Tag: The New Yorker

 The Story: Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is 87 years old and who was elected to her current six-year term in 2018, responded recently to rumors...

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Susan Glasser of The New Yorker and David Brooks of the The New York Times, about Michael Cohen's testimony and the U.S.-North Korea summit. I think... KELLY: Relief that no bad deal was cut... GLASSER: Correct, that no deal... KELLY: ...That that would be worse than... GLASSER: ...Is better than bad deal. And just because President Trump didn't make a bad deal with North Korea, just because I think most people in both parties do agree that talking even fruitlessly is better than threatening nuclear war, that doesn't mean that this wasn't an enormous embarrassment for the Trump administration and, I think, for the United States. GLASSER: ...Human rights of all kinds, I just don't - I don't see that as a win for the United States. Susan, years from now, will we remember this testimony as a footnote or the moment that winds shifted or as neither of the above? However... KELLY: 'Cause there were so many... GLASSER: Well, exactly. KELLY: David, you came at the testimony this week - your writing in The Times about it - from a moral perspective. Republicans are morally numb about Donald Trump. And every time you stereotype someone, you're ripping at it. KELLY: Words to close the week from The New Yorker's Susan Glasser and The New York Times' David Brooks.

NEW YORK (AP) — Sen. Bernie Sanders will return to Brooklyn, the borough where he was born, to launch a presidential campaign that's expected to connect his working-class childhood to his populist political views that have reshaped the Democratic Party. Sanders, a Vermont independent and the runner-up in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, will speak Saturday morning from Brooklyn College, which he attended for a time. Sanders launched his 2016 campaign from Vermont, the bucolic state that he has represented in the Senate for nearly two decades. But this time around, seeking to showcase more of his personal story, Sanders will first stop in Brooklyn, where he grew up as the son of a Jewish immigrant and lived in a rent-controlled apartment. In those reflections is an implicit contrast to another New Yorker, President Donald Trump, a billionaire who hails from Queens. Sanders has been among the most vocal critics of Trump, calling him, a racist, a sexist and a xenophobe. After Brooklyn, Sanders will travel to Selma, Alabama, where he will be among the politicians commemorating the anniversary of the 1965 clash known as "Bloody Sunday," when peaceful demonstrators were beaten back by Alabama state troopers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He'll hold his second campaign rally in Chicago, where he attended the University of Chicago and was involved in civil rights protests. But at the pair of weekend rallies, Sanders will shed light on how his childhood and his activism have informed the policies and ideas he's championed. Sanders joins the presidential race not as an outlier as he was in his campaign against Hillary Clinton but as one of the best-known candidates in a crowded field of Democrats.

The image that sticks most in my mind from the uniquely disruptive political year that was 2018 is of Angela Merkel with Horst Seehofer on the balcony of the Chancellery building. The chancellor, a glass of white wine in her hand, has turned her back and is stalking away from her rebellious interior minister, as though he were a dog she'd just caught going through the kitchen garbage can. If a current article in The New Yorker magazine is to be believed, one major reason Merkel decided to run for a fourth term in office in 2017 was because she felt the world needed a counterweight to US President Donald Trump. The incipient dissolution of the SPD The irony is that much of the political disruption in Germany was due to factors beyond the control of a chancellor whose preference — indeed whose whole political brand — is to remain above the fray. Merkel spent the first months of 2018 doing something familiar: negotiating a third centrist grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). The SPD began to disintegrate. It started with then-SPD Chairman Martin Schulz flip-flopping on whether Social Democrats would form another Merkel-led government and whether he himself would serve in it. Such is the state of Merkel's current partners. The Greens, whose popularity has yo-yoed over decades but who have never been a dominant party, are now Germany's second strongest political force, at least if public opinion polls are true, while the SPD is battling it out for third with the upstart AfD. Together, the conservatives and the SPD would be unlikely to be able to muster anywhere near a parliamentary majority.

NBC News reached out to Berchem for comment after obtaining a copy of a memo she wrote about the text messages. In a statement to NBC News, Berchem, a partner in the law firm Akin Gump, said: “I understand that President Trump and the U.S. Senate have ordered an FBI investigation into certain allegations of sexual misconduct by the nominee Brett Kavanaugh. After getting no response, she resent the summary on Monday morning along with screenshots of certain texts that she thinks raise questions that should be investigated. Berchem's texts with Yarasavage shed light on Kavanaugh’s personal contact with friends, including that he obtained a copy of a photograph of a small group of friends from Yale at a 1997 wedding in order to show himself smiling alongside Ramirez 10 years after they graduated. He flagged two texts in particular In a series of texts before the publication of the New Yorker story, Yarasavage wrote that she had been in contact with “Brett's guy,” and also with “Brett,” who wanted her to go on the record to refute Ramirez. According to Berchem, Yarasavage also told her friend that she turned over a copy of the wedding party photo to Kavanaugh, writing in a text: “I had to send it to Brett’s team too.” Bob Bauer, former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, said: "It would be surprising, and it would certainly be highly imprudent, if at any point Judge Kavanaugh directly contacted an individual believed to have information about allegations like this. Further, the texts show Kavanaugh may need to be questioned about how far back he anticipated that Ramirez would air allegations against him. Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker. According to the information Berchem provided, Ramirez tried to avoid Kavanaugh at that wedding of their two friends, Yarasavage and Kevin Genda. Ramirez, “clung to me” at the wedding, Berchem wrote to Yarasavage in a Sept. 24th text message.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ronan Farrow has a new bombshell report for The New Yorker that will accuse CBS CEO Les Moonves of sexual misconduct. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking…

The US celebrated the 242nd anniversary of its independence this week, roiled by fallout from the Trump administration’s family-separations policy at the same time it considers long-simmering questions over addressing its racial history and confronts the world with an isolationist trade policy. At heart of the debate is the question of identity—of us and them. Why is identity so often a source of conflict? Jelani Cobb, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a staff writer for The New Yorker, suggests the answer goes all the way back to founding of the republic. “The question of ‘We, the people’ has been our ongoing and unresolved conflict in American identity,” Cobb said at a Chautauqua Institute talk in western New York. “We’ve never sufficiently understood and defined who is included in that term.” Ever since Thomas Jefferson’s passage famously decrying the transatlantic slave trade in the Declaration of Independence was cut, American democracy has been characterized by a boom-and-bust cycle, Cobb said. “An expanding concept of ‘we,’” followed by “a contracting, fearful idea of who ‘we’ should be.” Identity politics—and a cycle of progress, followed by backlash— have shaped the course of US history. The Civil War was followed by Reconstruction—in which more than 2,000 African-Americans were elected to political office—which was followed by the repressive Jim Crow era. The US has vacillated between opening its borders to immigrants and lashing out against them, from an 1882 law that forbade Chinese immigrants from entering to turning away boats filled with Jewish refugees during World War II. And the past 10 years have seen both the election of the first black US president and the ensuing rise of political movements centered on the idea that the white identity is under threat.

Thirty or so lucky souls were treated to an enlightening public talk between journalist and author Lawrence “Larry” Wright and journalist and Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith. Wright was for it. Smith went on to lead Texas Monthly and now the Texas Tribune, while also interviewing top minds on “Texas Monthly Talks” and then “Overheard with Evan Smith” on public television. Smith then moved on to the main subject for the evening, Wright’s recent book, “God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State,” parts of which have appeared in the New Yorker. Emancipet Luncheon One speaker in town who could give Smith or Wright a run for their money is Amy Mills, CEO of Emancipet, an Austin nonprofit that provides free or low-cost spay, neutering and veterinary care at seven clinics in four cities. The room grew hushed when Mills rose to the stage. After all, she can so cogently and quickly explain a rapidly expanding and sustainable nonprofit, she would likely trounce every other participant at Philanthropitch. With animal welfare partners, they focused not on lost pets, but on vet care for families hit hard by the storm. Ann Richards School It’s impossible to ignore how composed and accomplished they are. The students from the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders are the real celebrities during the annual Reach for the Stars benefit for the Ann Richards School Foundation, now held at Four Seasons Hotel Austin.

Subscribe to the Real Time YouTube: http://itsh.bo/10r5A1B In his editorial New Rule, Bill pens an open letter to his dear friend Roseanne about a few inconsistencies in her political affiliations. Connect with Real Time Online: Find Real Time on Facebook:…

Subscribe to the Real Time YouTube: http://itsh.bo/10r5A1B Bill recaps the top stories of the week, including Bill Cosby's guity verdict, White House drama, and budding bromances both foreign and domestic. Connect with Real Time Online: Find Real Time on Facebook:…