Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: Former president Barack Obama is calling on South Carolina television stations to stop running an ad from a super PAC supporting President Trump that uses Obama’s words out of context in a misleading attack on former vice president Joe Biden. The Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Trump group, reported to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday spending more than $250,000 in South Carolina to oppose Biden. The group, which placed a similar amount of anti-Biden…

Read More Read More

When you're on the highway, the thing beneath you: socialism. The vehicles around you: capitalism. On Wall Street, the banks: capitalism. The regulators protecting them: socialism. Capitalism and socialism mingle in every hour of our lives. Let's break the billionaire binary. pic.twitter.com/hqBdLvd0SI — Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 26, 2020

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write: During the 2016 presidential campaign, many observers worried about what Donald Trump might do with the U.S. intelligence apparatus. These organizations kill people, after all, with scary flying robots. They have the ability to spy on huge numbers of people all over the world. And they have a history of scandal. So it was reasonable to wonder: What happens when you put organizations such as the CIA and the NSA in the hands of…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: As violence erupted in the streets Tuesday over a citizenship law that critics say discriminates against Muslims, President Trump defended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s record on religious tolerance as he closed out a two-day visit to India that served as a celebration of the bond between two nationalist leaders. Trump avoided any public criticism of his host — whose political biography is also built partly on religious and cultural divisions — along with any comparison of…

Read More Read More

Masha Gessen writes: There are two ways to misinterpret the comments Bernie Sanders made in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday night. When asked by the host, Anderson Cooper, to explain his long-ago praise of the achievements of Fidel Castro’s regime, in Cuba, Sanders said, “We are very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba. But, you know, it’s unfair to simply say, ‘Everything is bad.’ When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He…

Read More Read More

This is a wake-up moment for the American power establishment. Many in this elite are behaving like aristocrats in a dying regime — including in media. It’s time for many to step up, rethink, and understand the dawn of what may be a new era in America.pic.twitter.com/tr2jpTD7YY — Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 23, 2020 Jeet Heer writes: Bernie Sanders’s overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucus is sending shock waves through the American political system, perhaps nowhere more than on MSNBC….

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: In some of the most critical corners of the Trump administration, officials show up for work now never entirely sure who will be there by the end of the evening — themselves included. Even for an administration that has been a revolving door since Day 1, this has become a season of turmoil. At a moment when first-term presidents are typically seeking a stable team to focus on their re-election, President Trump has embarked on…

Read More Read More

Ryan Lizza writes: On Saturday in Nevada, Bernie Sanders laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries. You could see the dominoes of punditry cliches falling inside the caucus rooms. At the Bellagio Hotel, which held one of several “Strip caucuses” meant to be easily accessible to hospitality workers along Vegas’ main drag, 75 Sanders supporters gathered along the wall of a ballroom. The powerful Culinary…

Read More Read More

Robert Reich writes: In Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals would cost $50tn. Holy Indiana. Larry Summers, formerly chief White House economic adviser for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60tn. “We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal,” he told CNN. Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, claims Sanders’ agenda would at least double federal…

Read More Read More

The Intercept reports: On Saturday, caucus-goers began gathering around 10 a.m. at the Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. It had started raining early in the morning — a rare occurrence in Las Vegas — and didn’t lighten up until the rain stopped in the early afternoon. The high school, whose mascot is a jaguar, is located in a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood. Almost all the caucus-goers were people of color. The school served as the caucus site…

Read More Read More

Sarah Chayes writes: Donald Trump’s decision this week to pardon several Americans convicted of fraud or corruption has garnered condemnation from many in the political establishment. The pardons were shocking to some, but to me they were eerily familiar—straight out of the kleptocratic playbook I’ve experienced and studied in a dozen other countries. I was immediately reminded, for instance, of an episode from August 2010. I had been living and working in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade,…

Read More Read More