George Packer's Blog, page 107

The Questionable Account of What Michael Flynn Told the White House

The White House would like you to know that Michael Flynn’s sin was lying. Flynn resigned late last night as President Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, after twenty-four days on the job.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Mistake the Berkeley Protesters Made about Milo Yiannopoulos
It’s Time for a Proper Investigation of Trump’s Russia Ties
Classic Rom-Coms Rewritten for Trump’s America

The Embarrassment of President Trump

This can’t go on much longer, can it? In the past, the nation has had do-nothing Presidencies, and scandal-ridden Presidencies, and failed Presidencies, but until Donald J. Trump came along there hasn’t been a truly embarrassing Presidency. Trump himself looks out of place (that squinty-eyed frown, meant to bespeak firmness, or serious purpose, doesn’t succeed), and it’s easy to understand why he looks that way. He’s living a bachelor’s life in an unfamiliar house, in a so-so neighborhood far from his home town, surrounded by strangers who have been hired to protect him but cut him off from any sort of real privacy. His daughter Ivanka is close by, in the Kalorama neighborhood, but she has her own life to live, and her own problems—most recently, Nordstrom’s decision to stop to carrying her fashion brand. His wife, Melania, is two hundred miles away, in Trump Tower; for the time being, according to the family’s public statements, she’s there to look after her son, Barron, who’s finishing the school year in familiar surroundings.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
DeVos Says Trump’s Forty-Per-Cent Approval Rating Means More Than Half of Country Supports Him
Another Planned Parenthood Protest Showdown
The Utterly Insufficient Efforts to Separate Trump from His Businesses

Why Is Snap Calling Itself a Camera Company?

Ever since Snapchat—sorry, Snap Inc.—filed for its initial public offering, last week, it has been all that anyone in Silicon Valley can talk about. In the documentation that it sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Los Angeles-based company reported that it had achieved a sixfold increase in revenue in 2016, and that its hundred and fifty-eight million daily users were generating more than 2.5 billion Snaps per day. When Snap goes public, in March, it may be valued at as much as twenty-five billion dollars. Much of the tech-world buzz centered, as it has for months, on the question of the company’s future potential, given that larger and more established platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have already proved themselves adept at mimicking Snapchat’s features. As the S.E.C. filing acknowledges, “We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business.” But hidden in the opening pages of that filing is a more interesting declaration. It appears in emphatic black lettering against Snapchat’s signature yellow: “Snap Inc. is a camera company.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Death of a Battery, or Things I Wouldn’t Have Done If I’d Known I Wouldn’t Be Able to Charge My Phone Before Going Out Tonight
The Year in Nine Objects
The Best Time-Wasting of 2016

Another Planned Parenthood Protest Showdown

In January, 1993, the New York City Council moved unanimously to erect a sign at the intersection of Bleecker and Mott streets designating the small corner on the eastern edge of the West Village as Margaret Sanger Square. The bill, introduced by Kathryn Freed, noted that Sanger had opened America’s first birth-control clinic, in Brooklyn, in 1916, and that when she was arrested and jailed on obscenity charges she had taught her fellow-inmates about contraception. Her second birth-control clinic eventually became part of Planned Parenthood in New York City, which now serves more than fifty thousand patients each year and has been headquartered at the corner of Bleecker and Mott since 1992.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Embarrassment of President Trump
The Cost of Defying the President
The Photographer Who Searched for the Humanity in Strom Thurmond

The Utterly Insufficient Efforts to Separate Trump from His Businesses

If there had been any ambiguity about how far Donald Trump was prepared to press his role as President in service of the business interests of himself and his family, it was laid to rest on February 9th by his most visible surrogate, Kellyanne Conway. “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would say,” Conway now famously said on Fox News. “I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Embarrassment of President Trump
DeVos Says Trump’s Forty-Per-Cent Approval Rating Means More Than Half of Country Supports Him
Daily Cartoon: Monday, February 13th

Can the President “Destroy” Criminal-Justice Reformers?

On Tuesday, President Trump hosted a group of county sheriffs at the White House, where he spurred a now-infamous exchange with a lawman from Texas. The back-and-forth went like this: Trump asked the sheriffs if they had any ideas on “how we can bring about law enforcement in a very good, civil, lovely way,” in order to “stop crime.” Sheriff Harold Eavenson, of Rockwall County, Texas, fired first. “Asset forfeiture!” he called out. “We’ve got a state senator in Texas that was talking about introducing legislation to require conviction before we could receive that forfeiture money.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Preparing My Kids for the New America
Waiting for Resettlement in the Age of Trump
Football and Politics

Waiting for Resettlement in the Age of Trump

Recently, eleven men, mostly middle-aged refugees from Iraq and Syria, settled in on plastic chairs in a community center in the al-Hashmi al-Shamali neighborhood of East Amman, Jordan, waiting for their weekly support group to begin. Officially, there are seven hundred and seventeen thousand refugees in Jordan, but the real tally is thought to be much higher, and many of them live in this area, where rent is cheap, and the multistory, cement-block buildings are ramshackle. It was midday, but since refugees in Jordan are largely forbidden from working, their time is something to be filled. Some of the men in the group hold advanced degrees, while others were once farmers or builders in their own countries. Now they are all in the same situation, linked by poverty, unemployment, and uncertainty.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Preparing My Kids for the New America
Can the President “Destroy” Criminal-Justice Reformers?
Football and Politics

Chaos in Brazil: More to Come?

Things are not well in Brazil. The country’s social and economic tensions are rising and seem increasingly prone to erupt into violence. For the past six days, for instance, there has been a frenzy of looting, mugging, rioting, and murder in and around Vitória, which anchors a metropolitan area of about two million and is the capital of the state of Espírito Santo, north of Rio de Janeiro. The reason for the mayhem is the absence of police officers, after Espírito Santo’s force went on strike last Saturday to demand that its pay be doubled. The police union has said that its members have not received raises in four years. Family members of the officers have joined the strike by creating human barricades around the state’s police stations.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Chicago’s Violence and Trump’s Ominous Tweets
Yance Ford’s Powerful Cinematic Memoir, “Strong Island”
Why Brazil’s Greatest Writer Stopped Writing

Brazil on the Verge of Chaos

Things are not well in Brazil. The country’s social and economic tensions are rising and seem increasingly prone to erupt into violence. For the past six days, for instance, there has been a frenzy of looting, mugging, rioting, and murder in and around Vitória, which anchors a metropolitan area of about two million and is the capital of the state of Espírito Santo, north of Rio de Janeiro. The reason for the mayhem is the absence of police officers, after Espírito Santo’s force went on strike last Saturday to demand that its pay be doubled. The police union has said that its members have not received raises in four years. Family members of the officers have joined the strike by creating human barricades around the state’s police stations.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Chicago’s Violence and Trump’s Ominous Tweets
Yance Ford’s Powerful Cinematic Memoir, “Strong Island”
Why Brazil’s Greatest Writer Stopped Writing

An Encouraging First Victory Over Trumpery

Thursday’s ruling from three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a freeze on the Trump Administration’s anti-Muslim travel ban, was obviously a significant legal setback for the White House. My colleague Amy Davidson explained how the judges dismissed practically every argument that the Justice Department had presented to them. The ruling’s biggest repercussion for Trump, however, might be a political one. On just his twenty-first day in office, three very senior federal judges, one of them a Republican appointee, issued a stunning smackdown of his divisive and dangerous approach to governing.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Football and Politics
The Vulnerabilities in the Ninth Circuit’s Executive-Order Decision
Kellyanne Conway’s Battle for Trump’s Favor