The Nation March 2024

GIVEN HOLLYWOOD’S INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR reboots, it’s surprising that we still haven’t seen Four Funerals and a Merger, or indeed any cinematic attempt to explore the dramatic potential posed by the ongoing decline of the news business. It’s true that in the contemporary version of His Girl Friday, editor Cary Grant would have taken a buyout or been put out to pasture well before crack reporter Rosalind Russell returned to the newsroom for one last scoop. (The hotshot reporter in a modern-day rendition of The Front Page—the 1931 version with two male leads—might well have followed through on his plan to give up journalism for the joys of married life and a career in advertising.) Even Marty Baron—the hero editor of Spotlight—ended his career as a bad-tempered apologist for Jeff…

A HEAD OF MICHIGAN’S PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY, I TRAVELED TO THE STATE TO meet with arab american leaders, students, and progressives upset over president biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. As a progressive member of Congress who strongly supports a permanent cease-fire with the release of all hostages, I was there to show respect, hear their concerns, and serve as a liaison to the administration as a member of President Biden’s national advisory board. My first meeting was at a coffee shop in Dearborn with leaders from Emgage—an organization dedicated to empowering Muslim American communities. Our conversation didn’t center on politics or the push to have Democrats vote “uncommitted” instead of for President Biden. Instead, Assad Turfe, the deputy executive of Wayne County, told me about how both of his…

WHAT WOULD A SECOND TRUMP TERM LOOK LIKE? In Trump’s first term, his menace was mitigated by his sloth, ignorance, and incompetence. Don’t count on that if he wins in the fall. This time, the right is intent on turning Trumpism into a governing agenda, as illustrated by the Heritage Foundation’s multimillion-dollar Project 2025. The project includes four elements: the 900-plus-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which details the right’s agenda for each major federal department; the “Playbook,” a still-secret compilation of initiatives for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration; a right-wing version of LinkedIn designed to recruit thousands of MAGA movement operatives to staff the government; and a Presidential Administration Academy to train them on how to operate. Heritage’s proudest moment was its 1980 “Mandate…

I WILL LEAVE IT TO OTHERS TO DISCUSS THE PRECedents for Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., from Thích Quang Đuc to Norman Morrison to Mohamed Bouazizi to Irina Slavina to Wynn Alan Bruce. Yes, this has happened before. The world has been a terrible place for too many, for too long, and for that reason, the rare few who are most inclined to feel that terror, to breathe in its ashes, have found no other option but to set themselves on fire in protest—so that others may be forced to breathe in some of those ashes too. A debate has erupted about how best to interpret Bushnell’s last act. Was it heroic? Pointless? Another opportunity to opine on the need for more robust mental health…

ON FEBRUARY 23, THE THIRD DAY OF THE CONSERVAtive Political Action Conference, Ryan Sanchez, who had been kicked out of the US Marine Corps for his involvement with white nationalists, sidled up to me at a table in the lobby of the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md. He had recognized me because of my reporting on the far-right movement. Sanchez had slicked-back hair and wore a black leather jacket over a black mock turtleneck. His friends buzzed around us while he talked at me; eventually he suggested that we pose for a photo together. I didn’t want to leave and cede ground to a bunch of extremists, but neither did I want to be photographed with them. I put my head down, covered my…

FOR A MOMENT IN 2021, IT WAS POSSIBLE TO BELIEVE that Joe Biden might pull US foreign policy out of the 20-year wreckage that he’d helped to create. Like almost every US politician after 9/11, Biden, then a senator, cheered the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. But by the time he became vice president in 2009, Biden recognized that the war had become a quagmire. While he wasn’t ready to pull up stakes, he advised Barack Obama against escalation, to no avail. When he was elected president himself, Biden inherited the agreement for a withdrawal from Afghanistan that Donald Trump had negotiated with the Taliban. Taking a big political risk, Biden seized the opportunity. The spectacle of desperate Afghans flocking to the Kabul airport during a Taliban military takeover created…