George Packer's Blog, page 85

Jon Ossoff and the Future of the Democratic Party

In a congressional special election in suburban Atlanta last night, Jon Ossoff, a thirty-year-old Democrat, won far more votes than any Republican challenger, but not quite enough to avoid a runoff with a former Georgia secretary of state named Karen Handel. The progressive energy of the first months of the Trump Administration had gathered behind Ossoff, and his campaign raised more than eight million dollars, an astonishing amount, much of it in small donations from around the country. Some of the progressive enthusiasm had to do with the sense of possibility—prosperous Southern suburbs trended toward Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election—but it was also about the sheer thrill of planting a flag in enemy territory. The seat, in Georgia’s Sixth District, was once held by Newt Gingrich. Speaking around midnight, Ossoff conceded that the election might soon move to a runoff. “But let me tell you this,” he said. “There is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages.” His chances in the runoff, two months away, are something like fifty-fifty.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump, North Korea, and the Case of the Phantom Armada
The Conservative Agenda for Gorsuch’s First Week
The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal

Theresa May and the Crisis of British Progressivism

Last September, Andrew Marr, the host of a Sunday morning political show on the BBC, interviewed Theresa May, the Conservative Party politician who had succeeded David Cameron as Britain’s Prime Minister after the Leave side’s narrow victory in the Brexit referendum, in June. With the Conservatives holding a big lead in opinion polls over the opposition Labour Party, Marr asked May whether she was tempted to call a snap general election, which could conceivably have enlarged her government’s narrow majority in the House of Commons.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Unite, Unite Europe! A Protest in Favor of the European Union
Theresa May’s Empty Brexit Promises
Britain Jumps Into a Brexit Wonderland

The Conservative Agenda for Gorsuch’s First Week

Neil Gorsuch takes his seat on the Supreme Court this week and will immediately have a chance to make his mark with a case that involves one of the top priorities for the conservative movement: lowering the barriers between church and state. The issue has long been a priority for conservatives, on the Court and elsewhere. But the complexion of the controversy has changed in recent years, as those on the right have become more aggressive in pressing constitutional arguments. At one point, the issues in this area were fairly straightforward, if largely symbolic. Could a Christmas crèche be displayed on municipal property? (Yes, as long as there are, say, plastic reindeer as well as the baby Jesus.) Can a student deliver a prayer before a high-school football game? (Yes, in the stands, but not over the public-address system.)

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal
The Trump Era Tests the True Power of Sanctuary Cities
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 18th

The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal

Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America’s largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition. These intercepts were not related to the heart of the committee’s Russia investigation. In fact, only one of the documents had anything to do with Russia, according to an official who reviewed them.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Conservative Agenda for Gorsuch’s First Week
The Trump Era Tests the True Power of Sanctuary Cities
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 18th

The Trump Era Tests the True Power of Sanctuary Cities

Ever since Donald Trump became President, mayors and city council members in “sanctuary cities”—places where local law-enforcement officials limit their coöperation with immigration agents—have promised to resist the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants. The new Administration has responded with threats (to cut sanctuary cities’ funding), reprisals (like launching more raids in specific jurisdictions), and accusations (that these cities are making the country less safe). City leaders have, in turn, criticized immigration raids, and raised money to pay for the legal bills of residents who’ve been arrested. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) answers to the federal government, not to local officeholders, and as it continues to expand the scope and reach of its activity, the limits of city power are becoming increasingly clear.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Conservative Agenda for Gorsuch’s First Week
The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 18th

The Delicate Task of Memorializing the Boston Marathon Attacks

The most emblematic monuments to the victims of terrorist bombings and mass shootings may be the city-storage rooms that house, in carefully labelled folders and acid-free boxes, the posters, letters, stuffed animals, and other items that people place in makeshift memorials at sites of violence. The city of Boston, which commemorated the fourth anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing on Saturday, oversees an archive of thousands of cards, banners, and other paper and cloth materials left at Copley Square after five people were killed and more than two hundred wounded in the attacks; it stores larger items outside the city, including thousands of pairs of pristine running shoes, purchased specifically for the temporary memorial. Few people have asked to see the items in person, a city archivist told me, maybe because the collection is digitized and posted online.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
“Patriots Day,” a Police Procedural for the Age of Surveillance
American Presidential Campaigns in the Age of Terror
Terror in Brussels

Facebook and the Murderer

In mid-September, 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and chief executive officer of Facebook, broadcast, from his company’s headquarters in San Francisco, the first live video shown on his social-media platform. He wore a gray T-shirt. He spoke cheerfully about “our community.” He showed off “all kinds of cool stuff” on his desk. “At Facebook, no one has offices,” he said. He then walked into a conference room, where he took some meetings behind closed doors. He pointed to the walls. “It’s all glass,” he said. “We want to create this very open and transparent culture in our company.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Introducing the New Yorker Poetry Bot
The Not-So-Surprising Survival of Foursquare
Welcome to Facebook TV

A Woman’s Quest to Prove Her Brother’s Innocence Leads to a Discovery

In 2011, Kalimah Truesdale was at her job as a sales associate at Home Depot when she got a phone call informing her that her brother had just been arrested. Two years earlier, a teen-age boy had been shot to death in their old neighborhood—and now her twenty-five-year-old brother, Steven Odiase, had been charged with the murder. “What really didn’t make any sense was the fact that they said my brother was shooting at a kid,” she said. “I was, like, ‘No way!’ “

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Faces Behind Craigslist’s “Strictly Platonic” Personal Ads
A Break, but No Freedom Yet, for a Bronx Man Convicted in a Shaky Murder Case
Losing a Son in the New York State Prisons

The Trump Resistance: A Progress Report

Saturday was mild and cloudy in Philadelphia—good marching weather for the thousands of anti-Trump protestors who gathered at City Hall and made their way down Market Street to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The atmosphere was upbeat—festive, almost. Many members of the crowd were carrying homemade signs, and their chants filled the spring air: “What do we want? Trump’s tax returns. When do we want it? Now.” “We want a leader, not a tax cheater. We want a leader, not a friggin’ tweeter.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Olympic Bidding in the Age of Trump and Le Pen
Daily Cartoon: Monday, April 17th
Ivanka’s Notes for the Babysitter

Turkey’s Vote Makes Erdoğan Effectively a Dictator

Fifteen years ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the hope of the Islamic world. He was an Islamist, of course, but that was part of his appeal. As the mayor of Istanbul, one of the world’s great cities, Erdoğan had governed as a charismatic and smart technocrat. He’d served time in prison, in 1999—for reading a poem that seemed to celebrate militant Islam—but his jailers had been the country’s rigid, military-backed secular leaders who, by then, seemed as suited to the present day as dinosaurs. When Erdoğan became Prime Minister, in 2003, every leader in the West wanted him to succeed. In a world still trying to make sense of the 9/11 attacks, he seemed like a bridge between cultures.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A Journalist in Exile Awaits Turkey’s Momentous Referendum
A Mysterious Case Involving Turkey, Iran, and Rudy Giuliani
A Last Chance for Turkish Democracy