George Packer's Blog, page 92

Theresa May’s Empty Brexit Promises

Brexit has begun. On Tuesday evening, Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, signed a letter formally giving notice that the United Kingdom intends to leave the European Union. On Wednesday, Sir Tim Barlow, the U.K.’s Ambassador to the E.U., delivered the letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council. Next up: a long set of talks about the terms of Britain’s exit.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Pope Francis Proposes a Cure for Populism
How Geert Wilders, the Dutch Trump, Wins Even If He Loses
Britain Jumps Into a Brexit Wonderland

Donald Trump, Lost in Africa

The Trump Administration’s budget proposal for next year includes drastic cuts to a myriad of social services and programs, to environmental protection, education, public housing, and the arts and science. But there is something else buried under all of those line items: a call to completely eliminate the African Development Foundation, a government agency that gives grants worth thousands of dollars, in the form of seed capital and technical support, to community enterprises and small businesses on the African continent.

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Related:
How Trump Could Still Undermine Obamacare
Nunes Says He Held Russia Hearings Alone in His Apartment and They Went Great
Deutsche Bank, Mirror Trades, and More Russian Threads

Maybe the Earth Is Flat If You Are Kyrie Irving

One of my favorite basketball anecdotes involves George (Iceman) Gervin sitting in the locker room, sometime in the late nineteen-seventies, after hitting a game-winning shot. Journalists crowd him asking locker-room questions: “How did you do it?” “How did it feel?” “What were you thinking?” After a brief pause, Gervin responds, “The world is round.”

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Related:
The Political Athlete: Then and Now
The Ripple Effects of the Travel Ban on High-School Basketball
A Mathematician Confronts March Madness

The Problems with Trump’s D.C. Hotel Deal Aren’t Going Away

As the prospect of a Trump Presidency became real last year, a number of leading experts on ethics and corruption called on the U.S. General Services Administration, which oversees federal contracts, to cancel the Trump Organization’s lease to operate the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which is located in a building owned by the federal government. The President, they said, shouldn’t make money from a federal contract. Last week, the G.S.A. issued its ruling on the matter. In a hundred-and-sixty-six-page letter addressed to Donald Trump, Jr., a G.S.A. contracting officer named Kevin M. Terry declared that President Trump was “in full compliance” with the contract, and that anybody who disagreed was reaching “simplistic ‘black and white’ conclusions.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
White House Denies Any Ties to United States
How the White House and Republicans Blew Up the House Russia Investigation
Can Donald Trump Learn from Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill?

How the White House and Republicans Blew Up the House Russia Investigation

The evidence is now clear that the White House and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have worked together to halt what was previously billed as a sweeping investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election. “We’ve been frozen,” Jim Himes, a Democratic representative from Connecticut who is a member of the Committee, said.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
White House Denies Any Ties to United States
The Problems with Trump’s D.C. Hotel Deal Aren’t Going Away
Can Donald Trump Learn from Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill?

Pope Francis Proposes a Cure for Populism

Last Friday, twenty-seven heads of state gathered in Rome to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the treaty that established the European Economic Community, the progenitor of the European Union. Perhaps because of the setting, it seemed natural that Pope Francis should address them; he did so in the Sala Regia, the elegant barrel-vaulted hall adjacent to the Sistine Chapel. Francis is the beleaguered E.U.’s staunchest defender, and he rallied his audience by recalling the founders’ spirit. “In a world that was all too familiar with the tragedy of walls and divisions, it was clearly important to work for a united and open Europe, and for the removal of the unnatural barrier that divided the continent from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic,” he said. “What efforts were made to tear down that wall! Yet today the memory of those efforts has been lost.” Francis rattled off the economic, social, institutional, and humanitarian crises facing Europe, but he had no need to mention explicitly the most pressing crisis of all—Brexit, which comes to a head this week, as Prime Minister Theresa May (who was not in Rome) formally begins Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How Elizabeth Warren Found a Villain in Andy Puzder
The Awkward Attempt to Find Comedy in the Refugee Crisis
Pope Francis Is the Anti-Trump

Can Donald Trump Learn from Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill?

On April 28, 1982, fifteen months into his first term, President Ronald Reagan went up to Capitol Hill to meet with Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House. The two Irish-American politicians had to that point been bitter enemies. As Reagan had pursued his conservative agenda of tax cuts, a military buildup, and deregulation, O’Neill had done everything he could to resist. Now, though, with the budget deficit rising and the markets getting concerned about Washington’s solvency, the Republican and the Democrat needed each other’s help. The White House wanted to cut domestic spending, including Social Security. O’Neill wanted to safeguard entitlement programs and reverse some of Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
White House Denies Any Ties to United States
The Problems with Trump’s D.C. Hotel Deal Aren’t Going Away
How the White House and Republicans Blew Up the House Russia Investigation

The Gong Show, with Donald Trump

In the summer of 1976, the television producer Chuck Barris brought to NBC his most successful idea: “The Gong Show,” which today is probably remembered more for its name than its content. The idea was to let distinctly odd performers compete before a panel of B-list celebrities. If an act was atrocious (for instance, the Worms, three men in tights who jumped around before wriggling on the floor), a panel member would hit the gong, a signal to stop. The show was a ratings hit, and critics, naturally, hated it; John J. O’Connor, of the Times, for instance, thought that it came “very close to cruelty,” and fell “between the treacherous television stools of cupidity and cynicism.” But what do critics know? The mischievous Barris, who died this month at the age of eighty-seven, once told Salon that “a really bad review means the show will be on for years”; a Times obituary noted that some of Barris’s more notorious inventions, such as “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game,” stuck around for decades. In all this, one can see the roots of modern reality television, and of fare like “Celebrity Apprentice,” which was originally hosted by the real-estate brander Donald J. Trump, who since January 20th has been the President of the United States.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
White House Denies Any Ties to United States
The Problems with Trump’s D.C. Hotel Deal Aren’t Going Away
How the White House and Republicans Blew Up the House Russia Investigation

What the Russian Protests Mean for Putin

Sunday in Moscow was a bright spring day, chilly but clear, and by the time I made my way to Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s main thoroughfare, the sidewalks were full of people strolling up, toward Pushkin Square, and down, toward Red Square and the red-brick towers of the Kremlin. They had come out for a march led by Alexey Navalny, Russia’s savviest and most popular opposition politician, who had declared a nationwide day of anti-corruption action. The protest was one of mere presence, rather than any specific activity: a few people held signs, and every now and then a chant broke out, but the main political statement of the day was simply showing up.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Russia Problem Is Far from Marginal
Your Russian Connection: Is There Any There, There?
How the White House Got James Comey Wrong

Can We Slow Global Warming and Still Grow?

On March 17th, the International Energy Agency announced that 2016 marked the third year in a row that global carbon emissions had stayed at the same level while the world’s economy grew. This three-time repeat has put to rest any lingering suspicions of gremlins in the data. Something new is happening. The global economy has now grown nearly ten per cent without any increase in the annual CO2 emissions that are the principal human contribution to climate change. In the parlance of sustainability, growth and emissions appear to have “decoupled.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
When Is It Time to Retreat from Climate Change?
“Get Out” and the Death of White Racial Innocence
Two NASA Engineers Try Out Politics