Weekend Reading
What fresh hell is this? #Corruption #Incompetence
“In the past several weeks, President Donald Trump, who has never been fastidious about separating public and private business, has been involved in a remarkable number of potential conflicts of interest. He recently announced his intention to accept a four-hundred-million-dollar Boeing 747 from the Qatari government, which would be used in lieu of Air Force One for the remainder of his Presidency, after which it would be transferred to his Presidential library; he has continued selling access to himself through his meme coin (a company with ties to China recently announced that it would buy as much as three hundred million dollars’ worth of the coin, $TRUMP); and his trip to Saudi Arabia this week was preceded by his family’s announcement, late last year, of a new Trump Tower Jeddah. The scale of these conflicts may be unique for an American politician, but Trump, who has consistently condemned the Washington ‘swamp,’ is one of many right-wing ‘populist’ leaders and former leaders —Viktor Orbán, of Hungary; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Turkey; Narendra Modi, of India; Jair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil—who have won election by running against a supposedly corrupt system, and then become embroiled in corruption scandals that often vastly eclipse those of their predecessors.” (Isaac Chotiner/TNY)
“When a civil war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the army had aerial supremacy due to its fleet of warplanes and drones. Yet the RSF is closing the gap with an arsenal of suicide drones, which it used on Port Sudan for six consecutive days, hitting an army base, a civilian airport, several hotels, and a fuel depot, which caused a massive blast. ‘Sudan had already entered the phase of drone warfare over the last … few months at least,’ said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank. The army largely relies on the relatively affordable Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, reportedly receiving $120m worth of them since late 2023. Bayraktars can travel long distances with a large payload, and the army says they helped it regain swaths of territory from the RSF in eastern and central Sudan between September 2024 and March 2025, including the capital Khartoum. Despite losing significant ground, the RSF then stepped up its aggression against the SAF with Chinese-made drones, according to a recent report by Amnesty International. The human rights group, Sudan’s de facto military government and other monitors all accuse the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of purchasing these drones – and other weapons – and supplying them to the RSF. The UAE has denied the accusations as ‘baseless.’” (Mat Nashed/Al Jazeera)
“At a time of growing uncertainty about the future of the international order, middle powers seem to be having a moment. Along with countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey is trying to capitalize on a geopolitical landscape that is less shaped by the postwar U.S. alliance system and rules-based diplomacy and more by multiple centers of power and transactional relations. Especially since the global financial crisis in 2008, Turkey has pursued closer relationships beyond its traditional Western allies, including with Russia and China. It has also sought to extend its international reach, especially outside the West—Turkey now has the third-highest number of diplomatic missions in the world, trailing only China and the United States. And in conflicts in the South Caucasus, the Black Sea region, and the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey has played an increasingly assertive role. Turkey’s recent policies in Syria are emblematic of the way a middle power can exert influence in its region, sometimes outmaneuvering seemingly stronger players. Throughout Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, the Turkish government openly opposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and provided material support to groups fighting against his rule. It did so even when Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, appeared to have a stranglehold on power, and the conflict itself caused millions of Syrian refugees to flee to Turkey, creating security risks along Turkey’s long southern border with Syria. Yet 13 years later, in December 2024, the Assad regime collapsed. Against all odds, Turkey’s policy had belatedly paid off. Ankara’s adversary is gone, and the victory of Turkish-supported opposition groups has given it a direct line to Damascus. Regional geopolitics remain fragile, and state-building in Syria will be a long and delicate process, but Turkey has established itself as one of the main outside powers with the leverage to shape the country’s future.” (Mustafa Kutlay/Foreign Affairs)
“All around me are short, shiny young Romans groping each other. The old ones engage in the more solitary pleasures of hawking loogies and eating out of greasy paper bags. I’m on my way to a dark retreat on a farm so high up in the mountains it requires five modes of transportation to get there—plane, train, metro, bus, taxi—each more confusing than the last. You buy your bus ticket at a particular newsstand nowhere near the bus. The only reason I knew this was because Antonello, the dark-retreat guide, had emailed me travel instructions … paragraphs of them … which I had memorized for dear life. Clutching my ticket, I tried to go through gate ten up the stairs to platform ten, as instructed, but the gate was locked. I tried gate eleven, but there was a sign saying not to cross the platform, which would have been the only way to get to ten. Vomit or diarrhea had been flung over the wall of the stairwell at regular intervals the whole way up. How did anyone have so much stuff in their guts? And why would they keep going up the stairs? I would have laid down and called 911. These Italians are of hearty stock. The smell was amazing. The arrow indicating the way to the metro switched directions so many times it curled and pointed at the sky. I guess you just guess here. Don’t even think about asking for help from the people in little cages like tollbooths scattered about. Signs in front of the booths warn in English: ‘We’re Not Here to Give Information.’ At last I alighted in Sora, the town closest to the farm, population five thousand, and called the taxi driver, Giulia, but she only giggled and said her boyfriend took her car and she had no idea when he would be back. I walked the streets of Sora and noticed that all the clocks were off, but each told a different wrong time.” (Lisa Carver/The Paris Review)
“I believe he should have taken a one-term pledge. I felt this way in 2016 and again in 2020. I believe had he offered a one-term pledge in 2020, he would have won by a larger margin that year. We often gloss over how much his age was a real issue in 2020. It just wasn’t as big of an issue as Trump. I also believe Biden should have announced in the middle of his term that he wasn’t going to run again (and I often wonder what would have happened had the 2022 elections turned out differently). If he had, and done this in a way that talked about the realities of aging in the modern presidency, I don’t think we’d be having the conversation about his frailties that is happening today. Rather, I believe the vast majority of Americans would have understood, and even praised him for his honesty. But for all my decades as a hack, I’m mindful of the fact I am not the person putting my name on the line. It is easy for me to say all of the things above. Leaving the presidency early is not something that is in the DNA of the people who seek it. And folks are mistaken when they argue Biden said he would serve one term; when he actually said was that he would be a ‘transition president.’ He’s just like everyone else who has ever sat at that desk—none of them wants to leave before the job is done. My side had spent most of Trump’s first term assuming he would lose re-election. But Biden had understood how hard it would be. He also understood why voters had put him there. The foundation he could always fall back on—particularly when compared to Trump—was that people perceived that he ‘cared about people like us,’ ‘understands the middle-class family,’ and ‘has the right priorities.’ Those characteristics didn’t disappear from Biden. But by 2022, thanks to things both inside and out of the White House’s control, the voters’ perceptions of them had.” (Steve Schale/The Bullwark)
“At the Manhattan courthouse where Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs went on trial this week, one marshal at the court was overheard saying, ‘This is crazier than when Trump was here.’ As CNN's Laura Coates has said, the trial is a huge cultural moment. Accordingly there is a torrent of news coverage – from real-time text updates to AI recreations. At least half a dozen major media outlets have launched Diddy trial podcasts; CNN has ‘Trial By Jury: Diddy,’ hosted by Coates, while the BBC has ‘Diddy on Trial’ and the Daily Mail has ‘The Trial of Diddy.’ Right now ABC's trial podcast, called ‘Bad Rap,’ is #5 on all of Apple Podcasts, ahead of ‘The Daily’ and ‘Dateline.’ The trial has been ‘an absolute media circus – but not with your typical players,’ CNN entertainment correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister told me … It was one year ago tomorrow when Wagmeister broadcast a CNN exclusive about the horrifying surveillance tape of Diddy assaulting Ventura. Her report changed public perception and arguably the trial itself … Some CNN segments and stories about Ventura alleging a decade of physical abuse by Combs have been accompanied by reminders about the National Domestic Violence Hotline … NBC News Now devoted a segment to the online ‘court of public opinion,’ with anchor Gadi Schwartz pointing out that opinion is ‘really shaped through what you are seeing on your timeline right now, or on your For You page.’ It's another ‘trial by TikTok,’ happening parallel to the actual trial. Chat rooms and comments threads are full of ‘theories’ about ‘the other celebrities involved’ and mentioned in court, correspondent Maya Eaglin said.” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)
“At times it seems as though tragedy has seeped into the very walls of the sprawling farmhouse in Germany’s Altmark region where this story unfolds, only to leach out and pollute the happiness of each subsequent generation. At others, it feels as though the decades that separate the lives of the four girls who are the film’s focus are fluid, and that the barrier of time is somehow permeable. What’s certain is that Sound Of Falling, the striking second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski, is a work of thrilling ambition realised by an assured directorial vision … Alma (Hanna Heckt), the elfin, flaxen-haired protagonist of this section, becomes troubled by one picture, showing her pinched, mute mother posing with the inert body of a child who is the spitting image of her. Her older sisters tease her – the dead girl in the photo is Alma, they say, seeding a preoccupation with her own mortality … In another time, years later, teenage Erika (Lea Drinda) neglects her pig-tending duties because of her fascination with her amputee uncle, Alma’s older brother. Later, in the 1980s, Erika’s niece Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) finds herself the focus of the unwelcome attentions of her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst) and his gauche son Rainer (Florian Geißelmann). And in the final, contemporary story, the clan’s connection to the farm has been severed, and newcomers, a family with two daughters, have bought it to renovate. But the stain of sadness on the building is hard to shift. The casual horrors endured by the women of the earlier generations – dairy maids are ‘made safe’ for the men by an operation to render them infertile – are the kind of traumas that can leave a mark for decades to come.” (Wendy Ide/Screen Daily)
“For years, a Chinese-language market for crypto scammers and money launderers—by some measures, the internet's biggest black market of all time—operated in plain sight on the messaging service Telegram, facilitating tens of billions of dollars in illicit finance. Now, thanks to the scrutiny of one team of crypto crime researchers and Telegram's ban hammer, it's gone. Haowang Guarantee, the crypto-fueled crime bazaar more widely known by its original name, Huione Guarantee, declared in an announcement posted to its website sometime in the last 24 hours that it would be shutting down. The move comes in response to Telegram's action on Monday to ban thousands of accounts and usernames that served as the infrastructure for the sprawling marketplace of third-party vendors, many of whom provided money laundering and other services to the burgeoning industry of East Asian crypto scammers. Prior to its abrupt shutdown, Haowang Guarantee—which despite its rebrand was still partially owned by Huione Guarantee and its Cambodia-based parent company Huione Group—had allowed third-party vendors to sell a wide variety of services to crypto scammers, all via Telegram, using deposit and escrow systems to ‘guarantee’ the transactions. Huione Guarantee merchants primarily offered money laundering via the cryptocurrency Tether, but they also sold other components of the crypto scam industry, ranging from potential victim data for targeting, telecommunications infrastructure, deepfake software, and even GPS-enabled collars and electric batons used to enslave workers in the scam compounds that have spread across Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines.” (Andy Greenberg/WIRED)
“Going into Tuesday’s markup of Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill,’ House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee were expected to make $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food stamp program that’s long been one of the country’s leading anti-poverty initiatives. The actual outcome was even more devastating, with Republicans proposing a massive $300 billion in cuts over the next decade. ‘Every single one of my Republican colleagues here tonight should be ashamed. The instruction to this committee was to find $230 billion in cuts to SNAP, but that wasn’t good enough for the extremists in your party. So tonight, you’re cutting more,’ said Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), the ranking Democrat on the Ag Committee during Tuesday’s markup. SNAP helps 41 million Americans afford food; it cost the federal government around $115 billion in 2023. The program helps put food on the tables of some of the most vulnerable people in the country: data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that the vast majority of SNAP recipients—80 percent—live in a household with a child, a senior citizen, or someone with a disability. Republicans made most of their cuts to SNAP through policy changes that food policy experts have described as devastating. The biggest proposed change is the implementation of a state match program, which would require states to contribute to the direct cost of food benefits. As of now, the federal government pays 100 percent of food benefit costs, while states help cover half of the administrative costs of SNAP. This change would likely hit heavily rural states the hardest—most of which are represented by Republicans.” (Emma Jansen/TAP)
“After the 2020 blowup, (NYT Publisher A. G. Sulzberger) could very well have downsized ‘Opinion.’ It is both looked down upon by reporters as a factory that churns out bland 800-word ‘takes’ and feared by executives for the outsize controversy it can occasionally create — which is why the publishers of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have scrambled to diminish their respective opinion sections since the reelection of Donald Trump. It would have been easy to imagine Sulzberger concluding that there wasn’t a ton of upside to investing in an operation that was at the very center of the culture war ripping apart the Times. Instead, five years later, the department has doubled in size with nearly 200 people on staff — bigger than many American newsrooms and magazines. Kingsbury not only steadied the ship but built a fleet around it, with audio, video, graphics, design, and special-projects teams that operate independently of the main newsroom, as well as an expanded roster of columnists. The size and scope of the department make it feel like its own separate publication rather than just a corner of the Times, which is technically true in the sense that none of the journalism published by ‘Opinion’ is overseen by executive editor Joe Kahn. Kingsbury, who reports directly to Sulzberger, has encroached on newsroom departments like the magazine and the culture sections by frequently publishing longform narratives, access profiles, photography portfolios, and literary memoir. Some of the notable stories of Kingsbury’s tenure include a viral essay on the Asian American women named after legendary broadcaster Connie Chung, a stirring coming-out story by the son of a pastor, and, recently, a hard-to-get sit-down with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — none of which could be classified as a traditional work of opinion. ‘The line between news and opinion has simply been an organizational one for ten years,’ said a former senior ‘Opinion’ editor.” (Charlotte Klein/Intelligencer)
“The boiling internal GOP debate that’s holding up President Donald Trump’s self-declared ‘big, beautiful’ bill isn’t over the deductibility of state and local taxes — it’s about the class and geographic divide splintering today’s Republican Party. And more directly, it’s about two midterm elections: Trump’s first, in 2018, when a series of Republicans from affluent districts retired or lost, and his second, next year’s election when many of the lawmakers elected from upscale suburbia ever since are facing difficult re-elections. From the moment the president signed his 2017 tax legislation, which limited so-called SALT deductions at $10,000, congressional Republicans from high-income districts have been vowing to raise the cap. And now a handful are angry, and more than a little perplexed, that the initial House draft of the bill renewing those Trump tax cuts doesn’t do more to address what’s a central concern for their districts: the double-taxing of the large swath of their income that goes to state income taxes, property taxes, sewer taxes, personal-property levies and the like. But these lawmakers, who are overwhelmingly from the two coasts, shouldn’t be surprised. Just as that great sage of our times, John Edwards, once spoke about Two Americas, the GOP is bifurcated. Our tribal silos, it turns out, also exist within the same parties. The bulk of Trump-era congressional Republicans represent red states with lower incomes and more modest tax bills than their outnumbered counterparts in blue America. The only Republican left from New England in today’s Congress is Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, and West Coast states haven’t elected a GOP senator for over two decades, while mostly electing GOP House members from more rural and less well-educated inland districts.” (Jonathan Martin/Politico)