The Nation July 2024

THE VOTES HAD BARELY BEEN COUNTED WHEN THE New York Times rushed to offer a dose of reassurance: “In E.U. Elections, the Center Holds.” CNN also picked up the theme: “Far right surges in European Parliament elections but center still holds.” Yet most of the power in the European Union remains with its Council (which is composed of the heads of each member state, and which defines the EU’s priorities) and Commission (roughly, its unelected executive branch)—and the Council is free to ignore Parliament’s opinions. This renders the whole exercise safe for protest votes. But that doesn’t mean the rise of far-right parties across the continent shouldn’t be concerning, even here in the United States. I still recall the comical choreography of the customs line at Heathrow Airport the day before…

THE MOST DAUNTING RESPONSIBILITY FOR FOLLOWERS OF AN AUTHORITARIAN ruler is making excuses for when the boss screws up. Unfortunately for the Republicans who have chosen Donald Trump as their 2024 presidential nominee, they are having a hard time keeping up with the chaos that the 78-year-old convicted felon and aspiring dictator is spawning. It’s not that top Republicans have qualms about lying on their candidate’s behalf. They’re more than willing to maintain the cult of personality Trump demands. The problem is that they can’t keep their trumped-up stories straight. When it was reported in June that Trump told House Republicans that “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” US Representative Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican, declared, “I was in the room. President Trump did not…

AS JOE BIDEN’S REELECTION BID CONTINUES TO FALter, Democrats have to admit that the problem is either the message or the messenger. Two contradictory trends paint a bleak picture of a president who can’t get credit from the public for his genuine achievements. Writing in Forbes, New School economist Richard McGahey noted that with May’s unexpectedly strong employment report, which tallied the creation of 272,000 new jobs, “the Biden Administration’s robust and durable track record on jobs and unemployment is breaking records, putting up some of the best results we’ve seen in half a century.” Yet May was also when, according to Reuters, “Biden’s public approval rating…fell to its lowest level in almost two years, tying the lowest reading of his presidency in a warning sign for his reelection effort.”…

THE ONLY VOTE I’VE REGRETTED WAS MY FIRST. IN 2012, I was so furious about the Democratic Party’s failure to make meaningful progress on climate change that I used my first-ever ballot to cast a protest vote against President Barack Obama. Rather than forcing my way into the Democratic Party’s big tent, I sat outside it. That protest vote is on my mind as two startlingly unpopular presidents vie for another four years. Can I stomach a vote for Joe Biden, a man who promised jobs that would be good for the planet and workers’ wallets and delivered the funds for a super-charged domestic clean-energy industry, only to blow all of his goodwill by bear-hugging a far-right leader who is wanted by the International Criminal Court? And what do my…

ISRAEL’S ASSAULT ON GAZA HAS SHUTTERED EVERY one of its schools and universities, many of which have been reduced to rubble. Israel can cut off Internet and other forms of communication at any time. Air strikes have killed more than 100 journalists, many of whom Israel appears to have targeted. This is in addition to the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs (often manufactured by American companies), for whom there is, of course, no freedom of expression. In every conversation about Palestine, it is important to begin with these stakes. Because the material reality in Gaza is often lost in the debate over the appropriate response in the United States. As liberal organizations and universities in the US hem and haw over the merits of street protests,…

FEW PLACES IN THE WORLD FACE A MORE UNCERtain future than Gaza, where famine looms and 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the course of Israel’s brutal retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks. But in May, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly unveiled a plan for the region dubbed “Gaza 2035.” As outlined in the trade publication The Architect’s Newspaper, the plan envisions postwar Gaza as a tabula rasa, purged of residents, on which Netanyahu can realize a cartoonish, convoluted vision of fossil fuel extraction (an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of oil sit in the Strip’s coastal area), preemptive greenwashing (there’s talk of “electric car manufacturing cities”), and total fealty to the technology and real estate industries to shape the land. The proposal was accompanied by…