The Week Magazine May 26, 2023

Like so many political junkies, I was a congressional intern. For two summers in college, I worked at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, first as an unpaid mailroom grunt, and then in the sergeant-at-arms office for a piddling stipend. Back then, in the late 1980s, metal detectors were still a relatively new feature at congressional office buildings—they were only installed after the Capitol bombing of 1983, a little-remembered stunt in which radical leftists protesting the U.S. invasion of Grenada planted dynamite outside the Senate Chamber and blew off a door. The bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building by white supremacist Timothy McVeigh in 1995 brought another round of increased security measures, as did the 9/11 attacks. Most of the local offices that senators and representatives have back…

What happened The Biden administration said it was “encouraged” this week after new asylum rules instituted after the lifting of Title 42 did not result in an expected surge of migrants at the border. Last week President Biden sent 1,500 troops to the border and warned things would get “chaotic” after the end of the Covid-related public-health order, which for three years allowed border agents to summarily expel migrants. But after more than 10,000 migrants a day sought to cross the border just before Title 42 ended, much stricter asylum rules adopted by the administration under a restored policy called Title 8—including a five-year entry ban on migrants who try to enter illegally—cut the influx by half, with fewer than 5,000 migrant encounters a day. The five-year ban in…

Helen Kahan, a Holocaust survivor, celebrated her 100th birthday by throwing the opening pitch at a Tampa Bay Rays game. The Romanian-born Kahan practiced for days before throwing her first pitch at the weekend series–opening game against the New York Yankees. Kahan was 21 when she was sent to Auschwitz along with her parents and six siblings, who were killed at the concentration camp, before being liberated. “Oh dear, cannot be a better thing,” she said. “It cannot be. I am on my birthday and I have such happiness.” An oversize snapping turtle became an unlikely wildlife hero after kayakers took a video of the reptile enjoying the sun on the bank of the Chicago River. Deeply polluted and compared to an open sewer decades ago, the river has become…

What happened Ukrainian forces shot down a slew of Russian missiles over Kyiv this week and launched a string of counterattacks in Bakhmut, evidence that Western weaponry has substantially bolstered the country’s ability to resist the Russian invasion. Using two Patriot air-defense systems supplied by the U.S., the Ukrainians thwarted an intense, multidirectional overnight barrage on the capital Kyiv, downing six of Moscow’s showpiece long-range Kinzhal missiles. Those missiles, which Vladimir Putin once called “undefeatable,” can travel at five times the speed of sound and had previously blown past Ukrainian defenses. One of the Patriot batteries was damaged slightly. Ukrainian forces also reclaimed a 1-mile slice of territory south of Bakhmut that they say will protect a key supply chain, although Russia still controls 90 percent of the city.…

What happened President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled cautious optimism about breaking their stalemate over raising the debt ceiling as the deadline for avoiding the U.S.’s first default in history approached. After meeting with McCarthy this week, Biden backed down from his position that Congress must raise the ceiling without any additional conditions—which Republicans did three times under President Trump. He appeared open to accepting a deal that includes expanding work requirements for programs like cash assistance and food aid, while remaining opposed to any new restrictions on Medicaid. Biden appointed White House counselor Steve Ricchetti and budget director Shalanda Young to continue discussions. “There was an overwhelming consensus that defaulting on the debt is not an option,” he said. The U.S. reached its debt ceiling of…

The “madness” is back, said Frank Bruni in The New York Times, and the 2024 election season is going to be an even “stranger and scarier ride” than 2020 and 2016. That was the unmistakable takeaway from CNN’s town hall interview with Donald Trump last week, in which the former president made it clear he’s as shameless, unhinged, and deceitful as ever. The 2020 election was “rigged and stolen,” Trump still insisted. Jan. 6, 2021, was a “beautiful day”—so beautiful he’s “inclined to pardon” most of the Capitol rioters. The writer E. Jean Carroll, whom a jury last week determined Trump sexually abused in the mid-1990s and later slandered, is a “wack job” Trump can’t remember meeting. On and on Trump went, denying “incontrovertible facts,” portraying himself as both…