George Packer's Blog, page 110

Theresa May’s American Adventure

It has not been the quietest of times for Theresa May, the British Prime Minister. Last week, on January 26th, pausing only to issue a good-will message on the occasion of the Chinese New Year—this being the Year of the Rooster—she flew to Philadelphia and addressed the Republican Party conference. She spoke to those present of the “special relationship,” a phrase crying out for a moratorium, and proposed that the two nations “join hands as we pick up that mantle of leadership once more.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Tips for Contacting Your Elected Officials
What Happens to the Deported
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration

The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration

On Thursday, thousands of Yemeni-Americans turned out at a rally in Brooklyn, outside Borough Hall, to protest President Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban. Seemingly every person in the crowd had a story to tell about how the ban affected him or her personally, and every story was one of separation.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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What Happens to the Deported
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland
For the Protesters at Standing Rock, It’s Back to Pipeline Purgatory

From “Drain the Swamp” to Government Sachs

Until now, Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, has been the invisible member of the Trump Administration. Now we know why: he has been busy preparing favors for his old pals on Wall Street. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Cohn said that Trump was preparing to sign an executive order designed to pave the way for a broad rollback of the regulatory regime that the Obama Administration and Congress introduced after the disastrous financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland
For the Protesters at Standing Rock, It’s Back to Pipeline Purgatory

The Deep Denialism of Donald Trump

Donald Trump is hardly the first President to lie to the American people. Nor is he the first to place ideology before data. But this White House, unlike any other, has already crossed the threshold into a space where facts appear to mean nothing.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
What Happens to the Deported
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland

The New C.I.A. Deputy Chief’s Black-Site Past

From 2003 to 2005, Gina Haspel was a senior official overseeing a top-secret C.I.A. program that subjected dozens of suspected terrorists to savage interrogations, which included depriving them of sleep, squeezing them into coffins, and forcing water down their throats. In 2002, Haspel was among the C.I.A. officers present at the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda suspect who was tortured so brutally that at one point he appeared to be dead.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland
For the Protesters at Standing Rock, It’s Back to Pipeline Purgatory

Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus’s War for the White House

President Donald Trump’s first two weeks in office have produced what seems like a year’s worth of drama, but he has made essentially two consequential decisions. He issued a ban on immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries and he nominated Neil Gorsuch, a federal appeals-court judge, to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after Antonin Scalia’s death, last year.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland
For the Protesters at Standing Rock, It’s Back to Pipeline Purgatory

Why Trump’s “America First” Policy Is Doomed to Fail

The two words came eight minutes into President Trump’s Inaugural Address, and were delivered with the now-familiar gesticulations. “America first,” he declared, his right arm bouncing with each word, his index finger and thumb pinched together, followed by an exclamatory point of the finger: “America first.” With those words, Trump broke sharply with how U.S. Presidents have defined America’s relationship with the international community across seven decades since the Second World War.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Bodega Strike Against Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland
For the Protesters at Standing Rock, It’s Back to Pipeline Purgatory

Chicago’s Violence and Trump’s Ominous Tweets

This week, President Donald Trump held a morning meeting with African-American supporters to celebrate Black History Month. Reading stiffly from a piece of paper, he allowed how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was someone whose “incredible example is unique in American history,” and described Frederick Douglass “as an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job.” The conversation soon pivoted to the present day. As those gathered around the table introduced themselves, Pastor Darrell Scott, of the New Spirit Revival Center, in Cleveland, told Trump that he had been contacted by “some of the top gang thugs in Chicago,” asking him to come meet with them so that they can “lower the body count.” Trump seemed to perk up at the mention of a city he has singled out before. “Chicago is totally out of control,” he said, a reference, no doubt, to last year’s seven hundred and sixty-four homicides and the nearly four thousand people wounded by gunfire. “If they’re not going to solve the problem,” he went on, “then we’re going to solve the problem for them.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Cover Story: John W. Tomac’s “Liberty’s Flameout”
World Leaders Receive Crank Calls from Someone Claiming to Be President of United States
Teaching Southern and Black History Under Trump

A Syrian Doctor Returns to Illinois

At 10:15 A.M. on Thursday, Dr. Amer Al Homssi walked toward a baggage carousel in Terminal 5 at Chicago-O’Hare International Airport, pulling a small red suitcase. Just past the exit, a crowd had gathered to greet him: relatives, lawyers, co-workers, friends, reporters, photographers, TV cameramen. One woman held a homemade sign decorated with hearts and stars: “DOC: YOU MAKE AMERICA GREAT.” A man carried a white poster hand-painted with red and blue letters: “CHICAGO ♡ DR. AL HOMSSI.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Cover Story: John W. Tomac’s “Liberty’s Flameout”
World Leaders Receive Crank Calls from Someone Claiming to Be President of United States
Chicago’s Violence and Trump’s Ominous Tweets

Have the Democrats Got the Right Supreme Court Strategy?

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, has his critics, but he is seldom accused of not knowing which way the wind is blowing. After making some early noises about coöperating with Donald Trump, and then voting for some of the new President’s Cabinet nominees, the sixty-six-year-old Democrat encountered a barrage of criticism from his Party’s supporters. On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators marched near his Brooklyn home and chanted, “Chuck! Chuck! Don’t sell us out! We need a fighter to knock Trump out!”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Cover Story: John W. Tomac’s “Liberty’s Flameout”
World Leaders Receive Crank Calls from Someone Claiming to Be President of United States
Chicago’s Violence and Trump’s Ominous Tweets