Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i The Nation

IF YOU BELIEVE THE HEADLINES, THE SPECTER haunting the minds of Democrats today is not communism but the shadow of Chicago 1968, when young people protesting the Vietnam War—and the machine-backed nomination of Hubert Humphrey (presented to the Democratic National Convention though he hadn’t won a single primary)— flooded into the city, where they were met by Mayor Richard Daley’s cops. The ensuing riot, broadcast on national television, is widely blamed for propelling Richard Nixon into the White House. If Israel is still using American weapons to kill Palestinian civilians this August, the anti-war movement may well show up in Chicago again. Even so, it strains credulity that, as Politico recently reported, “some in Biden’s orbit are aggressively pushing” the Democrats to adopt a hybrid mode for their 2024 convention,…

WHEN LESLIE MOVED TO NATICK, MASSACHUSETTS, an outer suburb of Boston, it seemed to her like an “extremely welcoming place.” There were rainbow flags everywhere; three-quarters of its voters went for Biden. When her child came out as nonbinary, they had a “pretty decent” time at their public school. Leslie (a pseudonym) wasn’t surprised: Massachusetts has long prided itself on being at the leading edge of LGBTQ equality. In 2003, it became the first state to legalize marriage equality, and over the past 15 years it has passed laws that prohibit discrimination against trans people and ban conversion therapy. As red and purple states have been consumed by fights over bathroom bans and gender-affirming care for minors, Massachusetts has charted a different course, enshrining the right to such care. In…

CONTEMPT FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S PROGRESSIVE base is a sure path to Donald Trump’s return. A specter haunts the Democratic Party: the ghost of Clintonism, an ideology that’s been discredited at the ballot box yet still retains a mysteriously powerful hold on party elders. Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, when she lost a winnable election to a political novice who scored the highest disapproval polling numbers in modern American history, should have sounded the death knell for her brand of politics. Clintonism is all about triangulation—which in practice means building elite comity with establishment Republicans while disdaining populist forces on the right or the left. Pioneered by Bill Clinton in the 1990s with his attack on the rapper Sister Souljah, this strategy initially enjoyed some success—but in the long run…

Why do so many Americans seem to worship the Constitution? In his new book, The Constitutional Bind, Aziz Rana argues that today’s reverence for the document—among both Democrats and Republicans—is a distinctive product of the 20th century and the Cold War. Over the years, the US Constitution became the lodestar, globally, for proper governance. The result is a bind, Rana argues, that prevents any redrafting of the Constitution to reflect new and pressing political and socioeconomic realities. The Nation spoke with Rana recently about how our current constitutional bind can be broken. DSJ: There is an interesting moment, early on in your book, in which you try to explain the ambivalence that marks contemporary liberal views of the Constitution. Some, you say, are clearly aware of the anti-democratic features of…

In a 2012 article for Commentary, “When the Radical American Left Loved Israel,” Ronald Radosh recalled the days in the 1940s when The Nation’s editor, Freda Kirchwey, made the magazine “a singular voice in behalf of the Zionist cause.” It’s true that The Nation enthusiastically supported the creation of Israel. In late 1948, Kirchwey traveled to the new state and filed dispatches that were overwhelmingly approving—skeptical of outside criticism and woefully unbothered by the displacement of Palestinians and the occupation of their homes. Sara Alpern writes in her biography of Kirchwey that the editor’s son, Michael, recalled that while Kirchwey was interviewing a former Palestinian mayor of Jerusalem, Husayn al-Khalidi (uncle of the historian Rashid Khalidi), “she listened understandingly to Khalidi’s eloquent arguments; but it was as if she did…

THE FIRST PAGES OF PROJECT 2025’S MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP INVOKE THE Beltway axiom that “personnel is policy.” If that’s the case, readers should pay especially close attention to the handiwork of Russell Vought. Vought served as Donald Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the critical nexus of policy execution and agency performance in the executive branch. He has also served, by some accounts, as the lead administrator of the Project 2025 initiative, overseeing 1,000 employees in 30 separate task groups under its aegis. He also contributed a central chapter to Project 2025’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, bearing the deceptively anodyne title “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” In it, Vought lays out the case for unleashing untrammeled executive power from the…

PROJECT 2025’S BLUEPRINT FOR HOUSING POLICY IN A POTENTIAL SECOND Trump presidency is predictably awful. It manages to combine the worst traditional GOP obsessions around deregulation and rolling back what remains of the American welfare state with the most destructive Trumpian impulses to use the power of the state to crush the professional civil service and penalize immigrants. Add into the mix an effort to privatize the most valuable parcels of public housing stock and the obligatory swipe at the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs championed by the Obama and Biden administrations within federal housing agencies, and you have Trump’s grab bag of grift and cruelty in a nutshell. It is a collection of bad policies tailor-made to appeal to the instincts of Donald Trump, who inherited his family fortune…

THE CHAPTER ON THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY IN PROJECT 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, written in part by Ken Cuccinelli—who notoriously served as the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under President Trump—lays out a vision of an immigration enforcement agency that is even more draconian than its previous incarnation, one that will be purged of personnel who aren’t loyal to Trump and will be far less subject to oversight. Under the plan, the DHS would be dismantled, and immigration-related agencies from across the executive branch would be combined into “a stand-alone border and immigration agency” (except for the Transportation Security Administration, which would be privatized). Abolishing the DHS and starting from scratch would give the Trump administration an opportunity to oust anyone in the department who…

HEATHER BOOTH HAS A SECRET, OF SORTS. IT WAS UNKNOWN TO ME, at least, and to a lot of the activists who’ve worked with the veteran organizer in recent years. In 1968, in the first presidential election in which she could cast a ballot, she did not vote for the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. A passionate grassroots anti-war and civil rights activist, Booth believed that he hewed too closely to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of escalation in Vietnam. She wasn’t alone; many people on the left refused to back Humphrey. Some sat on the sidelines; others, like Booth, voted for Dick Gregory, the Black comedian and activist who ran a gadfly but politically attuned campaign that year. Richard Nixon beat Humphrey by 0.7 percent of the vote.…

VIOLENCE CONTINUES TO HAUNT EASTERN EUROPE. THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINAtion of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15 inevitably conjures up the memory of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 110 years earlier, which led to the First World War. It is, tragically, not an exaggeration to say that Europe (and crucially, this time, the United States) again faces a fateful choice: between a negotiated settlement in Ukraine and the possibility of a third, and perhaps final, world war. If recent statements by US and European officials are to be believed, there is a growing consensus in favor of war. On May 16, The New York Times reported that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, with regard to the possibility of NATO sending military trainers…

IN MAY, NEWS REPORTS PROCLAIMED THAT THE death counts of women and children in Gaza had been dramatically exaggerated. “UN admits Gaza death toll wrong, with almost 50% fewer women, children killed than previously reported,” a New York Post headline asserted. Yet not only does an examination of the available statistics leave no doubt that civilians in Gaza have overwhelmingly borne the brunt of Israel’s military campaign, but deaths from malnutrition and disease make it likely that the full toll is considerably higher. Conflict fatality data in Gaza is typically reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health, whose figures in previous conflicts have generally aligned with those from independent agencies. Yet throughout the war, US and Israeli officials have questioned the MOH death counts, citing the ministry’s position as part…

IN DECEMBER 2021, BETTE MIDLER’S ANGER TOWARD Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia prompted the singer to tweet that his state was “poor, illiterate and strung out.” Though Midler later apologized, she was only saying out loud what far too many people on the left already believe. Dismal views of rural America—as places of inexorable decline, few job opportunities, and rampant drug abuse—are commonplace among liberal pundits. Some, such as Paul Krugman, express sympathy for the plight of rural communities but contend that “nobody knows how to reverse” their downward trajectory. Brandon Dennison knows how. He came back home to West Virginia after finishing college, determined to help spark an economic transition in the southern part of a state long dependent on the coal industry. Founded in 2010, his Coalfield…

California fast food workers now have one of the highest minimum wages in the country. In 2022, the state Legislature passed the FAST Recovery Act, which established a fast food council made up of workers and corporate representatives that would set standards for wages, hours, and working conditions. A year later, after a well-funded attack on the law at the ballot box, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation enacting a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers, which took effect in April, and set the council up to develop further recommendations for raising pay. The new wage is a hefty increase; the state’s minimum wage for all workers is $16 an hour, and in 2022, the average wage for California’s fast food workers was $16.21. Nationally, median pay for fast food…

Introduction Robert L. Borosage The New New Right Kim Phillips-Fein The Executive Chris Lehmann Justice Elie Mystal Democracy John Nichols Housing Sasha Abramsky Healthcare Joan Walsh Climate Change Bill McKibben Immigration Gaby Del Valle China Jake Werner The Pentagon William Hartung HOW FAR MIGHT DONALD TRUMP GO, IF GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE? THE estimates range from dictatorship to a rerun of his first term, when indolence, ignorance, and incompetence mitigated his menace. But this time promises to be different—and far worse. Trump’s tempestuous stump performances, which meld vaudeville with venom, provide a clue. He has repeatedly promised to round up and deport millions of immigrants, pardon the January 6 offenders, prosecute his persecutors, impose tariffs on all imports—perhaps higher than 60 percent on goods from China—and “Drill, baby, drill!” What’s…

DONALD TRUMP HAS MADE NO SECRET OF HIS DETERMINATION TO GOVERN AS A “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward…

ROGER SEVERINO, A PROMINENT ATTORNEY FOR THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT, LED the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights during the Trump administration. In 2017, The Atlantic called him “the man behind Trump’s religious-freedom agenda for health care.” The profile contrasted Severino’s sparsely decorated office—adorned with a crucifix and a Clarence Thomas bobblehead—with his elaborate domestic agenda. During Severino’s time there, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services weakened the Affordable Care Act; strengthened the ability of healthcare providers to claim religious exemptions from providing all kinds of medical care, from abortion to birth control to vasectomies to gender-affirming care; and created a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in his office. Under Severino’s legal counsel, HHS cut teen-pregnancy prevention programs and prioritized abstinence in its Title X family-planning…

IN PROJECT 2025’S MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP, FEAR AND HATRED OF CHINA HAVE replaced the interests of big business and free-market dogma as the motive forces in Republican politics. The Chinese exclusion agenda has lent new vitality to the Republican policy program. In the wake of Trump’s disorienting triumph over the GOP mainstream, vilification of China is also creating shared ground for the party’s discordant factions. And because animosity to China helps make sense of widespread hardship in the US (which the Biden campaign is simply denying), it helps the otherwise unpopular politics of conservatives gain majority backing. In his framing essay, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts rehearses familiar conservative themes of cultural decay and government interference, but the pivot on which Project 2025 turns marks a new direction for the…

IN NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS, THE SIGNS OF COMPETITION IN EDUCATION ARE everywhere. Ads in storefront windows promise to boost SAT scores, enrich students with specialized math and science skills, or help them craft the essay that will gain them an edge in college admissions. After-school STEM programs train students as young as 7 in coding, robotics, and animation—promising anxious parents a leg up in the race to acquire 21st-century skills. “STEM-related learning is the key to the bright future of our children,” declares one such edu-preneurial venture. Meanwhile, an army of private tutors offers to supplement what students learn in school. An affluent community outside Boston, Newton is known for its excellent schools. Students here go on to college at a rate that far outpaces the state average, and the district…

IN BILLIONAIRES’ ROW, A BOOK BY THE WALL STREET Journal reporter Katherine Clarke, we are presented with a riveting narrative in which the heroes of her account, the developers Harry Macklowe and Gary Barnett, race to build the city’s first very tall and exceptionally skinny condo towers. And when I say “very tall and exceptionally skinny,” I mean it: Macklowe’s project, at 432 Park Avenue, was planned to be a soaring 1,397 feet in height, while Barnett’s project (known as One57), at 157 West 57th Street, was just over 1,000 feet tall. And because these buildings are so much taller than they are wide, some unorthodox engineering was needed just to keep them standing upright: 432 Park, for example, has five double-height floors open to the elements to allow the…

IN RECENT WEEKS, ONE STORY HAS FAILED TO GARner as many headlines or dominate as many social media feeds as it should have, despite its widespread implications. Right now, Canadian wildfires are once again issuing a grave global warning: Catastrophic climate change is no longer just a future dystopian possibility; it’s a present, inescapable reality. While fires blaze across Western Canada, spreading smoke, making it harder to breathe, and diminishing air quality for people living as far away as South Dakota and Iowa, millions of people in Brazil are recovering from severe floods in Rio Grande do Sul, which, as with the Canadian wildfires, scientists and major research organizations have characterized as an alarming sign of what is to come from accelerating climate change. Following the last Canadian wildfire season,…

DECADES OF LIBERAL ADVOCACY PREACHING “DON’T let the perfect be the enemy of the good” have led us directly to City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The case, for which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April, will determine whether the law, in its majestic equality, deems it “cruel and unusual” to penalize anyone for sleeping on public property. Concern with ameliorating people’s suffering is understandable. But the liberal position on homelessness has encouraged ceding important ground in favor of securing palliative interventions that will be palatable to governing elites. As a price of gaining support for helping homeless people as individuals, this compromise accepts homelessness as a fact of life, or an ecological condition, to which individuals can succumb. The demand for public housing for people in need…

88% Portion of Americans who say marijuana should be legal 5 Average federal prison sentence, in months, imposed on people convicted of marijuana possession in the past five years 31 Number of states that have fully or partially decriminalized certain marijuana possession offenses 0 Number of people in federal custody who had been sentenced solely for a simple marijuana possession offense, as of January 2022 54 Number of years since the Controlled Substances Act categorized marijuana as a Schedule I substance 17.7M Approximate number of people using marijuana daily or near-daily in the United States…

AFTER RONALD REAGAN WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT IN NOVEMBER 1980, THE Heritage Foundation—then an upstart think tank—released a prepublication draft manuscript of Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration to the presidential transition team and to the press. Written over the course of 1980, the 3,000-page manuscript (1,093 pages when published as a book) reflected the aspirations of a surging political movement about to take power. When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, let alone when Barry Goldwater ran for the presidency in 1964, there had been no comparable intellectual infrastructure that could have produced anything like Mandate. There were a handful of free-market intellectual societies and anti-communist propaganda outfits, but most were broadly ideological, offering sweeping political and economic visions rather than a detailed policy program. By 1980,…

THERE HAS PROBABLY NEVER BEEN A PRESIDENT WHO WAS MORE ignorant of the government, the Constitution, and the laws of this country than Donald Trump was in 2017. The man came to power with a child’s understanding of civics and a mob boss’s understanding of power. Instead of using the power of government to effectuate his agenda, he thought he could simply bend the law to his will. Trump was wrong, and the Department of Justice showed him why. Trump fired FBI director James Comey (whose decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails happened to be one of the proximate causes of his election in the first place) for his lack of loyalty. That led the DOJ to investigate Trump’s abuse of power. Trump likely assumed that his…

A SECOND HELPING OF DONALD TRUMP CAN DO ENDless damage on any number of fronts. But with the climate crisis, he can do damage that will last, in human terms, forever—damage that will be visible in the geologic record for eons to come. His actions can literally help melt the poles and raise the oceans—and in the pages of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, his conservative legions have made it abundantly clear that they will. The suggestions range from the massive—ending support for everything from electric vehicles to offshore wind farms—to the cruelly specific. Project 2025, for instance, takes aim at the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (environmental justice concerns have been enshrined in Biden-era energy policy in a way we’ve never seen before). It even…

WHEN I DIPPED INTO THE 195-PAGE SECTION ON “THE COMmon defense” in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, my first question was how even the most hawkish of hawks could be disappointed with a Pentagon budget that is now soaring toward $1 trillion a year—hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the Vietnam War or the peak year of the Cold War. I was particularly intrigued because the author of its chapter on the Pentagon is Christopher Miller, who, after a brief stint as acting secretary of defense under Donald Trump, wrote a memoir in which he asserted that our military is “bloated and wasteful” and argued that we could “cut our defense budget in half and it would still be nearly twice as big as China’s.”…

BE CANADIAN. BE ZANY. BE MOODY. BE relatable. Write about your mother. Write about desire. Write about trauma. Write about loneliness. Write about grief. Write about nature. Write about the body. Invoke universals. Make it mythic. Tell it slant. Do not use rhyme. Do not use meter. Use short lines. Leave a lot of space on the page. Juxtapose your words with quivery line drawings in ink or paint or collage. If you want to produce poetry that a large subset of American teenagers and twentysomethings will adore with a passion verging on religious devotion, these simple rules provide your best hope. Of the three prominent writers who have triumphantly followed this track, the most senior, born 1939, is Margaret Atwood, who has published 18 books of melancholic, reflective poetry,…

When I say I’m okay, it’s just nobody’s coming to save me. I’m out of sight this way. With my mouth muddled I’m so safe. I speak most clearly when I’m dangerous. Step to and the room grows dim, let my word slip and the whole world turns fire and hiss under my tongue. I’ll say I didn’t mean it but I did. You’ll feel better soon, the night sagging in its silence again. It’s just what you won’t see: I drift all around me in the snow our shapes make. I move through America looking up at the trees, which are stolen, this land a vast and stolen thing and I a stolen thing deposited within it. When I say I’m okay, I mean I’m just one black ripple…

Raised to live in the expectation of angels, speaking trees, sinkholes, and suffering, I plummet on a tenuous threshold only one dog’s bark from holy instruction or a paramedic’s bag landing in the hallway. And yet compelled irreparably to love, I put my breath onto the mirror, and toast the ground as much as the snow: this is life at the top, I know. I know. To have survived this far. To have gotten away with myself and wept into a clearing. There was a chance that a bird took instead of a boy. That was what happened in my case. And in my case, I was the bird.…