The Week Magazine March 24, 2023

Did you know that Silicon Valley Bank imploded because it was “woke”? Or that masks provide absolutely no protection against Covid? Or that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Chinese lab by a sinister “bat lady” in cahoots with Dr. Anthony Fauci? Millions of Americans believe all these statements to be proven fact, despite being unsupported by actual evidence, because that’s what they’ve been told by Tucker Carlson and the far-right infotainment system—which knowingly lies to its audience for profit and power. (See Controversy, p.6.) Whether it’s peddling stolen elections or mass deaths from vaccines, the recipe is the same: Start with a tiny sliver of information, separate out 99.8 percent of the evidence, inflate with hot air and repetition, and voila! You have The Real Story. Since the audience wants…

What happened The Federal Reserve launched an investigation this week into the oversight and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, as the Biden administration scrambled to limit the political and market fallout from the nation’s second-largest bank failure in history. Federal regulators stepped in to rescue all the bank’s depositors when SVB—which catered primarily to Silicon Valley venture capitalists and tech startup companies—collapsed last Friday, as panicked depositors pulled out $42 billion in a single day. The bank had invested heavily in low-interest, long-term Treasury bonds that lost value as interest rates climbed, forcing it to sell $21 billion in bonds at a steep loss. A planned stock sale to raise cash sparked fear among depositors, including well-known venture capitalists who aired their worries on Twitter, leading to a run…

What happened A high-stakes showdown over the country’s finances began this week as the Senate took up the Biden administration’s 2024 budget proposal, a $6.8 trillion behemoth that would include a raft of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy. The plan, published last week, would revive parts of the 2021 Build Back Better agenda, including an expanded child tax credit and funding for climate, child care, and other projects. To raise revenue, it includes a 25 percent minimum tax on billionaires and a hike in the top tax rate for Americans making more than $400,000 a year (from 37 percent to the pre-2017 rate of 39.6 percent). It also gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies. The administration says the revenue increase and…

At 81 years old, best friends Sandy Hazelip and Ellie Hamby have set out to travel the world in 80 days—a tribute to Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel. Even with total knee replacements, they’ll visit seven continents, nine wonders of the world, and 18 countries. Hazelip and Hamby, who became fast friends while on a trip to Zambia 20 years ago, say they’re making good progress: They’ve already set foot on Antarctica and flown over Mount Everest. “Don’t sit in that chair and waste away,” Hazelip said. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Roots musician Cedric Watson grew up listening to relatives speak Kouri-Vini, a blend of African languages and French that, with fewer than 6,000 speakers left, was at risk of being forgotten. As an adult, he…

It’s no surprise to other media people that Tucker Carlson, the Fox News prime-time star and host of the highest-rated show on cable television, “doesn’t believe half the things he says on his show,” said Jack Shafer in Politico. But that “obvious truth can now be enjoyed more widely.” A new trove of documents released last week from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox includes a slew of texts and emails in which Carlson shares his candid feelings about former President Donald Trump. “I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote, calling his presidency “a disaster” to which “there isn’t really an upside.” When the cameras rolled, however, Carlson took the same “wildly pro-Trump stance” that informs his current effort to recast the Jan. 6 attempted coup as…

Good week for: Free speech, with confirmation by a Canadian court that “flipping the bird” to anyone is not only legal, but “a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.” Russian conscripts, 10,000 of whom have provided personal information to a Ukrainian confidential phone hotline for Russian soldiers who want to surrender discreetly. Callers to the “I Want to Live” line are greeted with the words “Hi, I’m listening” and assured that they will be listed as “captured.” Food fights, after Donald Trump’s SuperPAC filed a complaint with a Florida ethics commission, charging that Gov. Ron DeSantis is violating state ethics and election laws by taking and spending “millions of dollars” for his “shadow presidential campaign.” Bad week for: Jumping the gun, after President Biden told the crowd…