that fate, Adams noted, by maintaining high moral standards. “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private [virtue], and public virtue is the only foundation of republics,” he wrote to an acquaintance in June 1776. “There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power, and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty.”Reading the Epstein emails is like absorbing the negation of the Founders’ dream. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. It was generally understood even then that this was the tip of a rotten iceberg. Yet Epstein kept his place in elite society, maintaining quiet friendships with people from across the political and ideological spectrum.There are a lot of conspiracies surrounding Epstein, an inevitability when a wealthy sexual predator with a lot of famous friends is found dead by suicide in a prison cell. The emails themselves do not describe specific criminal acts by anyone in particular, though they point towards unsavory behavior by more than a few people. What they do underscore, rather emphatically, is the utter absence of any sort of civic virtue.Last week, members of the House Oversight Committee released thousands of pages of emails, text messages, and other documents that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate. He died in 2018 while awaiting trial on a host of charges related to underage sex trafficking. This trove is distinct from what many have called “the Epstein files,” which are the investigatory materials in the Justice Department’s possession.First, Democrats on the committee released a tranche of documents that shed new light on Epstein’s relationship with Trump. The president famously does not text or email other people, so his own words aren’t present in the documents, but Epstein described his interactions with Trump to third parties. In one email, Epstein alleged that Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims and claimed in another that Trump “knew about the girls,” an apparent reference to the financier’s sex-trafficking schemes.Committee Republicans responded by releasing a much larger trove of documents that capture Epstein’s interactions with a significant chunk of what one might describe as the American elite. The contents are often mundane but frequently stomach-churning. They also capture the amorality and decadence of some of the most influential people in the country.Lawrence Krauss, a prominent astrophysicist who resigned from his university posts amid a sexual-harassment scandal, sought advice from Epstein (of all people) on handling the growing turmoil. Steve Bannon, a prominent MAGA leader and then-White House advisor, corresponded regularly with Epstein on a variety of matters, including improving the latter’s image. In one ugly exchange, Epstein suggested to Bannon that he could try to discredit Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged that now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, during the confirmation battle by publicly insinuating that she was taking memory-affecting drugs for purported psychiatric disorders. (Bannon, to my knowledge, did not follow Epstein’s advice.)Epstein’s wide-ranging contacts were already public knowledge in recent years, but the emails add new light and texture to his relationships with important and powerful people. He offered to introduce Peter Thiel, an apparent acquaintance, to his friend Woody Allen. He casually mentioned his friendships with the Clintons, the (now former) Duke of York, various Middle Eastern leaders, influential figures in academia, finance, government, the arts, and more—relationships that largely endured despite his well-known offenses.Among the most telling interactions are those between Epstein and Larry Summers. If anyone could be counted among the nation’s elite it would be Summers: he served as a Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and later became the president of Harvard University for a time. (More on his Harvard tenure later.) For some reason, Summers maintained an active friendship with Epstein long after his 2008 arrest and corresponded with him regularly in 2018 and 2019. He has since said that he regrets having done so. In some of the exchanges, Summers made the baffling decision to ask Epstein for advice on courting a woman who viewed him as an “economics mentor.” The two men use the nickname “peril” when mentioning the woman—who is an accomplished economist and academic in her own right—in an apparent reference to her Chinese ethnic background and the “yellow peril” trope. Summers told Epstein about his efforts to romance her via their professional relationship, which were apparently unsuccessful. His “best shot,” Summers explained, was that she would find him “invaluable and interesting” and realize “she can’t have it without romance/sex.”This is not Summers’ first public episode of misogyny. In 2005, he remarked at an academic conference that fewer women might be represented in scientific and mathematical fields because of innate biological differences between the sexes. Summers later apologized after intense public backlash, and his resignation from the Harvard presidency the following year stemmed in large part from the scandal. (He remained on Harvard’s faculty and teaches there to this day.)In an apparent reference to the scandal, Summers told Epstein in one email, “I observed that half of the IQ In [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.” He also appeared to downplay the gravity of sexual harassment. “I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote to Epstein at one point in 2017. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the Epstein emails is how the now-dead financier described Trump himself. In Epstein’s eyes, the president is exactly who he seems to the rest of us. His public persona is not an act to thrill his supporters, nor it is a caricature invented by his critics and foes. “Recall I’ve told you, I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein told Summers during Trump’s first term. “Not one decent cell in his body. So yes, dangerous.” In a 2018 exchange with Kathy Ruemmler, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration, he remarked, “You see, I know how dirty Donald is.”It would be tempting to dismiss the Epstein scandals as a purely elite phenomenon. But this is the society for which the American people have voted. The 2016 election could once be dismissed as a constitutional fluke since most Americans voted for Trump’s opponent. The 2024 election is more definitional. This country had nearly a decade of experience with Trump in power—the corruption, the lies, the bigotry and misogyny and abuse and violence—and welcomed more of it.At its core, Trumpism is a permission structure for evil. It is the abolition of ethical norms and the erasure of moral authority. It defies checks and balances, rejecting the notion that power can be abused or corrupted because it justifies itself. Trumpism is not really about immigration, or inflation, or trade, or draining the swamp, or building the wall—it is ultimately about the dark thrill of abusing those whom its adherents consider to be inferiors, either directly or by proxy.This is why the second Trump administration is populated with such ghoulish figures. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s own mother described him as an “abuser” who “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” He is now purging women and minority service-members from the armed forces, blaming “wokeness” for past military defeats and unwinding decades of efforts to make the nation’s military reflect the nation itself.Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of health and human services, allegedly introduced his own family members to illegal drugs, cheated on his wife multiple times, allegedly assaulted his children’s babysitter, and hung out with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on multiple occasions. He is now spending his time undermining public confidence in vaccines, dismantling the nation’s public-health infrastructure, and misleading parents about the causes of conditions like autism.Trump almost managed to install Matt Gaetz, a former Republican member of Congress who barely practiced law, as the nation’s attorney general. His nomination only failed because Gaetz so thoroughly repulsed his own Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill that even Trump’s demand could not sway them. A House Ethics Committee investigation concluded that he had likely slept with an underage girl; The New York Times reported recently that she was homeless at the time.Economic and social precarity always enables abuse. Perhaps that is why the Trump administration has gone to such great lengths to destabilize large swaths of American life. Russ Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, bragged to wealthy donors that he wanted federal employees to be “traumatically affected” by his planned mass layoffs. He largely dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans from financial scams and exploitation, and worked to weaken public-sector unions that help protect civil servants from illegal conduct.It is also no small wonder that the Trump administration’s policies are largely about inflicting harm on the people who voted for them (and the tens of millions who didn’t). Trump’s tariff policies effectively allow him to extort foreign trading partners and American industries alike into ideological compliance. By simultaneously waging war on American higher education and the federal government’s research-funding infrastructure, Trump and his allies apparently hope to de-educate millions of Americans and force them into menial, low-wage industrial jobs.“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick bragged to CNBC in April. Americans, he argued, are now destined for a form of industrial serfdom. “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here,” he later rejoiced in an interview in May. Lutnick, coincidentally enough, was Epstein’s former next-door neighbor in New York City. His own children are reportedly set to make millions at a major investment firm thanks to their father’s tariff policies.In Trump’s America, all of us are not created equal. There is a hierarchy atop which the Lutnicks and Kennedys and Thiels and Musks of the world can prosper, free from government regulation or union negotiations or press scrutiny or law-enforcement investigations. Everyone else is part of a underclass whom the wealthy can abuse and immiserate at their own discretion. The Epstein emails give the rest of us a glimpse into this world, where even the most grotesque crimes can be forgiven or ignored out of a sense of elite solidarity—at least until they become too publicly awkward to privately sustain—and where amorality is required to participate.The Founders were not without their own sins, of course, but at least they had higher aspirations for their new nation. “Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net,” Adams once wrote to another friend. “Our Constitution was made only for a [moral] people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” So far, Americans are failing that test—and the republic itself.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203332/american-people-voted-jeffrey-epstein

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2025-11-18T14:40:05+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

While President Donald Trump is scrambling to try to fix all of the economic problems he’s caused with his own policies, many American families may be heading toward a disaster. And the proximate cause may end up being not what the administration has done, but what it’s not doing.In October, foreclosure starts were up 20 percent compared to the year before, according to numbers from ATTOM, a real estate analysis firm. Moreover, the rate has been rising for eight months in a row. Because it can take banks as many as three months to start the foreclosure process, these cases aren’t caused by momentary blips from the government shutdown. These are continuing signs that American families have been struggling to pay their bills all year.None of these numbers have risen to Great Recession levels, but the fact that they are following years of record lows in foreclosures is a bad sign, pointing to a crisis over the horizon. Averting such a calamity isn’t easy in most instances. This administration, however, is not even trying.Some of the most worrying signs involve, as the saying goes, “location, location, location.” The states with the highest foreclosure rates over the past few months include Florida, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas. These are states that saw a huge uptick in home prices and sales throughout the pandemic, before the Federal Reserve Board started to raise interest rates to calm runaway inflation.One of the reasons the first creases of this disruption are starting in these locales is that private home insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable in some of these states, and families, in turn, are struggling to make their monthly payments. At the same time, home prices are falling relative to where they were during the overheated market in 2020 and 2021, so buyers can’t sell their properties to get out from under ballooning costs. “It’s a good example where you have both a combination of falling home values and insurance costs that are climbing up that seem to be kicking off this foreclosure issue,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Groundworkers Collaborative.All of which means that people feel stuck in their homes even as monthly payments climb.There are other factors at work, as well. Joel Berner, chief economist at Realtor, said in a blog post at Realtor.com in August that Nevada and Florida are also states that rely heavily on tourism. “Tourism tends to be volatile, and when economic growth slows as it has this year, that industry is often the first and most painfully impacted. Some homeowners in these states may be losing their jobs and becoming unable to make their mortgage payments,” he said.Vacations are one of the first things families cut out of their budgets when hard times hit. But the job market is fairly volatile right now, no matter which sector is under the microscope. Economists believe a labor market slowdown is ahead, and some of the economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s policies, including tariffs, is making companies nervous about adding jobs.Month to month, more families are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs, whether it’s in the form of rent or a mortgage, are usually the biggest monthly expense families have, and they remain at record highs.It’s not just the cost of housing that’s squeezing families, however. After the Supreme Court squashed hopes that President Joe Biden would help rein in the student loan debt that’s strangling many millennials, borrowers are now having to pay back into a less forgiving system. Trump ended Biden’s signature income-based repayment program, which capped monthly payments and kept borrowers from accruing too much interest, and is making it harder for some borrowers to receive public service student loan forgiveness for work in nonprofits and the public sector. The administration is talking about selling the entire student loan portfolio, essentially privatizing it. That means many borrowers could go without the protections they’re used to. Meanwhile, almost all borrowers are being saddled with high monthly student loan payments that might have been more manageable a few years ago.On top of that, utility bills are increasing. A new report from the Century Foundation says many Americans can expect bills that are 7.6 percent higher this winter as compared to last. These costs are rising because of many factors that aren’t quickly solved; unfortunately they’re also a monthly bill that most Americans can’t skip. The impact of these higher costs is already being felt electorally: Two Democrats won spots on the Georgia Public Service Commission earlier this month because of the affordability crisis hitting people’s energy costs.Additionally, most families will see their health insurance premiums skyrocket in 2026 because the enhanced tax subsidies on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces were allowed to expire. On average, the cost of premiums on the marketplace are going up about 26 percent. But some families who buy their insurance on the marketplaces will see their premium costs go up even more because they will no longer qualify for subsidies they once enjoyed. Beyond that, everyone is likely to see some increase, even if they get their insurance from their employer, because healthier people will opt out of insurance altogether and make those covered more expensive to pay for.All of this means that many Americans are seeing more and more necessities stretch beyond their budgets, all while they feel insecure in their jobs and the safety net is being whittled away. This could be just the beginning of a new wave of foreclosures that topples Americans’ delicate financial security.To solve this, Trump has only floated a widely criticized idea that seems to have come on a whim: a 50-year mortgage, which was quickly dismissed by experts. It would barely lower monthly payments for borrowers and instead saddle them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan, while it takes them decades to build equity.At the same time, Trump’s tariff policy continues to steer the economy toward a disaster while he tries to pressure the independent Fed to lower interest rates, even if that’s not the right policy for the moment. And Trump and the Republican Party continue to refuse to even acknowledge that climate change is already happening, which means homeowners in states with increasingly unaffordable home insurance are on their own.“People are getting killed on the cost of living,” Jacquez said. “These are real, structural, big-ticket items on people’s balance sheets that they’re struggling to afford.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/203329/trump-economy-foreclosure-crisis-affordability

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2025-11-18T14:40:05+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. The Democrats need to become a party centered on fighting government corruption, oligarchy and other issues that don’t cut along traditional ideological lines, says Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford University and author of the “On Data and Democracy” newsletter. In the latest edition of Right Now, Bonica argues that many voters don’t think in the left-right terms that political junkies do. These Americans think basically politicians are corrupt and ineffective, leading them to keep ejecting whichever party briefly has control in Washington. Instead of Democrats mindlessly following polls and trying to demonstrate “moderation,” Bonica says they could appeal to the big bloc of people either not voting and swinging between the parties by taking stands such as limiting how much billionaires and corporations can spend in politics and banning members of Congress from trading stocks.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203012/trump-rampant-corruption-created-huge-opening-democrats

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2025-11-17T23:35:39+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump is open to the possibility of launching attacks on Mexico to stop the flow of drugs, he told reporters in the White House Monday. “It’s OK with me,” Trump said. “Whatever we have to do to stop drugs. Mexico is, look, I looked at Mexico City over the weekend, some big problems over there.” Trump bragged about his bombing campaign across the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean next to Central America, claiming that it had reduced the drug flow into the U.S. by 85 percent. “We have almost no drugs coming into our country by the sea, by, you know, the waterways, and you know why, OK? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Would I do that on the land corridor?” Trump said, making a positive gesture. When a reporter asked if he would need Mexico’s permission, the president was dismissive. “I wouldn’t answer that question. I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways. We know every route,” Trump said, claiming that the government knows where “every druglord” lives. He said that he’d be proud to go to Congress and claimed that he would have the support of Republicans and Democrats “unless they’re crazy.”“I am not happy with Mexico,” Trump said, concluding the press session. Trump: Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It's ok with me…Reporter: Would you need Mexico's permission? Trump: I've been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. I’m not happy with Mexico pic.twitter.com/u16dH4bLb9— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025The Trump administration has bombed dozens of boats south of the United States without providing evidence that they are trafficking drugs, or providing the names of people killed in the strikes. In some cases, the dead and injured were fishermen whom the U.S. declined to prosecute. The strikes have been condemned by multiple countries, with some even opting to stop sharing drug-trafficking intelligence with the U.S. out of fear that it would be used for more bombings without transparency. Even Republicans have spoken out against the strikes. But if Trump decides to strike Mexico, that could change, as some Republicans have been egging on the president to bomb the country for years. Trump himself told advisers in his first presidential term that he wanted to “bomb the drugs” in Mexico, and even devised plans to invade the country before beginning his second term. Will he follow through, or is this just the ravings of a man experiencing cognitive decline?
https://newrepublic.com/post/203328/ok-with-me-trump-considers-bombing-mexico

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2025-11-17T23:35:39+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino was seen on video asking a random brown-skinned man standing at a bus stop in Chicago if he spoke English. “You speak English?” Bovino asks, pointing at the man, who looks obviously uncomfortable. He gives no response, and Bovino switches to Spanish. “No demands made. It was a very casual conversation that ended with the arrest of this illegal alien,” Bovino posted on X in the comment section of the video. “Chicago will continue to see Title 8 immigration enforcement. All illegal aliens should self deport immediately via the CBP Home app.” Watch Bovino, head of Border Patrol's racial profiling operation, approach a random Hispanic guy at what looks like a bus stop and demand to know if he speaks English. pic.twitter.com/BhIabDVhnn— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) November 17, 2025Bovino has been often criticized for his brutal and wanton tactics, which include using tear gas and pepper balls against peaceful protesters. “This is the lie they want you to believe; that you can refuse to answer and walk away but we know that’s not true,” Cato Institute Immigration Studies director David Bier wrote in response to Bovino. “We’ve seen them arresting people for doing exactly that.” Bovino’s approach in the clip also aligns with the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of racial profiling, which it has fought in court to preserve. “Apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances—for instance, if agents know that the members of a criminal organization under investigation are disproportionately members of one ethnic group—even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” the Trump administration wrote in a Supreme Court request that was later granted, clearing the way for racial profiling. “And, in context, officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203325/border-patrol-chief-bovino-asks-brown-man-do-you-speak-english

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2025-11-17T21:21:37+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The arrival of masked federal agents at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday sent some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside, witnesses told The Charlotte Observer. The ICE agents, who mobbed a group of church members doing yard work, did not ask any questions or make any attempt to identify themselves before arresting one man. The Observer did not report the name of the church.The church’s pastor, who told The Observer he did not want to identify himself, said that agents threatened to arrest other church members, and were physically aggressive. “Right now, everybody is scared. Everybody,” he said. “One of these guys with immigration, he say he was going to arrest one of the other guys in the church. He pushed him.”Fifteen-year-old Miguel Vazquez was one of the people who took off running when federal agents arrived. “I thought, ‘Wait, why am I running? I’m a citizen,’” Vazquez said. As some of the men outside fled, the women and children inside the church reportedly cried out of fear that their loved ones had been arrested.The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the U.S. Border Patrol, which has been favored over Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Trump administration for its more aggressive law enforcement tactics, made 130 arrests in Charlotte on Saturday and Sunday. The DHS claimed that detainees had criminal records including a variety of infractions, but they have not released the names or paperwork relating to the arrests. As part of its tactlessly named Operation “Charlotte’s Web,” masked agents in paramilitary gear have kidnapped people from a number of public locations in Charlotte, including restaurants, grocery stores, Home Depot parking lots, and now churches. In January, Trump directed ICE to target immigrants in previously protected areas considered “sensitive locations,” including churches, and in April, a federal judge gave him the greenlight.On Saturday, Charlotte residents took to the streets to protest the presence of federal law enforcement.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203321/ice-agents-raid-church-charlotte

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2025-11-17T21:21:37+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has a new primary challenger: New York City Council member Chi Ossé, an ally of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Ossé filed paperwork Monday to run in New York 8th congressional district, which covers part of east and south Brooklyn. In a statement, Ossé said, “The Democratic Party’s leadership is not only failing to effectively fight back against Donald Trump, they have also failed to deliver a vision that we can all believe in.” The council member is 27 years old and supported Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, leading a rally and canvassing for him. Like Mamdani, Ossé has a large social media following and is seeking to capitalize on public frustration with Democratic leadership, joining other young candidates launching primary challenges across the country. Ossé enters the race with some name recognition in New York City, having been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, and New York magazine. But, according to Axios, Mamdani won’t be offering any public support to Ossé to ensure that Jeffries and other leading New York Democrats don’t oppose his policies as mayor. Still, the upstart candidate could build upon not only Mamdani’s example, but also that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2018 defeated a member of the Democratic leadership at only 27 to enter Congress, representing the nearby New York 14th district. Ossé will have to rally the support of Jeffries’s many critics who see the congressman as ineffectual in leading Democrats against Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The question is whether Brooklynites agree.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203319/chi-osse-mamdani-files-paperwork-challenge-hakeem-jeffries-election

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2025-11-17T21:21:37+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator David Richardson abruptly resigned from his post on Monday, according to sources familiar with the situation. His resignation comes after months of being AWOL, particularly during deadly flooding in Texas over Fourth of July weekend. FEMA employees told The Washington Post that Richardson spent as little time as possible in daily operations meetings and shied away from leadership, even telling his own employees that he expected to be gone by Thanksgiving. Richardson became acting head of FEMA after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ousted his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton. During his first meeting as the new head of FEMA, Richardson told his employees, “Don’t get in my way … because I will run right over you.”When flooding hit Texas in July, Richardson was unable to be reached “for hours and hours,” one senior official said. Richardson claimed to be in “constant contact” with FEMA officials, but was actually missing from disaster response while on vacation with his two sons. At least 130 people died in the floods. “Staff say Richardson is basically useless—absent from the office, unreachable in a disaster, and powerless because Secretary Noem has sidelined him,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone Jr. said in September, calling on Richardson to resign. “This level of bureaucratic incompetence from the Trump administration is putting lives at risk when the next natural disaster hits.”In November, Richardson was muzzled by the Department of Homeland Security, banned from giving interviews or responding to media requests. President Trump has yet to comment on Richardson’s resignation.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203305/fema-head-david-richardson-resigns

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2025-11-17T20:10:37+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The Trump administration seems to be screwing up its attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the Department of Justice to turn over all grand jury materials, including minutes and recordings, to Comey’s defense team because he thinks there is merit to Comey’s claim that government misconduct may have tainted legal proceedings. In his ruling, Fitzpatrick said that an FBI agent who may have had access to attorney-client information, which is privileged, was allowed to testify to the gran d jury, which the judge noted was “highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.” Also, the judge said that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, jeopardizing the case. Fizpatrick also said he thinks the DOJ is not being transparent on all of the grand jury proceedings because jurors approved a second indictment after rejecting the government’s first one, which does not show up in transcripts. All of this bolsters Comey’s attempt to have the false-statement and obstruction-of-Congress charges against him dismissed and validates his claims that they are politically motivated. Halligan was chosen by President Trump after her predecessor refused to charge Comey due to a lack of evidence. She has no prosecutorial experience, sent a legal reporter multiple texts about grand jury matters, and is having her appointment legally challenged. With each day, Halligan looks more out of her depth and her attempt to carry out Trump’s baseless case against Comey seems closer to failing.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203301/judge-trump-doj-prosecutor-grand-jury-materials-james-comey

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2025-11-17T19:05:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Maryland Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin is facing some backlash for extending party membership to hard-line MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—once again raising the issue of just how big the Democratic tent should be.“We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over!” Raskin said on Sunday while speaking to a group of Florida Democrats. “We got room for anybody who wants to stand up for the Constitution, and for the Bill of Rights today.… You’re damn right I’m a liberal, the heart of that word is ‘liberty.’ And I’m a progressive because the heart of that word is ‘progress.’ But my favorite thing to call myself today is a conservative, because I wanna conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constition.”Raskin: We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over. pic.twitter.com/Iswe6tzG84— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025Raskin’s comment is certainly eyebrow-raising. Greene has been making headlines in recent weeks due to her surprising break from Trump on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, his decision to bail out Javier Milei in Argentina, and his insistence that the economy is great and there is no inflation. Just this weekend, Trump called her a “traitor” to the country, leading her to fear for her safety.But this is also the same woman who has supported Trump on nearly every other issue, spreading racist, antisemitic, and generally unhinged rhetoric that has made her one of the most radical members of Congress.“Fuck no. Stop trying to rehabilitate terrible people just because they said one bad thing about Trump,” one frustrated X user wrote.“I’m an admirer of @RepRaskin & I think the Dems should be a ‘big tent’ too BUT as @AdamKinzinger has pointed out, MTG still supports election denial & the Big Lie and, I would add, the ICE cruelty & violence against people, including Americans, of color,” journalist Medhi Hasan said. “Let’s not whitewash her.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203300/jamie-raskin-democrats-marjorie-taylor-greene

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2025-11-17T19:05:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

On Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security posted the latest installment in its running series of outrageous social media posts that seem like they could be cited at the Nuremberg trials. “This week, it’s important to dispel a lie that has permeated American political thought for some time. America is not a nation of immigrants,” said DHS deputy assistant secretary Micah Bock in a video posted to X. “We are a nation of citizens. And it is because of those citizens that we are an exceptional nation.”The United States, of course, is a “nation of immigrants.” That’s not a lie. No American citizen, with the exception of Native Americans, has a family history that does not involve some form of immigration to the United States. The phrase “A Nation of Immigrants” was popularized as the title of former President John F. Kennedy’s 1958 book that argued the nation was strengthened by the steady flow of immigrants from around the world. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously called this book a reminder “of our shared dreams, goals, and destiny as a nation,” writing that Americans “must remain mindful that there is much more that unites us than divides us.” Bock, on the other hand, insists that immigration system had been “molested and abused by previous administrations without concern for preserving our country’s traditions, customs, or quality of life.” In the text accompanying the video, DHS attempted to refashion the United States’s motto to be a slogan about homogenizing American citizenry. “Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. One Nation. One Culture. One Shared Heritage,” the post read. This is a pretty questionable compression of the history of the E Pluribus Unum slogan, which was originally supposed to symbolize the Thirteen Colonies: It makes no claim about a common culture or heritage—language with strong fascist overtones. But this is par for the course for DHS which seemingly shitposts specifically to excite far-right internet trolls.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203303/dhs-nation-immigrants-american-history

Nostr event nevent1qqs0pcfachxc3htzxzctvtgaf4ygte5qcc4n0j458l3gmre3a59487szyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjprdv8n

2025-11-17T17:54:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Kash Patel has reportedly assigned a security detail of SWAT agents to guard his country singer girlfriend, in the latest chapter of the FBI director’s blatant misappropriation of bureau resources. A group of elite agents from the FBI Field Office in Nashville have been assigned to protect Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, two sources told MS Now, formerly MSNBC. The sources added that those agents, who are typically charged with responding to high-risk situations, would likely be unable to respond in the event of a crisis in the Nashville area. People familiar with FBI security protocols told MS Now that they’d never heard of a top FBI official’s girlfriend receiving a security detail staffed by government agents. Patel’s efforts to heighten his girlfriend’s security come after he was caught using a $60 million government jet to visit Wilkins at a wrestling event at Penn State, and then fly her back to Nashville. Patel responded to the scandal by making it harder to track his jet, and arguing that people were wrong for “attacking” Wilkins, though it seems that most people were just criticizing him. “Attacking her isn’t just wrong — it’s cowardly and jeopardizes our safety. My love of family will always be my cornerstone, and you will never tear that down or keep me from them,” he wrote in a post on X earlier this month. Patel’s commute to work in Washington, while keeping a legal residence in Las Vegas, has sparked concern from lawmakers over whether Patel reimbursed the government for personal trips. The leaks to MS Now suggest Patel’s unorthodox use of government resources hasn’t won him any friends at the bureau either.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203288/kash-patel-fbi-swat-team-26-year-old-girlfriend

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2025-11-17T17:54:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Iconic and recently troubled rapper Nicki Minaj will address the United Nations on Tuesday to speak up against what the Trump administration describes as “atrocities against Christians” in Nigeria.“.@NICKIMINAJ is not only arguably the greatest female recording artist, but also a principled individual who refuses to remain silent in the face of injustice,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wrote on X on Sunday. “I’m grateful she’s leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria, and I look forward to standing with her as we discuss the steps the President and his administration are taking to end the persecution of our Christian brothers and sisters.”Minaj responded to the right-wing Christian Zionist graciously.“Ambassador, I am so grateful to be entrusted with an opportunity of this magnitude. I do not take it for granted. It means more than you know,” she wrote. “The Barbz & I will never stand down in the face of injustice. We’ve been given our influence by God. There must be a bigger purpose.”Minaj has never been that politically inclined, aside from a few Obama endorsements, and her music wouldn’t suggest that she feels strongly enough about the persecution of Christians to speak on behalf of the Trump administration at the U.N. But her flailing career—marked by her incessant use of Grok and nasty, manic beefs with younger female rappers—and the sex offense and rape charges of her husband and brother certainly would. Earlier this month, Minaj also reposted Trump’s Truth Social message from earlier in which he pledged to “stand ready, willing, and able” to step in and aid Nigerian Christians.“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other,” she said at the time. “Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice. Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” She also reposted a pro-Trump TikTok around the same time she started talking about Nigerian Christians.The claim that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted for their faith is as contentious as Minaj’s expertise on the matter. Trump has threatened to invade the “now disgraced country guns-a-blazing” to stop Islamic extremist groups.Nigerians and their government have pushed back on assertions of anti-Christian prosecution.The Nigerian government wrote in a statement in September, “Nigeria’s security challenge is not a war of religion.” The statement continued:‘Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality.’ Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.Between May 2023 and Feb 2025, over 13,500 terrorists were neutralized and nearly 10,000 hostages rescued. Just last month, the top leaders of ANSARU, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Nigeria, were captured.‘The Nigerian story is not one of genocide or persecution, but of resilience, diversity, and a globally acknowledged commitment to peaceful coexistence.’Christianity is neither endangered nor marginalized in Nigeria. Our nation is home to some of the world’s largest Pentecostal churches, the largest Anglican congregation, and one of the biggest Muslim communities anywhere.Anyone should be skeptical of Trump’s plans to invade a West African country under the guise of religious freedom—especially when it comes after what The Guardian described as “weeks of lobbying by US lawmakers and conservative Christian groups urging him to designate Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern.’”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203290/nicki-minaj-trump-united-nations-ambassador-christians-nigeria

Nostr event nevent1qqsz3zxl9rm6jcgt4t6ylku9cxl9twlqwa47mjm8m7knh6f3xy5arnqzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjm3aafy

2025-11-17T17:54:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Hours after Donald Trump targeted an Indiana Republican, that same state senator became victim to a swatting incident. On Sunday, Trump accused Greg Goode and fellow Republican state Senator Rod Bray of going against his idea to redraw Indiana’s congressional districts. The president called the pair “RINO senators” on Truth Social and said he was “very disappointed” in them. That same night, Goode’s home was swatted, meaning that a false emergency call was made to law enforcement in Vigo County, Indiana, that people were in danger inside the residence. Officers from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office responded, and initially couldn’t make contact with anyone at the house before they finally spoke to people there. Goode and others “were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell said in a statement. “While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode said in his own statement Sunday. Swatting incidents go well beyond pranks, and can cause injury or even death, not to mention trauma and wrongful arrests. They are a tool of intimidation designed to threaten people. Trump bears responsibility for his post inspiring stochastic terrorism, and Goode has not even made a public statement on redistricting. Trump’s post also claimed that every Indiana Republican senator against redistricting would have their names released to the public later on Sunday, which did not seem to happen. If it had, Goode might not have been the only victim of Trump’s worst supporters. All of this goes to show that Trump is demanding total obedience and authority, and his supporters see any defiance as worthy of violence.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203293/republican-lawmaker-swatting-trump-attack-redistricting

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2025-11-17T16:51:25+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump has changed his mind and now wants House Republicans to vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.The president announced his reversal on Truth Social Sunday night, saying, “We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’”Why the sudden flip-flop, especially since House Republicans have been trying to delay a vote to force the release of the Epstein files for months? Well, after the House Oversight Committee released pages and pages of damaging correspondence from the Epstein estate, Trump feels as though he’s going to lose anyway. House GOP leadership was already projecting that as many as 100 Republicans could vote to release the files.By agreeing now, Trump is trying to get ahead of the release and placate his fellow Republicans, who have no defensible reason to keep blocking the files with their base clamoring for their release. Over the past week, emails and text messages have revealed that Trump was very close to Epstein in recent years, despite his many denials. Trump is eager for the stories to end and the issue to fade out of news coverage, and now he wants to rip off the Band-Aid.“The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT,” his Truth Social post said.It’s a rare instance that the president has caved to pressure from Congress, and shows some cracks in his control over the GOP. What happens now? Will Senate Republicans also vote to release the files? And what is in the files that the president has fought so hard to keep hidden?
https://newrepublic.com/post/203287/trump-180-release-epstein-files

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2025-11-17T16:51:25+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Outspoken GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has received multiple threats of doxing and violence, and she directly blames President Trump and his “dog whistle” rhetorical attacks for endangering the lives of her and her family. The jabs became more serious last Friday, as Trump announced that he’d be “withdrawing” his support from Greene after she pressed for the Jeffrey Epstein files to be released in full, broke with Trump on inflation and affordability, and criticized his foreign policy decisions on bailing out Argentina and bankrolling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote Friday, claiming that Greene was only publicly disagreeing with him because he told her not to run for senate or governor in her home state of Georgia, which Greene denies. Over the next few days, Trump went on to say that Greene (who he called “Marjorie Taylor Brown” because of green turning brown when it rots) “betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left” and that she was a fake Republican, a “traitor,” and a “disgrace” to the “great Republican party.” Greene was quick to respond. “I stood with President Trump when almost no one else would. I campaigned for him all over this country and spent millions of my own dollars helping him get elected,” she said Sunday on CNN. “That’s why being called a ‘traitor’ isn’t just hurtful, it puts a target on my back and puts my life in danger.”Greene elaborated on that danger in a post on X later that same evening. “The hoax pizza deliveries have started now, to my house and my family members. Update: we also received a pipe bomb threat on my construction companies office building. President Trump’s unwarranted and vicious attacks against me were a dog whistle to dangerous radicals that could lead to serious attacks on me and my family,” Greene wrote. “Unfortunately, I’ve been down this road before. As a matter of fact, as I campaigned all over the country and defended President Trump, I received dozens of swatting calls on my house and my family members homes along with these hoax pizza deliveries, but even more severely I have received some of the most death threats of any Member of Congress that led to multiple men being convicted and serving time in prison. And all of that came from the left.“Now that President Trump has called me a traitor, which is absolutely untrue and horrific. Mark Levin has been calling me a traitor. And so have other prominent likely paid social medial activists. This puts blood in the water and creates a feeding frenzy. And it could ultimately lead to a harmful or even deadly outcome.”The president had no regard for Greene’s fear. “Wacky Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown where there is ROT involved!) is working overtime to try and portray herself as a victim when, in actuality, she is the cause of all of her own problems,” he wrote on Truth Social. “The fact is, nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country!”Trump is no stranger to inciting violence through rhetoric, but this is a significant shift given how loyal Greene was to Trump and the MAGA agenda. Still, she has no intention of dropping her push for the release of the Epstein files.“I stand with these women, I stand with rape victims, I stand with children who are in terrible sex abuse situations, and I stand with survivors of trafficking,” Greene said on CNN. “I will not apologize for that. I believe the country deserves transparency in these files. And I don’t believe that rich powerful people should be protected if they have done anything wrong.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203282/trump-marjorie-taylor-greene-death-threats

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2025-11-17T14:37:23+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. Anxiety is rising among President Trump’s staunchest allies that he’s politically lost his way. Several new reports document that they fear the MAGA coalition is fragile, that Republicans are in political trouble in the midterms and that Trump isn’t doing enough about any of it. Meanwhile, Trump just exploded in fury on Truth Social saying he is now calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ties with Democrats. Yet as one Republican pointed out, it’s Trump who is overly obsessed with Epstein right now, and that’s part of the GOP’s political problem. It’s clear that Trump and the GOP are in very deep political trouble, but Trump doesn’t seem to know it. That puts him in a moment of extreme weakness. And yet, do Democrats know it? Are they really set to capitalize on it? Today we’re talking about all this with Michael Cohen, author of the very good Substack Truth and Consequences, who has new pieces out on Trump’s unpopularity and the GOP breakdown. Michael, good to have you on.Michael Cohen: Greg, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Sargent: So we have a couple striking new reports out right now. Let’s start with the one in the New York Times. It reports that Trump allies fear that his populist message has become muddled because he’s spending his time courting wealthy donors, like on his ballroom, and demanding Nobel Peace Prizes for his alleged successes abroad. He’s also talking about going to Davos and his advisors fear this would send the wrong message right now. Michael, what I find striking about this is that the GOP coalition seems to be in trouble. The non-MAGA voters don’t like the ballroom or the bizarre Nobel Prize antics and his own allies and advisors know it. What do you think of this? Cohen: I mean, one thing I’m struck by in Trump’s second term is I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president who seems to care less about his political standing than Trump. I mean, he really doesn’t spend a lot of time and energy trying to improve how Americans see him. He seems very completely focused on his own sort of pet issues, which is, I would say, his legacy—which is why you see all these efforts to travel around the world trying to make peace deals, and his ballroom, I think, is part of that legacy consideration. And also his revenge tour. I mean, that is what seems to be driving him.Really, you know, the things he has done so far—the big, beautiful bill, the shutdown, the refusal to bend on these Obamacare subsidy increases—they’re not… he doesn’t seem to be thinking about politics at all. He doesn’t seem overly concerned about how Republicans do in the elections next year.And so from that perspective, if I was Republican, I would be pretty concerned about this, because you have a president who should be leading the way politically and is not.Sargent: Well, you’re absolutely right to bring up the Affordable Care Act subsidies. In fact, the other report I wanted to bring up is from CNN, and it says that the expiration of these subsidies has stirred deep anxiety among some Republicans—particularly in the battlegrounds.It occurs to me that the MAGA coalition is getting hit by a kind of double whammy. On one side, you’ve got the ACA subsidies lapsing—that’s going to hammer the Trump base. The economy is killing him with his own voters. But on the other, you’ve got key voters in the GOP coalition who voted for Trump, that helped Trump win, who don’t like all the ballroom antics and the Nobel Prize garbage and all that sort of stuff, and he’s not doing anything to appeal to those people.It’s like a double blow, right?Cohen: Yeah, the Obamacare subsidy story is underappreciated how much of a landmine this is for Republicans, right? I mean, I know the Democrats, you know, allegedly caved in the shutdown. I guess they did, they did cave in. They didn’t get to what they wanted, but they actually took the situation up politically so that this budget bill that they agreed to expires at the end of January.And by that point, people will have already been paying these higher premiums for their health insurance. And I don’t know if people are aware of this, but according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report I saw earlier today, those premiums are expected to double in price—double. I mean, that is a huge increase for an ordinary American.And here’s the thing: why are Republicans not more concerned about this? I don’t actually kind of get it. I really don’t. Democrats, in a way, gave them a lifeline by shutting the government down over this issue. If they compromised on it, it would have actually diffused what is a ticking time bomb, which is these increases.And now actually the chances that the Republicans concede on this point and compromise has actually gone up, because I think once people realize how damaging this is gonna be politically, I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Speaker Johnson and, and, and John Thune in the Senate to find some way to avoid this happening.Sargent: I think a lot of Republican elected officials still don’t quite understand the degree to which they depend on these new types of working class voters as well. Don’t you?Cohen: Yes. And look, you really saw this in what happened in New Jersey and Virginia in these off-year elections. In 2024, Trump made serious inroads with younger voters, with Hispanic voters. You saw that completely reversed in New Jersey and Virginia. Now, some people—on the Hispanic voters—some people would say it’s because of the mass deportations. I’m sure that’s part of it.But part of it too is some of these voters voted for Trump because they were unhappy about the economy under Biden. Think they’re happy now? I don’t really get the impression that they are. If you look at the numbers on the economy, most voters are not happy with the state of the economy, and they’re not happy with Trump’s attention to the issue, or lack thereof.Same thing with young voters. The switch in young voter support against Trump is overwhelming. I saw a poll about a week or two ago—I think before the Tuesday election—that showed Democrats… there was a question about the congressional ballot: Which candidate do you support, the Democratic or Republican candidate? And among 18- to 29-year-olds, Dems were leading by 27 points. That number probably has even gone up since last week. And that’s kind of what the Republicans are dealing with right now.And I think a lot of that has to do with the economy. And so that they are willing to, A, have these bad numbers in the economy and then proceed with these premium increases—it’s political malpractice. It’s a hard thing to grasp what’s going on up there on Capitol Hill that they’re allowing this to happen.Sargent: It really is remarkable. And I think maybe the way to think about it is not a double whammy, it’s a triple whammy because we’ve got Jeffrey Epstein stuff, which is absolutely deadly for Trump and the Republican Party right now. And Trump just exploded on Truth Social over the Epstein stuff. I’m going to read a big chunk of it because it’s so deranged:“I will be asking AG Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JP Morgan Chase, and many other institutions and people to determine what was going on with them and him. This is another Russia, Russia, Russia scam with all arrows pointing to the Democrats.”Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s going to work, Michael, do you?Cohen: Do you think anybody believes that outside of, like, the pure MAGA base? I understand that—that Trump wants to get this issue to go away. But it’s sort of like the idea that you can do that by sort of pointing to Democrats, when I think something like half the emails that were released by Democrats last week or this week contain Trump’s name. That’s a pretty hard argument to make, especially when you’re actually talking directly about Trump.So I think that again, I get what they’re doing, but I don’t think it’s gonna work. And I do think that the Epstein story, unlike every other scandal that involves Trump, is one that actually [is] going to strike at the heart of the MAGA base. Because there are Republican voters who truly believe in this conspiracy around Epstein, and they—I don’t think they’re— I think this is an issue where they actually might break with Trump.And you’re seeing this on the Hill, by the way. You’re seeing already Democrats—I mean Republican senators and congressmen—who are distancing themselves on Epstein, or at least saying that they’re gonna support this House vote on releasing the Epstein files. I saw on CNN this week, Senator Kennedy from Louisiana coming out and saying that he, you know, might vote to open… on this, this bill to open up the Epstein files that are at DOJ. That’s a huge shift. I mean, Kennedy is a big supporter of the president, but I think he understands where the political winds are blowing, and on this issue, they’re blowing against the White House.And I don’t think the White House—I don’t think Trump—truly realized that. And going after Bill Clinton… And I, and by the way, it’s worth noting that he wrote this, that Bondi should go after Clinton. Apparently within, like, the hour of that happening, Bondi appointed a prosecutor to look into Clinton’s role. I mean, you know, this is just an obvious effort to try to obfuscate Trump’s own relationship with Epstein.Sargent: It’s ludicrous. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene got another dimension of the Epstein thing. I think she pointed out that Trump is spending his time trying to stop the Epstein files from coming out. In other words, Trump is the one who’s obsessed with Epstein, not Democrats. Well, Democrats want the files, but it’s Trump who’s really letting it consume him in some sort of really profoundly pathological way.And we all know why, because he’s desperately trying to keep it from coming out. But I think the core truth that Marjorie Taylor Greene got at there is that the Epstein files is really bad for Trump in two ways. Right? The more obvious, superficial way, which is that he’s in the damn files and he doesn’t want ’em to come out, but every second he spends trying to stop the files from coming out reminds everybody that he’s taken his eye off the ball of the economy—or worse, that he’s just wrecking the economy and doesn’t give a shit about it.Cohen: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s right, and I also think that they have gone above and beyond trying to cover up or trying to make this issue go away with Epstein. It’s not working. And they—and I don’t even know if Trump’s guilty of anything. I really don’t. I’m not convinced he did anything wrong except maybe, perhaps, you know, not speaking up when he may have known that Epstein was abusing young girls, but he’s… he looks guilty. He’s made himself look guiltier than he probably already is.He did the same thing on the, on the Russian investigation to some degree, and I think that’s a political problem for him. It’s a political problem for the party. And I do think every day they spend on Epstein is a day they’re not talking about the economy, and that’s a good thing for Democrats.Sargent: So on your Substack, you had this piece that used the New York Times’ chart—polling chart—of Trump’s approval, which is an average of the polls, and it looks like it’s now nosedived to its lowest point of his second term. It’s down to 41% approve and 55% disapprove. That is a negative-14 rating, and the trend is very clearly down in recent days.Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, these are bad numbers, and I think probably the Times approval average might even be a little high because some of the recent polls we’ve seen—quality polls—have it even lower than that, like in the high thirties. But still, to have the average of polls, the New York Times average, down to 41–55, negative-14, that’s terrible. Can you talk about it?Cohen: Yeah, no. Look, the AP poll from—I think it was this week or last week—had him at 36%, which is insanely low. I don’t remember it being that low even in his first term.Look, I’ve been saying this for months now, and I think it’s just the story that not enough people are appreciating. Donald Trump is historically and deeply unpopular. Okay? His numbers for a first-term president are insanely low. And they have—they have been—they have been going lower, you know, and there seems to be very clear… this Navigator survey poll out, I think it was yesterday or today, that showed that his numbers went down during the shutdown. The shutdown definitely hurt him.His numbers on the economy are in the 20%. He’s getting killed on health care. Even immigration, he’s doing poorly across the board. He is unpopular. And I don’t think—I think it wasn’t until last week and the election returns in New Jersey and Virginia—people suddenly realized how unpopular he is and how damaging this is to the party.I mean, you can talk all you want about Democrats and are they too liberal, are they too moderate, or whatever you want to discuss. But the reality of the situation is that Democrats won big in New Jersey, Virginia, for one major reason: because Donald Trump is unpopular and people want to just send him a message.And, by the way, it’s not just that people disapprove of him; they strongly disapprove of him. His strong-disapprove numbers are much higher than his even sort-of slightly disapprove numbers. This is the biggest story in American politics, and it’s not—I don’t see much reason to believe it’s gonna get better.There was a hilarious story I’m seeing about the White House which wants to send Trump out to talk about the economy. I mean, good luck with that. He’s not capable of doing that at all. When he goes out on these speaking tours, he talks about his sort of pet issues that he cares about. It’s clear he doesn’t care about the economy. He cares about his legacy. He cares about his ballroom. He cares about his revenge tour. He doesn’t care about the economy, and he has no really good ideas how to fix it.So to me, this is a situation that is bad for the White House and bad for Republicans, and it’s getting worse. I don’t see it improving anytime soon.Sargent: And you could even slot the Epstein thing into the revenge tour idea here. So in a funny way, that too works against Trump because nobody likes the revenge tour stuff. No one likes the politicization of the Department of Justice. No one likes the fact that Trump is spending all his time sicking prosecutors on his Democratic enemies. That stuff works against him. All of it works against him. And I don’t know if he knows it.Cohen: Oh, I don’t think he knows it at all. Or if he does, I don’t think he cares. I just don’t think he cares about the Republican Party. I don’t think he cares about the long-term future of the party. I think he’s concerned about Democrats taking back the House in ’26 because he is worried about maybe getting impeached again. But I don’t think he cares politically about—from a policy standpoint—about what happens.And, by the way, I think it’s also interesting—we could talk about this a little bit—that, you know, one of the ways Trump was trying to get around the fact that he’s so unpopular, and Democrats are probably gonna do well in the midterms, was he tried to get all the Republican states to redistrict. Well, that’s not working out too well right now.I wrote a piece out this week about it. If you add up the numbers, it’s quite possible that Democrats actually gain more seats from redistricting than Republicans do. Just today, an hour or so ago, Indiana Republicans announced they’re not going to redistrict. They got a hard, hard push from the White House on this, and they said no to the White House.That speaks to something else, which I think is very characteristic of the White House: that they do not have the same kind of political persuasive capabilities that they once had, or thought they once had, even with their own members.So that is a good… and you may see on this Epstein thing—and just to go back to that for a second—you could see a good number of Republicans in the House end up voting to open up the files. And if that happens, I don’t think there’s any chance the Senate blocks that.If that happens, it’s not just a problem for Trump in the substance of the policy of releasing all these files. It’s a problem because it shows that he is weak, and he’s weak with his own party. So that becomes a much bigger political problem for Trump to deal with.Sargent: Right. I have trouble seeing 13 Republican senators supporting, releasing the Epstein files, but I certainly hope you’re right and I wouldn’t rule it out at all, especially if the vote is very big in the house. As you say, that really brings a lot of pressure, and as you said earlier, Senator Kennedy moving like that is also a key tell. You never know, Donald Trump has a lock on his party until he doesn’t. That’s the thing that people forget, is that politics isn’t static. It actually changes.Cohen: No, it changes a lot. And actually in these days, it changes, you know, from month to month and year to year for sure.Sargent: So you had in your piece, just to wrap this up, you talked about how these key voter groups move towards Spanberger in Virginia and Sherrill in New Jersey. And you talked a little bit about that, especially the young voters. I’m so old that I remember when pundits were saying that the young voters shift towards Trump was the end of the Democratic Party, basically. Somehow all these pundits forgot that the way politics works is that the party in the White House is the one who get the referendum in the midterms and in the off year elections. Talk about that.Cohen: I love to point this out: you know, the last three presidential elections we’ve had governing trifectas won by each party in each of these three elections—2016 Republicans, 2020 Democrats, 2024 Republicans. You know the last time that happened in American politics? Never. It’s never happened before, which says to me that there is a major sentiment of anti-incumbency in the country right now, which also means that if you’re drawing your conclusion from what happened the last election, you might need to update your priors.And I think what we saw, you know, last week was that what happened in 2024 may not be relevant anymore. I don’t think it’s relevant at all in 2025. And the young-people thing is interesting. You know, if you look at 2020, you look at the midterms—’18 and ’22—Democrats did very, very well with young voters. And in ’24, you saw slippage.Now, to assume from that slippage in a year in which there was a great deal of anti-incumbency, in which the economy was a major concern among all voters, especially young people—if you drew from that that all of a sudden Democrats are screwed with young voters, I mean, you really were sort of, I mean, based on a sample size of one. And what we’ve seen in the past nine months is there’s no group in which Trump has lost ground more dramatically than with younger voters.And this should surprise nobody. I mean, from a cultural standpoint, younger Americans are much more aligned with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, and that’s been true for more than a decade now. None of this should surprise us.You know, but beyond that, what happened in ’24 was that a lot of young people were upset about the state of the economy—they couldn’t find jobs, inflation was high. Well, guess what? The economy isn’t very good now either. So, not surprisingly, those same voters have switched back to the Democratic Party. I think also, by the way, they’re not terribly happy with a lot of the policies that Trump’s implementing, like on deportations and on other cultural issues.So I just think that we should not… remember that things can change quickly in politics. You know, if the president is not doing what he promised to do, if he is… the economy is struggling, there’s going to be a consequence from that. And these voters who may have switched to Trump in ’24—if they switched—means that their allegiances are fluid. And we’re seeing that now that they’re flowing back to the Democratic Party.Sargent: Absolutely. So let’s try to tie all this together. So one of the storylines here is that the low-propensity voters who aren’t really MAGA ideologues in any sense—they’re very fluid, as you said—we’re talking about young voters, you know, non-white working class of a certain type, they moved to Trump a little bit in 2024.Now we’re seeing they’re really moving in the other direction pretty hard. Chances are that in the midterms we’ll see that as well. They’re motivated by the economy. So that’s one story that’s happening.Then we have this other story in which Donald Trump is completely fucking his base in every conceivable way, including the elements of his base who are hardcore MAGA, or at least pretty, pretty committed to Trump—maybe not super, super hardcore MAGA, but pretty committed to him, right?So you’re saying the Epstein files alienate those voters, the globalist stuff alienates those voters. There you have, I think, the two big stories of the moment. Can you talk about that?Cohen: Well, you know, think one thing I think I’m surprised by is how big a story this Epstein files issue really is. Because I have to say, I’ve always been—because I was skeptical there was really much here. I’ve never bought into a lot of the conspiracy theories around Epstein. But I think what we’ve seen over the past couple of months is a recognition that this is a big story for a lot of people on the right.And not just on the right, but in general, across the political spectrum. But it’s a story that motivates a lot of Republican voters and was a big motivation for them. And, you know, what you’re seeing, I think, with this story—the way that it has continued to metastasize over the past couple of months—is that people care about this and that this is something that Trump doesn’t have a, a good response on. And I think it’s hurting him politically in a way that I don’t—I frankly didn’t—really expect.And I think it’s… look, you could say all the bad things in the economy about Trump, all things are going to hurt Trump, and that’s the major thing that’s going to hurt Trump. The economy is the biggest factor; that’s what’s going to hurt him the most. But this Epstein story is kind of—this is a nagging story that continues to chip away at his support, especially, I’d say, among, you know, these sort of committed MAGA voters.I mean, look, there’s probably 30% of MAGA voters who will vote for Trump no matter what, support Trump no matter what. But I think there are some softer Trump voters out there who are upset about this. And I think, will they still vote for Trump? Probably. But will they vote for Republicans in 2026? I don’t know.That’s why I said before, I’m kind of getting to the point now where I think a lot of these Republican senators and House members may conclude they don’t want to be on the wrong side of their own voters on this issue. That could be wrong; I suspect that’s what’s happening. And when you see somebody—Kennedy—come out and say that, that makes me think this is a real thing.Sargent: Well, I’ll tell you what, the size of the defections or deflections as Donald Trump put it in one of his deranged tweets is going to be a very big tell. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Michael Cohen’s Substack, Truth and Consequences. Michael, always good to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on. Cohen: Greg, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203279/transcript-trump-fury-epstein-mess-explodes-allies-openly-panic

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2025-11-17T13:27:42+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

For Ashleigh Ligon, a mother of six living in Federal Way, Washington, the defining word for November has been “uncertainty.” Ligon’s household is already marked by the chaos of a large family—her six children include two sets of twins—and the hard work of staying afloat in a society that is not overly accommodating to people with disabilities. She and her husband are both disabled, her adult son has a disability, and her 7-year-old son has severe allergies. The challenges Ligon faces every day were intensified by the government shutdown, which ended last week after a record-breaking 43 days. She and her family participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food assistance to nearly 42 million low-income Americans. When she heard the news that the Trump administration would not pay out full SNAP benefits for the month of November, Ligon worried how she would keep her family fed.“I definitely had to eat differently. My children had to eat differently,” said Ligon. “We’ve just been really careful, because there was no way we would get through November [without SNAP benefits].”Ligon knew she was supposed to receive her SNAP benefits on November 11, meaning that she had some time to plan for the possibility of not getting any assistance. Like millions of Americans, Ligon turned to the charitable sector—but visiting a food pantry simply cannot replace the assistance she receives from SNAP. Ligon’s disability makes it difficult for her to stand for long periods to wait in line. But even after she got to the front of the line, she could not take some of the donated food items because of her son’s severe allergies.“I left without even the ingredients to make a meal for him, not even one meal. And so while I was grateful for the services that they do offer—I don’t want to sound ungrateful—it’s just not a good fit for my family because of the structure of my family,” she said.As Washington state was one of the states to pay out full benefits, Ligon was able to receive her SNAP payments on November 11—but only after enduring a period of significant uncertainty the previous week. SNAP benefits are loaded onto a card, which can then be used to purchase food products. On November 6, Ligon’s future benefits registered as “pending,” so she felt comfortable to go to the grocery store and use the rest of her benefits, knowing that she would have more soon.“There was a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety going into that whole process, to be honest with you, because I was so happy when I heard everyone was getting their benefits. I was like, ‘OK, we can finally eat,’” Ligon recalled. But the next day, she heard about the U.S. Supreme Court order to halt the administration of full benefits. She tried to check on the status of her pending benefits, but the system was down; when she was able to log in between November 8 and November 10, Ligon said, she could only see her available balance, but not any pending balance.“There’s just a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknown, which was very stressful, because I had gone grocery shopping once I had seen that those benefits were pending, and I felt secure. And then I felt like my security was kind of ripped from me again,” continued Ligon. “I still made smart decisions in the groceries that I purchased, but it’s not enough. Like, no matter how you cut it, it’s not enough.”Ligon’s experience of being able to receive full benefits was not universal; several states only offered partial payments to SNAP participants. Others offered none at all. And while the shutdown has ended and benefits are slated to be restored, the disruption will leave scars. What was mere “uncertainty” for a few weeks may spawn something more lasting: a potential long-term impact on how the program is implemented during future shutdowns, and how the stability of SNAP is perceived overall by participants.This November marked the first time that SNAP benefits have not been distributed during a shutdown. During the second-longest government shutdown, which spanned 35 days from the end of December 2018 through January 2019, the first Trump administration took deliberate steps to ensure SNAP benefits would not lapse. The second Trump administration appears to have different priorities.In late October, the administration announced that it would not pay the full benefits for the month of November. The Agriculture Department complied with a court order to use a $4.5 billion contingency fund to pay out partial benefits but challenged other lower court rulings to tap into other reserves to fully fund the program. The Supreme Court issued and then extended a short-term order allowing the administration to withhold full payments, allowing time for Congress to reopen the government.“The Trump administration itself went from understanding that continuing SNAP is part of the responsibilities of governing, to being quite hostile to continuing SNAP, and using this as an excuse to attack the program,” said David Super, professor of law and economics at Georgetown Law School. For the first two weeks of November, food security for the roughly one in eight Americans who rely on the benefits hung in the balance. According to a tally by the Associated Press, 19 states and the District of Columbia issued full benefits to at least some participants. Many did so in the single day between a lower court ruling that required the federal government to fully fund SNAP and the Supreme Court order granting a stay. But the remaining states either issued partial benefits or did not offer them at all. SNAP participants may have chosen to prioritize buying food over other expenses, which would have long-lasting repercussions for their ability to maintain other needs, such as housing and heat. “We cut off food assistance to a lot of people with their limited funds, and many of them had to spend their rent money or their utility money buying food for their families, and they can’t pay that back with SNAP,” Super said. “It is certainly possible that there will be long-term disruptions in how people’s budgets are managed, or even people going to extreme measures to avoid getting evicted or getting their utilities shut off because they diverted the money this month.”Even when the program is fully funded, the average SNAP participant receives around $187 per month, or about $6 per day. Kyshanna Patman, a mother of four living in Lexington, North Carolina, who participates in SNAP, said that she usually runs out of benefits by the third week of the month. By that time, she often has to choose to go without to ensure her children have enough.“There are times when I probably won’t eat at all, just to make sure they’ve got [food],” said Patman.Her family receives supplemental security income because two of her children are disabled; at the end of the month, Patman will sometimes use that money to buy groceries. In the days before the disruption to SNAP, Patman worried about how she would handle everyday costs when her family is already struggling.“I still have to pay bills, and I still have to use money for transportation to get them back and forth to school and things like that. So for us to not be able to have it anymore, it will really be a hard thing,” Patman said in an interview at the end of October.North Carolina only provided partial payments to SNAP recipients in November. When reached by text on November 13, Patman said that her family had already used the partial SNAP benefits they had received this month. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services planned to issue full benefits by November 14.When SNAP participants have access to full benefits again, they will be able to stock up on items they need. This could help the small grocers who felt the impact of the disruption to SNAP. The National Grocers Association warned earlier in November that the lapse in funding could lead to “reduced employee hours, perishable food losses, and declining sales for many community grocers across our nation.”But the difficulties faced by SNAP participants at the beginning of the month could be a harbinger of pending challenges. The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted SNAP, and the president has indicated that he will continue to take aim at the program even after the end of the shutdown.Congress also passed legislation over the summer that could result in millions losing their benefits across the country. States were instructed to begin implementing a provision to tighten work requirements in November, and the shutdown added to the logistical challenges for state governments.“States have been in chaos for the last several weeks. They’ve been fielding questions from people about where their benefits are, and at a time when states ought to be engaging in careful evaluations to see who is subject to the three-month time limit and who has enough hours of work or is unable to work,” said Super.Another provision of the law would force states to shoulder some of the cost of SNAP benefits depending on their error rate—the percentage of over- or underpayments in a state—which may lead them to either spend less on SNAP or further restrict benefits in future years. If state officials have been distracted with handling the shutdown, this could lead to more errors once SNAP is fully up and running. Moreover, the continuing resolution that funds the government has authorized SNAP spending through next year, but that may just mean the next political fight over the program has been punted until 2026.Participating in SNAP already has its challenges. Ligon is frustrated by the time-consuming requirement to verify her family’s information every six months, a process that always seems to be accompanied by some sort of administrative error that can only be ironed out when she speaks with a supervisor. Even with her benefits, she has to occasionally make difficult decisions, such as choosing not to eat meat so her kids will have enough protein. She will buy more processed items and frozen fruits and vegetables because fresh produce is more expensive.Still, SNAP is incredibly important to Ligon’s family, and she worries about the impact of future cuts even after the government is reopened and benefits are more secure. The disruption of the shutdown has made her less confident about her family’s future.“Things that I couldn’t imagine happening are happening, and things that they say could never happen, happened,” said Ligon.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203217/snap-recipients-wary-program-future

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2025-11-17T13:27:42+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

In the early 2010s, seemingly everybody was talking about how television was in the midst of a “golden age.” This beatification of the medium in the teens emerged out of a long-simmering blog-level conversation about whether and how TV was (or had recently become) an “art form,” but now the conversation was starting to go mainstream, jumping the tracks from the AV Club comments section into popular discourse. “From where I sat,” wrote beloved TV critic Alan Sepinwall in his 2013 book on 2000s television, “TV was in the middle of another golden age.” Journalist Brett Martin’s own 2013 TV book, Difficult Men, called it a “golden age” too, drawing meta-attention to how much critics historically love declaring periods of time to be golden ages. “Welcome to TV’s Second Golden Age,” offered CBS Sunday Morning later that year, and no less an authority than Steven Soderbergh proposed the dawn of a “second golden age of television” from a podium at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2014, in The New York Times, David Carr wrote that he was “barely keeping up in TV’s new golden age,” and, by the end of the year, Vanity Fair was asking, seemingly behind the times: “Are We in a Golden Age of Television?”The irony is that, by the time these outlets were gleefully gilding a decade of prestige television, the critics were getting antsy again. Just as the golden age was being cast, keen observers of the discourse were beginning to hear tell of a new age, not golden, but silver perhaps? But what, exactly, was TV’s “silver age”? To Andy Greenwald, writing in Grantland (talk about golden ages) in 2012, the TV silver age was an exciting new horizon of creative innovation. Anchored by Showtime’s hit espionage drama Homeland, the archetypal series of the silver age was, “a refreshingly artful hybrid: cable brains spliced with network brawn.” If the golden age prior was about premium cable channels striking out on their own, inventing new forms unburdened by network convention, the silver age was about recasting those tried-and-true network conventions with the high-end production values and sex and cursing of the golden age.But others imagined this silver age as a time of decline. “With an increase in expectations and a glut of new programming,” Hank Stuever wrote in The Washington Post in 2015, “we’ve become accustomed to shows that are, at their best, pretty good instead of brilliant.” I think, in retrospect, that Stuever’s take is prophetic rather than descriptive. Looking back, many of the shows we might associate with this silver age—Homeland (the first season), The Americans, The Leftovers, The Knick, late Mad Men, late Breaking Bad, Halt and Catch Fire, Louie, Girls—have held up as magnificently rewatchable achievements. Stuever was right to observe the beginning of a decline as more and more shows slapped prestige aesthetics on cookie-cutter clones. But he couldn’t have known how much worse it was going to get. Even in 2015, he couldn’t have seen how bad streaming would make things.I’m doing all this reminiscing from the point of view of a period that Sam Adams has pretty aptly called, “Trough TV.” It is, in some ways, a nightmare hallucination of Stuever’s concerns about the silver age. Even the best shows are copies of copies, the risk-taking Wild West executives of the golden age have been replaced by private-equity goons playing Moneyball with existing I.P., and they just keep making more and worse Game of Throneses. It’s an era of zombies, so it only seems right that the shows our streamers are currently most interested in zombifying are not even shows of that vaunted golden age, but rather, the silver one. Vince Gilligan has a new show on Apple, so does Jon Hamm. Lena Dunham has one on Netflix, so does Keri Russell. And now, Homeland creator Howard Gordon has reunited with Claire Danes as well as The Americans’ Matthew Rhys to bring us The Beast in Me, a silver age supergroup nostalgia tour, now playing on Netflix. There’s not a lot of new material here, and even the hits don’t quite sound the same.There’s a scene in the second episode of The Beast in Me where we watch Matthew Rhys stand at a kitchen island and consume an entire roast chicken. We’re in medium close-up, and we can hear every crunch and slurp as he sucks every ounce of meat—and seemingly cartilage—off the bone in a bizarre manner Rhys either invented for this performance or has adapted from some obscure Welsh technique. It’s eerily reminiscent of the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King where Denethor houses a chicken and Pippin sings him a sad song, and just as unsettling. It’s a good encapsulation of The Beast in Me’s whole deal. The show is not particularly original, its beats will feel so familiar you’re initially suspicious of them, and its metaphors will clank down upon your head. This man, you see, is a predator. He feasts upon the succulent roast carcasses of his enemies. And he does so with a dead-eyed stare. The chicken scene is thuddingly unsubtle about this. But it’s also, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a treat. Rhys is an absolutely magnetic actor, as menacing as he is charming. And he is, bless his heart, eating this chicken in as interesting a way as it is possible for him to do within the constraints of the scene and its script. Is that enough?Matthew Rhys is eating this chicken in as interesting a way as it is possible for him to do within the constraints of the scene and its script. Is that enough?Rhys plays Nile Jarvis, a brash billionaire New York real estate developer who’s just moved to the countryside. He’s relocated there with his new wife, Nina (Brittany Snow), in an effort to stay out of the public eye as he prepares to launch a massive building project—Jarvis Yards—that’s attracted a lot of controversy around its Manhattan building site. But Jarvis isn’t just trying to avoid the gaze of Councilwoman Benitez, the progressive firebrand organizing a movement against Jarvis Yards, he’s also trying to dodge a credible murder accusation. Two years before we meet him, Jarvis’s first wife disappeared, her body never found. After a prolonged and punishingly intimate investigation, the FBI ruled her death a suicide, but that hasn’t changed public opinion all that much. Nile Jarvis, to all the readers of the tabloid mags that stalk him, is still a likely murderer.His new neighbor, living in a far less palatial country estate down the road, is Aggie Wiggs (Danes). Wiggs is a famed magazine profile writer who has stalled out on the follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. But it’s not just writer’s block that’s giving Aggie a hard time. Several years before we meet her, Aggie’s young son Cooper died in a car accident. Consumed by grief and by an obsession with the allegedly drunk driver who caused the crash, Aggie’s marriage dissolves, and she spends her days procrastinating, puttering around her decaying house, talking to her scene-stealing pooch, Steve. Two damaged, possibly damaging people on a collision course with each other. The first two episodes of the show, which dwell at length on Jarvis and Wiggs as they feel each other out and take turns manipulating each other in a series of extended intimate chats, are gripping TV. Rhys imbues his cartoonish villain character with a kind of twitchy impulsiveness that makes him feel one degree less predictable than he might initially appear. When he says something provocatively insulting or childishly cruel, we’re never quite sure whether to read it as a tactic or a tic. It’s hard to tell to what degree Jarvis is in control of his performance.Danes, for her part, returns fitfully to the Homeland well. Her chin near-constantly aquiver, Wiggs is always on the verge of tears, a woman deep, deep in the midst of a nervous breakdown. But, in her scenes with Jarvis, she comes alive, activating the lethal attentiveness and brazen disregard for danger that made her the prize-winning journalist we’re told she was. In their early interviews, it’s enthralling to watch Wiggs shed her sadness and go in for the kill. But Danes, likewise, portrays Wiggs as someone who’s not fully in control of how and when her grief or her guts take over. Jarvis is, in fits and starts, disarmed by her. Theirs, finally, is a fair fight. Soon after his arrival to town, a townie mysteriously disappears. Partially because she suspects Jarvis, and partially because their tête-à-têtes have reinvigorated her, Wiggs sells her neighbor on the idea of a biography, a chance to set the record straight. Her editor is over the moon, and so Wiggs descends into the world of Nile Jarvis.All of this early setup is quite promising. The sparring sessions between Rhys and Danes remain the highlights of the series—including an obligatory night of drinking and dancing and spontaneous personal revelation later in the season. But, once the stage is set, that old “network brawn” easily overpowers any of the show’s artful aspirations. In particular, what we begin to notice is how thinly the world outside these two is constructed and, conversely, how much time the show seems to want us to spend in it. There’s the pair of compromised FBI agents hissing warnings at Aggie, there’s Jarvis’s imposing father (Jonathan Banks, another silver age stalwart) grumbling disapproval, there’s the aforementioned Councilwoman Benitez (Aleyse Shannon) shouting clichés through a megaphone—The Beast in Me easily could have leaned into the psychological brinkmanship of Jarvis and Wiggs, but, instead, it insists on becoming a paint-by-numbers political thriller too.Benitez, in particular, is ill served by the show’s treatment of her plotline. A clear AOC stand-in, the show treats her with the same texture as a “ripped-from-the-headlines” Law and Order case of the week. The show doesn’t so much characterize her as allow us to recognize her Ocasio-Cortez-iness and then fill in the characterization for ourselves. It’s hard to tell whether this caricature of an ambitious progressive activist whose bold leftist politics might be more opportunistic than sincere is the result of lazy or scurrilous writing. On paper, The Beast in Me presents itself as a kind of alternate-universe, celebrity death match, in which present-day AOC squares off against a young hybrid of Robert Durst and Donald Trump in their prime, while a writer for The New Yorker chronicles it all. But in order for that to happen, this show would need to take any of those institutions—the New York left, the New York oligarchs, or the New York press—seriously enough to render them with specificity and nuance. It doesn’t.Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell were co-stars and became a real-life couple on the set of The Americans—the silver age FX series that I think rivals any of its golden age ancestors. And now, over a decade later, they’re each starring in their own fall Netflix series. Russell’s The Diplomat is a vastly different beast. While it stars a silver age icon, it is very much a return to, and revision of, the golden age network drama The West Wing. Not only does it reinvent that show’s classic walk-and-talk style, but it also proceeds, methodically, as a dissection of that show’s many triumphs and missteps. Its ambivalent relationship to the romance of competence, its defiantly different gender politics, its tortured examination of the costs of Sorkinian belief in the American civic religion—The Diplomat is a work of criticism about its source text. The show has faults all of its own, but it is certainly an attentive and insightful reimagining of a titanic series from a bygone televisual era. If the fate of our current streaming environment is that every show must, in some way, function as a shadow or reflection of some other, older, admirably successful show, then The Diplomat is among the best-case scenarios.The Beast in Me, less so. Homeland, say, might provide many lessons for The Beast in Me to learn: for instance, what happens to the soul of a political true believer once they become willing to commit crimes in service of that belief? The Americans might hold some lessons too, like: What is the cost of a double life? What intimacy is there to be found in deception? Beast might have consulted Mad Men for its granular depiction of creative, writerly labor or The Leftovers for its flayed depiction of unstoppable grief.But rather than substantively revive the spirit of any of those shows, The Beast in Me seems content to have its stars, and the vague outlines of its plot suggest these kinds of insights to us, to leave us viewers plenty of space on-screen to fill in our own complexity. It’s easy to remember the feeling of watching Rhys’s Philip Jennings explode in lightning rage or Danes’s Carrie Mathison confidently push further and further past red line after red line. The Beast in Me is neither a reckoning with their era of TV nor a return. But maybe it’s a reminder that every period of seeming decline might one day look like its own golden age in retrospect.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203139/beast-epitomizes-trough-tv

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2025-11-17T13:27:42+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump’s appointments track record is just about uniformly hideous. From putting a vaccine denier in charge of public health, to having our nearly $1 trillion defense colossus run by a guy who thinks it’s cool to be called the War Secretary (but whose only wars so far are against Latin American fishermen and soldiers with beards), to the Rolex-flashing dog-killer who relishes sending innocent people to live in horrendous conditions in foreign prisons. And these are just the first three to spring to mind. But let’s not give short shrift to his atrocious record on naming prosecutors. First, there was Jeff Sessions; I know he looks tame by today’s Stalinesque standards, and he did stand up to Trump on Russia, but his track record on immigration and deportations, voting rights, and criminal justice was hard-shell right wing. Bill Barr won, and earned, praise for standing up to Trump when he tried to steal the 2020 election, but prior to that, he made a number of moves that only shored Trump up, like essentially burying the Mueller Report. Another of Barr’s lamentable moves involved maybe the most horrific prosecutorial appointment of all: He named, with Trump’s presumed blessing, John Durham as special prosecutor to uncover the truth about the deep state. Durham became a national laughing stock, although his efforts probably weren’t terribly amusing to the two targets against whom he worked up flimsy indictments that juries rejected out of hand. Which brings us to Jay Clayton. Who is he? Clayton was named over the weekend by Attorney General Pam Bondi—speaking of prosecutorial appointments that would make Francisco Franco smile—to delve into the Jeffrey Epstein affair. Except that when I say “delve into the Jeffrey Epstein affair,” I don’t mean that it is Clayton’s mandate to turn over every last rock to see which American politicians and other movers and shakers may have benefited from Epstein’s, um, generosity over the years. No—Bondi and her boss have made it quite clear that their official ukase for Clayton involves looking under only rocks that have bright blue “D”s painted on them. Trump was quite explicit that Clayton’s targets were to be former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Democratic presidential adviser Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman. You do not have to be paid-up members of those men’s fan clubs to understand this as the hideous affront to American custom that it is. For starters, the idea that a president should be ordering up an investigation of specific citizens is a horror; in an America that was actually adhering to its founding ideals, this would in itself be grounds for starting to discuss impeachment. It certainly would have been if Barack Obama had done it, I assure you. But now, that’s just one more norm that Trump has set on fire. Last Friday, on Air Force One, Trump told reporters: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.” Let’s quickly pause here just to note: That statement is an admission of both his laser-instincts directly toward authoritarian rule and his ignorance. Democracy isn’t about what’s allowed. It’s about what’s right—as well as what’s respectful of norms and traditions. But of course, he ordered it, and—of course—Bondi said, “Yes, sir!” Which brings us around to an examination of who Clayton is, and why Bondi chose him for this obviously political task that has nothing whatever to do with “justice.”Clayton is mostly a high-finance guy. His career is in corporate law. In Trump’s first term, he chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission. That he did not become a household name in those years indicates to some extent that he probably executed his duties in a comparatively responsible fashion. He oversaw the kinds of deregulatory moves you’d expect from any Republican SEC chair; at the same time, he did initiate some high-profile insider trading cases. One thing that impressed me, and that was at odds with the standard Trumpian flouting of rules of any kind governing the behavior of appointees and their families, is that his wife, a Goldman Sachs official, resigned her position when he took the job. What? People in the Trump solar system acting ethically of their own volition? Hard to imagine how Trump tolerated that.However: Clayton has no prosecutorial experience at all. Barr said in 2020 that Clayton would be named the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, arguably the most important federal prosecutorial post in the country after the attorney general. But Trump ultimately chose someone else. Then, earlier this year, Trump named Clayton to run the Southern District. Chuck Schumer blocked the nomination. Trump appointed him on an interim basis for 120 days. Once that period expires, it’s up to the federal court for the district to decide whether the appointment should go forward. In August, seven months after Trump tried to name Clayton, Manhattan’s federal judges decided he should have the job.So, there he sits, in Foley Square, with all the power his office entails—the associate prosecutors, the investigators, the budget. He’s been a cautious sort so far, although critics noted that when Bondi fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of James Comey who had overseen the prosecutions of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Clayton said nary a word. In a filing detailing the basis of her lawsuit alleging wrongful termination, Comey said Clayton told her: “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.” So, we return to the question raised higher up in this column: Who is Jay Clayton? In these next several weeks, we’re going to find out. The Aaron Sorkin-movie version of Clayton would have told Bondi to stuff it Saturday and resigned—I do not hold this public trust to go on politically motivated fishing expeditions. But that’s not real life, especially in Trumpworld. Might he quietly embark on this task and come back early next year, say, and announce that there is no evidentiary basis on which to indict this trio? That would be brave. But if he brings indictments … well, there would be two plausible explanations. One might that there’s actually evidence sufficient to an indictment. In which case, let justice be done. But in Donald Trump’s, and Pam Bondi’s, America, we would be quite justified in suspecting a second explanation: That Clayton did what he was ordered by the White House to do.The Trump era is a time of learning what people are made of. I’m guessing that in six months’ time, we’ll know a lot more about Jay Clayton than we know today.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203278/trump-jay-clayton-epstein-investigation

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2025-11-17T12:23:41+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Anxiety is rising among President Trump’s staunchest allies that he’s politically lost his way. The New York Times reports that his advisers fear he’s alienating key voters in his own coalition. And CNN reports that some Republicans are openly warning the White House that the GOP is in trouble in the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Trump just erupted in a furious new tirade about the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco. In it, he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to Democrats. Bondi immediately did his bidding. That Trump has now formally turned the Justice Department loose in this way shows his anger over Epstein has hit new highs. Some Republicans say all these things are related: Trump is so consumed with Epstein that he’s letting everything else go to hell. So we talked to analyst Michael Cohen, who has a good new piece on Trump’s doldrums on his Truth and Consequences Substack. He explains why Epstein is undoing Trump, how the MAGA coalition is fracturing, how deeper structural factors are working against him, and how it will all impact the midterms. Listen to this episode here.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203262/trump-explodes-angriest-epstein-tirade-yet-allies-visibly-panic

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2025-11-17T00:03:23+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The internet had a field day this week when the House Oversight Committee released thousands of billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s emails to the public—including an exchange with his brother Mark that seemingly referred to Donald Trump performing fellatio on someone named “Bubba.” Now, Mark Epstein has come out to remove a modicum of the mystery surrounding the remark, by revealing who Bubba is not.In the message in question, from March 2018, Mark Epstein told his brother to ask former Trump adviser Steve Bannon whether Russian President Vladimir Putin “has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.” Jeffrey Epstein replied, “and i thought- I had tsuris,” using the Yiddish word for “troubles.”Because “Bubba” is a nickname for Bill Clinton—who, like Trump, had a relationship with Epstein—social media was awash with jokes and speculation that Mark Epstein was, in jest or not, describing kompromat depicting the current and former presidents.Mark Epstein issued a statement Saturday, shared online by Business Insider’s Jacob Shamsian, which described the emails as “simply part of a humorous private exchange between two brothers.” “For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton,” the statement continues. “Any attempt to conflate that reference with President Clinton, or to read sweeping implications into them, misrepresents both the purpose and the tone of the original correspondence.” But while clarifying the unserious nature of the message, the statement leaves the true identity of Bubba unknown.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203277/jeffrey-epstein-files-bill-clinton-bubba-trump-mystery

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2025-11-17T00:03:23+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on deporting immigrants has led to extreme changes at the Department of Homeland Security and undermined efforts to combat child exploitation and sex trafficking, a new report has found.According to The New York Times, the department has been forced to shift its priorities and sideline other important law enforcement activities to make way for the president’s agenda.Agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been temporarily reassigned, a national security probe into the Iranian black market slowed and lost momentum, and agents working on sex trafficking issues have been forced to pause their work in order to support the Trump administration’s deportation goals. Even the Coast Guard has been pulled in to aid the deportation work, the Times reported. The new data that the report is based on comes from previously unseen internal DHS documents, and interviews with more than 60 officials. Officials inside the agency spoke of being “berated” by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for not arresting enough people. Yet the Trump administration’s extensive focus on immigration hasn’t played out the way they might have imagined. Less than 40 percent of people ICE arrests carry criminal convictions, the report says. The Trump administration’s pressure campaign extended to all parts of the agency.As of August, there are currently more than 60,000 people being detained by DHS, and the Trump administration has shown no signs of pulling back anytime soon. While so many government agencies have been gutted, depriving Americans and the international community of much needed aid and assistance, DHS has received a hefty funding boost. ICE is expected to grow its staff by 66 percent over the next few years.Hany Farid, a computer scientist who worked on software that detects child sexual abuse materials and aids law enforcement, told reporters that it was heartbreaking. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children,” he said.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203274/trump-turned-dhs-department-deportation-report

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2025-11-16T19:37:30+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump is lashing out at Indiana Republicans for rejecting his redistricting effort in the state.On Friday, Indiana state Senator Rodric Bray, a Republican, announced that, after “thoughtful consideration” of a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to help the Republicans gain more seats in Congress, “there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene.”In response, Trump on Sunday cast aspersions on Bray and a fellow Republican state senator, Greg Goode, for “not wanting to redistrict their State, allowing the United States Congress to perhaps gain two more Republican seats.” He called the two “politically correct type ‘gentlemen’” and “RINO Senators”—meaning Republicans in name only.Trump also blasted Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, who supported the redistricting effort but, in the president’s view, may not be giving his all “to get the necessary Votes.” Trump applied pressure to Braun, whom he described as his “friend,” adding, “Mike wouldn’t be Governor without me.”The president concluded his tirade by threatening Indiana Republicans who oppose his redistricting scheme with a primary challenge.Indiana is just one red state Trump is pressuring to redraw its congressional maps in his favor, as Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri have already done so. Democratic officials in California and Utah have adopted redraws of their own, and others are attempting to do the same.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203268/trump-truth-social-redistricting-indiana

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2025-11-16T18:29:59+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, are apparently continuing their war on the media.The president on Saturday took aim at comedian Seth Meyers, who, on Late Night with Seth Meyers the day prior, said Trump is “the most unpopular president of all time.” The notoriously thin-skinned Trump took to Truth Social, diagnosing the host with an “incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term MAGA frequently uses to dismiss its critics, and urging NBC to fire him.About a half-hour later, Carr made a point to post a screenshot of Trump’s comments, without further comment, on X.As Matthew Gertz of Media Matters noted, Comcast, the parent company of NBC, is reportedly looking to acquire some of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would require Carr’s approval.The posts are just the latest example of the president seeking to censor those he believes have cast him in a critical light; he recently threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar lawsuit.The targeting of Meyers especially recalls Trump and Carr’s jawboning of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show. After Kimmel ridiculed MAGA’s response to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Carr threatened those who platformed the host. Broadcasting companies with business before the FCC then pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live, which was subsequently cancelled by ABC before the network reversed course.At the time—before Kimmel’s show returned to air—Trump claimed shows are “not allowed” to excessively bash him and urged NBC to suspend Meyers’ show, as well as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203266/trump-seth-meyers-latest-attack-late-night

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2025-11-16T17:26:48+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, are rallying in opposition to the invasion of their city by federal immigration enforcement agents under President Donald Trump. On Saturday, Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin announced that the Trump administration is “surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte” in an operation dubbed “Charlotte’s Web.”Agents conducted searches and arrests across the Democratic-led city, which is home to a significant immigrant population. Thus far, the operation has targeted local retail stores and a church. Many businesses closed down because, as a local bakery owner told The Charlotte Observer, “They’re not chasing criminals. They’re chasing anyone who looks, speaks like me, who has an accent like me, who looks like me.” In one incident, agents detained a U.S. citizen—who had also been stopped previously by agents—after shattering the window of his truck.In a statement, Charlotte’s mayor and other local officials said the operation was “causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty in our community as recent operations in other cities have resulted in people without criminal records being detained and violent protests being the result of unwarranted actions.”Hundreds have peacefully protested the agents’ presence, with one major demonstration at a park in uptown Charlotte, and others at locations where Border Patrol agents were spotted.“They’ve been doing terrible things in Chicago, and we’re not happy that they’re bringing it here to North Carolina,” one protester, who held a sign that read “Stop kidnapping our neighbors,” told the Observer.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203263/protests-trump-border-patrol-crackdown-charlotte

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2025-11-16T01:45:37+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

As President Donald Trump and Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s feud over Jeffrey Epstein boils over, survivors of the late sex criminal have reportedly issued a collective statement of support for the Georgia Republican.The bizarre development comes amid a deepening internal rift in the MAGA movement.The letter, as reported Saturday by MeidasTouch News, thanked Greene “for standing up against the intimidation, silencing, and abuse that Epstein survivors have endured for decades.”“When you speak the truth and refuse to bow to threats, you become a survivor by proxy—an ally who carries part of the fight with us,” the message continued. “That courage matters. You have our full support. We stand united with you against any attempt to bully, rewrite history, or shut down accountability.”The 27 reported signatories, who faced or were otherwise impacted by Epstein’s abuse—such as Maria and Annie Farmer, Courtney Wild, and the family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre—promised to defend Greene “with everything we have” and offered “to help and to talk.”Greene, a far-right politician, former Trump disciple, and frequent purveyor of bigotry and conspiracy theories, has drawn the president’s ire in recent days for her efforts to compel government transparency on the Epstein case. She was among four House Republicans to back a successful bid to force a (now forthcoming) floor vote on the release of the Justice Department’s Epstein-related documents.The president, in turn, has publicly withdrawn his support of Greene, dubbing her a “RINO”—or Republican in name only—as well as nicknames like “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” and “Marjorie Taylor Brown” (because, he explained, “Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!”).Greene on Saturday said Trump’s abuse has “fueled and egged on” threats against her.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203259/epstein-survivors-marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-feud

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2025-11-15T23:32:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

After days of deliberations with high-ranking officials, President Donald Trump thinks he may have come to a decision about a major foreign policy issue. He’s not quite sure, though, and he definitely isn’t sharing what his decision might be.“I sort of have made up my mind,” Trump told CBS Friday on the topic of Venezuela, during a meeting with the press on Air Force One. However, the president continued, “I can’t tell you what it is.” He added that they had “made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in,” however.As The New York Times reported Friday, Trump has been applying military pressure to the South American country, but it remains a mystery for what purpose or what end.The U.S.’s biggest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was moving into a position close enough to carry out strikes on the country, the Times reported, and the president was meeting with officials to review military options. He hadn’t ruled out direct action inside the country.Trump has engaged in saber-rattling toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for some time now, saying he’s allowing armed gangs to smuggle drugs in the U.S. Venezuela’s military is now on high alert, creating a pressure-cooker situation, though, as several outlets have reported, Trump officials and aides have said contradictory things about the purpose of these moves. The U.S. military has also engaged in numerous strikes over the past few months on more than 20 boats it claims were moving drugs from South America to the U.S. While the legality of these strikes are questionable, they’ve killed dozens of people in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, and have created a surge of anger and displeasure among the international community, and Americans—and even Trump’s base.As The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, a secret leaked memo from the DOJ showed that the administration was linking the boat strikes to fentanyl and stating that they were a chemical weapons threat, a claim that hasn’t been substantiated.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203255/trump-venezuela-maduro-conflict-comments

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2025-11-15T23:32:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump thinks it’s possible that, some time in the past year or so, his political enemies planted damaging information about him in Jeffrey Epstein case files.Following the latest release of Epstein-related records, Trump on Friday was asked about the possible publication of more such files.The president floated a wild theory.“If they had anything, they would have used it before the election, OK?” Trump said, evidently referring to Democrats. “I can’t tell you what they put in since the election, but if they had anything, you don’t think they would have used it before the election?”This week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of documents obtained from Epstein’s estate, including private emails mentioning Trump. In one such message, the disgraced financier suggested Trump “knew about the girls” he had trafficked. The recent dump followed the committee’s release of tens of thousands of pages of Epstein-related documents in September.Friday was not the first time Trump or his allies have baselessly claimed that Democrats fabricated Epstein documents. “I can imagine what they put into files,” the president said in July, as the controversy was gaining steam.And in September, when the House Oversight Committee published Epstein’s 50th birthday book from 2003, featuring a lewd letter from Trump, the White House claimed the subpoenaed document was a fake. MAGA lawmakers joined in on the conspiracy theorizing, with Representative Tim Burchett saying the Biden administration may have forged the letter and somehow gotten it into a decades-old book in possession of the Epstein estate.Next week—despite Trump’s best efforts—the House is expected to vote on legislation that would force the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein-related records.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203258/trump-jeffrey-epstein-files-conspiracy-theory

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2025-11-15T20:09:53+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

After pardoning a far-right militia member for his role in the Capitol riot, President Donald Trump gave him another pardon for an unrelated conviction for illegally possessing firearms.On January 6, 2021, Dan Wilson, of the Oath Keepers and a Three Percenters–associated militia, breached the Capitol. Days earlier, per prosecutors, he had sent a disturbing text message to a Telegram group chat with other anti-government militia members: “I am ready to lay my life on the line. It is time for good men to do bad things.”Wilson was ultimately convicted for conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. He pleaded guilty to the gun charges after authorities searched his Kentucky home and discovered firearms, some loaded, that he was forbidden from possessing due to previous felony convictions.Trump did away with the conspiracy charges this January, when he pardoned “individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Since then, Wilson’s lawyers have argued that the pardon also applied to his gun charges. But as Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled in March, the “plain language of the pardon” did not cover them. However, the judge noted at the time, Trump “has the constitutional authority to pardon Wilson for all of his crimes. He still may do so.”On Friday, the president did just that, Politico reported Saturday—signing a full and unconditional pardon for Wilson that specifically cited his gun case. An unnamed White House official told Politico’s Kyle Cheney that Trump is pardoning Wilson because the search that led to the firearm conviction “was due to the events of January 6, and [the investigators] should have never been there in the first place.”In recent days, Trump has issued slews of eyebrow-raising pardons for his political allies, though this one stands out as a particularly egregious example. As Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on social media, “Trump is now pardoning January 6th rioters for unrelated crimes, just to reward them for their violence to keep him in power. The Republican Party is in the full time business of endorsing and incentivizing political violence.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203252/trump-second-pardon-far-right-militia-member

Nostr event nevent1qqsdwqnezng78tqrghq27yadnknkcc0vl9dnd5jlez905dgurayx8zgzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjwya6u6

2025-11-15T19:05:22+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump made a baffling comment after receiving an MRI, calling into question his grasp of basic medical treatment—or what he could be hiding from the general public.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, the president said that he had undergone a physical and received an MRI, or medical resonance imaging test, as part of the exam. He (predictably) reported that the results were extremely positive.“Mr. President, can you tell us why you needed to get an MRI?” a reporter asked. “I understand that the results were good, but what was it for?”“Because it’s part of my physical,” he said. After some back and forth, the president broke it down for the reporter.“Here’s what the story is. I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor. That’s it.” Trump said. “But, I had an MRI as part of my standard, yearly — or, I think they do it every two years. But I have the physical every year. But the result was outstanding.”“Was it your brain, or … ?” the reporter asked.“I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well,” the president said. Trump: I had an MRI and the result was outstanding.Reporter: Was it your brain?Trump: I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well. pic.twitter.com/uMhkBu0RUU— Acyn (@Acyn) November 15, 2025For what it’s worth, an MRI is a fairly involved process that involves removing clothing, donning earplugs, and lying completely still in a large scanner for extended periods of time with the goal of obtaining quality images of internal structures of the body, according to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine. Given the amount of effort this process takes, several people on social media pointed out, patients would generally know what body part is being tested.Trump, who is the oldest person ever elected president, has been the subject of swirling theories and concerns about his health for months, which seems to have put him on the defensive. The president breezed past his ignorance about the test, and continued the conversation with the reporter, lauding his mental acuity, as he is wont to do.“The other thing is, I took, as you know, a … very advanced test on mental acuity. Because I think a president should have to do that. And as you probably heard I aced it, I got a perfect score … the only reason I tell you that is that it’s one subject, unlike Biden, and others, that you can take off your plate,” he said.But for someone who claims not to know what his MRI “analyzed,” it’s hard to see how this could be true. Or maybe he just doesn’t know us to know. Either way, we’re left with a lot more questions than answers.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203251/donald-trump-health-mri-physical-exam

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2025-11-15T19:05:22+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

President Donald Trump eased some of his “Liberation Day” tariffs Friday evening, all but conceding that his trade policy has increased Americans’ grocery expenses despite his administration’s claims to the contrary.In an executive order, the president exempted certain products, including coffee, beef, and bananas, from reciprocal tariffs that he announced in April. This comes as costs for such goods—and groceries in general—have spiked under his administration, thanks in no small part to his tariffs. And the move undermines his repeated assertions that his tariffs do not hit American consumers’ wallets.Asked about the rollback on Air Force One Friday, Trump said the reversal was meant to “bring down some of the foods” whose prices have become “a little bit high” (an understatement) because “we don’t make them in this country.” He did not elaborate on why, in light of this predictable outcome, he had issued the tariffs in the first place.In a fact sheet, the White House patted itself on the back—with no hint of irony—for “strengthening the economy.” On social media, prominent MAGA accounts spun Trump’s attempt to undo price increases of his own making as evidence of his commitment to affordability. “President Trump has just signed an executive order ELIMINATING tariffs on beef, coffee, and tropical fruits,” wrote pro-Trump influencer Nick Sortor. “This is an effort to bring down food prices in America, as voters voice concerns about affordability. Keep focusing on affordability, 47.” He omitted mentioning who had put the tariffs in place.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203249/trump-economics-disastrous-grocery-tariffs-beef

Nostr event nevent1qqsff7yfq8n7ga4285ec5gerr4kgz0exp235v8pvhty46dvp3qthlrgzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqj30fa3d

2025-11-15T17:55:21+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump’s feud with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene continued Saturday, as the president unveiled two new disparaging nicknames for the Georgia Republican.Trump has been at loggerheads with Greene and her colleague Thomas Massie over their calls for full transparency regarding the notorious late Jeffrey Epstein. Greene and Massie were among the four members of the GOP who signed a discharge petition to force a floor vote, now expected to take place next week, on the Epstein files’ release.The president, who maintains that l’affaire Epstein is all a Democratic “hoax,” tore into Greene on Friday evening, calling her a “ranting Lunatic” on Truth Social. Greene shot back on X, posting screenshots of text messages to Trump and a White House aide, in which she emphasized the importance of justice for Epstein’s victims: a concern that has thus far failed to move the president.Come Saturday morning, the two were still exchanging barbs. In one Truth Social post, Trump referred to Greene as “Marjorie Taylor Brown,” as, he explained, “Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!” The president dubbed Greene and Massie RINOs, or Republicans in name only.Greene attributed Trump’s attack to her Epstein stance and her increasingly critical views of Israel, insinuating the country was putting “pressure” on the president to suppress the files. Trump answered with more taunting, this time christening the lawmaker “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green,” an insult already coined by MAGA influencer Laura Loomer—to whom Trump has previously outsourced staffing decisions and now, apparently, his name-calling.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203248/donald-trump-lunatic-epstein-marjorie-taylor-greene

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2025-11-15T13:29:38+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The United States Senate: Can’t live with it, can’t burn it down (or so my lawyers caution me). Recently, I’ve had cause to ruminate on the upper house’s continued existence and the way its workings threaten our own. And then, this week, liberals were given new reason to rue the “cooling saucer of democracy,” as the Democratic Senate Surrender Subcommittee—apparently with the assent of Chuck Schumer—threw the wettest of blankets on a historically great week for the party by caving on the government shutdown, letting a bloodied Trump up off the canvas, and giving Republicans reason to exult.Those exultations, according to a report from Zeteo, were just as Trumpian as you could imagine, with anonymous White House officials said to be “cackling” and “gratuitously using terms such as ‘losers’ and ‘pussies’ as they reveled in the relief from a shutdown that even President Trump acknowledged was getting Republicans ‘killed’ politically.” It’s a fitting reminder that there are actually two U.S. Senates in America—one that is committed to dismantling democracy, while the other is committed to a functioning government (sometimes to a fault). It’s also worth remembering that the divergent ways that Republican and Democratic senators discharge their duties is hardly a recent development, but rather baked into the two parties’ DNA.Recent history paints a stark contrast between how GOP senators behave and how they use the Senate to advance long-term right-wing agenda items, and how Democrats approach the same projects. On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia slipped this mortal coil, and Democrats salivated at the prospect of President Barack Obama replacing him. These hopes ended up being short-lived, as the Senate was in the hands of Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky senator, who by then had mastered the art of thwarting the president’s ambitions, simply put the kibosh on advancing Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, in a norm-breaking display of “preferring not to” that would make Bartleby the Scrivener blush.Republican senators held the line, to the delight of their base, raising the salience of the Supreme Court vacancy in the presidential election. And once Donald Trump signaled that he was willing to simply follow the Federalist Society’s lead on judicial appointments, it became easy for many Republican elites to look past the fact that he was obviously a dumb asshole who didn’t belong anywhere near the Oval Office. Holding out in the face of public pressure helped McConnell secure lasting power for his party, a reward for keen strategic thinking.As I was reminded this week, the key to unlocking the Democratic approach to the Senate can be found in 2006, when Connecticut voters nominated Ned Lamont to be the Democratic nominee for Senate, seemingly putting an end to incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman’s career. It didn’t go according to plan: With GOP support, Lieberman ran as an independent and won. But when Lieberman returned to the Senate, rather than knock him down a peg for his dalliances with the GOP, Democratic leaders allowed him to remain a senior member in good standing, with all the attendant chairmanships and rewards.Lieberman repaid this generosity by repeatedly shivving his fellow Democrats—and we’re all still living with the consequences. As The New Republic’s Monica Potts recently detailed, the public option, which died at Lieberman’s hands, might have gone a long way to keeping today’s insurance premiums more affordable. (When you consider Lieberman’s weakening of Obamacare alongside his 2003 effort to create the Department of Homeland Security, there is so much current Trumpian misrule covered in his fingerprints.)The differences between Republican and Democratic senators are largely reflective of the two parties’ approaches to politics. On the GOP side, you see an utter ruthlessness when it comes to wielding power, no fear of breaking norms or of the stern reproaches from official D.C.’s media nannies, and a complete dedication to long-term right-wing interests. The slings and arrows of denying Obama his Supreme Court nomination are easy to bear when everyone’s eyes are fully on the prize of taking over the high court for a generation.Taken as a whole, it must be great to be a Republican voter. Their senators are advancing key ideological projects in concert with the conservative movement, pushing the envelope on what’s deemed to be polite, and training their base to expect Beltway norms to be dismantled in pursuit of their agenda. On the Democratic side, well, they’re not beating the charges that they are an insular party fully in thrall to the Iron Law of Institutions, which holds that “the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.”Democrats seem to treasure their tidy little debating society and its traditions and trappings far beyond any other political concern. They constantly undercut the idea that democracy is in peril by working hand in glove with the party that we are told is seeking to destroy the constitutional order. They rise in defense of the filibuster instead of their constituents and their democracy. And they piss away advantages, like a shutdown that was rattling the Trump presidency, instead of thinking strategically about the next step. (If caving was inevitable, why not force Trump to eat the pain of a ruined Thanksgiving, then step in to “save Christmas”?)The Democratic senators’ faults shone brightly in the wake of the shutdown cave. It’s painfully obvious that the caucus maneuvered to protect its most vulnerable members from the votes to end the shutdown, instead sacrificing eight members who are not up for reelection in 2026. Schumer voted against reopening the government but is fooling nobody, multiple members are feigning anger at the result they actually sought, and no one is capable of telling the straight story of why they did what they did—probably because they are falling back on their one political idea: Let the GOP hurt people, then step in to collect the electoral winnings once the country is traumatized enough. It’s all kabuki and prevarication, and no one is above suspicion. The Democrats opted to fund Trump’s government under unanimous consent; not one of them stepped forward to debate the merits further or use their beloved privileges to at least throw some sand in the gears. And as The American Prospect’s Whitney Curry Wimbish noted on Tuesday, it only takes one senator to put Schumer’s continued leadership up for a debate. As Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, told Wimbish, “Most Senate experts would say it’s highly unlikely. But if the members are really pissed off, this is a mechanism they have.” That’s the big takeaway: While some may huff and puff for the cameras and their angry constituents, this caucus is not, in fact, pissed off enough—or at all.Looking into the future, Republican voters are going to increasingly cherish the Senate, even as the Democratic base’s ire at the institution grows. As I’ve previously noted, the upper chamber’s malapportionment crisis—in which fewer and fewer voters are needed to construct durable Republican majorities—is only going to get worse. One study suggests that changing demographics could one day allow 30 percent of Americans to elect 70 of its senators—a cohort that will skew rural, white, and conservative. Imagine a GOP-led Senate capable of convicting a Democratic president in an impeachment trial minutes after their being sworn in—this could be reality in some of your lifetimes. Not so much for the geriatric windbags of the Democratic caucus, but they can look into that bleak future and see a perfect arrangement: an inert superminority caucus, with cushy jobs and top-flight health care, Statler-and-Waldorfing their way into decades-long careers as stern letter writers and handwringing concern-havers. Why put up a fight when you’re getting exactly what you want?This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203160/senate-democrats-republicans-shutdown-politics

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2025-11-15T00:07:58+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Trump’s White House is naming fentanyl as a chemical weapon to justify the indiscriminate “drug boat” bombings it’s been carrying out in the Caribbean, which have killed 80 people to date.A classified Justice Department memo reported on by The Wall Street Journal sheds light on the administration’s multiple legal arguments to justify the strikes—including that drug cartels are terrorist organizations and that their smuggling efforts are specifically meant to destabilize the U.S. and its citizens. Two people familiar with the memo shared its contents.The brief mentions fentanyl multiple times as a justification for the strikes, even as the bulk of the drug entering the U.S. is known to come over land from Mexico. There is no evidence that Venezuela, where one of the newly classified terrorist organizations is based, is making and moving fentanyl.“Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and @SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X Thursday. “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood—and we will protect it.”Democrats and experts remain thoroughly unconvinced.“Much of it is geared toward making a financial argument about what the drugs are providing in terms of monetary resources” to the so-called “terrorist” cartels, New Jersey Senator Andy Kim told the Journal. “But they are trying to use that now to create a lethal kinetic justification, which is not what that designation is for and has never been done before.”“It is an incredible stretch,” said former Trump and Obama State Department legal adviser Brian Finucane.The memo also refers to the president’s powers under Article 2 of the Constitution, which allows him to control military action for up to two months before congressional approval is necessary—something even Republicans have taken issue with.“The president had the right to take initial actions, but should seek Congressional authorization for continued strikes,” Representative and House Armed Services Committee member Don Bacon said. It certainly seems that the Trump administration knows it doesn’t have standing to just keep blowing up “drug boats” instead of stopping, boarding, and arresting these alleged “narco terrorists.” So instead it has to engineer claims in secret memos of chemical warfare and terrorism to avoid any congressional resistance.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203243/trump-doj-memo-chemical-weapon-fentanyl-drug-boats

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2025-11-14T22:57:17+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Republicans in a red state have failed to initiate their pro-Trump gerrymandering efforts for the second time this month. On Friday, Indiana’s state Senate Republicans announced that they failed to gather enough votes to redistrict their state in their favor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. “Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state’s congressional maps,” state Senator Rodric Bray said, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Niki Kelly. “Today, I’m announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene.”This is a massive failure in the GOP’s plan to redraw districts in the middle of the decade to help their party gain more seats in Congress. Last week, Kansas Republicans gave up on a weeks-long effort to accelerate the redrawing of their state’s congressional map. Days later, a Utah judge rejected a Republican-drawn map and instead instituted the state’s first blue-leaning one in 25 years.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203238/yet-another-red-state-kills-trump-redistricting-dreams

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2025-11-14T22:57:17+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Even before the spit hit the fan this week regarding her unhinged screed about “barely legal” underage rape survivors, veteran news actress Megyn Kelly was already serially flirting with bad taste. Days before her pedophilia rant on “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, Kelly passed judgment on the feud between the right-wing pundits Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin over right-wing anti-Semitism. “Just fucking put a lid on it, fuckin’ Mark Levin,” Kelly said, siding with Carlson after he had white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his show.Regarding friendships and family relationships ruined by politics, Kelly declared: “Fuck them.” Those celebrating the assassination of right-wing entertainer Charlie Kirk were “fucking douche bags,” Kelly said, scorning an anti-Kirk sign [where? More context needed for this to make sense] with a curt “what the fuck is that?” She called the newspaper of record “The New York Fuckin’ Times.” Of Democrats, Kelly said, “These guys are fuckin’ radical.” Well, as Walter Cronkite no doubt would have said of twenty-first century podcast media: “That’s the fuckin’ way it fuckin’ is.” Kelly’s f-bombs cited her are but a small sample of what she dropped on audience ears during a few mid-November days on her show, which runs for two hours from Monday through Friday beginning at noon (EST) on Sirius XM. A visual version of the show gets posted later in the day on YouTube.With her own Sirius “Megyn Kelly Channel” debuting on November 4 and a tour of live appearances in progress, Kelly is the flavor of the month. Her show started in late 2020, shortly after she bombed out at NBC following her success at Fox News Channel. She joined Sirius in 2022 and, lately, her show is gaining traction.But this Wednesday, things turned weird even by Kelly’s standards when she discussed the dead sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein and his friendship with President Donald Trump. Kelly, who is a lawyer, seemed to build a careful distinction between Trump and Epstein, saying that there is a difference between females who are young and those who are even younger, and that Trump’s alleged sexual escapades as Epstein’s wing man stayed on the legal side, while Epstein preferred the underage victims.But then she made a sharp turn in legal logic when she quoted an anonymous source as having told her “Jeffrey Epstein was not a pedophile. . . He was into the `barely legal’ type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls . . . He wasn’t into, like, eight-year-olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”Although most jurisdictions consider the legal age of sexual consent to be from 16 to 18, Kelly – again, she is a lawyer – seemed to imply that the boundary is fluid and is determined in part by the predator, and that it is fine to lure underage women into sex slavery as long as they’ve hit double digits.“We have yet to see anybody come forward and say `I was like, eight, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview,’” Kelly said, as if this was exonerating. “You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old.”Regular listeners to Kelly’s show on Friday tuned in at noon to discover not a live show but, instead, a rerun of a show recorded on Nov. 7 in Miami before a live audience with guests Eric Trump and Piers Morgan. No announcement was made as to Kelly’s absence. Requests to Sirius for comment were not returned as of mid-afternoon. Immediately after the rerun Friday, Kelly appeared live by telephone on the “Meghan Kelly Wrap-up Show” hosted by Emily Jashinsky on the Megyn Kelly Channel. But in a half-hour interview, neither addressed the news of the day: Kelly’s comments about Epstein and pedophilia.Sirius bragged in a press release last month that The Megyn Kelly Show is “one of the most consumed news shows in the country . . . regularly charted as a top 4 news podcast and top 10 podcast overall in America on both the Apple and Spotify podcast charts.” In the same release, Kelly announced: “Linear television is dead. People can’t stand those stilted, censored conversations.”Certainly, she is uncensored. From her potty mouth, Kelly fires sharp-tongued commentaries about the culture war, often condemning transgender people. With lawyerly guile, Kelly tried to drive a wedge into the alliance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community.“How are these L.G.Bs not realizing that the T.Q.s are bizarre,” she asked, saying that they are “not part of the same universe” and that trans people undermine youth. “They’re trying to convert little gay boys into girls,” she said, shouting theatrically as if trying to sway a jury. “Reject the T.Q. insanity.”Unlike some talk-show hosts, Kelly takes no phone calls from listeners when in her Red Room studio in New York, but she allows a few questions from audience members on her tour while recording her show on stage with guests. In Atlanta, a Chattanooga teacher told Kelly that Trump’s ICE police deported some of her former students now in their 20s who came to the United States from Mexico as babies.In that they know no other home, the woman asked, what might Congress do to make things right? Not a single thing, Kelly said. “I think the answer is nothing -- because they need to go (back to Mexico),” Kelly said, to the cheers of her live audience. “I’m sorry. I’m not heartless. But we have enough of our own problems . . . You came in the wrong way and you’re going to have to leave.”When Epstein’s emails leaked early in the week, Kelly didn’t minimize the story as Fox did, devoting the first 36 minutes of Wednesday’s show to the scandal. She used terms like “kiddie porn” and “barely legal” and “middle finger” and “Democrats are now salivating.”Regarding blame for the Epstein coverup, she said: “Republicans are fucking over that game.” Regarding unproven allegations against the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Kelly said “It’s a fucking lie. This is utter bullshit.” Regarding the Attorney General of the United States – Trump’s employee who often double-talks around Epstein questions – Kelly actually bucked the party line: “I have to be honest. I don’t really trust Pam Bondi’s word” regarding Epstein, she said.Kelly certainly is a dynamic performer. She varies her volume, pace, and tone the way a boxer mixes jabs, hooks and crosses, some to the body, some to the head, and some below the belt. Her tour concludes on November 22 in Glendale, Arizona, where her guest will be Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie, and now a leading figure for white Christian nationalism dressed up as Turning Point USA.In that the Kirks were a pious and Godly couple, let’s hope the widow Kirk is not horrified by Kelly’s constant use of the word “fuck” in all its forms. Maybe, backstage, she can whisper the age of consent into Kelly’s legal ear. And, perhaps a fellow Ka-RISS-chin in the audience will stride to the microphone and say “Megyn, you’re better than all this. Please knock it off.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/203198/megyn-kelly-trump-epstein-defense

Nostr event nevent1qqs95msf0j2ncrvshcwnsv4ug7qephmlp4why4vk9hgkhgrfrz7jrpszyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjqkry22

2025-11-14T22:57:17+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were apparently so close that the billionaire child sex offender once paid the now-president a hefty bet. Emails released by the House Oversight Committee show an exchange between Epstein and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra discussing a time to video chat, when Chopra asked Epstein if he knew Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples. Epstein replied, “Yes , in fact when she told donald she was pregnant. I lost a 10k dollar bet with him, and sent him a truck of baby food in payment. but i have not spoken to her in many years since then.”The email, dated July 29, 2016, didn’t end there. Epstein added that “she can tell you the story of her friend who was caught having sex with her shoes. yes-shoes.” The entire exchange took place months before Trump would win the presidential election for the first time, and details the extent of the president’s relationship with the now-dead Epstein. When Trump and Maples got married in 1993 at the New York Plaza Hotel, Epstein was in attendance. Maples and Trump would divorce in 1999 after having one child together, Tiffany. Chopra and Maples spoke together at a “Sages & Sciences Symposium” in 2010, and Maples posted a picture of the two together on Instagram in 2016, in which she called him her friend. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Independent that “These emails prove literally nothing.”On the contrary, these emails show that Epstein and Trump have a long-standing relationship, refuting the president’s denials. They may have even spent time together while Trump was president. With every new release of Epstein’s correspondence, Trump’s denials are looking more and more pathetic.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203236/epstein-lost-bet-trump-truck-full-baby-food-email

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2025-11-14T21:54:27+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are pleading with Congress to release the Epstein files.In a haunting letter, the family members of deceased abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre—along with several victims who have accused Donald Trump of participating in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring—asked lawmakers to “be brave” in the coming days as they vote to potentially make the case files public. “There is no middle ground here. There is no hiding behind party affiliation,” they said in a letter jointly addressed to members of the House and Senate.“Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s crimes exposed a double standard of justice, where rich and powerful men and women evade repercussions. Despite years of work to bring them to justice, most of Epstein and Maxwell’s co-conspirators remain completely free, continuing to amass power and prestige, living without apparent shame.”“As you gather with your family this season, remember that your primary duty is to your constituents,” the writers continued. “Look into the eyes of your children, your sisters, your mothers, and your aunts. Imagine if they had been preyed upon. Imagine if you yourself were a survivor. What would you want for them? What would you want for yourself? When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.”Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up this week after a discharge petition to force a vote on the files’ release succeeded. Just ahead of the petition passing, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic in correspondence between Epstein and his pen pals.In a 2011 email, Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of his residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”When queried by Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of the president’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”The White House immediately brushed off the reports, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting that the emails prove nothing. Trump, in turn, has accused Democrats of inventing the Trump-Epstein connection, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax.”In the halls of Congress, conservative lawmakers are turning on Trump. Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available, Politico reported Wednesday. A handful have already voiced their intention to back the forthcoming bill, including Representatives Eli Crane, Don Bacon, and Warren Davidson.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203235/epstein-victims-beg-congress-release-files

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2025-11-14T21:54:27+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino has finally left Chicago, after a federal judge said he’d lied about using excessive force to target protesters opposing immigration operations.During an appearance on Fox News Thursday, Bovino, who’d been tasked with leading “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, said that he had retreated to West Virginia, where he was “undergoing training with several hundred border patrol agents.” Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is home to Custom and Border Protection’s Advanced Training Center.The CBP chief said he could soon redeploy in either New York, Chicago, or Charlotte, North Carolina, adding that he could “guarantee” that Illinois Governor Pritzker would see “a lot more” immigration enforcement in Chicago. Earlier this week, officials told CBS News that Bovino planned to leave, taking many of his Border Patrol agents with him.It seems that Bovino left with his tail between his legs, after suffering a lashing from a federal judge. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.” Ellis said that Bovino had admitted to lying about being hit in the head with a rock before deploying tear gas canisters on protesters in Little Village during his hourslong deposition, and that she’d reviewed video that “disproved” his prior claim. Ellis also said she’d reviewed a trove of evidence that federal agents had used excessive force against protesters, despite little evidence of any actual criminal activity. Her preliminary injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In line with her request from a previous hearing, the government’s lawyer confirmed that Bovino would now wear a body camera.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203233/customs-border-protection-leaves-chicago-warning-next

Nostr event nevent1qqstlwg9jnedps2dfytpfacgfq76u3aayjphql8x4r28lqf0phy3puszyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjpqhnnf

2025-11-14T21:54:27+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Several prison employees at the facility holding Ghislaine Maxwell have been fired since internal whistleblowers revealed the extent of the child sex criminal’s cozy digs.News of their termination came by way of Maxwell’s attorney, who on Friday cited the recent release of Maxwell’s emails by Representative Jamie Raskin earlier this week as the rationale for the prison staffers’ sudden firing.“The release to the media by Congressman Raskin, of Ms. Maxwell’s privileged client-attorney email correspondence with me is as improper as it is a denial of justice,” Leah Saffian, a California-based attorney who has long represented Maxwell, said in a statement.“There have been appropriate consequences already for employees at Federal Prison Camp Bryan,” Saffian continued. “They have been terminated for improper, unauthorised access to the email system used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to allow inmates to communicate with the outside world.”Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp mere days after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July to help curate a new list of Jeffrey Epstein’s potential associates.The information exchange resulted in an extremely cushy transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”The British ex-socialite has since raved about her new digs, celebrating the difference between the two facilities as akin to having “dropped through Alice in Wonderlands [sic] looking glass,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.She has also been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates, including meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203231/ghislaine-maxwell-prison-fires-employees-whistleblower

Nostr event nevent1qqsxazen50ylzlaz40wvwjklenp4s3lxlc3sa0ru6slfe45c0zkzcwgzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqj404gx5

2025-11-14T21:54:27+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Kash Patel allowed a radio host conspiracy theorist to fill the number two spot at the FBI without first passing a polygraph test.Deputy Director Dan Bongino reportedly received a waiver for a polygraph test, according to four people who spoke anonymously with ProPublica Friday.Typically, polygraph tests are required to establish approval for the “Top Secret” security clearances necessary to work at the agency. Recipients are asked questions about their criminal history, drug use, foreign contacts, and any mishandling of sensitive documents. Their results are used to determine whether they can have access to classified information. It seems that Bongino may not have been asked about any of this, and yet, as deputy director, he has access to a trove of sensitive information, including the President’s Daily Brief, that collates essential information from the intelligence community. He is also responsible for day-to-day operations at the FBI and green-lighting surveillance operations. Those familiar with Bongino’s rise to deputy director, after he had no prior experience at the agency, said issuing him a waiver was unprecedented. Multiple former FBI officials told ProPublica that they could not recall a single instance where a top-ranking official such as Bongino had received a waiver for a polygraph test, or anyone who had failed one. Bongino and two other top-ranking officials reportedly received waivers from Patel.In a statement to ProPublica, FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said: “It is false that the individuals you referenced failed polygraphs.”“The FBI follows all laws and procedures on personnel security measures, and any implication otherwise is false,” Williamson wrote. “Furthermore, while the FBI does not comment on confidential security information, particularly in matters of personnel, this article is riddled with falsehoods—it misrepresents polygraph protocol, inaccurately portrays FBI security measures, and makes multiple false claims about FBI employees who have done nothing wrong.”The spokesperson also claimed that polygraphs were “not required” for political appointees at the agency. But several experts, including Daniel Meyer, a former executive director for the inspector general of the Intelligence Community External Review Panel, and three other lawyers specializing in national security told ProPublica that those Schedule C employees would not typically be excluded from the tests. A former senior FBI official told ProPublica that while the existence of the waiver may suggest Bongino did not pass the polygraph test, it was possible he received a preemptive exemption. The outlet could not determine whether Bongino sat for a polygraph test.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203229/kash-patel-skip-polygraph-test-security-clearance

Nostr event nevent1qqs02wt3cwafnn68mwkghpm985ldr4hduj0k7zwhldr9d6y39rtefsszyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjx5vhk8

2025-11-14T20:44:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Ever since President Trump started bombing alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea while refusing to provide even minimal factual justification for it, a couple of big questions have gone unanswered: Are Trump’s underlings being given illegal orders? Do they fear that they’re being given illegal orders?This line of questioning gained urgency after the top military official overseeing the bombings, SouthCom commander Alvin Holsey, abruptly stepped down last month. The lack of any public explanation led some Democrats to raise the possibility that Holsey sees the bombings as unlawful, a case made by many legal experts.Democrats now have a new opening to start pressing this question even harder. And in a strange twist, it comes courtesy of a new memo drafted to justify the bombings by the Trump administration itself.This memo, reports The New York Times, was drafted by Justice Department lawyers to justify the strikes. It says that the United States is embroiled in an armed conflict with drug cartels. To buttress this idea, per the Times, the memo loops back on itself by relying on the White House’s own declarations to that effect as its key evidence.The memo—drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel—notes that the government has designated some Latin American drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” which is itself unprecedented. The memo then takes a step further into La-La Land. It claims the White House’s characterization of cartels as waging war on the U.S.—which few legal experts accept as legitimate—itself provides the legal foundation for treating the drug cartels this way under Trump’s wartime powers as commander in chief. As the Times delicately notes, administration lawyers have “accepted at face value the White House’s version of reality.” It’s circular reasoning, of course. But I want to highlight another revelation about the memo, per sources who have seen it and who spoke to the Times:A lengthy section at the end of the memo, they said, offers potential legal defenses if a prosecutor were to charge administration officials or troops for involvement in the killings. Everyone in the chain of command who follows orders that comply with the laws of war has battlefield immunity, the memo says, because it is an armed conflict.In other words, administration lawyers appear to be preemptively laying out arguments for why people down the chain of command are acting legally in carrying out these orders. Where does the need for this extra step come from, exactly?Representative Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, says it’s not typical for such a memo to offer an affirmative legal shield against future prosecution. After all, the memo itself is supposed to explain why the actions are legal, so that line would appear superfluous. “It is highly unusual to say in it that ‘we’re going to give legal protection for these actions,’” Smith told me.Smith said this should be read alongside the news, reported by CNN, that the United Kingdom has halted sharing intelligence about suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the U.S. The U.K. does not want to be complicit in unlawful strikes, CNN claims.“They think that what we’re doing is illegal,” Smith said. The rub here is that, by inserting this line, the administration has opened itself up to questions about why it did this. “It signals a fear that what they’re doing is illegal and that they could possibly be subject to criminal action under U.S. law and under international law,” Smith told me. He added that administration lawyers may be looking at Trump’s bombings and saying, in effect, “Damn, we are really pushing the envelope here. We’d better do something a little extra special to protect our people.”Indeed. Congress has not authorized these bombings, which have now killed at least 80 people in 20 strikes. So Trump is claiming that he has inherent constitutional authority to order the strikes to defend the country against acts of war. Legal experts point out that this effectively hands Trump the authority to unilaterally execute civilians who are not waging war against the United States in any recognizable sense. And they note that the bombings might be violating other U.S. criminal and international laws.On top of all that, there’s already plenty of evidence that some of these boats might not even be trafficking drugs to the U.S. in the first place. But now this memo is leading us even deeper into Trump’s hall of mirrors by effectively claiming this evidence exists because the White House says it does. And anyone who is carrying out these orders should rest assured: The orders are legal. After all, the memo says so.We need to acknowledge something: This memo’s mere existence could dissuade future prosecution even for acts that do appear illegal, says Brian Finucane, a former senior State Department lawyer. Even if its arguments prove to be “laughable,” Finucane says, those following orders would presumably have relied on advice from the lawyers, which a future administration would have to weigh against the need for “accountability.”But nonetheless, there’s another way to look at this. It provides an opening for Democrats to now step up and try to establish why this memo’s added assurances were written in the first place. Do those carrying out the strikes fear they are acting unlawfully, and did that make the lawyers take this extra step? “This could indicate awareness of potential criminal exposure,” Finucane told me. If the Pentagon asked for these assurances, Finucane says, “that may reflect consciousness on their part that they’re in legally treacherous territory.”Democrats should grab onto this. Recall that Democrats have sought testimony from Adm. Holsey about why he resigned. The Pentagon has said he won’t testify, and Republicans who control the Armed Services Committee apparently are not pushing for it, as they surely don’t want to see him asked if he believed the strikes Trump is demanding are illegal. But if Democrats win the House, they can get to the bottom of all of this.True, it’s dicey for elected Democrats to say straight out that anyone carrying out illegal orders is vulnerable to prosecution later. That’s up to the next attorney general and the next Justice Department and should be based strictly on what the law says, of course. But Democrats can say this much: Are you really sure you want to trust Donald Trump, of all people, when he tells you that what he’s directing you to do is lawful and that you’ll be protected later as a result? That’s a pretty tenuous position for anyone to put themselves in—and Democrats should not hesitate to say so.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203219/trump-boat-bombings-secret-memo

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2025-11-14T20:44:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Michael Flynn is seeking restitution from the government to the tune of $50 million.Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser is now negotiating a settlement with his Department of Justice, claiming that he was unjustly prosecuted by former special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian official. Flynn initially pleaded guilty and then fought the prosecution, eventually receiving a pardon from Trump in 2020. Flynn later filed a lawsuit against the government for damages, only to have a federal judge dismiss the case in December last year. While the Biden administration fought Flynn’s case, the Trump administration seems open to a settlement.. The move mirrors Trump’s attempt to get $240 million from the DOJ to settle his own claims of politically motivated prosecution. Flynn notoriously lasted only 22 days as Trump’s first national security adviser in 2017, resigning over his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Sergey Kislyak.Since then, Flynn has been one of the leading evangelists of the QAnon conspiracy theory and has also pushed Christian nationalism. If he actually gets his hefty settlement (with Trump’s approval), it’ll show that he’s still friendly with the president and the Republican Party, leaving the door open for conspiracy theorists to push their agenda.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203226/justice-department-prepares-pay-trump-ally-michael-flynn-millions

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2025-11-14T20:44:26+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

On Friday, Rashida Tlaib and 20 other members of Congress put forth a resolution to recognize “the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” something the United States has consistently refused to do even in the face of U.N. evidence.“Under the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is committed when one or more categories of underlying acts are committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such, namely—(1) killing members of the group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or (5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” the resolution reads. It continues: “[T]the overwhelming evidence is clear that the State of Israel has committed acts … within the scope of the Genocide Convention against Palestinians in Gaza, including by—(1) killing members of the group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” The resolution goes on to note that Israel has killed “at least 67,160 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom are women and children, since October 2023,” and that 83 percent of them were civilians. It also highlights the Israeli military killing at least 250 journalists and at least 543 aid workers from the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen, and the Palestine Red Crescent Society.Israel has wounded at least 169,679 Palestinians in Gaza, “creating the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history,” the resolution continues. It also mentions that 500 schools, every university, 53 cultural sites, and 92 percent of all residential buildings have been destroyed by Israel. The signees make a point to note that Israel’s genocide has been largely bankrolled by the U.S. government and the American taxpayer, stating that “the United States provided an estimated $21,700,000,000 in military aid to Israel, and during that same period, the White House authorized or notified over $30,000,000,000 in additional new arms sales agreements to be paid for and delivered in future years.”The resolution also focuses on the genocidal language employed by Israeli leaders, quoting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Major General Aharon Haliva. “‘Remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we fight,’” the resolution said, quoting Netanyahu. “[This is] a reference to the Book of Samuel, in which God tells the Israelites, ‘Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’, rhetoric that has since been repeatedly echoed by other government officials.“‘It does not matter if they are children. I’m not speaking out of revenge. I’m talking about a message for future generations. From time to time, they need a Nakba to feel the cost’, referring to the violent ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias and the Israeli army during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947 to 1949,” the resolution read, quoting Haliva. The tide of public opinion is shifting on Israel perhaps more than ever. But while this resolution is as strong of a statement we’ve gotten from congressional officials since the genocide began, there is little to suggest that this resolution will pass the GOP-controlled House. Here are the representatives—all Democrats—who signed on anyway:Rashida Tlaib—MichiganAndré Carson—IndianaBecca Balint—VermontGregorio Casar—TexasMaxwell Frost—FloridaMaxine Dexter—OregonChuy Garcia—IllinoisAl Green—TexasPramila Jayapal—WashingtonHank Johnson—GeorgiaRo Khanna—CaliforniaSummer Lee—PennsylvaniaJim McGovern—Massachusetts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—New YorkIlhan Omar—Minnesota Ayana Pressley—MassachusettsMark Pocan—WisconsinDelia Ramirez—IllinoisLateefah Simon—CaliforniaNydia Velázquez—New YorkBonnie Watson Coleman—New Jersey
https://newrepublic.com/post/203210/democrats-resolution-congress-recognize-israel-genocide-gaza

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2025-11-14T19:40:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The recently ousted leader of the University of Virginia released a tell-all memo Friday on the DEI feud with Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin that cost him his job.In a 12-page letter to the university’s Faculty Senate, former UVA President James E. Ryan detailed how Youngkin had mischaracterized the university’s decision regarding DEI, landing them in hot water with the Trump administration and its overzealous Justice Department. The DOJ promised to “bleed UVA white” before Ryan resigned.Ryan said his experience differed “in significant parts” from previous accounts, including from Youngkin and the school’s rector Rachel Sheridan. In March 2025, the school received a resolution, drafted by Youngkin’s office, on how it should handle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies under Donald Trump’s second term. Ryan noted that it was the first such time that Youngkin had acted on the school’s behalf in his seven years atop the institution.The school, however, did not adopt the resolution in full, according to Ryan. Instead, the resolution was whittled down to something that even the board’s Democratic appointees found palatable: the dissolution of UVA’s central DEI office and a reshuffling of permissible programs. But that night, Youngkin went onto Fox News with a very different message for the nation—claiming that the university board had done “something radical and sweeping” by declaring that “DEI is dead.”“Dead” was a difficult term to decipher, according to Ryan, who noted that “it’s not clear even today what it means to kill DEI, and the Governor didn’t go much beyond the soundbite.” “For example, did it mean that we could no longer try to recruit qualified first-generation students from rural parts of Virginia, or offer financial aid, or even serve matzah in the dining halls during Passover, because each of those efforts would be advancing diversity, equity, and/or inclusion?” Ryan speculated.While the parameters of Youngkin’s Trump-inspired DEI goals remained obfuscated, the Republican governor successfully set the University of Virginia up for failure.The school did what it said it would do, in accordance with the agreed-upon resolution. Part of that involved a thorough review of the college’s many schools, which the school deemed would require more than the original 30-day allotted timeframe. It was Sheridan, who was then serving as chair of the board audit committee, who demanded that school officials with knowledge of the shifting DEI policies remain silent until the university board had a chance to meet.That turned out to be a huge problem.“Having to remain silent about our response to the Board resolution left us in a difficult position because our community was curious about the changes and what it might mean for them,” Ryan argued. “At the same time, external critics interpreted our silence as inaction. We explained to Board members that we were being placed in an untenable position, given that we could not implement any changes if we could not even discuss them publicly.” “We also pointed out that the Board had merely asked for an update, which implied that more work could still be done. But they nonetheless insisted that we remain quiet. So began the narrative that we were recalcitrant and resistant to any changes, which was not true but would continue up and through my forced resignation,” Ryan wrote.Further still, Youngkin’s comments had created false expectations in the Trump administration as to how the university would navigate the DEI demands. Three weeks after the school submitted its update to the board in late April, the school received a letter from the Justice Department, inquiring as to why they had not complied with the board’s resolution, using language that was more aligned with Youngkin’s remarks on Fox News than the actual text of the approved memo.“It was unclear, and still is, why the United States Department of Justice would have the interest or authority to enforce a resolution of the Board of a state university as opposed to enforcing federal law,” Ryan wrote.In the ensuing months, a group of UVA alumni at the Justice Department took aim at their old school. Ryan recollects the school’s communications with this DOJ team, noting that “neither of the DOJ lawyers were fans of mine.” He also chronicles the process of compiling hundreds of pages’ worth of admissions data for the Justice Department—only to have the agency turn around and mischaracterize the school’s approved requests for extensions as attempts to “stall” the process.“Why our own lawyers did not seem to understand or appreciate that submitting information in stages would be better than submitting nothing at all, especially given the false accusations that we were stonewalling, remains a mystery to me,” Ryan continued. “I do not know if they were exercising their independent judgment or receiving directions from a Board member and/or the Attorney General’s office.”Ryan issued his letter a day after Sheridan penned her own account of the Trump administration-infused events leading to the university president’s ouster. The boiling drama adds another flair to tensions between Youngkin and his successor, Democratic Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, who has questioned the Youngkin-appointed board’s influence over the ability for UVA to select Ryan’s replacement.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203223/ex-uva-president-maga-governor-donald-trump-dei

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2025-11-14T19:40:35+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

In a Friday post, the president has ordered the DOJ to jump into an investigation of Democrats in the Epstein emails, threatening us all with a good time.President Donald Trump had another one of his patented social media meltdowns Friday morning as he demanded a federal investigation into any of the Democrats mentioned in recent emails released from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Never mind that dozens of those same emails also mentioned the convicted sex offender’s awkwardly close ties to the president himself. Seemingly as payback for the Democrats using the “Epstein hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans” to “deflect” from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Trump said that he would direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into Epstein’s ties to various Democrats mentioned in the trove of documents. The president’s list of targets would include former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. (Trump also said the investigation would focus on J.P. Morgan and “Chase” as if the long-dead financier and the Chase Manhattan Bank of the 1950s were separate individuals.)“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island,’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. (Epstein claimed multiple times in his emails that Clinton had never been to his home in the Virgin Islands.)None of the documents released this week directly implicate Trump in any of Epstein’s alleged criminal activity, but they do directly suggest that Trump may have known about it, while fleshing out aspects of a relationship that seemed close—and to varying degrees salacious. In emails released by Democrats, Epstein claimed that Trump “knew about the girls,” had spent hours in Epstein’s home with one of his victims, and called him the “dog that hasn’t barked.” In emails released by Republicans, Epstein suggested that he knew “how dirty Donald is,” said Trump didn’t have “one decent cell” in his body, and made multiple comments that suggested the two spent time together after he was in office.Other prominent Republicans were also mentioned in the thousands of documents, including billionaire apocalypse prophet Peter Thiel and Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon. In one email exchange with Epstein, Bannon said he couldn’t believe no one was making “the connective tissue” between Trump and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s (then Prince Andrew) alleged sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre. In another, Epstein gave Bannon advice on how to help Trump.Clearly incensed by the recent reporting, Trump also shared a video clip from Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime to Truth Social, in which Watters lamented the Democrats’ “smear campaign disguised as a bombshell,” and claimed the only thing that the emails revealed was Trump’s “deep ties to liberals.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203222/donald-trump-epstein-truth-social-rant

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2025-11-14T18:30:15+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Jeffrey Epstein’s email correspondence, released by the House Oversight Committee this week, implicates many powerful people, particularly President Trump. One email chain in particular seems to allude to Trump performing a lewd act. The thread in question from March 2018 is between Epstein and his brother Mark, who asked the billionaire child sex offender, “What is your boy Donald up to now?” Epstein replied things were “all good,” and that Steve Bannon, the president’s one-time adviser, was with him. Mark then emailed his brother, “Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” The billionaire replied “and i thought- I had tsuris,” using the Yiddish word for troubles. Mark’s reply then alludes to a prison movie: “You and your boy Donnie can make a remake of the movie Get Hard.” Mark’s comment could either be a joke or a reference to an actual event. It’s not clear who Bubba is, but commentators on social media had a field day. Many noted that it is one of President Clinton’s nicknames, and Clinton also had a relationship with Epstein as well as Trump. Is this real, or a disgusting joke between brothers? Trump has not directly addressed this email and has only taken shots at Clinton and others implicated in the released correspondence. The allusion to another piece of “kompromat” that Putin has over Trump seems to have irked the president, as he railed against another “Russia, Russia, Russia Scam” on Truth Social Friday morning.With all of the sexual assault allegations against Epstein, and Trump, the emails could point to something genuine. Regardless, the fact that the government has not yet released its full trove of Epstein files could mean that this is only the beginning.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203212/jeffrey-mark-epstein-emails-trump-putin-bubba

Nostr event nevent1qqsyluqm0v4q4fvsqfsd7xz9k96wzh50k9fwyd26ett0y4ga7eec7yszyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjdhwfj4

2025-11-14T18:30:15+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called fully releasing the Epstein files “the easiest thing in the world,” while accusing President Trump of “gaslighting” the American people.The president continues to deny everything and unsuccessfully pressure other GOPers not to sign the House’s discharge petition. Greene sees Trump’s efforts to block the Epstein files and delegitimize his victims as a distraction from key issues like health care access and affordability.“This is me wanting my party to do something, to win and do something good for the American people. It’s not me going against, it’s me pushing my party to say, this is what we need to be doing,” Greene told Politico. “Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world.... Just release it all, let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes—it just doesn’t make sense to me.”In another interview Thursday evening, she even accused the president of “gaslighting” Americans about rising prices.“President Trump and his administration [do] deserve a lot of credit for lowering inflation and holding it steady, but that doesn’t bring prices down. And so gaslighting the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping,” she said on The Sean Spicer Show.MAGA’s most hard-line representative has now split with Trump on releasing the Epstein files, on health care access and inflation, and on foreign policy. Only time will tell if her heel turn remains true.“I’m just speaking for myself, I’m America first. I am 100 percent for my country, no other country,” Greene continued. “That’s what a lot of people thought they voted for in 2024.... It’s a failure of our Republican majority in the House and the Republican majority in the Senate, if we aren’t legislating that way and making that happen.... I don’t see how we win the midterms on the course that we’ve been set on so far.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203214/marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-gaslighting-epstein-economy

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2025-11-14T17:27:14+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)
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Steve Bannon was receiving advice from Jeffrey Epstein as he defended President Trump in media appearances in 2018, text messages released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday show. From August 17 to August 23 of that year, the billionaire child sex offender coached Bannon on his messaging and TV appearances. In the released documents, Epstein’s email address is shown on an Apple iMessage account, while the other correspondent is redacted. Context clues such as Fox News appearances, Bannon’s firing from the White House in 2017, and Bannon’s work on a documentary reveal that he is the other party in the conversation. It’s not clear whether the released messages are part of a larger conversation between Bannon and Epstein. The Guardian reached out to Bannon multiple times for comment, but did not receive a reply. The pair discussed breaking scandals such as the Michael Cohen case, as well as Bannon’s TV appearances on MSNBC. At one point, Epstein offered compliments on how Bannon looked on TV, saying “You looked so clean cut next to him i thought i turned on the figure skating channel by accident.”Bannon responded with “My ‘come hither’ look,” to which Epstein replied “Better than the usual ‘come hitler’ look.” Epstein also helped Bannon come up with talking points to use in media appearances, telling him how to handle critics of Trump tax cuts.“We can discuss response to tax cut criticism. The 83 percent to rich is misleading by miles . Cash back. Pension funds up,” texted Epstein, adding ““Corporations are not people. Giving corp breaks , is perceived as giving it to someone else. wage inflation cant be the first focus, the additional money in the system. First goes to hiring new people, only afterwards can wages rise.”Other revealed messages show that Epstein advised Bannon during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on what questions Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, should be asked to undermine her credibility. Epstein suggested that Ford could be accused of taking medications that cause memory loss. While Bannon doesn’t work directly for Trump, the pair still communicate and the president often reaches out to him for advice, as was the case this past February before Trump’s disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The release of these texts suggests that Bannon had a close relationship with Epstein, just like the president, and raises the question if all three collaborated on political business—or worse.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203201/epstein-steve-bannon-advice-trump-texts

Nostr event nevent1qqswac3suan96vec2nttc4shxrme2ncr2c2wyar35x9nd0t905wvs9gzyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqj6yzv6w

2025-11-14T17:27:14+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The key thing about Donald Trump’s presidency, when you examine it alongside the history of every other Oval Office occupant, is that to understand what drives him day-to-day, you have to have a handle on his psychology—all those twisted urges and impulses that twitch through his brain. This is because so much of what he does is by pure instinct—id unchecked by superego; animal urge unmitigated by conscience. That, plus the fact that all he really cares about is how he looks on TV (more specifically, Fox News and Newsmax). Who can doubt that part of what he loves about bombing those boats in the Caribbean is that he loves seeing them go boom on a big screen?So, when we analyze this administration, we have to look for the psychological “tells” in a way we simply didn’t with any other president, because the other presidents, no matter their politics, weren’t emotional 5-year-olds who lived in an impenetrable image bubble created and maintained by their staffs and their propagandists with press passes. And the psychological tell of the week? Hauling Representative Lauren Boebert into the White House Situation Room to try to break her down and make her change her vote on the Jeffrey Epstein discharge petition.Think about this purely as a presidential decision. We don’t know whether this was his idea or if an aide hatched this plan and he liked it, but it amounts to the same thing. Yeah, we can picture Trump thinking: the Situation Room; secret, private, all those fancy screens and maps—that’ll intimidate her.When LBJ had a recalcitrant member of Congress to win over, he invited him up to the Truman Balcony for a bourbon. Trump locked Boebert in the room that’s supposed to be used to monitor military operations. It’s where Barack Obama watched Seal Team Six take out bin Laden. It’s unclear whether Trump was there. One assumes he was. But willing hacks Pam Bondi and Kash Patel showed up. Wait, what? What was their presence meant to imply? Why did the attorney general and the FBI director need to be present on a legislative matter? Was the idea to hint to Boebert that she could face some sort of legal consequences if she didn’t capitulate? On a congressional vote?Boebert laughed it all off, but she didn’t cave. In fact, the strong-arming apparently left her all the more convinced Trump may be hiding something. Hard to imagine I’d ever be saying this, but: good for her. And for her colleague Nancy Mace, whom Trump simply called, in the old-fashioned way. But both stood their ground, and next week, the House will vote to compel Bondi’s Justice Department to release the files, with possibly up to 100 Republicans voting to do so.Trump is clearly in a dead panic about this. We saw this week the reason why. Many of the Epstein emails released this week were—at least in the court of public opinion—incriminating to one degree or another; none more so than the one Epstein wrote to an unnamed acquaintance in December 2018, in which he announced: “i am the one able to take him down.” Also: “I know how dirty donald is.” (He was too lazy to hit the shift key, apparently.)Trump, as always, says it’s all a lie and he did nothing wrong. And a few of the released emails can be read to support this claim. But just stop and think: We are sitting here, in November 2025, in the middle (or the beginning-middle) of a credible investigation into whether the president of the United States engaged in sex acts with underage girls. (And when media allies such as Megyn Kelly publicly try to finesse the differences between having sex with a 5-year-old versus having sex with a 15-year-old, that’s not a good sign.)There’s still plenty of reason to think we’ll never get a satisfactory answer about Trump’s place in Epstein’s grotesque constellation of decadent elites. Trump still has a number of roadblocks to put in the way of getting to the point of the files being released. First and foremost, there’s the Senate. Because once the House votes to release the files, then the Senate has to. I haven’t seen much handicapping on this yet. But it would have to clear the 60-vote cloture hurdle, meaning that 13 Republicans would have to vote with the Democrats to bring the matter to final passage. Then, of course, even if it does pass the Senate, Trump can veto it. At that point, two-thirds of each House would be required to override the veto. And even then, if all that happens, there’s still Bondi. She could just say, No, I’m not going to do it. Yes, that would be defying an act of Congress. Do you really have trouble picturing her doing that?Of course, if this gets to that point, we’ll have a major national scandal on our hands, for one simple reason that will be crystal clear to a comfortable majority of the American people: If Trump and his goons are going to those lengths to keep these files from being made public, then he must obviously have something bad to hide.That’s what makes this different from every other Trumpian contest of wills. In his battles with Democrats, with woke universities, with liberal law firms, with people he doesn’t like being in America, he’s always had a position that some percentage of Americans found compelling, for whatever reason. That’s why they cheer his bullying and don’t care about his lies.This, however, is different. He’s not defending anything that could remotely be called a principle, and he’s not slaying any America-hating dragons. He’s just covering up his own potential monstrous crimes. Given the way we’ve already seen this issue divide MAGA land, even some percentage of Trump’s hard-shell base will surely see the difference.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203207/trump-epstein-emails-boebert-media

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2025-11-14T17:27:14+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The Trump administration tried to deport a Native American woman. Leticia Jacobo, a 24-year-old member of the Arizona Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, in September for allegedly driving on a suspended license. She was supposed to be released on November 11, but was issued a random ICE detainer that day—which forced her to stay in place for 48 hours while Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepared to deport her.“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’ and ‘We have proof,’” Jacobo’s sister Maria Nunez told the Arizona Mirror. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going to take her, but we have no information on that.’”Jacobo’s family scrambled to prove that she was unjustly detained, posting on Facebook, contacting tribal leaders, and even bringing her birth certificate to the jail. Her Social Security number was also on file. Polk County Sheriff Office Spokesman Lt. Mark Chance eventually admitted that the jail had made a massive mistake and the detainer was meant for someone else.“It was human error, but I’m sure as soon as the command staff find out about it, they’re going to have some meetings with their supervisors internally and be like, ‘Hey, guys, we gotta keep our thumb on this, this is silly,’” he said. “Silly” is putting it mildly. Nearly deporting a woman with more right to be in this country than most is a product of the racial profiling inherent in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE has previously stated that “ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances,” and that “officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.” Back in January, during Trump’s first week in office, the Navajo Nation announced that ICE had harassed at least 15 indigenous Americans at their homes and workplaces simply because they looked Latino. That strategy (and the cruel processes it produces) have only persisted since.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203195/ice-almost-deports-native-american-woman-arizona

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2025-11-14T17:27:14+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

If you thought sending horrific, racist texts was enough to get you shunned from political service, think again! President Donald Trump wants Paul Ingrassia to take his “Nazi streak” to the General Services Administration.In a Thursday email to his colleagues obtained by Politico, Ingrassia announced that the president had personally offered him a position as general counsel at the GSA. The conservative activist had previously been serving as White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security.Last month, Ingrassia withdrew his nomination for a position at the Office of Special Counsel, after his involvement in a racist text chain was discovered. His vile messages cost him critical support in the Senate, helping Trump set a record for having the most nominees withdrawn of any president.In a normal world, this new job would be surprising considering the fact that Ingrassia revealed himself to be a deeply hateful and racist person. “No moulignon holidays.… From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” he wrote in one text, using an Italian slur for Black people in the beginning of the message. “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” he said in January. He also said he had a “bit of a Nazi streak” and to “never trust a chinaman or Indian. NEVER.” Additionally, Ingrassia has also been accused of sexually harassing a co-worker, and he has sued Politico for reporting on those allegations. Still, the Trump administration had nothing but good things to say about Ingrassia while confirming his move. A White House official said Ingrassia was “a very helpful addition to GSA and will successfully execute President Trump’s America First policies.” A spokesperson for GSA said they “look forward to having Paul Ingrassia’s legal talents help advance the GSA mission and the President’s priorities.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/203204/donald-trump-failed-nominee-nazi-streak-paul-ingrassia-job

Nostr event nevent1qqspxr4gs6umqx0kyyvue5ug0wyge3h2res08qpvjsnzhqzsnvegdkszyzjjh2tqdtt595wtmwtqycw2pt5ztrjaqduznlahlyv5z9fe4qyqjc4803k

2025-11-14T17:27:14+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Ellen Mei, a program specialist at USDA, was one of the thousands of federal employees who were furloughed during the record 43-day pause. But her time at the agency will soon come to a permanent close, all because she discussed the reality of SNAP benefits on MSNBC, reported The Washington Post.The Trump administration walked back a pledge it made to continue funding the food assistance program, allowing the benefits to partially expire for more than 42 million Americans earlier this month. It did this despite the fact that the USDA had available funds that were specifically earmarked to cover the cost of SNAP during the shutdown. Mei’s interview was no different from the dozens of others that she had participated in during her tenure as a government employee. Mei, who is also president of the National Treasury Employees Union for the Northeast division, told MSNBC on October 2 that she was speaking on behalf of herself and her union rather than the agriculture agency. Every detail she discussed with regard to SNAP and the shutdown was already publicly available information, either by way of news coverage, advocacy groups, or think tanks.But the next day, Mei was notified by a USDA human resources representative that her employment would be terminated by the end of the month, and was accused of discussing the agency “without prior approval.” Mei interpreted the letter as retaliation for voicing her opinion on the machinations of the Trump administration.“As I was and have been speaking in my personal capacity and in my capacity as union representative, I am not required to ask for permission to speak on behalf of me or my co-workers,” Mei told the Post. “Especially speaking on behalf of my co-workers as the union president, that is a right that I am granted by the Federal Labor Management statute. So I do not need to ask for permission.”In a follow-up interview with MSNBC, Mei said she was “honestly really confused” by the termination notice. “The New York Times and NPR had already published everything that I had said about SNAP and WIC,” Mei told the network, adding that some of what she discussed was also on the public-facing USDA website.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203199/trump-department-agriculture-fires-worker-food-stamps

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2025-11-14T16:16:23+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Donald Trump says the country is hotter than ever. JD Vance must not have gotten the memo.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203189/jd-vance-undermines-donald-trump-economy-inflation

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2025-11-14T16:16:23+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Even Donald Trump is being forced to recognize how bad things are.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203192/donald-trump-chicken-out-tariffs

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2025-11-14T12:58:30+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

The new movie about Lorenz Hart evokes a hallowed showbiz past.
https://newrepublic.com/article/202666/broadway-allure-richard-linklater-blue-moon

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2025-11-14T12:58:30+01:00

The New Republic (nprofile…6kn7)

Comments by Trump and his officials this week suggest food assistance might be the administration’s next target.
https://newrepublic.com/article/203120/trump-snap-food-stamps