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Tensions with Mainland China Explode into Violence on the Streets of Hong Kong

In June, protests erupted in Hong Kong over a proposed bill that could have allowed the Chinese government to prosecute political dissidents living in Hong Kong. This past Sunday, police in the city fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, and a group of masked men attacked protesters and civilians at a Hong Kong train station. The protests are only the latest expression of increasing tension between Hong Kong, which has been a special administrative region since 1997, and the People’s Republic of China. Jiayang Fan joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss that rancorous relationship, and whether Beijing might order a military crackdown.




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Tana French on “The Witch Elm”

Tana French was an actor in her thirties when she sat down to write about a mystery that took the lives of two children, which became the global blockbuster “In the Woods.” With her subsequent books about the Dublin Murder Squad, French became known as “the queen of Irish crime fiction”—despite having been born in the United States. French’s latest book, “The Witch Elm,” departs from her line of police procedurals: the narrator is a civilian, a happy-go-lucky young man named Toby whose life is turned upside down when he is attacked during a burglary. Although the book involves a murder, “The core story arc is not the murder and the solution,” French tells Alexandra Schwartz. “The core story arc is Toby going from this golden boy [with] his happy life to somebody who’s had that shattered. . . . Where will this crisis take him?” Though known as a literary mystery writer, French acknowledges that some of her fans have found the plot frustrating. “If you’re coming to this book expecting a straight-up crime novel . . . you are going to be a hundred pages in [asking], ‘Where’s my murder?’ ” 




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Senator Michael Bennet on His Long-Shot Bid for the Presidency

In May, the Colorado senator Michael Bennet became the nineteenth Democrat to announce that he was running for the Party’s Presidential nomination. He is among the most experienced and respected candidates: prior to his decade as a Democratic senator from a purple state, he was the chief of staff to the governor, and, before that, the superintendent of Denver Public Schools. He is the kind of moderate many voters say that they’re seeking. Still, Bennet has struggled to make his voice heard when much of the attention is being lavished on the progressives in the race. Senator Bennet joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss why he is running for President, the trials of being a political underdog, and his ideas about how to restore America in an age of broken politics.




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Living in the Shadow of Guantánamo

When Mohamedou Salahi arrived at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in August of 2002, he was hopeful.  He knew why he had been detained: he had crossed paths with Al Qaeda operatives, and his cousin had once called him from Osama bin Laden’s phone.  But Salahi was no terrorist—he held no extremist views—and had no information of any plots. He trusted the American system of justice and thought the authorities would realize their mistake before long. 

 

He was wrong. 

 

Salahi spent fifteen years at Guantánamo, where he was subjected to some of the worst excesses of America’s war on terror; Donald Rumsfeld personally signed off on the orders for his torture.  And, under torture, Salahi confessed to everything—even though he had done nothing. “If they would have wanted him to confess to being on the grassy knoll for the J.F.K. assassination, I’m sure we could have got him to confess to that, too,” Mark Fallon, who led an investigation unit at Guantánamo, said.  

 

Ben Taub reported Mohamedou Salahi’s story for The New Yorker and tried to understand what had gone wrong in the fight against Al Qaeda. Salahi met Ben in Mauritania, because, when the U.S. released him, it was under the condition that Mauritania would withhold his passport. He would like to go abroad—he needs medical treatment, and he hopes to live in a democracy. But, for an innocent victim of Guantánamo, being released isn’t the same as being free. 




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The Rippling Effects of China’s One-Child Policy

Nanfu Wang grew up under China’s one-child policy and never questioned it. “You don’t know that it’s something initiated and implemented by the authority,” she tells The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan. “It’s a normal part of everything. Just like water exists, or air.” But when Wang became pregnant she started to understand the magnitude of the law—and the suffering that it caused. Wang’s documentary, “One Child Nation,” explores the effects of one of the largest social experiments in history. She uncovers stories of confusion and trauma, in Chinese society at large and within her own family. After Wang’s uncle had a daughter, his family forced him to abandon her at a local market so that he and his wife could try for a son. “He stood there, across the street, watching to see if somebody would come and take the baby,” Wang tells Fan. “He wanted to bring her home, but his mom threatened to commit suicide. . . . He felt so torn. There was no right decision.” 




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In the Wake of a Mass Shooting, Dayton’s Mayor, Nan Whaley, Takes the National Stage

Earlier this month, a gunman killed nine people and injured nearly thirty more in Dayton, Ohio. The shooting in Dayton, the 251st mass shooting in the United States this year, took place only hours before an even deadlier mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. As the city reeled, its mayor, Nan Whaley, was suddenly rocketed into prominence as both a spokesperson for Dayton and a figure in the national conversation about gun violence. Paige Williams, who met with Nan Whaley after the shooting, joins Eric Lach to discuss the role of local officials in times of national tragedy.




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HBO’s “Our Boys,” a Brutally Truthful Depiction of the Effects of Hate Crime

In 2014, a pair of crimes shocked Israelis and Palestinians. The first was the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group. Then there was an act of reprisal—the torture, burning, and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir—by Israeli right-wing extremists. Even by the standards of this conflict, the killings were shocking. 

“Our Boys,” a co-production of HBO and the Israeli Keshet Studios, examines the forces that led to Abu Khdeir’s killing. It is not for the faint of heart, David Remnick says, but the series is as complex and deep a portrayal of the conflict as he has ever seen. Remnick spoke with two of the creators: Hagai Levi, an Israeli Jew, and Tawfiq Abu Wael, a Palestinian living in Israel. Abu Wael tells Remnick why he resisted pressure from activists not to participate in an Israeli production. 




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Marianne Williamson Would Like to Clarify

Marianne Williamson, the self-help author associated with the New Age movement, has never held political office. But the race for the Presidency, she thinks, is less a battle of politics than a battle of souls. In her appearance in the July Democratic debates, she said that President Donald Trump is bringing up a “dark psychic force.” “The worst aspects of human character have been harnessed for political purposes,” she tells David Remnick. Williamson sees herself as a kind of spiritual counter to Trump, reshaping our moral trajectory. And she does have policies, which include repealing the 2017 tax cut and an ambitious plan for slavery reparations, and also tapping some surprising people for her Cabinet. Campaigning on her credentials hasn’t been easy: she’s had to debunk some myths and clarify some statements. She is not an anti-vaxxer, she insists—she apologizes for her earlier remarks on the subject—or a medical skeptic. “I’m Jewish,” she says, “I go to the doctor.” She does not, she says, even have a crystal in her home. “I know this sounds naïve,” she complains, but “I didn’t think the left was so mean. I didn’t think the left lied like this.” 

 




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Salman Rushdie’s Fantastical American Quest Novel

The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, talks with Salman Rushdie about “Quichotte,” his apocalyptic quest novel. A few years ago, when the four hundredth anniversary of “Don Quixote” was being celebrated, Rushdie reread Cervantes’s book and found himself newly engaged by a much-improved translation. He immediately began thinking of writing his own story about a “silly old fool,” like Quixote, who becomes obsessed with an unattainable woman and undertakes a quest to win her love. This character became Quichotte (named for the French opera loosely based on “Don Quixote”), who is seeking the love of—or, as she sees it, stalking—a popular talk-show host. As Quichotte journeys to find her, he encounters the truths of contemporary America: the opioid epidemic, white supremacy, the fallout from the War on Terror, and more. “I’ve always really liked the risky thing of writing very close up against the present moment,” Rushdie tells Treisman. “If you do it wrong, it’s a catastrophe. If you do it right, with luck, you somehow capture a moment.” At the same time, the novel gives full rein to Rushdie’s fantastical streak—at one point, for instance, Quichotte comes across a New Jersey town where people turn into mastodons. Treisman talks with the author about the influence of science fiction on his imagination, and about his personal connection to the tragedy of opioids. Rushdie’s much younger sister died from the consequences of addiction, and the book is centrally concerned with siblings trying to reconnect after separation.




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In Communities of Color, Fighting for a Stake in the Legal Cannabis Market

People of color have suffered disproportionately under cannabis criminalization, and social-justice advocates have played a major role in the push for legalization; Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” changed many people’s minds on this issue. But, as the legal cannabis market takes off into a multibillion-dollar economy, this “green rush” is likely to leave behind those who suffered. An entrepreneur in New York tells the staff writer Jelani Cobb that “while we’re waiting [for legalization], huge corporations are . . . working on their packaging, how they’re going to come to the market. If we don’t have that same freedom, how is it fair?” Cobb reports on how legalization bills are seeking to address that historical inequity. In Oakland, California, a bill stipulates that half of dispensary permits must be awarded to people who have been harmed by criminalization in the past. But one businessman tells Cobb that, without access to capital, would-be dispensary owners will be shut out, and will likely end up selling those permits for cheap.




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Trump’s Enablers: How Giuliani, Pence, and Barr Figure Into the Ukraine Scandal

This week, evidence emerged that Trump tried to enlist the help of a foreign power to discredit his political opponents—in this case, Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Further disclosures revealed that the President may have been aided in his efforts by his personal lawyer, Rudy GiulianiVice-President Mike Pence, and Attorney General William Barr. On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, saying that he had betrayed his oath of office, the nation’s security, and the integrity of U.S. elections. Jeffrey ToobinJane Mayer, and David Rohde—three New Yorker writers who have reported extensively about the Administration—join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the case against Trump, and how his inner circle may have helped jeopardize his Presidency.




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Cory Booker on How to Defeat Donald Trump

Senator Cory Booker burst onto the national scene about a decade ago, after serving as the mayor of the notoriously impoverished and dangerous city of Newark, New Jersey. To get that job, Booker challenged an entrenched establishment. “My political training comes from the roughest of rough campaigns,” he tells David Remnick. “You just won’t think it’s America, the kind of stuff we had to go up against. And it [was] such a great way to learn [that campaigning] has to be retail—grassroots. And so much of this, in those early primary states, is about that.”  

Booker spoke with Remnick about growing up black in a largely white area of New Jersey, where his parents had to fight to be able to buy a home; about his long relationship with the Kushner family, which started back when Jared Kushner’s father, Charles, was a leading Democratic donor; and why he’s proud to collaborate with even his direst political opponents on issues such as criminal-justice reform. “Donald Trump signed my bill,” Booker states. “I worked with him and his White House to pass a bill that liberated thousands of black people from prison” by retroactively reducing unjustly high sentences related to crack cocaine. “Tell that liberated person that Cory Booker should not deal with somebody that he fundamentally disagrees with.” 

Note: In this interview, Senator Booker asserts, “We now have more African-Americans in this country under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1850.” The historical accuracy of this comparison has been challenged. More accurately, the number of African-American men under criminal supervision today has been compared to the number of African-American men enslaved in 1850. 




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Trump’s Enablers, Part 2: How Mike Pompeo’s Loyalty to the President Has Affected Diplomacy in Ukraine

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the line for President Trump’s July 25th phone call with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump urged Zelensky to assist in an investigation into Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden. Pompeo, a fierce Trump loyalist and the last surviving member of his original national-security team, is now implicated in a scandal that threatens Trump’s PresidencySusan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the rapidly unfolding Ukraine story and Pompeo’s place within it.

 




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Trump’s Abandonment of the Kurds Appeases Erdoğan and Infuriates Republicans

Last Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan informed President Trump of his intention to launch a military offensive in northeastern Syria, in an effort to eradicate the Kurdish militias there. Trump agreed to draw down American troops to clear the way for the Turkish army. Though Erdoğan regards those militias as terrorist groups, the Kurds have been close American allies in the battle against ISIS. Trump’s decision was met with harsh criticism by high-ranking Republicans, U.S. military officials, and others. Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the incursion into Syria is affecting one of the most volatile regions in the world, and what it could mean for Trump’s Presidency.




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Evan Osnos and Jiayang Fan on the Hong Kong Protests

The months of protests in Hong Kong may be the biggest political crisis facing Chinese leadership since the Tiananmen Square massacre a generation ago. What began as objections to a proposed extradition law has morphed into a broad-based protest movement. “There was just this rising panic that Hong Kong was becoming just like another mainland city, utterly under the thumb of the Party,” says Jiayang Fan, who recently returned from Hong Kong. In Beijing, Evan Osnos spoke to officials during their celebration of the Chinese Communist Party’s seventieth year in power. He found that the leadership is feeling more secure than it did in 1989, when tanks mowed down student protesters. “I think the more likely scenario,” Osnos tells David Remnick, “is that China will keep up the pressure and gradually use its sheer weight and persistence to try to grind down the resistance of protestors.” 




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Ronan Farrow on a Campaign of Silence

Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein and other accused perpetrators of sexual assault helped opened the floodgates of the #MeToo movement. In his new book, “Catch and Kill,” and in “The Black Cube Chronicles” published on newyorker.com, Farrow details the measures that were taken against him and against some of the accusers who went on the record. These included hiring a private spy firm staffed by ex-Mossad officers. Speaking with David Remnick, Farrow lays out a connection between accusations against Harvey Weinstein and NBC’s Matt Lauer. And he interviewed a private investigator named Igor Ostrovskiy who was assigned to spy on him—until he had a crisis of conscience.




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How Facebook Continues to Spread Fake News

One of the big stories of the 2016 Presidential campaign was the role Facebook played in spreading false and misleading information, from Russia and from inside the United States, about candidates. The company has made some changes, but it is still under attack from the press, activists, users, and Congress for its failure to curb the proliferation of “fake news” on its platform. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, announced this fall that Facebook will not fact-check political advertisements or other statements made by politicians on the platform. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss social media’s power to shape politics and the likely effects on the 2020 Presidential campaign.




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The Supreme Court Weighs the End of DACA

Jeff Sessions, then the Attorney General, announced in 2017 the cancellation of the Obama-era policy known as DACA—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. A number of plaintiffs sued, and their case goes to the Supreme Court next week. The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer spoke with two of the attorneys who will argue for it. The noted litigator Ted Olson is generally a champion of conservative issues, but he is fighting the Trump Administration on this case. He told Blitzer, “It’s a rule-of-law case—not a liberal or conversative case—involving hundreds of thousands of individuals who will be hurt by an abrupt and unexplained and unjustified change in policy.” And Blitzer also spoke with Luis Cortez, a thirty-one-year-old from Seattle who is arguing his first Supreme Court case. Cortez is an immigration lawyer who is himself an undocumented immigrant protected by DACA status; if he loses his case, he will be at risk of deportation. 




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Tricky Dick and Dirty Don: How a Compelling Narrative Can Change the Fate of a Presidency

In 1972, Richard Nixon’s political future seemed assured. He was reëlected by one of the highest popular-vote margins in American history, his approval rating was near seventy per cent, and the public wasn’t interested in what newspapers were calling the “Watergate Caper.” But the President’s fortunes began to change when new revelations suggested that he knew about the Watergate break-in and that he had participated in a coverup. In May of 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee hearings were broadcast on television, and millions of Americans tuned in to watch compelling testimony about Nixon’s illegal activities. A narrative emerged, of Nixon as a scheming crook who put his own interests before those of the country. His poll numbers plummeted, his party turned on him, and, in August of 1974, Nixon resigned from the Presidency in disgrace. Thomas Mallon dramatized Nixon’s downfall in his 2012 novel “Watergate.” As Congress again debates the impeachment of a President, Mallon joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the power of a good story to affect the course of political history.




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On and Off the Debate Stage, Democrats Contend with Race

This week, ten of the seventeen candidates still running for the Democratic nomination met on a debate stage in Atlanta. The setting was significant: for decades, Georgia has been seen as a Republican stronghold, but last year the Democrat Stacey Abrams very nearly won the election for governor. Democrats hope that the state will go blue in 2020. Key to any Democratic strategy in Georgia, and in other states, will be mobilizing black voters, ninety-three per cent of whom went for Abrams in 2018. Jelani Cobb joins Eric Lach to discuss the candidates’ messages on race, and how voter suppression efforts may play a role in the 2020 election.




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What Can Progressive Voters Do to Help Fix Our Broken Political System?

For decades, conservative organizations have poured time, attention, and money into state politics, and today, Republicans control the governorships and state legislatures of twenty-one states. But in recent years, grassroots progressive movements have begun to close the gap. Democrats have seen victories in formerly Republican districts in Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maine. In two election cycles, Future Now, an organization that supports progressive candidates in state-level races, has helped flip three legislatures. Its co-founder and executive director, Daniel Squadron, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how progressive voters can make their voices heard on the issues they care most about.




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Facts vs. Fiction in the Impeachment Proceedings Against Donald Trump

This week, after two months of questioning seventeen former and current State Department and White House officials, the House Intelligence Committee released its report on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. What has the country learned with certainty about how the Administration tried to strong-arm the new President of Ukraine, and about the fictional counter-narrative being spun by the Republican Party? Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the strengths and weaknesses in the Democrats’ case for the impeachment of the President.




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Revelations About the Forever War in Afghanistan

On Monday, the Washington Post published “The Afghanistan Papers,” a trove of more than two thousand pages of interviews with U.S. and foreign officials about the war in Afghanistan. The document reveals the extent to which politicians and military leaders lied to the public about the conflict. Dexter Filkins, who has covered the war since its inception, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the report, his experiences as a reporter in Afghanistan, and the current status of America’s longest war.




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In Iowa, the Democratic Candidates Respond to the Conflict with Iran

The New Yorker’s Eric Lach is in Iowa for the month leading up to the Democratic caucuses. Next week’s debate, in Des Moines, was likely going to focus on health care and other domestic issues core to the Democratic platform, but the agenda may instead be dominated by a discussion of the Trump Administration’s killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and the United States’ fraught history of war in the Middle East. Polls show that Joe Biden is trusted on foreign-policy issues, but Lach suggests that Bernie Sanders’s history of opposing wars—and his quick and confident articulation of his position on Iran—may sway voters seeking a clear message. Nearly a year into the campaign, votes will finally be cast, and in Iowa the deciding factor may involve personal contact more than ideological positions. Iowa voters tend to say, “ ‘I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’m going to make my decision after I’ve shaken this other person’s hand.’ That counts for a lot, I think,” Lach says.




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As the Impeachment Trial Begins, the Democratic Candidates Struggle to Forcefully Take on President Trump

This week, Democratic Presidential candidates met for their final debate before the Iowa caucuses, a few weeks after Trump ordered the targeted killing of the Iranian military commander Qassam Suleimani. They talked about how America’s role in the world is threatened by the President’s erratic—and, in the case of Ukraine, likely criminal—approach to foreign policy. But many voters remain skeptical that Trump can be beaten. Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the radical uncertainties of the 2020 race.




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Ten Years After “The New Jim Crow”

The United States has the largest prison population in the world. But, until the publication of Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow,” in 2010, most people didn’t use the term mass incarceration, or consider the practice a social-justice issue. Alexander argued that the increasing imprisonment of black and brown men—through rising arrest rates and longer sentences—was not merely a response to crime but a system of racial control. “The drug war was in part a politically motivated strategy, a backlash to the civil-rights movement, but it was also a reflection of conscious and unconscious biases fuelled by media portrayals of drug users,” Alexander tells David Remnick. “Those racial stereotypes were resonant of the same stereotypes of slaves and folks during the Jim Crow era.”




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Adam Schiff, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Framers Weigh In on Impeachment

Last week, the Senate opened the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. With Republicans standing immovably by the President, the trial is expected to result in Trump’s acquittal. The Framers of the Constitution issued dire warnings about the spectre of “factionalism” and how it could endanger American democracy. Jelani Cobb joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the origins of partisanship in American politics and how it’s playing out in arguments about whether the President should be removed from office.




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The Trump-Netanyahu “Deal of the Century”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced his Administration’s Middle East peace plan. The unveiling occurred in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial of Trump, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and on the day that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, in three cases. While nominally presenting a two-state solution, the plan heavily favors Israeli interests. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the Trump Administration’s plan in the Middle East and the dangers that Trump and Netanyahu pose to the future of democracy in their countries.




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After Two Primary Contests, What’s Ahead for the Democratic Race?

On Tuesday, voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots in the Democratic Presidential primary. Following the debacle surrounding the Iowa caucuses, many Democrats hoped that the results from New Hampshire would bring clarity to the race. Bernie Sanders won, arguably making him the front-runner. But close behind him was Pete Buttigieg, who also narrowly won the Iowa caucuses, and Amy Klobuchar, whose third-place finish gave her campaign renewed energy. Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Eric Lach to discuss the New Hampshire primaries and how a clear picture of the future of the Democratic contest remains elusive.




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Stephen Miller, the Architect of Trump’s Immigration Plan

Donald Trump began his Presidential bid, in 2015, with an infamous speech, at Trump Tower, in which he said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” But it was not until a former aide to Jeff Sessions joined Trump’s campaign that the nativist rhetoric coalesced into a policy platform—including the separation of children from their families at the border. Jonathan Blitzer, who writes about immigration for The New Yorker, has been reporting on Stephen Miller’s sway in the Trump Administration and his remarkable success in advancing an extremist agenda. “There has never been an American President who built his campaign around the issue of immigration and later won on that campaign on immigration. Trump was the first and only President really ever to do it,” Blitzer tells David Remnick. Despite this influence, Miller remains largely behind the scenes. Blitzer explains why: “He knows that the kiss of death in this Administration is to be identified as the brains behind the man. He can’t let on that he’s the one who effectively is manipulating Trump on these issues.” 




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Rebecca Solnit on Harvey Weinstein and the Lies that Powerful Men Tell

This week, the former film producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted on two counts of sexual assault in a New York court. Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than ninety women, has become an emblem of misogyny in Hollywood, and of the systems that protect wealthy and powerful men from the consequences of criminal misconduct. Rebecca Solnit joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss whether the Weinstein verdict is a turning point in the #MeToo movement, and what it takes to expose the lies of those in power in business and politics.




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The Many Iterations of Michael Bloomberg, C.E.O., Mayor, and Presidential Hopeful

Eleanor Randolph finished her biography of Michael Bloomberg in June, 2019, just as the former mayor decided not to run for President. “He didn’t want to go on an apology tour,” Randolph tells David Remnick. Bloomberg knew that he would be called to answer for his vigorous pursuit of unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policing, accusations against him of sexual misconduct, and his history as a Republican. Ultimately, Bloomberg did enter the race, and he has spent more than four hundred million dollars on political ads to defeat another New York billionaire, the incumbent, Donald Trump. Randolph and Andrea Bernstein, a reporter for WNYC who covered Bloomberg’s three terms as mayor, join Remnick to discuss the candidate’s time in Gracie Mansion, his philosophy of governing, and his philanthropy. Trump’s political contributions have been unabashedly transactional, but Bloomberg’s generous philanthropy also has an expected return. “All the money that he gave to philanthropies and charities were a way of doing good in the world, sure, but they were also a way of making him more powerful as mayor,” Bernstein says. “Everything with Bloomberg, there’s a countervailing thing. Something benefits somebody: it also might benefit him, it also might benefit billionaires from Russia.”

Eleanor Randolph is the author of “The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg.” Andrea Bernstein’s book is “American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.”




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Is Joe Biden the Future of the Democratic Party?

Joe Biden’s pitch to voters has been remarkably consistent: he says he can unite older voters, people of color, and moderates into a coalition that can defeat Donald Trump. A series of gaffes, concerns about his voting record, and disappointing results in the early primaries seemed to doom Biden’s candidacy. But big victories in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday have given new credence to his claim that he’s the best person to take on Trump in November. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how Biden became the Democratic front-runner and how he’ll go about winning over skeptical young, progressive voters.




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The Ripple Effects of a Pandemic

For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock. But not for Lawrence Wright. A staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al Qaeda, Wright recently wrote a novel—yet to be published—called “The End of October,” about the spread of a novel virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of COVID-19. Wright looked to illnesses of the past to try to understand their enduring consequences, and he mapped those ripple effects onto our contemporary circumstances. “The End of October” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre, but what he imagined in it turns out to be eerily close to what we are experiencing now. “I read the paper and I feel like I’m reading another chapter of my own book,” he tells David Remnick.  

 

Lawrence Wright’s “The End of October” is due out in April. 




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Arts and Entertainment in the Era of Coronavirus

This month, in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, arts organizations around the country shut their doors. Theatre productions were cancelled, film premières postponed, gallery openings scuttled. Artists and other creative professionals, many of whom are freelance workers with no health benefits and little access to unemployment insurance, suddenly found themselves with no income. The dire economic circumstances have caused some to search for new creative outlets online, but others face an uncertain future. Emily Witt and Alexandra Schwartz join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the effect of the coronavirus on arts and artists—and their audiences.




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Can Democrats Take the Offensive in the Pandemic Elections of 2020?

Since the coronavirus became a public-health emergency in the United States, coverage of the 2020 Presidential election has been scarce. With little media attention and public events an impossibility, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have taken their campaigns online. Meanwhile, state election officials across the country are struggling to find the best time and means to hold their primaries. Eric Lach joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss electoral reforms, such as voting by mail, and how the Democratic Party is trying to exploit President Trump’s bungling response to the pandemic.




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The Injustice of COVID-19

On the surface, COVID-19 may seem to be a great leveller. Princes and Prime Ministers, musicians and Hollywood A-listers, N.B.A. players, and other prominent people have made headlines for contracting the virus. But looking more closely at the numbers of illnesses and fatalities, we see that the virus—far from an equalizer—exacerbates the inequality of the American health-care system. Minorities, and particularly African-Americans, account for a greatly disproportionate number of deaths in places around the country. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a contributor to The New Yorker and an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, describes to  David Remnick the circumstances that give rise to this stratification. Even the basic preventative measures urged on Americans by the C.D.C. are less accessible in black communities. To shelter in place, she points out, “you need to have safe, sound, and comfortable housing . . . [and] only nineteen per cent of black people have the ability to work at home, because of the types of jobs that they are employed in. . . . African-Americans in New York city still must get on the subway to get to work.” Even access to clean water, she points out—essential to frequent hand washing—is not universally available.




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Trump and Biden Face Off Over China and the Coronavirus

Around the world, COVID-19 is fundamentally altering politics. In China, the Communist Party is lauding its handling of the crisis and spreading disinformation about the virus in the U.S. And, as attacks on Chinese-Americans increase, the Biden and Trump campaigns accuse each other of being overly cozy with Beijing. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the coronavirus is affecting the course of the 2020 Presidential election.




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A City at the Peak of Crisis

Experts predicted that Wednesday, April 15th would be a peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, its epicenter. On that day, a crew of New Yorker writers talked with people all over the city, in every circumstance and walk of life, to form a portrait of a city in crisis. A group-station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can’t live without it; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying; a graduating class of medical students get up the courage to confront the worst crisis in generations; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families. The hour includes contributions from writers including William Finnegan, Helen Rosner, Jia Tolentino, Kelefa Sanneh, and Adam Gopnik, who says, “One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life, or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life. That's the mystery of the pandemic.”




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How to Build a Coffered Ceiling

Apply basic carpentry techniques to primed boards and molding to add a formal, elegant touch to any room




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How to Patch Hardwood Flooring

Ask This Old House general contractor Tom Silva helps a homeowner patch a hardwood floor to make it look seamless



  • How-to Video

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From Reading to Understanding

'Amid struggles, trials, or even times of great happiness and prosperity, how can we learn to keep Christ at the center of our lives? Why is it so important that we do so?'




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From Jerusalem to Babylon

'As we face the challenges of the twenty-first century, we need to recapture the perception of God that is so vividly reflected in the book of Daniel.'




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From Mystery to Revelation

'Whenever we face a big problem, we also should recognize that our God is great enough to resolve even the most unsolvable challenges.'




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From Furnace to Palace

'We show real faith when we pray to the Lord for what we want but trust Him to do what’s best for us, even if at the time we don’t understand what is happening or why.'




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From Pride to Humility

'God continues to change lives today. No matter how proud or sinful people may be, in God there is mercy and power to turn rebellious sinners into children of the God of Heaven.'




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From Arrogance to Destruction

What are ways in which our society and culture profane the truth of God’s Word? How can we be careful not to take part in that profanation, even in subtle ways? At what point can we say that we are acquainted with all the truth that we need to know?




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From the Lions’ Den to the Angel’s Den

'What kind of witness do we present to others in regard to our faithfulness to God and to His law? Would people who know you think that you would stand for your faith, even if it cost you your job, or even your life?'




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From the Stormy Sea to the Clouds of Heaven

'With the coming of the Son of Man, God’s dominion is restored to those to whom it properly belongs. What Adam lost in the garden, the Son of Man recovers in the heavenly judgment.'




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From Contamination to Purification

'What should this study tell us about how precious and important the knowledge of biblical truth really is in contrast to human traditions?'