George Packer's Blog, page 115

Trump Makes the Global Gag Rule on Abortion Even Worse

In 1984, at a population conference in Mexico City, the Reagan Administration brought domestic abortion politics into the arena of international aid for the first time. The Administration declared that “the United States does not consider abortion an acceptable element of family planning programs and will no longer contribute to those of which it is a part.” The so-called Mexico City Policy has been in effect for seventeen of the past thirty-two years—espoused by every Republican Administration, renounced under every Democratic one, including that of President Barack Obama. One of the policy’s requirements is that the United States not contribute to nongovernmental organizations that “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.” To receive American funding for any of their family-planning work, in other words, groups would have to promise that they wouldn’t even speak of abortion—hence the nickname that the policy’s exasperated critics soon coined: the global gag rule.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Why Republicans Won’t Break with Trump

Tom Price’s Confirmation Hearing Muddies the Swamp

On Tuesday, at the confirmation hearing for Representative Tom Price, of Georgia, for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, asked him, “Does it burn you that they want to hold you to a different standard, now that you’re a nominee, than they are as a member?” The “they” were Democrats who had raised questions about Price’s trading in the stocks of companies that the House committees he sat on helped to regulate; in one case, this had involved a private placement of a stock—its sale, that is, to a few people the company chose, rather than on the open market—at a below-market price. That didn’t bother Burr; indeed, what he and other Republicans found disturbing—scandalous, even—was that anyone would question these dealings. Burr spoke in a sad, low tone of circumspect rage, with an expression one might reserve for a martyr, and Price, with a modest smile, responded as such.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Why Republicans Won’t Break with Trump

Europe’s Populists Prepare for a Nationalist Spring

On January 20th, as Donald Trump was taking the oath of office, in Washington, populist leaders from across Europe were arriving in a quiet city on the Rhine. Early the next morning, French, German, Italian, Austrian, and Dutch nationalists stood together on a stage in Koblenz, a central German town that has been associated with political countercurrents since it harbored aristocrats during the French Revolution. Their national flags flew behind them as they greeted what they called the “birth of a new world.” “Yesterday, a new America,” Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, proclaimed to a hall filled with about a thousand attendees, most of them sturdy men in dark suits. “Tomorrow, a new Europe.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Donald Trump’s New World Disorder

On his first full working day as President, Donald Trump chose to get things going by signing an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a fledgling free-trade agreement that brought together a dozen Pacific Rim nations, including Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam. Future historians may look back on the signing as an event of epochal importance.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, January 24th

A Bad Day for the Environment, with Many More to Come

Tuesday began with news that the Trump Administration had imposed a comprehensive gag order on employees of the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a leaked memo, “no press releases,” “no blog messages,” and “no social media will be going out,” and “no new content can be placed on any website” until further notice—perhaps an attempt to camouflage the other big E.P.A. announcement, which was that the agency’s grants and contracts had been temporarily frozen, effectively halting its work. Then, at nine o’clock, the President had breakfast with a group of beaming auto executives. Trump told them that he was “to a large extent an environmentalist,” but apparently his long participation in that movement had persuaded him that “environmentalism is out of control.” The last time Detroit’s C.E.O.s came to the White House, in 2011, President Obama got them to agree, grudgingly, to increase average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon, a pledge they now hope to recant. The day went on. Just before noon—surrounded by his increasingly familiar cast of white guys in suits—Trump signed an executive order expediting approvals for the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, thus overturning perhaps the two biggest environmental victories of the Obama years, both of which the advocacy organization I helped found, 350.org, fought for vigorously.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Donald Trump’s New World Disorder
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Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, January 24th

The Gas-Price Protests Gripping Mexico

In the days leading to President Trump’s Inauguration, most eyes in the United States were directed toward the spectacle of his transition, the confirmation process of his dubious appointments, and the drama of his incendiary rhetoric. The same was true for many residents below the southern border, where Mexicans were curious about what the new Administration would mean for their own country. But there was an even more immediate, and important, concern occupying Mexicans’ attention: the mass outcry over the dramatic rise in gas prices, called the gasolinazo, that accompanied the recent privatization of the oil industry. The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, confronting a weakening currency and rising inflation, removed fuel subsidies in order to conserve funds and attract investment. Prices leaped up twenty per cent, and the country revolted.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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J. J. Redick’s Part-Time Job

Last March, J. J. Redick, a guard for the Los Angeles Clippers, confessed some of the worst financial mistakes he had made as a professional athlete. Shortly after being drafted by the Magic, in 2006, for instance, Redick purchased a house in Orlando, which he eventually sold at a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Later, he splurged on a Porsche, which caused him back problems, before selling it two months later. And, at a charity auction, he bought a custom yellow golf cart with chrome rims, which didn’t have space to hold golf clubs. (He got rid of that, too.) “I think youth may have something to do with these bad decisions,” he said. “God, I was stupid.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Sean Spicer’s Abnormal Press Conference

Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, made it clear in his first official briefing that, like his boss, he would break with Washington precedents. After he stepped to the lectern yesterday and read a lengthy readout of the President’s day—three Presidential memoranda signed and several meetings with corporate C.E.O.s, union officials, and congressional leaders—he called on his first news organization, the New York Post.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Donald Trump’s New World Disorder
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Trump’s Vainglorious Affront to the C.I.A.

The death of Robert Ames, who was America’s top intelligence officer for the Middle East, is commemorated among the hundred and seventeen stars on the white marble Memorial Wall at C.I.A. headquarters, in Langley, Virginia. He served long years in the region’s hellholes—Beirut; Tehran; Sanaa, Yemen; Kuwait City; and Cairo—often in the midst of war or turmoil. Along the way, Ames cultivated pivotal U.S. operatives and sources, even within the Palestine Liberation Organization when it ranked as the world’s top terrorist group. In April, 1983, as chief of the C.I.A.’s Near East division, back in Washington, Ames returned to Beirut for consultations as Lebanon’s civil war raged.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Scenes from the Women’s March on Washington
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Scenes from the Women’s March on Washington

The Women’s March on Washington, yesterday: women, men, girls, boys, trans people, old, young, black, white, brown, Asian, gay, straight, sighted, blind, babies in strollers, people in wheelchairs, people with walkers, immigrants, second-generationers, students, Canadians, Muslims, Jews, Rosie the Riveters, Princess Leias, everybody coming from everywhere. My little group—two women, one man—was dressed plainly and practically, various survival items tucked into our pockets and our tiny, march-approved bags. Around 8:30 A.M. at the Metro station in Bethesda, Maryland, streams of people, pink hats everywhere. A man in an Abe Lincoln getup, complete with stovepipe hat, held a sign that said “STANDING TALL WITH WOMEN.” Friends texted and posted photos of their own pink-hatted planefuls, busfuls, carfuls, coming in from north, south, and west. At each Metro stop, big crowds on each platform, too many to fit, and hearty cheering at every influx of people—“Whoo!”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump’s New World Disorder
A Bad Day for the Environment, with Many More to Come
Drawing the Women’s March and the Way Forward