Attention to the Unseen

Quartz reports: The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon’s plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right. Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian…

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The Washington Post reports: Just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, new evidence emerged Thursday suggesting the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to white Republicans. The evidence was found in the files of the prominent Republican redistricting strategist Thomas Hofeller after his death in August. It reveals that Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the…

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Edo Konrad writes: Avigdor Liberman has, over the past decade, exerted a greater impact on Israel’s political discourse than any other lawmaker. In just a few years, he made once unthinkable ideas — such as stripping Palestinian citizens of their citizenship and forcing them to swear oaths of loyalty to the Jewish state — part of the mainstream discourse. Today, Israeli liberals and their intelligentsia are ready to ignore or brush aside Liberman’s racist, hyper-nationalist remarks and polices, while crowning…

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The Guardian reports: The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”. The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is…

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Anoosh Chakelian writes: After weeks on the campaign trail, most politicians take a breather after the polls close. Not Magid Magid. The 29-year-old former Somali refugee – Sheffield’s outgoing Lord Mayor – was straight back out doing public events while waiting for the European election results. We meet two days before Magid was elected as a Green MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber. He was one of a record seven across Britain, following the party’s highest European election vote share…

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Ivan Krastev writes: It was a turning point but Europe did not turn. Despite fears of a right-wing populist surge, a majority of voters across the Continent cast their ballots for mainstream, pro-European Union parties in the recent elections for the European Parliament. The main center-right and center-left blocs have lost their majority, but they will continue to dominate the 751-member legislative body. The center has held for now. But the anti-Brussels, nationalist far right that includes parties like Marine…

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