“There are stories that make a splash, and then there are stories that leave a mile-deep crater. This week’s piece by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, detailing how he was inadvertently added to a Trump administration group chat detailing war plans against the Houthis, falls smack into the second category. A lot of praise has already been heaped upon Goldberg’s story, given what it tells us about national security and the competence of top administration officials. But for our purposes, we want to give a laurel to whoever edited the piece, because it shows how journalists can go right up to the line without crossing it. One example is how Goldberg deals with the initial uncertainty around who was really on this Signal thread. So the story doesn’t say that Vice President JD Vance was arguing against the strike, but names one of the authors as ‘the account labeled ‘JD Vance.’’ A response to Vance comes from ‘a message [that] arrived from the ‘Pete Hegseth’ account’—referring to the secretary of defense. The piece also deftly takes the reader through Goldberg’s own thought process. It begins with skepticism, amid his reasonable concerns that the chat is an elaborate hoax: ‘I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans.’ Then it proceeds to clarification, as Goldberg (sitting in a Safeway parking lot) sees via X that Yemen is being bombed on a timeline that jibes with the schedule detailed by the Hegseth account. Finally, there’s confirmation, when Goldberg emails the National Security Council and is told that ‘this appears to be an authentic message chain.’ The Atlantic hit the publish button shortly afterward.” (Bill Grueskin/CJR)
“Donald Trump is holding a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding huge reparations payments and laying claim to half of Ukraine’s oil, gas, and hydrocarbon resources as well as almost all its metals and much of its infrastructure. The latest version of his ‘minerals deal’, obtained by The Telegraph, is unprecedented in the history of modern diplomacy and state relations. ‘It is an expropriation document,’ said Alan Riley, an expert on energy law at the Atlantic Council. ‘There are no guarantees, no defence clauses, the US puts up nothing.’ The US will control infrastructure linked to natural resources ‘including, but not limited to, roads, rail, pipelines and other transportation assets; ports, terminals and other logistics facilities and refineries, processing facilities, natural gas liquefaction and/or regasification facilities and similar assets.’ Three of the five board members on the new fund will be chosen by the US. It will have ‘A’ shares and golden shares. America will receive all the royalties until Ukraine has paid off at least $100bn of war debt to the US, with 4pc interest added – less than the $350bn floated earlier by Mr Trump but still half of Ukraine’s GDP, and unpayable. Ukraine has only ‘B’ shares and will receive 50pc of the royalties only once its arrears are paid off. The fund is registered in Delaware but under New York jurisdiction. The US has the first right of refusal on all projects. It has authority to examine the books and accounts of any Ukrainian ministry or agency whenever it wants during working hours.” (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard/The Telegraph)
“You know, of course, that Trump claims that they’re all gang members; and you know also, I suspect, that many aren’t; and most of all you know, I hope, that regardless of their innocence or guilt sending them to a foreign prison described as ‘notorious’ by both critics on MSNBC and fans on Fox News, absent any due process, likely in defiance of a court order, is the work of a regime, not an administration; a fascist authority, not the rule of law … Kristi Noem in tight athleisure—white top, drawstring grey pants—in front of a prison cell packed with mostly shirtless men. Noem’s hair cascades out of her navy DHS cap. The men appear to be wearing loose white patient pants. Norm wears a heavy gold-and-silver watch. [Numerous commentators have identified it as a $58-60,000 Rolex, but I can’t confirm that.] The men’s arms are at their sides or clasped in front, as if they’ve been told to stand at attention. Noem’s cap is pulled low, so we can’t really see her eyes; instead, her face appears comprised mainly of lips. The men’s heads have been shaved; there’s lighting on Noem but they’re in the murk, hard to distinguish from one another. When I showed my wife the video, her first response was ‘Holy shit.’ Because it’s a lot. The caged men, the pose, the look. My wife, Julia Rabig, a historian, identified the look—we both, journalist & historian, recognize that the politics here are the look, not Noem’s generic ‘tough’ words—as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. ‘There’s a way in Trump world,’ she said, ‘in which performing a certain kind of ‘sexy’ is ‘serious.’’ That is, she argued, in the gendered politics of Trumpism certain women convey their particular authority by conforming to conventional ideas of ‘sexy,’ ultra-femme variations of styles appropriate to the situation.” (Jeff Sharlet/Scenes From a Slow Civil War)
“INTERVIEWER What was it like to grow up in this Black society you call Negroland, and what did you have to hide from it? MARGO JEFFERSON Well, there were several layers of hiding, from the profound to the very superficial. To start with the superficial, it had to do with modes of behavior that were not going to give off a whiff of those distasteful stereotypes about rough and wild Negro girls and rough and wild and crude Negro women. INTERVIEWER It’s like that moment in The Bluest Eye when Geraldine thinks, I’ve seen that little girl all my life, hanging out of windows, crawling over porches, sitting in bus stations holding paper bags. JEFFERSON And wearing nail polish your mother thinks is too red. Exactly. And then there are diction lessons and, within diction, the question of speaking loudly versus not. There’s a whole code of manners and mannerisms. You have to be vivacious enough to be good company and to dance well at parties, but you can’t cross the line into a coarser vivacity. So the superficial part requires a lot of manipulation and quick turns. My mother, Denise, and I would be in an elevator at Marshall Field’s, and Denise would say something and we’d both start to crack up, and my mother would want to laugh but would say, ‘If you don’t straighten up yourselves and your backs by the time this elevator door opens …’ Now, on a deeper level, the struggle was with how to excel. You were certainly supposed to do well in school, but if doing well demanded that you be a little too original or daring, that might be a problem, might violate the codes of perfect Negrodom.” (Margo Jefferson/The Paris Review)
“Sudan’s army says it has wrested control of the capital Khartoum from a feared militia accused of genocide after ousting it from the Presidential Palace and the city’s airport it had held since the start of a brutal two-year conflict. But while the capture of Khartoum marks an important moment in the conflict, with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) deeply embedded elsewhere in Sudan and attempting to form a parallel government, analysts warn there is little likelihood of a swift resolution to the war. Since April 2023, two of Sudan’s most powerful generals – Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who leads the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and former ally Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – have engaged in a bloody feud over control of the country which is split between their strongholds. The ruthless power struggle, which was essentially triggered by disagreements on how to restore civilian rule after the fall of former President Omar al-Bashir and a subsequent military coup, has left more than 28,000 people dead and 11 million homeless in what the United Nations has described as the world’s ‘most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis.’ The military claims control of swaths of Sudan but almost all of Darfur, a region roughly the size of France, is held by the RSF, which also retains footholds in the neighboring states of West Kordofan and North Kordofan, according to a map released by the SAF. The RSF has battled to maintain its presence in Khartoum, but a streak of losses in recent weeks has forced the militia to flee its key positions within the city. On Wednesday, the SAF posted a video on social media which it said showed RSF fighters fleeing Khartoum, hours after it reclaimed the airport.” (Nimi Princewill/CNN)
“Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday that Canada’s old relationship with the US was ‘over’ and vowed that there would be a ‘broad renegotiation’ of the trade agreement between the countries. Speaking in Ottawa after meeting the nation’s provincial premiers, Carney said the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump would force Canada to rethink and reshape its economy and seek ‘reliable’ trading partners. ‘The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operations, is over,’ he told reporters. ‘The time will come for a broad renegotiation of our security and trade relationship.’” (Ilya Gridneff/FT)
“While (Rep. María Elvia Salazar R-Fla.) said Trump is delivering on promises to close the border and go after gang members, the administration has also taken a wrecking ball to the immigration system, gutting asylum, refugee, and temporary protected status programs while embarking on an authoritarian dream sequence that includes shipping Venezuelan men who have common tattoos but, in many cases, no criminal records to Guantánamo Bay or a brutal Salvadoran prison. Rick Swartz, who founded the National Immigration Forum and worked on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (also known as the ‘Reagan amnesty’), was simultaneously pained and humored by her words. ‘I’ll have what she’s smoking,’ Swartz said. ‘Every bone in Stephen Miller’s body contradicts that delusional wishful thinking. If she gets Miller to say ‘We’ll do legalization for 6 million people now that we kicked out the worst of the worst,’ great! I’ll nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.’ I asked Salazar: Why should the scarred and traumatized immigrant community, whose members are being attacked irrespective of whether they have green cards or legal status, trust Republicans to lead this effort? She said they should trust the plan because she intends to advocate this legislation while flanked by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. ‘Very simple—you introduce legislation and ask the Lord to help you and guide you,’ she said …” (Adrian Carrasquillo/Huddled Masses)
“One of the most coveted jobs in television is quickly becoming one of the hardest to keep filled. Taylor Tomlinson is the latest participant in a lengthening parade of comics and talk-show hosts who have decided that a perch in late-night TV is just not for them. Tomlinson announced Wednesday that she would leave the two-season-old ‘After Midnight’ on CBS despite the offer of a third cycle this fall and the backing of Stephen Colbert, who hosts ‘The Late Show’ an hour before her program airs. CBS, meanwhile, won’t cast about for someone new to lead her show’s 12:30 a.m. slot. She joins Trevor Noah and Roy Wood Jr. in a recent exodus of people who had won established positions in wee-hours programming but felt they could do better on their own … A late-night show is not an easy creature to tame. You need topical humor for every broadcast, an array of guests and musicians, and the staff needs to come up with a few surprises every week to keep viewers delighted. In recent years, the difficulties have been compounded by the fact that no one needs to watch Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel late at night. People can merely sample clips the morning after via YouTube or any number of social-media outlets.” (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
“To belabor the obvious, given the Senate Republicans’ stubbornly lockstep devotion to Trumpification, the only civic bastion potentially able to brake this flamboyantly lawless White House’s drive for unbounded power is the federal judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court. Long aware of this last potential obstacle to their ambitions, Trump and his team have been unreserved about impugning the court’s authority to dispute their sweeping definition of presidential power. Trump’s most hawkish presidential imperialists, Vice President JD Vance and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, have trumpeted their zest for defying any judicial orders to respect legal boundaries. At the same time, Trump himself, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, has been more coy, at least until their circumvention of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s March 15 order to halt extralegal deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. So all eyes have turned to Chief Justice John Roberts and his five conservative colleagues to divine whether, when, and how they might stand up to this unprecedented existential threat to the rule of law. In a recent article, I laid out the most promising approach for the justices to take up this challenge. Namely, just do their job, as the Constitution and laws prescribe, as the Framers of those enactments anticipated, and the electorate expects. That means the straightforward civics class imperative: laser-focus on the relevant enacted text of the Constitution and pertinent statutes; interpret that text in good faith, with the lawyerly discipline of their craft, in light of its Framers’ design; and apply and enforce that interpretation, without regard to partisan, policy, personal, or institutional preferences and interests. That approach will enable the justices to fight this epochal war on their own turf, playing to their strengths, forcing Trump and his henchmen to play defense—and simultaneously spotlight his agenda as the lawless bid for raw, unbounded power that in fact it is.” (Simon Lazarus/TNR)
“Democrats could make a reasonable argument that 2016 was a fluke. The results of the 2024 election were far more of an existential threat to the party. This time, Trump won the popular vote victory he was denied the first time he captured the White House. He ran the table in the seven swing states. Exit polls showed that Trump carried a larger percentage of Latinos than any other Republican in history. A plurality of young men and a majority of Latino men backed him, and he made gains with Black men, too. In fact, it’s hard to find a part of the country that didn’t shift toward Trump — from the urban counties of the Northeast to the Native-American counties in the West and also the more educated and suburban counties in between. Judging from the electoral architecture of his victory, some Democratic officials argue, Trump reduced the onetime party of the working man to little more than a narrow club of elites. One of the few voting blocs that moved toward Harris were postgraduate degree holders, and it was Harris, not Trump, who won people who make more than $100,000 annually.” (Holly Otterbein/Politico)
“Historians have, for centuries, assumed that the ancient Egyptian pyramids were built as great tombs only for the elite and powerful. New research at the ancient archaeological site of Tombos, in modern-day Sudan, however, suggests this conventional assumption may not be entirely accurate. A new study published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology reveals that lower-status laborers were also buried in pyramid tombs alongside the elite, contrary to what has long been assumed about social stratification in ancient burial practices. Located along the Nile River, Tombos was an important place in the ancient Nubian region. Egypt conquered the area around 1400 BCE and established Tombos as a colonial settlement to exert control over Nubia. Wealthy individuals were typically buried in pyramid tombs, but on a smaller scale than the gigantic pyramids at Giza. A recent reevaluation of 110 human skeletons at the site has shed some unexpected light on the composition of individuals interred within these monuments. Archaeologists examined the entheseal changes within the bones—alterations where the ligaments and tendons attach to bone, and which frequently indicate levels of physical labor. According to the study, individuals with little entheseal wear were likely elite members of society who performed minimal physical work. In contrast, many skeletons with extensive entheseal changes, indicative of heavy work, were also buried within pyramid tombs. These findings suggest pyramids were not exclusively reserved for elites. ‘We can no longer assume that individuals buried in grandiose [pyramid] tombs are the elite,’ the authors wrote in the study. ‘Indeed, the hardest-working members of the communities are associated with the most visible monuments.’” (Dario Radley/Archaeology)