Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 277

A Guilty Verdict for Daniel Holtzclaw

An Oklahoma County jury handed down a series of guilty verdicts on Thursday night in the trial of former Oklahoma City Police Department officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who allegedly raped and sexually assaulted at least 13 black women in the neighborhood he patrolled.

Holtzclaw, who turned 29 years old on Thursday, faced 36 charges in total. The jury found him guilty of 18 of them, including four of the six counts of first-degree rape. For each of those charges, the jury recommended a sentence of 30 years. The other charges against him ranged from indecent exposure to sexual battery and forcible oral rape. Jurors deliberated for four days over the extensive indictment before rendering their verdicts.

The 13 women who brought allegations against him shared their stories with BuzzFeed. Taken together, they describe a pattern of predatory behavior in which Holtzclaw used his status as a police officer both to coerce his victims during their assaults and to intimidate from coming forward afterwards. Prosecutors also noted a tendency to target women whose credibility would be questioned by both law enforcement and society in general.

By allegedly focusing on poor black women with criminal records, Holtzclaw kept himself from being caught—until he met J.L., a black woman who was just passing through the neighborhood he patrolled. “Not only is this individual stopping women who fit a profile of members of our society who are confronted rightly or wrongly by police officers all the time,” said the [Oklahoma County] prosecutor, [Gayland] Gieger. “He identifies a vulnerable society that without exception except one have an attitude for ‘What good is it gonna do? He’s a police officer. Who’s going to believe me?’”

During the trial, defense attorneys tried to challenge the victims’ credibility by emphasizing their criminal records to the jury and asking about their past drug use. Holtzclaw’s family also accused the victims of fabricating their stories.

The case highlighted challenges in uncovering sexual misconduct by law-enforcement officials, which is believed to be widely underreported. A yearlong investigation by the Associated Press published last month discovered over 1,000 police officers nationwide who lost their badges in the past six years for offenses including rape, sexual assault, and possession of child pornography. Since reliable comprehensive numbers do not exist, the actual number of officers fired during that period could be even higher.

Although the Holtzclaw trial received relatively little national media attention, it caught the attention of activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, who followed the case through social media and helped elevate its profile nationwide.

I can't believe I'm watching some form of Justice. Like can not believe it. Wow.

— Johnetta Elzie (@Nettaaaaaaaa) December 11, 2015

The #DanielHoltzclaw verdict is important as it will prevent him from harming anyone else. It will not, however, repair the damage done.

— deray mckesson (@deray) December 11, 2015

Holtzclaw sobbed and rocked in his chair as the judge read one guilty verdict after another and the sentences attached to each one of them. In total, the jury recommended a total of 263 years in prison. His final sentencing is set to take place in January.

A Senate Vote on Donald Trump's Religious Test

Republican Party leaders have been quick to condemn Donald Trump’s proposal to bar all Muslims from entering the United States, but the idea is not anathema to a group of Senate conservatives that includes his presidential rival, Ted Cruz.

On Thursday afternoon, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont offered an amendment to a nuclear terrorism bill in the Judiciary Committee stating that it was “the sense of the Senate that the United States must not bar individuals from entering into the United States based on their religion, as such action would be contrary to the fundamental principles on which this nation was founded.”

Simple enough, it would seem. Yet Cruz and three other Republicans on the committee—Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—all voted against it. The seven other Republicans on the panel, including long-shot presidential hopeful Lindsey Graham, supported the amendment. Cruz was not present for the debate and voted by proxy, which is allowed only in committee votes in the Senate.

Cruz’s Senate spokesman, Phil Novak, said the resolution was “nothing more than a political stunt” that was unrelated to the underlying legislation. “A nuclear terrorism bill is not the place for political games," Novak wrote in an email, “which is why after voting against Senator Leahy’s amendment, Senator Cruz voted for the nuclear terrorism bill to protect Americans against this grave threat.” Novak didn’t respond when pressed on whether Cruz believed that a religious test for entering the U.S. was appropriate.

Cruz’s vote is less surprising when considering that of all of Trump’s major rivals, he has expressed the least alarm at his proposal to temporarily ban Muslim entry. “Well, that is not my policy,” he told reporters initially before touting his own more limited plan to place a three-year moratorium on resettling refugees from countries where ISIS or al Qaeda have a presence. And as he has risen in the polls, Cruz has been reluctant to criticize Trump at all and risk alienating voters he hopes to gain if Trump eventually fades. After The New York Times reported Thursday that Cruz had questioned Trump’s “judgment” at a private fundraiser, the Cruz campaign issued a statement calling the story “misleading.”

On Capitol Hill, the most extensive argument against Leahy’s amendment came from Sessions, who for years has taken the most hardline positions in the Senate against any expansion in legal immigration or legal status for undocumented immigrants. In a lengthy statement, Sessions said that choosing who can come to the United States is “by definition, an exclusionary process” and distinct from the constitutional protections that apply to citizens. “The adoption of the Leahy Amendment would constitute a transformation of our immigration system, Sessions said. “In effect, it is a move toward the ratification of the idea that global migration is a ‘human right,’ and a civil right, and that these so-called ‘immigrants’ rights’ must be supreme to the rights of sovereign nations to determine who can and cannot enter their borders.”

Four of 11 Republican senators on a committee panel may be a tiny—if influential—sample, but the vote seems to reflect the sentiments of a sizable portion of the party’s base. Polls released on Thursday found anywhere from 42 percent to 65 percent of Republican primary voters agreed with Trump’s proposal to block Muslims. (Whether they are agreeing with the policy or just agreeing with Trump is another matter, as my colleague David Graham ponders.) If nothing else, the four no votes on what a month ago would have seemed a noncontroversial statement of principle is yet more evidence of the yawning gap between the GOP leadership and a much more restive conservative base.

How Many Republicans Really Want to Ban Muslims?

Here’s the good news: In a poll released Thursday evening, NBC News found that 60 percent of Americans oppose Donald Trump’s patently unconstitutional proposal to ban Muslim immigration.

Now, the bad news: A small but real plurality of Republican respondents support the proposal—42 percent, with 36 opposing it. When limited to GOP primary voters, however, the tally is 38 percent for, 39 percent against.

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How Republicans Won and Then Lost the Muslim Vote

That’s actually less than the results in some other polls. A Bloomberg poll found that among likely Republican primary voters, 65 percent agreed with Trump and 22 percent opposed the idea. Rasmussen found almost identical numbers. There are a couple good reasons to be skeptical on the specifics of the latter two polls. The Bloomberg poll was taken online, on a single day, and was opt-in. Rasmussen’s results are often somewhat unreliable too.

But there’s also a good reason to be wary of the overall message, too. How many Republicans really want to ban Muslims from coming into the country? Probably fewer than are saying so here. In an environment like this one, polling about this question tends to serve largely as a litmus test. These results are probably more an indication of what side the respondents are on, rather than what they truly believe about the issue.

A couple years ago, Huffington Post recreated a classic political-science experiment that found that respondents will answer confidently about things they have no real opinions or knowledge about. (This phenomenon will be familiar to fans of Jimmy Kimmel’s “Lie Witness” man-on-the-street interviews.) Huffington Post went one step further, asking respondents to share their feelings on the 1975 Public Affairs Act. When they told their respondents that President Obama wanted to repeal the act, Democrats said they agreed, while Republicans opposed repeal. When they told respondents, in turn, that Republicans favored repeal, Democrats wanted the act to stand and Republicans wanted it repealed. In other words: It’s all about tribal identification, not policy.

The danger is that reading too much into these polls could produce a vicious cycle, in which Republican candidates become convinced that their primary voters really do want to ban Muslim immigration, and as a result take stands similar to Trump’s.

Yet antipathy to Muslims is also very real. Other, less news-tethered surveys have shown that a minority of Republicans would be willing to vote for a Muslim candidate for president. My colleague Peter Beinart and I have each written about the corrosive influence of Islamophobia on the American populace, and the danger of it becoming enshrined within the GOP.

So even if this batch of polls primarily reflects partisan allegiance—Republicans siding with a candidate against the media—that’s no reason to dismiss the broader concern about the spread of Islamophobia.

The Connecticut Governor's Executive Order on Guns

Connecticut’s governor announced Thursday he would sign an executive order that would ban people on federal “watch lists” from buying firearms.

“Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris,” Dannel Malloy said at a news conference. “This should be a wake-up call to all of us. This is a moment to seize in America—and today I’m here to say that we in Connecticut are seizing it.”

Malloy said the order will go into effect once the White House, with which he has been working on the policy, grants the state access to some of the government’s watch lists. These include the no-fly list, a roster of about 10,000 people who are barred from flying at U.S. airports because the government believes they may have ties to terrorism. The no-fly list is itself controversial, leading to, as my colleague David Graham has reported, “confusion, false positives, and outrage.” Many innocent people have been placed on the list, and those on it discover their inclusion only when they try to fly.

Malloy said he believes there are people in Connecticut who are on federal watch lists, according to the Hartford Courant.

Under Malloy’s policy, individuals on watch lists would not be eligible to buy handguns, shotguns, rifles, or ammunition in Connecticut. People seeking to purchase guns in the state would need to apply for a permit, undergo a background check, and be cleared against the watch lists. Those denied can appeal the decision.

Malloy, a Democrat, said his state would become the first in the United States to implement a rule linking gun ownership to the no-fly list. President Obama has called for Congress to institute such a measure in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting last week.

“Here in America, it’s way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun,” the president said in his most recent weekly address. “Right now, people on the no-fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That’s insane.”

A measure that would have prevented people on no-fly lists to buy guns failed in the Senate a day after the San Bernardino shooting. Republicans argue that stripping people on the list of their Second Amendment rights is a violation of their due process.

Connecticut enacted some of the strictest gun laws in the country in 2013, several months after a gunman killed 20 kindergarteners and six staff members at an elementary school in Newtown before killing himself.

Gun-rights groups criticized Malloy’s actions on Thursday.

“Governor Malloy is planning to take what is in our view unconstitutional executive action that would prohibit firearms purchases and seize firearms of individuals who have not been indicted or convicted for any crime,” the Connecticut Citizens Defense League said in a statement. “While we are all concerned about terrorism, this approach is very un-American and shameful.”

The Golden Globes Nominations: Snubs, Smashes, and Surprises

Every year, the Golden Globes function largely as a precursor to the Oscars. This year’s Academy Awards race already featured a broad group of contenders without a clear frontrunner, but Thursday morning’s Globe nominations did little to narrow the field. This was perhaps predictable: The Hollywood Foreign Press divides the awards into two categories, drama and comedy/musical, allowing a bigger pool of nominations and a better chance to have major stars attend the ceremony.

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The 2016 Oscar Race Is Wide Open

While the film nominees were a predictable bunch, the television picks were more surprising—and diverse. It echoed last year’s ceremony, where the film winners were more staid, while the TV section included underdog champions like Transparent and Jane the Virgin. As they often do, the Globes leaned toward new shows like Mr. Robot and Empire, leaving last year’s winners like The Affair and Jane the Virgin largely in the cold. They also doled out nominations to streaming networks like Amazon (for Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle), Hulu (Casual), and Netflix (Narcos, Master of None, and Orange Is the New Black), reflecting the boom in Internet-only television in the past few years.

After the major film critics groups chose a historically large batch of winners, the Hollywood Foreign Press anointed most presumed Oscar contenders, like Spotlight, Room, Carol, and The Revenant, while giving crucial support to outside shots like Will Smith in the NFL drama Concussion and the Bryan Cranston film Trumbo. In all this, one thing remains clear—there’s still no juggernaut positioned for an easy Oscar sweep.

Todd Haynes’s acclaimed romantic drama Carol was the most-lauded film of the day, picking up five nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara), and Best Score. Other expected drama nominees were Spotlight (which also nabbed Director and Screenplay nods), the frontier-survival film The Revenant (also nominated for Director, Score, and Lead Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio), and Room (whose lead Brie Larson and writer Emma Donohue were also acknowledged).

In the more nebulous “comedy” category, the NASA space thriller The Martian (which somehow slipped in here based on a wisecracking screenplay) was nominated for Best Picture, Director (Ridley Scott), and Actor (Matt Damon). David O. Russell’s biopic Joy also made the list, along with its lead actress Jennifer Lawrence—a welcome bit of recognition for a presumed contender after she was shut out of the Screen Actors Guild nominations on Wednesday. Adam McKay’s furious Wall Street satire The Big Short hit it big as well, scoring nods for the lead actors Christian Bale and Steve Carell, as well as one for its screenplay.

While the film nominees were predictable, the television picks were more surprising—and diverse.

But the most heartening news of the day was the attention lavished on Mad Max: Fury Road, a critical favorite that has a difficult path to Oscar success because it’s a big-budget movie about flaming cars racing through the desert with next to no dialogue. But the Globes gave it Best Picture and Best Director nominations. Other box-office winners, Trainwreck and Spy, received nominations in the comedy categories, with nods for the stars Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy.

Perhaps the strangest story of all is that of Trumbo, a Jay Roach film about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, which stars the awards favorite Bryan Cranston but drew shrugs from critics on its release. Never underestimate a film about the film industry, though—Trumbo received Globes nominations for performances by Cranston and Helen Mirren, right after receiving three SAG Award acting nominations. Prognosticators are largely baffled, though perhaps they should have foreseen the awards appeal of a work about Hollywood insiders (though it’s made less than $5 million in a month at the domestic box office).

On the TV side, the Globes followed their usual policy of picking things that are fresh and hot. Empire, Mr. Robot, Narcos, and Outlander were new nominees alongside Game of Thrones in the drama category, and comedy picks were Hulu’s Casual, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent, Veep, Silicon Valley, and Orange Is the New Black. Rachel Bloom was a surprising and deserving Best Actress pick for her underseen CW show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the terrific Rami Malek snuck in for Best Actor.

The Globes have always functioned as a stamp of approval for whatever’s currently hot in television—it’ll give Best TV Series trophies to new shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine or The Affair, then drop them from the nominations roster entirely only a year later. Shows like Narcos and Mozart in the Jungle have added appeal because of their international quality, something the Hollywood Foreign Press has always embraced, but it’s undeniable that the TV nominees are far more diverse than film, reflecting a stark difference between the two industries. Only a year after the Oscars picked 20 white acting nominees out of 20, only two of the Globes’ 30 acting nominees are people of color. That means it could be another depressingly whitewashed Oscar ceremony in 2016.

The full list:

Best Picture, Drama

Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Picture, Comedy or Musical

The Big Short
Joy
The Martian
Spy
Trainwreck

Best Director

Todd Haynes, Carol
Alejandro Innaritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Ridley Scott, The Martian

Best Actor, Drama

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Will Smith, Concussion

Best Actress, Drama

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Rooney Mara, Carol
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Best Actor, Comedy

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Steve Carell, The Big Short
Matt Damon, The Martian
Al Pacino, Danny Collins
Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear

Best Actress, Comedy

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Melissa McCarthy, Spy
Amy Schumer, Trainwreck
Maggie Smith, The Lady in the Van
Lily Tomlin, Grandma

Best Supporting Actor

Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Supporting Actress

Jane Fonda, Youth
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Helen Mirren, Trumbo
Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Best Screenplay

Emma Donoghue, Room
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, The Big Short
Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs
Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight

Best Original Score

Carter Burwell, Carol
Alexandre Desplat, The Danish Girl
Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
Daniel Pemberton, Steve Jobs
Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto, The Revenant

Best Original Song

“Love Me Like You Do,” Fifty Shades of Grey
“One Kind of Love,” Love & Mercy
“See You Again,” Furious 7
“Simple Song #3,” Youth
“Writing's On the Wall,” Spectre

Best Animated Feature Film

Anomalisa
The Good Dinosaur
Inside Out
The Peanuts Movie
Shaun the Sheep Movie

Best Foreign Language Film

The Brand New Testament
The Club
The Fencer
Mustang
Son of Saul

Best TV Series, Drama

Empire
Game of Thrones
Mr. Robot
Narcos
Outlander

Best TV Series, Comedy/Musical
Casual
Mozart in the Jungle
Orange is the New Black
Silicon Valley
Transparent
Veep

Best TV Miniseries or Movie

American Crime
American Horror Story: Hotel
Fargo
Flesh and Bone
Wolf Hall

Best Actor, TV Drama

Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Rami Malek, Mr. Robot
Wagner Moura, Narcos
Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul
Liev Schrieber, Ray Donovan

Best Actress, TV Drama

Caitriona Balfe, Outlander
Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder
Eva Green, Penny Dreadful
Taraji P. Henson, Empire
Robin Wright, House of Cards

Best Actor, TV Comedy

Aziz Ansari, Master of None
Gael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle
Rob Lowe, The Grinder
Patrick Stewart, Blunt Talk
Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Best Actress, TV Comedy

Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Jamie Lee Curtis, Scream Queens
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin
Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie

Best Supporting Actor, TV

Alan Cumming, The Good Wife
Damian Lewis, Wolf Hall
Tobias Menzies, Outlander
Ben Mendelsohn, Bloodline
Christian Slater, Mr. Robot

Best Supporting Actress, TV

Uzo Aduba, Orange is the New Black
Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey
Regina King, American Crime
Judith Light, Transparent
Maura Tierney, The Affair

Best Actor, Mini-Series or TV Movie

Idris Elba, Luther
Oscar Isaac, Show Me A Hero
David Oyelowo, Nightingale
Mark Rylance, Wolf Hall
Patrick Wilson, Fargo

Best Actress, Mini-Series or TV Movie

Kirsten Dunst, Fargo
Lady Gaga, American Horror Story: Hotel
Sarah Hay, Flesh and Bone
Felicity Huffman, American Crime
Queen Latifah, Bessie

Bowe Bergdahl Makes His Case on Serial

On the inaugural season of the true-crime podcast Serial, the host and This American Life producer Sarah Koenig turned the case of Adnan Syed, a young man who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 2000, from an obscure Maryland criminal footnote into a pop-culture phenomenon.

After all the recaps, thinkpieces, and backlashes against the podcast’s popularity, two questions remained: Was Syed really innocent? And how could Serial possibly match the intrigue and popularity of its first season?

The first question is currently being meted out in the appeals process with no small debit owed to the podcast. On Thursday, we came closer to an answer to the second question with the release of Serial’s second season.

The Peabody-winning show takes on a much bigger case this time, that of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the American solider who infamously abandoned his post at a base in Afghanistan in 2009, was scooped up by the Taliban, and was returned last year in a politically divisive prisoner swap.

His conversations with the filmmaker Mark Boal have been adapted to fit the format of the show. “As you can imagine, he’s been the subject of a lot of sound-bite coverage,” Boal told The New York Times. “He has a definite point of view about hit-and-run TV reporting, and so this was the opposite of that.”

Like Adnan Syed, Bergdahl has a lot at stake. He faces two charges, including desertion, for his actions abroad. The Army is currently holding hearings about whether to levy Bergdahl with a court-martial for his actions or grant him an honorable discharge and substantial backpay.

He is also a controversial figure in the middle of a national story. Earlier this year, Senator John McCain said Bergdahl was “clearly a deserter,” a remark that brought a rebuke for its prejudicial nature. More recently, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called him a “no-good traitor” and suggested he should have been executed. The release of the second season of Serial comes on the same day that the House Armed Services Committee released a report claiming that President Obama misled lawmakers and the public about the prisoner swap that brought Bergdahl home.

So what will we learn about Bergdahl, who previously refused to give his side of the story? Will the narrative of Bergdahl as troubled and confused soldier or would-be-whistleblower be discredited or reinforced? Apparently, we’ll have to listen to find out.

Syrian Refugees Are Canada-Bound

A group of 164 Syrian refugees are on their way to Canada, part of the new government’s commitment to accept 25,000 refugees by February from the Arab country that has been engulfed in a nearly five-year-long civil war.

The group left the airport in Beirut—one of two cities in the region (the other being Amman, Jordan) where the Canadian government has set up refugee-processing centers—Thursday on a Canadian government plane, which will stop in Cologne, Germany, before arriving in Toronto later Thursday. A second flight with more refugees is expected to arrive Saturday.

Some 416 Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada since November 4, but they have come on private aircrafts. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to resettle 25,000 Syrians throughout the country by February. The refugees will be a mix of government- and privately sponsored people. The 164 who left Beirut Thursday were privately sponsored, reported CBC, the Canadian broadcaster. Private groups will support them upon their arrival in Canada, CBC added, though the government will pay for their transportation, initial medical costs, and arrival expenses.

Public opposition to the government’s plan has climbed since last month’s Paris attacks. At least two of the attackers were found to have traveled to Europe using fake Syrian passports, in which there is a large trade because of the relative ease with which Syrians fleeing their civil war are granted asylum in the West—though their journeys themselves are by no means easy, and often deadly. Trudeau’s initial plan was to bring in the 25,000 by the end of this year, but his government has since said it will complete the transfer by the end of the February.

The government’s position was a reversal from the stance taken by Trudeau’s predecessor as prime minister, Stephen Harper, who had declined to accept more Syrian refugees. The matter became an election issue following the death of a 3-year-old Syrian boy, whose body on a Turkish beach has become the defining image of the refugee crisis. The boy had relatives in Canada, and his father claimed Canada had rejected their asylum application.

Critics of the refugee-resettlement plan broadly echo what my colleague David Frum, who is Canadian-born, said in this interview with Sirius XM Canada:

I believe the first duty of governments is to their own people and, when faced with this potential vast influx of people from all over the southern Mediterranean and eastern Mediterranean and Africa, too, and now South Asia—because it’s turning out many of the people claiming to be Syrian are actually from Pakistan—governments have to ask themselves: Are they admitting people who are going to strengthen the country, who are consistent with the country’s national security, who will enhance the welfare of the country? Or are they creating for themselves more of the kind of massive internal security conflicts that Europe has had with its past immigration from the Middle East?

But critics of that position point to the fact Canada has a proud tradition of accepting the world’s asylum-seekers. It has taken in refugees from Kosovo, Uganda, Vietnam, and other places.

The Toronto Star, in a front-page editorial, welcomed Thursday’s impending arrivals:

As 150 refugees land in Canada today, on behalf of the Star we say: Welcome to Canada. #ne… https://t.co/2ErZGadZO3 pic.twitter.com/TSZCf9m80t

— TorontoStar (@TorontoStar) December 10, 2015

The debate in Canada over the acceptance of refugees echoes what’s happening in much of the Western world, where the desire to satisfy the humanitarian instinct clashes with concerns over security—especially in the wake of the attacks in Paris and elsewhere, and fears over the dangers the refugees may pose.

The U.S. has accepted slightly more than 1,500 refugees from Syria, and it plans to accept 10,000 more next year.  Those plans have been sharply criticized by several presidential candidates who have called for a halt to the arrival of Syrian refugees, and several states, including Texas and Alabama, that have said they don’t want Syrians resettled there. But as my colleague Matt Ford reported last week: “States lack the constitutional mechanisms to directly bar refugees under current Supreme Court precedent.”

Those debates are also being played out across Europe, even more acrimoniously. The European Union has been dealing with an increased influx of migrants and refugees since the summer. Plans to resettle asylum-seekers across the EU have been fractious. Countries such as Germany and Sweden have welcomed the asylum-seekers while newer members of the bloc, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, have not. Tensions over the issue threaten the bloc’s unity.

“Either Europe stands together and acts with solidarity in times of hardship for hundreds of thousands, or fences and barriers will again be raised,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister,

A Search for Suspects in Geneva

The alert level has been raised in Geneva as authorities searched for suspects in the wake of last month’s attacks in Paris.

“In the framework of investigations carried out following the Paris attacks, at the international and national level, Geneva police and their partners are actively looking for people whose description has been provided by the Swiss Confederation,” the Geneva department of security said in a statement.

News organization initially reported the suspects may be linked to the Paris attacks, but the statement did not explicitly make that connection. Having said that, tensions are high in Europe after the November 13 rampage in Paris that killed 130 people. Nearly a month after the attack, investigators are trying to determine exactly how many people were involved in the plot and who they were. At least two of the attackers carried false Syrian passports, and at least one major figure in the plot is still on the run.

Police in several European countries are still looking for people believed to have carried out or planned the Paris attack. The Paris attackers have been identified as French or Belgian nationals.

Reuters reported Thursday that security in Geneva had been visibly increased.

UN security guards in Geneva, the European headquarters of the world body, were stationed with MP5 sub-machine guns at entry points for cars, a highly unusual measure at the sprawling complex near the French border.

“It is maximum alert,” a second UN guard told Reuters.

The New York Times adds the raised alert level in Geneva comes as the Swiss city is preparing for talks involving senior officials from the U.S., Russia, and the UN on Syria.

A Trip to Israel ‘Postponed’

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, says he is postponing his scheduled trip to Israel, amid the controversy over his remarks calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

I have decided to postpone my trip to Israel and to schedule my meeting with @Netanyahu at a later date after I become President of the U.S.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2015

As we reported Wednesday, in the wake of Trump’s remarks, his previously scheduled meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, on December 28 drew widespread criticism.

But while Trump’s comments—and Trump himself—have been condemned, a visit to Israel is akin to a rite of passage for any serious presidential candidate. Barack Obama did it when he was running in 2008, as did Mitt Romney, prior to the 2012 election.

Netanyahu himself, while noting that he would go ahead with the December 28 meeting, criticized the remarks.

As we reported:

Trump’s visit to Israel, which he announced on Twitter on Tuesday, has proven highly controversial, and his proposed meeting with Netanyahu has been condemned by some Israeli lawmakers, mostly Israeli Arabs and members of leftist parties.

Issawi Frej, an Arab-Israeli lawmaker from the Meretz party, wrote to Silvan Shalom, the interior minister, asking that Trump’s visit be blocked.

“As an Israeli citizen, I ask that the state treat the racism against me in the same way it would relate to racism against Jews,” he wrote, according to The Times of Israel. “Just as it is obvious that Israel wouldn’t allow an anti-Semite to use it to advance its political goals, so too, should be the case of Trump.”

Trump, who is leading in many polls to be the Republican presidential nominee, has defended his remarks about Muslims, citing the attack in San Bernardino, California, which was carried out by an Illinois-born man and his Pakistan-born wife.

How Comedy Soared in 2015

In 2015, comedy underwent its biggest upheaval in more than a decade—or at least it did on late-night TV, its supposed hub of talent. Comedy Central lost its bedrock pair, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who were replaced by Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore. Colbert jumped to CBS, displacing the industry’s aging king, David Letterman. But the real change resonated more widely: Despite the good work of these and other TV hosts, the comedy world proved this year that it’s not content to follow old formats of distribution or to work within the confines of the genre.

It can be safely said that 2015 was the year of the comedy auteur. TV networks took chances on a wider range of shows, Netflix became a new booster of the venerable one-hour stand-up special, and the free-wheeling world of podcasts continued to grow. As a result, talents that might formerly have been squeezed into formulaic sitcom or late-night boxes were given more room than ever to indulge their specific tastes. In the past, “indulgent” might have been a scary word for television executives. But so often in 2015 it was the exact opposite, fueling some of the most adventurous, hilarious, smart, and relevant comedy in recent years. I offer some of the most memorable moments this year as proof:

“12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer”

Comedy Central

Amy Schumer had a lot of highs in 2015: her blockbuster film Trainwreck, a Saturday Night Live hosting gig, a slew of Emmy nominations, a series of Internet takedowns calling her a racist and/or a sexist (which, some might say, is a sign you’ve made it in comedy). But Schumer’s greatest moment was an episode in which she barely appears, except as a headshot. “12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer,” the third episode of her show’s third season, was a 20-minute long sketch featuring 12 male jurors debating whether she was hot enough to be a star. It was every piece of gross Internet commentary and personal insecurity: the ultimate ego trip, and at the same time a devastating piece of self-examination. It was one of those things you laugh all the way through then get depressed thinking about after: in other words, a perfect piece of comedy.

The Netflix Comedy Boom

Netflix

Just a few years ago, stand-up comedians were bemoaning the uncertain future of the hour-long special, once the provenance of premium channels like HBO and Showtime. Louis C.K. said in 2014 that one reason he was motivated to self-distribute his specials was that no networks were interested. At the time, his decision was hailed as the future of comedy, but just a year later, it already feels outdated. Netflix, the standard-bearer of “Peak TV,” produced 11 specials this year and promised more for the future. There were big names, like John Mulaney’s brilliant Comeback Kid, Aziz Ansari’s Live at Madison Square Garden, and Chris Tucker’s return to the stage. But there were also up-and-comers like Iliza Shlesinger, breakout stars like Chelsea Peretti, and perhaps best of all, Jen Kirkman’s I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine), a searing, open-hearted work about growing older and pushing back against cultural norms. Once floundering, the comedy special now feels more vital than ever.

The Carmichael Show Proves Summer TV Wrong

NBC

Buried on NBC’s summer schedule, where unwanted shows are usually “burned off” to be forgotten, Jerrod Carmichael’s The Carmichael Show instantly proved itself one of network’s most vital sitcoms in years. After so many attempts to make the old-school, multi-camera, laugh-track sitcom relevant again, Carmichael cracked the formula by embracing the staginess and centering every week around a socially relevant or politically tense issue. A new sitcom usually takes weeks, if not years, to find its feet. The Carmichael Show was interrogating the black family’s generational reactions to Black Lives Matter in its second week—and it was being funny while doing it. Its renewal for a second season was one of the heartening success stories of the year, and its ratings success was further proof that the traditional September-to-May model of TV programming is nearing obsolescence.

The Chris Gethard Show Goes to Asbury Park

Fusion

It’s impossible to root against the underdog story of The Chris Gethard Show. Gethard is a comedian who found he couldn’t pursue his passions within the traditional formats of the industry, so he went to Manhattan public-access television, where he became a cult sensation. Fusion acquired the show this year for a 10-episode run that included anarchic stunts like a studio audience comprised entirely of dogs or an episode taped after the cast had been awake for 36 straight hours. In the finale, Gethard took his whole audience to Asbury Park, New Jersey, and led them around the boardwalk to have whatever fun they wanted, climaxing in an impromptu late-night beach party, while NPR’s Ira Glass held court in an empty Gethard Show studio. That the comedy TV circle has grown enough to get this kind of charming zaniness on national television is a good sign for the future.

Stephen Colbert Talks to Joe Biden

CBS

There’s very little new to say about this year’s massive shake-up of late-night personalities, partly because late night has a long, long lead time. It’s usually more than a year before hosts find their feet, and comedians like Trevor Noah and James Corden simply haven’t had long enough to really define their brand. Even a seasoned vet like Colbert is figuring out exactly what he wants The Late Show to be, but the incredible humanity of his first few weeks helped set an agenda that felt semi-revolutionary. The most memorable moment was Vice President Biden’s tearful discussion of the loss of his son Beau, and Colbert’s own openness about the grief he’d felt in his life. In a world full of confusion and fear, late-night hosts often function as the nation’s onscreen therapists, helping audiences unpack and put terrible things into some kind of perspective. This year, no one felt better equipped for the job than Colbert.

President Obama Visits WTF With Marc Maron

WTF With Marc Maron

I first listened to WTF sometime in early 2010, when the comedian Marc Maron had banked about 40 episodes chatting with fellow stand-ups and grousing about his uneasy place in a changing industry. An experiment run out of Maron’s garage, it was one of the first comedy podcasts to be noticed. These days, practically every comedian on the planet has a podcast, many of them belonging to ever-expanding networks that are doing a better and better job of monetizing their strange form of Internet radio. Even in that thriving world, President Obama sitting down with WTF felt like a seal of approval for a medium few Americans are familiar with. The chat was everything comedy podcasts are allowed to be: free-form, candid, unobstructed by act breaks or network notes. Yes, Maron has had other notable guests this year, like SNL’s Lorne Michaels, but you can’t get a bigger guest than Obama.

You’re The Worst and “The Sadcom”

FXX

In its first season, You’re the Worst was biting, sometimes cruel, often bleak in its outlook on human relationships. But it was never exactly sad. In its second season, which ended Wednesday on FXX, it dug into one of its main characters’ clinical depression with the kind of shocking frankness few dramas have attempted, and yet it still managed to be hysterically funny every week. It’s not an outlier, either: Shows like Togetherness, Bojack Horseman, Review, and Rick and Morty explored the darkest corners of the psyche while being among the comedy highlights of the year. Vulture’s Jenny Jaffe crowned this subgenre the “sadcom”: half-hour shows unafraid to resemble dramas in their plot descriptions, while still shooting for laughs every minute. It’s a tough balance to strike, but it’s one other countries (particularly Britain) have explored for many years (if he wanted to, Ricky Gervais could claim the “sadcom” as part of his legacy). It’s nice to see American networks finally catching on.

Aziz Ansari’s Parents Visit Master of None

Netflix

Only a handful of stand-up comedians have sold out Madison Square Garden. Aziz Ansari pulled that off at the age of 31, and the show that helped build his fame, Parks & Recreation, came to an end earlier this year. He could have done anything he wanted, and so he did: He made Master of None, a Netflix show that was autobiographical in all the best ways, interrogating his generation’s place in the world, the faulty romantic connectivity of the Internet age, and both the comedy and tragedy that comes with being the child of immigrants. It also cast Ansari’s actual parents in roles they were born to play. Every move in Master of None could have been indulgent in the worst way, but the independence that came with being on a streaming network disinterested in ratings clearly fed Ansari’s best creative impulses, and presented a pretty optimistic vision of the genre’s future.

“The Eye Doesn’t Lie” on Documentary Now

IFC

Every episode of IFC’s bonkers series Documentary Now was lovable in its own weird way, but “The Eye Doesn’t Lie,” a dead-on spoof of Errol Morris’s true-crime classic The Thin Blue Line, was the most idiosyncratic delight of the year. The show, created by Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and Rhys Thomas, spoofs specific documentaries down to the camera lenses. “The Eye Doesn’t Lie” was as faithful as it gets, nudging a true story of wrongful imprisonment into the realm of satire, without ever dropping the self-serious act. It has to be seen to be believed, preferably right after a viewing of The Thin Blue Line. Yes, it was niche—and the rock-bottom ratings confirmed it—but I’m glad there’s space for Meyers (busy every week hosting Late Night) and his old SNL buddies to produce such an inspired work.

Oh, Hello Becomes the Hottest Ticket in Town

David Gordon

The former SNL writer John Mulaney had a weird 2015. His self-titled Fox sitcom Mulaney, which should have marked a major step forward in his burgeoning career, tanked with both audiences and critics. His Netflix special drew major plaudits, clearing a path for him to be an acclaimed stand-up for the rest of his career. But like so many rising stars, he’s having the most fun playing in the margins and pursuing weird passion projects. He and Nick Kroll are staging a month-long show at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, Oh, Hello Live, a spinoff of their two bizarre old-men characters best known for their prank show-within-a-show “Too Much Tuna.” Tickets sold out immediately and are going for more than $300 on StubHub right now. The two-hour play, filled with offensive rants, stale deli salad, and walk-on guest stars, is one of the funniest creations of the year. It was yet another supreme act of comedy auteurdom—Kroll and Mulaney taking a thing they knew was special, expanding on it, and bringing it to passionate audiences outside of any network or ad-dependent model. I can only hope for much more of the same for 2016.