George Packer's Blog, page 65
June 16, 2017
The Link Between Domestic Violence and Mass Shootings
June 15, 2017
The Urban Protesters Defying Vladimir Putin in Russia
June 14, 2017
Mass Shootings Don���t Change the Gun-Control Debate
June 13, 2017
Where Trump Learned to Love Ritualized Flattery
Where Trump Learned To Love Ritualized Flattery
Donald Trump is not, by all accounts, a great reader. But he’s memorized the Roy Cohn playbook, and in his first Cabinet meeting, yesterday, he consulted a page from it: the one on ritualized flattery.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Man Ravaged by Amnesia Somehow Able to Hold Down Demanding Legal Job
Nick Nichols’s Arresting Intimacy with the Wild World
The Warriors’ Torrential Victory
The Warriors’ Torrential Victory
It is over. The floor is strewn with confetti and small children. N.B.A.-championship celebrations used to be backroom affairs; the players didn’t linger to commiserate, they escaped into the champagne-drenched oasis of the locker room. That’s where Jordan clutched his trophy and cried, thinking of his dead father. This time, Cleveland’s players exit stage left. It’s an orderly procession. LeBron and the other Cavaliers are shown walking toward their locker room in a dark tunnel that seems only to be lit with a black light; parts of his sneakers glow, but everything else is in shadow. Out in the bright arena, everyone stands up and goes nowhere—except for the kids, who mobilize.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Alex Honnold’s Perfect Climb
The Loneliness of LeBron James
An Ode to Bartolo Colón, the Oldest, Stoutest Player in Baseball, on His Birthday
Why So Many Republicans Still Grovel to Trump
Donald Trump is the first President in history to have a Cabinet meeting go viral. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must watch the video of Trump going around the table on Monday morning and eliciting gushing testimonials and expressions of loyalty from his own appointees.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Is Trump Now a Subject of the Mueller Investigation?
A Lawsuit Attacks the Marketing of the Presidency
The Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump’s Travel Ban Again
Is Trump Now a Subject of the Mueller Investigation?
If the former F.B.I. director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee is to be believed, one of the driving factors that led Donald Trump to fire Comey was the F.B.I. chief’s reluctance to publicly state that the President was not a subject of the Russia investigation. But is he now? While the Justice Department and Robert Mueller, the special counsel, have not commented on whether they are investigating Trump, several former federal prosecutors told me that if he’s not yet, he soon will be—or at least should be.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Why So Many Republicans Still Grovel to Trump
A Lawsuit Attacks the Marketing of the Presidency
The Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump’s Travel Ban Again
A Lawsuit Attacks the Marketing of the Presidency
On the same day that President Trump gathered his Cabinet secretaries around him for a televised display of acclamation and declared, contrary to the evidence of his legislative record, “Never has there been a President, with few exceptions, who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done,” two state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court suggesting that Trump’s most significant achievement as President has been “unprecedented constitutional violations.”
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Why So Many Republicans Still Grovel to Trump
Is Trump Now a Subject of the Mueller Investigation?
The Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump’s Travel Ban Again
The Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump’s Travel Ban Again
Did President Donald Trump’s travel ban violate the Constitution, or just the law? Late last month, the Fourth Circuit found that the executive order in question, which suspends the entry into the United States of people from six predominantly Muslim countries and of all refugees, was a blatant act of religious prejudice, and so was barred by the Establishment Clause. It upheld a lower court’s nationwide injunction blocking the executive order. The Ninth Circuit, in a ruling on Monday, also upheld a different lower court’s order putting the ban on hold, but on the grounds that Trump had exceeded his powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The two decisions—10–3 in the Fourth Circuit and 3–0 in the Ninth—led to the same place, and are in no way mutually exclusive; the Ninth Circuit emphasized that it hadn’t found on the constitutional question only because it didn’t need to: the order was flawed enough on statutory grounds, and the tradition of American jurisprudence is to avoid making grand constitutional pronouncements unless it is necessary. What the Ninth Court did, though, was give the Supreme Court more choices when it rules on the travel ban, as it almost certainly will.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Why So Many Republicans Still Grovel to Trump
Is Trump Now a Subject of the Mueller Investigation?
A Lawsuit Attacks the Marketing of the Presidency
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