Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i The Nation

IT WAS THE WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED, AND my mother and I had pulled into the parking lot at Korvette’s—a discount department store in Northeast Philadelphia—ready to load up on pencils, pens, composition notebooks, and other supplies, when she stopped dead and said we were going elsewhere. Noticing my confusion, she said simply, “We don’t cross picket lines.” And so began my political education. Many years later, at Nation associate editor Andrew Kopkind’s kitchen table in Vermont (where much of my higher political study took place), I met Jack O’Dell, a once-blacklisted ex-communist who had provided the fundraising muscle for Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaigns and was a key adviser to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign at the time. It was O’Dell who tipped me to the importance of Operation Dixie,…

ELON MUSK HATES UNIONS, WITH A WHITE-HOT passion that has rendered him delusional. In late November, at a New York Times DealBook Summit where the aspiring-to-be-rich gather to get pointers from the actually rich, the Tesla CEO explained that “I disagree with the idea of unions…. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants sort of thing.” In the same interview, Musk—a mega-billionaire who famously threatened, in 2018, to take away the stock options of Tesla workers if they organized to exercise their collective-bargaining rights—griped, “I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company.” When the second-richest man in the world is complaining that giving employees a voice in their workplace creates negativity and “a lords-and-peasants sort of thing,” we’re definitely through the looking glass. (See…

I AM CURRENTLY LIVING IN LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA, with two roommates in an apartment with a very small kitchen. By American standards, it’s closer to what you’d call a kitchenette. It consists of a stainless-steel sink/stove combo (with a slow, tiny dishwasher nested underneath), an IKEA storage cart, and the smallest refrigerator in existence, beneath which is an equally tiny oven. Even my old 500-square-foot studio in Washington, D.C., which featured miniature versions of most appliances, felt bigger than this. Every time I come to Europe, I experience culture shock when I first see a minuscule apartment kitchen. There are luxurious exceptions for the wealthy, of course, but in most cases the kitchen is simply not the most important room. In the United States, it’s hard to escape the sense that…

$2.5B Amount Boeing agreed to pay in 2021 to settle a criminal charge following a Justice Department investigation into the safety of its 737 Max aircraft after deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019 346 Number of people killed in the 737 Max crashes $77.8B Boeing’s revenue in 2023 16.8% Percentage increase from Boeing’s revenue in 2022 33 Number of FAA “product audits,” out of 89 total, that Boeing failed at its plant in Renton, Washington, after a panel blew off a 737 Max mid-flight in January 16 Number of airline safety incidents United Airlines had in the US in March, the majority of which involved Boeing planes, according to the FAA…

THE END OF 2020 WAS DRAWING NEAR, AND ANDREA TURLEY, A 36-year-old self-employed hairdresser, had to figure out how to afford gifts not only for her two daughters’ birthdays but also for Christmas. She came up with a solution: a job working on the floor of Tesla’s auto manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. It paid about $20 an hour. Turley’s grandparents had worked at the same plant when it made cars for General Motors. She knew what working on an assembly line would entail and hoped to stay; her grandparents had worked there for decades. “I don’t have a problem with doing hard labor,” she told me. “The problem was the sexual harassment. It was the racism,” she said. “It’s the constant disrespect.” On her second day of training, Turley…

THERE’S A NEW ENTRY IN THE WARM-UP MATERIAL AT TRUMP RALLIES, SANDWICHED between the classic-rock anthems and the demagogic diatribes of various local political leaders. It’s a two-minute video that Trump posted to his Truth Social account just prior to the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Called “God Made Trump,” the campaign spot is brazenly messianic in tone and substance alike, directly paraphrasing the “So God Made a Farmer” speech made famous by the conservative radio personality Paul Harvey. “On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’” a Harveyesque narrator, no doubt manipulated by AI, announces at the outset. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own…

ANYONE WHO WRITES ABOUT CURRENT events knows how cruel the gap between final edits and publication can be. Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, certainly does. On October 2, 2023, Foreign Affairs closed a print issue that included a 7,000-word article by Sullivan intended to offer a comprehensive overview of the global situation on Biden’s watch. In it, Sullivan boasted that the Middle East “is quieter than it has been for decades” and that “we’ve de-escalated crises in Gaza.” Five days after those lines went to press, and 17 days before their publication, Hamas launched a sneak attack on southern Israel that resulted in some 1,200 Israeli casualties and the capture of more than 200 hostages. Over the ensuing months, Israel has retaliated with a merciless war on Gaza…

EDDIE ANZORA ARRIVED IN EL SALVADOR, THE COUNTRY of his birth, on the eve of its independence day. He had spent virtually his entire life in California, and his return was not a homecoming but an exile. A minor conviction for drug possession in 1997 had put Eddie on track for deportation, even though he had a green card. After a decade of dodging immigration officers, he was arrested on his way to the barbershop. He spent nine months in a Los Angeles County jail mentally preparing himself for a return to a country he hardly knew, until one day he and 30 other Salvadorans—all shackled at the wrists and ankles—were loaded onto a plane bound for San Salvador. The circumstances of Eddie’s deportation were the product of arcane laws…

MAKESHIFT MEMORIALS AND BILLBOARDS FEATURING A SINGLE CANDLE AND THE words “We Mourn” have continued to flood Moscow’s streets since the heinous March 22 attack—in which at least 143 people were killed. People stood in long lines throughout the Russian capital to donate blood. Russian embassies abroad lowered their flags. President Vladimir Putin declared March 24 a national day of mourning. From the beginning of his reign in 2000, Putin has built his career and his image on a promise to bring stability, order, and security to the country. The glaring failure of his security state to prevent this gruesome assault—despite a US warning that a strike on a Russian concert hall could be imminent—may endanger his social contract with the Russian people. Putin also built his persona as a…

The 75th anniversary of NATO offers a chance to reflect on the pact’s Cold War origins, checkered history, and uncertain future. Created in 1949 to formalize American security guarantees in Western Europe, NATO immediately signaled its intention to expand beyond the North Atlantic region designated in its name. Almost as quickly, The Nation expressed skepticism about this plan. In 1951, we objected to the idea of adding Turkey and Greece to the alliance. Bringing those countries in would “effectually end the concept of a democratic union in defense of the ‘free world,’” the magazine argued. “What we are constructing instead, with breathtaking speed, is an old-fashioned military alliance equipped with ‘fantastic’ new-fashioned weapons.” A year later, one of The Nation’s regular correspondents on foreign affairs, the Spanish writer and socialist…

DONALD TRUMP OFTEN TELLS RURAL FOLKS THAT HE loves them. Contrary to myth, not all of them love him back. According to The Rural Voter, a new book by the political scientists Nicholas Jacobs and Dan Shea, only about one in 10 rural people are what they call “rabble-rousers”—the kind of MAGA die-hards who tweet incessantly or raise a stink at school board meetings, often with an intimidating edge. While more conservative on average than urbanites, rural Americans are far from monolithic—racially, culturally, or politically. Even among rural conservatives, about a third are less fans of Trump than they are people who’ve come to mistrust Biden. Some of these folks are potential Biden voters. To win in November, the president needs every one of them he can get. In 2012…

Yes! JOSHUA A. COHEN THIS NOVEMBER, FOR THE SECOND time in three election cycles, the US voting public will probably be forced to choose between two of the country’s least-liked, most-distrusted politicians. It was this same dynamic that led to the narrow defeat of Hillary Clinton at the hands of Donald Trump in 2016, and all signs indicate that if the election were held tomorrow, it would end the same way: with Trump in the White House. Don’t let the spurt of pro-Biden hype after the State of the Union address fool you. Trump is currently in the strongest position of his political career. Biden, long broadly unpopular, has recently sunk to all-time approval lows, and it has allowed his opponent to break through the public’s distaste for him. At…

THE RECENT DECISION BY THE UNITED STATES NOT to veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza—the first time the US had allowed such a measure to pass—shocked Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s subsequent cancellation of an Israeli meeting with the Biden administration only added to the feeling that Israel had been left isolated on the global stage, and that Netanyahu was jeopardizing his country’s most important asset: its alliance with the United States. Yet despite widespread criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of these sensitive issues, his opponents—both in the “liberal” camp and on the moderate right—were unanimous in their rejection of the UN vote. Yair Lapid, head of the opposition Yesh Atid party, said that the resolution had “no practical meaning.” Israeli minister Hili Tropper, a…

THIS MOMENT FEELS DIFFERENT. SOMETHING NEW IS in the air. Of course, everything is always changing. Impermanence is the way of life. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have reminded us for centuries that the only constant is change. As the late, great Nina Simone once put it: Young becomes oldMysteries do unfold’Cause that’s the way of timeNothing, and no one, remains the same Still, I think I am not alone in sensing that this year feels different. Something new is in the air. Some would say it is the stench of death. We can smell it now, almost taste it. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza in just a few months with our bombs—mass murder funded by our government, aided and abetted by our military, paid for…

San Juan, Puerto Rico YARELYS DÍAZ RIVERA WAS DESPERATE. HER YOUNG DAUGHTER, ISABELLA, was gravely ill. What had begun as seemingly mild stomach problems had turned into a life-threatening heart condition. And Díaz Rivera, a 39-year-old mother from the rural and mountainous Puerto Rican town of Corozal, couldn’t find the healthcare she needed on the island. Isabella was already starting from behind. The doctors had misdiagnosed her for a month before they finally figured out that she had an enlarged heart and needed a heart transplant. Others refused to take Díaz Rivera’s insurance. After Isabella spent another month in Centro Médico, Puerto Rico’s largest hospital, it became clear that she would need surgery that was simply not available on the island, which has just one pediatric heart surgeon for a…

IN JANUARY 1969, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART opened an exhibition dedicated to the vibrant history of Harlem—the institution’s first attempt at displaying and interpreting African American culture. “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968” came to life at the tail end of the civil rights movement and on the cusp of Black Power. Enthusiastically promoted by the Met’s then-director, Thomas P.F. Hoving, the show was meant to signal the institution’s commitment to civil rights and the Black political struggle and to bring Black and white audiences together in the celebratory space of the museum. But something was missing—in retrospect, an unthinkable omission. Not a single painting, sketch, or sculpture was on view in the “Harlem on My Mind” galleries. No fine art by Black artists—no fine…

LARRY DAVID IS THE LAST OF HIS KIND, IN A VARIETY of ways. First and foremost, David is the last Jew. Not literally, of course—there are about 15.7 million of us scattered around the world. But he is the last of a certain type of entertainment-industry Jew: the Brooklyn-raised, acid-tongued, and sidesplittingly funny Jew who used to occupy center stage in mainstream comedy. Think Mel Brooks (né Melvin Kaminsky, raised in Williamsburg); Woody Allen (né Allan Konigsberg, raised in Midwood); Joan Rivers (née Molinsky, raised in Crown Heights), and, of course, David himself (raised in Sheepshead Bay). These Brooklyn Jews are united in both background and comedic approach. For them, nothing is off-limits. All subjects, no matter how dark, from self-hatred to the Holocaust, could be grist for their comedic…

KID CUDI HAS RETURNED FROM SPACE WITH INSANO, HIS ninth studio album. It’s a decidedly material effort, one that’s more about the party than it is about the comedown. Cudi is no longer on the moon; he’s planted his feet right here on Earth. On the album, Cudi has brought along a few guests who like to party—Travis Scott, Young Thug, Lil Wayne—and the whole romp is narrated by DJ Drama, whose main job is scene-setting. It feels like a capital-T traditional 2020s rap album, with slick 808s and heavy kicks running throughout. But there’s something weighing Insano down too, something that keeps it from reaching escape velocity. There’s a listlessness—even a boredom—in the midst of all this partying. The boasts feel rote, the occasional introspections a little fake-deep. Cudi…

THE ELECTION-SEASON MUSTERING OF RIGHT-WING billionaires began in earnest in March, with a little-heralded confab between the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Pennsylvania-based investor and options king Jeffrey Yass. Yass—whose stake in ByteDance, the owner of the social media app TikTok, via his Susquehanna International Group, could be worth as much as $30 billion—asked Trump to speak at a retreat for the powerful right-wing business PAC the Club for Growth. The Club for Growth also happens to be employing former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to lobby on behalf of TikTok on Capitol Hill. The retreat seemed to go exactly as planned. Trump praised Yass as “fantastic” and, per Yass’s policy preferences, also emerged as a critic of a TikTok ban. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook…

Steve Brodner’s love of cartooning almost got him kicked out of college. Raised by a working-class single mother in Brooklyn, he started selling cartoons when he was in high school to make a little extra spending money. His first, a cartoon about local Brooklyn politics, ran in The Kings Courier, a local newspaper, in November 1971. He enrolled in Cooper Union to study fine art, but cartooning remained his ambition, particularly after he encountered the work of Thomas Nast, the 19th-century master of cross-hatching who famously helped end the reign of the corrupt Tweed gang that ruled New York politics. “Nast was the big atom bomb in my early career,” Brodner told The Comics Journal in 2004. “Nast showed you could change the world with pictures.” Already radicalized by the…

LAST MONTH, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a bill that could result in a nationwide ban on TikTok. The legislation essentially demands that ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, find a non-Chinese buyer for the social media app, and fast— divesting within just six months. The legislation, which has yet to be taken up by the Senate, cruised through the House with support from a majority of both Republicans and Democrats. No matter how you feel about the bill, can we all admit that this demonstration of bipartisanship is proof of our representatives’ willingness to put aside differences and dispense with political theater when it really counts? That’s a hard no, considering the bill itself is exactly the latter, scapegoating China for…

Wearing a black Feminist Buzzkills podcast T-shirt, green sweats, and blue Hokas, Amy Hagstrom Miller leads us out of her kitchen and into her car to buy groceries. Leisurely shopping in relative anonymity is a luxury she’s gained by living in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she moved from Austin, Texas, 10 years ago. In Austin, Hagstrom Miller was the face of the abortion rights movement. In 2016, the abortion clinic she founded was the plaintiff in the landmark case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, in which the Supreme Court ruled that two provisions of a Texas law were unconstitutional because they placed an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions. In 2021, Hagstrom Miller’s clinic was again the lead plaintiff in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the case that challenged Texas’s Senate…

IT’S NO SECRET THAT AMERICANS AREN’T EXACTLY excited about the prospect of a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In January, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 67 percent of Americans were “tired of seeing the same candidates in the presidential election, and wanted someone new.” It’s not just the polls, either; the steady presence of the “uncommitted” movement in Democratic primaries around the country underscores the depth of dissatisfaction with Biden’s support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. But all of that discontent can’t pull this flaming car over. We have our two candidates. One of them is deeply uninspiring, and the other one is Donald Trump. So, for the third election in a row, we are being exhorted to hold our noses and choose the lesser of two evils…

IN THE CENTER OF THE PHOTOGRAPH IS A YOUNG WOMAN WEARING A kerchief. Alongside a small group of protesters, she holds up a sign that reads, in English, “Fair Trade and Democracy Now.” The protest—the only expression of dissent during Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s triumphal tour of California—took place in September 1991 at Stanford University, where the Mexican president was invited to give a speech. Salinas was at the height of his power. Thirteen months later, he and his fellow North American leaders, US President George H.W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, would sign the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. At that moment, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the young woman in the photograph, was driving from her home in Palo Alto, California, to the Lawrence Berkeley National…

LIKE MANY GREAT LITERARY CRITICS BEFORE HER, LAUREN Oyler wrote a novel as her first book. Published in 2021, Fake Accounts followed an unnamed blogger living in Brooklyn who moves to Berlin after her boyfriend, an online conspiracy theorist, is apparently killed in a biking accident in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Our Brooklyn blogger is supposedly grieving her loss, but she has another reason to flee the United States: She wants to leave her day job churning out “content” to become a more serious writer. Yet after setting herself up in Berlin, she mostly spends her time in bed, scrolling through Twitter and OkCupid. When she does finally leave her apartment, it is mostly to go on dates with random men to whom she lies about her identity…

Louder still from the choirof the Black Madonna, the treble linebeat blue with the drumming hauntsof incalculable betrayal, too devianta lie to unbraid. Even at my dreary ends,the lasts of me spread across 3000 seasons,I still got a bell built for humming, that hymn ofrepetition an infinite note to God. You thinkI worry about beauty? By design,I come back twice. Undeadimperium, the only idols I’ve got leftcan’t be seen. In a goodfinal silence, they ask mehow I’d like to return. If I’d like to return.I stay knowing the depth of the vessel belly,the ripe scent of flesh snipingat the soft of my eyes, the melon seedwedged in my tooth like a clove. I say yes,say, send me backto this very animus, thisendless fiction. Yes. I would rather be uglythan forget.…