The New Yorker: Politics And More

In January, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell passed a career milestone: he became the Senate’s longest-serving party leader. Since then, McConnell has suffered a number of health setbacks. This includes a fall and subsequent concussion in March and, most recently, a medical episode at a press conference in which he abruptly froze while taking questions, standing silent and motionless for more than thirty seconds. At age eighty-one, McConnell is hardly the only politician showing his years: the two leading Presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, are the two oldest Presidents in history. Susan B. Glasser, a staff writer and a co-host of the Political Scene’s Washington Roundtable, recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker about what she calls “America’s fragile gerontocracy.” She joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how baby boomers continue to dominate our political system, and what this could mean for the 2024 Presidential election.

Bob Woodward has been writing about the White House for more than fifty years, going toe to toe with nearly every President after Richard Nixon. Woodward is every inch the reporter, not one to editorialize. But, during his interviews with Donald Trump at the time of the COVID-19 crisis, Woodward found himself shouting at the President—explaining how to make a decision, and trying to browbeat him into listening to public-health experts. Woodward has released audio recordings of some of their interviews in a new audiobook called “The Trump Tapes,” which documents details of Trump’s state of mind, and also of Woodward’s process and craft. Despite having written critically of Trump in 2018, Woodward found his access unprecedented. “I could call him anytime, [and] he would call me,” Woodward tells David Remnick. His wife, Elsa Walsh, “used to joke [that] there’s three of us in the marriage.”

It’s been eighteen months since Russia invaded Ukraine. In that time, Russia has annexed four Ukrainian territories; the mercenary Wagner Group staged a coup against Putin, and then its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a mysterious plane explosion; Ukraine mounted a successful counter-offensive, and then a less successful one, which is currently ongoing. All the while, the U.S. has engaged in what seems like a proxy war with Russia, imposing extensive sanctions and providing thirty billion dollars in weapons, training, and intelligence to Ukraine. Some foreign-policy experts are questioning this strategy. Keith Gessen, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, has been covering the war in Ukraine since its beginning. This week, he published a piece titled “The Case for Negotiating with Russia,” about the analysts who are pushing for diplomacy over warfare. He joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the state of the conflict, and why it’s the U.S. that could ultimately decide how it ends.

The Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut was named after an N.F.L. player who died of exertional heatstroke. The lab’s main research subjects have been athletes, members of the military, and laborers. But, with climate change, even mild exertion under extreme heat will affect more and more of us; in many parts of the United States, a heat wave and power outage could cause a substantial number of fatalities. Dhruv Khullar, a New Yorker contributor and practicing physician, visited the Stringer Institute to undergo a heat test—walking uphill for ninety minutes in a hundred-and-four-degree temperature—to better understand what’s happening. “I just feel puffy everywhere,” Khullar sighed. “You’d have to cut my finger off just to get my wedding ring off.” By the end of the test, Khullar spoke of cramps, dizziness, and a headache. He discussed the dangers of heatstroke with Douglas Casa, the lab’s head (who himself nearly died of it as a young athlete). “Climate change has taken this into the ev

The Washington Roundtable: In the first debate of the Republican Presidential primary, which took place in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, six of the eight potential nominees onstage raised their hands to indicate that, if Donald Trump is their party’s choice, they will support him—even if he is convicted in a court of law. Trump wasn’t present. The following day, the former President had his mug shot taken in a Fulton County jail. Trump was booked on thirteen charges, among them that he, along with eighteen others, conducted a “criminal enterprise” to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia. The two events signal the G.O.P.’s dilemma regarding Trump, and his grip on the contest for the nomination. What motivates the Republican primary contenders to defend a man whom they are ostensibly trying to defeat? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos weigh in.

In this week’s magazine, Ronan Farrow has published a major story about the business practices of Elon Musk. Farrow, who has reported extensively on abuses of power for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Musk has become an essential yet unofficial part of American governance, holding the keys to the green transition, the space race, and even the war in Ukraine. The reason for this, Farrow explains, is not Musk’s outrageous personality; it’s the structures of neoliberal capitalism that allowed a person like Musk to ascend. Read more by Ronan Farrow on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, Britney Spears’s conservatorship, and the Israeli surveillance agency Black Cube.

Even in a summer of record-breaking heat and disasters, Republican Presidential candidates have ignored or mocked climate change. But some conservative legislators in Congress recognize that action is necessary. Their ideas about how to tackle the problem, however, depart from the consensus that is dominant among Democrats. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who represents Iowa’s first district, is vice-chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus and a former head of the Iowa Department of Public Health. “Where there’s difference among individuals is with what urgency people believe there needs to be change. I believe that having rapid change without having affordable, available energy is not a solution,” she tells David Remnick. Miller-Meeks extols innovation in the private sector, but feels that mandates on electric vehicles would drive up costs too much for rural consumers. With a goal of reducing fossil-fuel consumption, she says, environmentalists need to reconsider their desire to remove hydroelectric dams to resto

The Washington Roundtable: It has been a summer of history-making indictments against Donald Trump. This week, he received his fourth—this one from Georgia, where the former President and eighteen co-defendants are accused of conducting a “criminal enterprise” to reverse his 2020 defeat in the battleground state. Despite all of Trump’s legal troubles, he remains the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024, and a rematch with Joseph Biden appears imminent. Yet history cautions that, with fifteen months to go before Election Day, all kinds of factors could derail his campaign. How damaging are these criminal charges in Georgia? Can anything actually shake up the race? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos weigh in.

The practice of legacy admissions—preferential consideration of the children of alumni—has emerged as a national flash point since the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in June. Even some prominent Republicans are joining the Biden Administration in calling for its end. David Remnick speaks with the U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, about the politics behind college admissions. Cardona sees legacy preference as part of a pattern that discourages many students from applying to selective schools, but notes that it is not the whole problem. How can access to higher education, he asks, be more equitable when the quality of K-12 education is so inequitable?    Plus, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School, looks at the problems facing admissions officers now that race cannot be a consideration in maintaining diversity. Gersen has been reporting for The New Yorker on the legal fight over affirmative action and the movement to end legacy admissions. She speaks with the dean of admissions

Andrew Marantz, in the August 14th, 2023, issue of The New Yorker, wrote about Leah Hunt-Hendrix, a major donor to progressive causes whose grandfather was a politically conservative oil tycoon. Hunt-Hendrix’s use of her money and influence to support progressive social movements is remarkable in that the goals of these projects run counter to her class interests, and even aim to put her family’s company out of business: raising taxes on the rich, pushing for more corporate regulation, and passing a Green New Deal. She funds grassroots organizations, and also co-founded the political organization Way to Win, which works to elect candidates on the left. In this episode of the Political Scene, Marantz, a guest host, invites the writer Anand Giridharadas to discuss the unexpected nexus between big money and movement politics. Giridharadas is the author of four books, including, most recently, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and “The Persuaders: Winning Hearts and Minds in a Divided Ag

The New Yorker Radio Hour: Last month, the country singer Jason Aldean released a music video for “Try That in a Small Town,” a song that initially received little attention. But the video cast the song’s lyrics in a new light. While Aldean sings, “Try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / ’Round here, we take care of our own,” images of protests against police brutality are interspersed with Aldean singing outside a county courthouse where a lynching once took place. Aldean’s defenders—and there are many—say the song praises small-town values and respect for the law, rather than promoting violence and vigilantism. The controversy eventually pushed the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The staff writer Emily Nussbaum has been reporting from Nashville throughout the past few months on the very complicated politics of country music. On the one hand, she found a self-perpetuating culture war, fuelled by outrage; on the other, there’s a music scene that’s diversifying, with inc

The Washington Roundtable: This week, in a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to four charges in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the January 6th insurrection. Those include counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States, to obstruct an official proceeding, and to oppress citizens’ rights to vote. This third Trump criminal indictment is the most serious and far-reaching yet, going to the heart of the former President’s efforts to undermine American democracy. The trial, which will coincide with the height of campaign season, could create a number of “constitutional sci-fi” scenarios. Hosted by the New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos.

On June 23, 2023, tanks rolled into Moscow and into the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and troops surrounded military and government buildings. They were fighters from the Wagner Group, a private battalion. The group’s leader is Yevgeny Prigozhin, who sold hot dogs and ran a restaurant on a boat where Putin liked to dine before he became the head of this mercenary outfit. On that June day, he was initiating the strongest challenge to the Kremlin since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Joshua Yaffa has written an extraordinary piece about the Wagner Group’s global reach, its brutal battlefield tactics in Ukraine, and its mysterious decision to mutiny. He joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss it, and to examine how Prigozhin became such a strange and significant player within Russia’s military apparatus.

Nearly one in ten Americans owe significant medical debt, a burden that can become crippling as living costs and interest rates rise. Over the past decade, a nonprofit called RIP Medical Debt has designed a novel approach to chip away at this problem. The organization solicits donations to purchase portfolios of medical debt on the debt market, where the debt trades at steeply discounted prices. Then, instead of attempting to collect on it as a normal buyer would, they forgive the debt. The staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar reports on one North Carolina church that partnered with RIP Medical Debt as part of its charitable mission. Trinity Moravian Church collected around fifteen thousand dollars in contributions to acquire and forgive over four million dollars of debt in their community. “We have undertaken a number of projects in the past but there’s never been anything quite like this,” the Reverend John Jackman tells Kolhatkar. “For families that we know cannot deal with these things, we’re taking the weight

The Washington Roundtable: This week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy moved one step closer to calling for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Biden, on the grounds that Biden has used the “weaponization of government to benefit his family.” For years, Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese companies have been the focus of Republicans’ efforts to undermine the President, although investigations in the House and Senate have found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden in relation to his son’s business dealings. Also this week, the federal judge Maryellen Noreika, in Wilmington, Delaware, put the brakes on Hunter Biden’s plea deal for tax and gun-possession crimes. Hunter Biden is not the first family member of a President to cause political headaches; the brothers of Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Clinton preceded him. What should we make of the latest news about the President’s son? More broadly, how do Oval Office political scandals arise and take hold of the public’s imagination?

This summer, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are on strike together for the first time in sixty-three years. At the same time, hotel workers across Southern California are organizing coordinated rolling work stoppages. The Teamsters just successfully negotiated substantial wage increases and averted a strike for workers at UPS. But now the United Auto Workers, whose contract is up in September, are threatening to strike. What is behind all of this labor unrest? Is it a lingering effect of the pandemic, or something larger? E. Tammy Kim, a contributing writer and a former lawyer, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the forces that led to what organizers are calling “hot labor summer,” and to imagine what may come after.

In making “Oppenheimer,” which opens in theatres this weekend, the director Christopher Nolan relied on a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography of the father of the atomic bomb, “American Prometheus,” by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Bird is credited as a writer of Nolan’s movie, and he spoke with David Remnick about Oppenheimer’s life story—in particular, about the ambivalence that the scientist felt, and expressed publicly, about the use of the bomb, which led to a McCarthyist show trial that destroyed his career and reputation. “He’s very complicated and he’s highly intelligent, so he’s capable of understanding and holding in his head contradictory ideas,” Bird says. On the one hand, “He feared that if [the bomb] was not used, or the war ended without the use of this weapon, the next war was going to be fought by two nuclear-armed adversaries and it would be Armageddon.” On the other hand, after Hiroshima, Oppenheimer used his status as a celebrity scientist to educate the public about the dange

The Washington Roundtable: The midsummer Presidential campaign is full of surprises, including a deluge of upcoming legal battles for the G.O.P. front-runner, former President Donald Trump. Recent federal disclosures have painted a preliminary picture of the race to raise money taking place between Republican primary contenders. The campaign of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who was initially viewed as a powerful competitor to Donald Trump in the Republican primary, has spent much of its cash and been forced to lay off staff. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels hosted an event in New Hampshire this week co-headlined by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, and former Utah Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, raising concerns among Democrats of a possible third-party “unity ticket” shaking up the race. Plus, Trump may face his third indictment—this time, for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. In a separate case against Trump, regarding classified do

Many Americans have been fascinated by the story of Hunter Biden, who has allegedly leveraged his father’s prominence for his own financial gain. Hunter’s spiral into alcoholism and drug addiction has been chronicled by the press. Recently, federal prosecutors announced a deal in which Hunter would plead guilty to two tax charges and be sentenced to two years of probation, bringing a five-year-long investigation into his business dealings to an end.  In July, 2019, The New Yorker published a groundbreaking investigation titled “The Untold History of the Biden Family.” Its author, Adam Entous, uncovered the rags-to-riches-to-rags story behind the President’s modest upbringing in Scranton. It’s a very different tale from the one that Joe Biden has shared with the public, replete with polo matches, war profiteering, addiction, and scandal. It’s a story that, until recently, even the President and his children may not have known in full. It provides crucial context for the Hunter Biden saga, and a deeper understa

No Labels, which pitches itself as a centrist movement to appeal to disaffected voters, has secured a considerable amount of funding and is working behind the scenes to get on Presidential ballots across the country. The group has yet to announce a candidate, but “most likely we’ll have both a Republican and Democrat on the ticket,” Pat McCrory, the former governor of North Carolina and one of the leaders of No Labels, tells David Remnick. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are reportedly under consideration, but McCrory will not name names, nor offer any specifics on the group’s platform, including regarding critical issues such as abortion and gun rights. That opacity is by design, Sue Halpern, who has covered the group, says. “The one reason why I think they haven’t put forward a candidate is once they do that, then they are required to do all the things that political parties do,” she says. “At the moment, they’re operating like a PAC, essentially. They don’t have to say who their donors are.” Third-