Weekend Reading
What fresh hell is this? #Corruption #Incompetence
“Here’s some context, on why institutional failure connects so much else that is going wrong. —We know we have a problem of leadership pathology. Everything that could be wrong with a human being, is wrong with Donald Trump. As it happens, both of Trump’s parents turned out to be long-lived, although his father spent his final years in dementia, with first symptoms at about Donald Trump’s current age.¹ Donald Trump is not all there, but actuarially he will likely be with us for a while. And behind him stand JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Emil Bove, and others who share his amoral cruelty. —We know we have a crisis of disinformation, misinformation, and simple info-chaos. Neil Postman, who sadly was less long-lived than the Trumps, presaged our situation with the brilliant Amusing Ourselves to Death back in 1985. —We know that we have ‘culture war’ problems, because we read and hear about them nonstop. And we hear almost as frequently about today’s political messaging imbalance: Voters don’t like what Republicans actually do in office—tariffs, Medicaid cuts, abortion bans, and so on—yet they seem to like the Democratic ‘brand’ even less. And we know we have gerrymandering and vote-suppression problems, now openly egged-on by Trump. But connecting all these, and now looming largest to me, is the weakness that Trump and his operatives have revealed in the institutional infrastructure of US governance. Americans love to say that our constitutional rules, and our brilliant checks-and-balances structure, are what make the nation so strong. I’ve long believed just the opposite: That the US governing structure is flawed and outdated. (Worth remembering: Of the hundred-plus new democracies that have emerged in the past century, exactly zero have copied the US governance model.) And that only good luck, plus natural advantages—location, resources, scale—plus some filament of shame and self-restraint, have kept the US kept the US going as well as it has. We’ve succeeded in spite of our system, not because of it.” (James Fallows/Breaking The News)
“I spent a good deal of time researching Melania for my book on the Trump family women, The Trump Women: Part of the Deal. Anyone who has tried to learn what Melania Knauss was up to in the years between leaving Slovenia around 1990 and washing up in New York City a few years before she says she met Trump in 1998, finds a lacuna, a blank slate on which there is almost no record. Mary Jordan, a Washington Post reporter and author who wrote a 2019 Melania biography, noted in her preface that she had an easier time reporting on national security spooks than on Melania. I made some headway: I interviewed denizens of the New York fashion world who suggested, at the very least, that she was never a ‘supermodel.’ I went to Slovenia, found a few sources who talked, and much fear, including in a powerful businessman who told me he was backing out of talking to me about Melania’s father’s legal problems after he was visited in his office by thuggish men in business suits. In my reporting on Melania, I never ran across an Epstein connection. But it was 2018, and he wasn’t on my radar. I did discover a discrepancy in the official story of how Trump and Melania met. Melania says she met Trump in 1998 at a Victoria's Secret party. But fashion photographer, Jarl Alé de Basseville (who shot her in the nude scenes for a French men’s magazine that the New York Post published during the 2016 campaign) told me he and his team recalled her telling them in 1996 – two years before the official story – that Trump was her boyfriend. Melania, of course, denies this. The truth is that Melania was an Eastern European beauty who came of age in a formerly Iron Curtained-off country, Tito’s Yugoslavia. Like her predecessor, Ivana Trump, she grew up looking longingly over at the luxuries of the West, from plentiful Coca-Cola and Swiss chocolate to Italian jeans to Mercedes cars. As soon as the Berlin Wall fell, two things happened to women like her: one, they saw an escape hatch in commodifying their beauty, and two, they were ripe for exploitation by men like Epstein, whose business model involved trafficking Eastern European women – and girls.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“This week on What Rough Beast, Stephen and Virginia go deep on the Epstein conspiracy. Here's what we covered:
How Epstein represented a new class of ultra-wealthy who exempt themselves from democratic norms and why this scandal has traction when Trump seemed ‘Teflon’
Virginia's first-hand experience with John Brockman's Epstein-funded EDGE organization and the ‘intellectual dark web’
The physics envy pipeline from quantum mechanics to finance via IQ fetishism
How neo-Darwinism provided intellectual cover for predatory behavior
Why Trump supporters care more about ‘cover-ups’ than actual crimes and whether cognitive fatigue could provide an off-ramp from Trump loyalty” (Virginia Heffernan/What Rough Beast)
“President Donald Trump is going after Republican Sen. Susan Collins despite hopes among some in the party that she will run again next year and help the GOP hold the Senate. Trump, who has privately discussed finding someone to run for her seat should she not seek reelection, attacked the Maine senator’s voting record in a post on Truth Social. The senator has voted against two of Trump’s signature legislative achievements this year — the domestic policy megabill and the measure to claw back $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding. ‘Republicans, when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins,’ Trump said. ‘Generally speaking, you can’t go wrong.’ Democrats have targeted Maine seat as one of a small number of opportunities to pick up a Senate seat in 2026. The party has carried the state in every presidential election since Collins was elected in 1996.” (Aaron Pellish/ Politico)
“In the summer of 2024, Democratic Party leaders refused to let even a single Palestinian American speaker address their presidential convention about Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza. But almost exactly a year later, a solid majority of Democratic members of the US Senate has voted to block arms shipments to Israel in response to an ‘all-out, illegal, immoral and horrific war of annihilation against the Palestinian people’ that Senator Bernie Sanders told the chamber is being waged by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sanders has tried to block arms shipments before. But in the past, he’s gotten only a handful of his colleagues to join his effort. This week, the Vermont independent had the support of 26 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus. They did not win their fight to prevent a Republican-controlled Senate from authorizing another $675 million in weapons sales to Israel. But they did move the Democratic Party a little further toward the right side of history, confirming that the relentless campaigning from students on campuses across the country, as well as activism by groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab American Institute, the If Not Now Movement, the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and so many others, is having an impact. Sanders has tried to block arms shipments before. But in the past, he’s gotten only a handful of his colleagues to join his effort. This week, the Vermont independent had the support of 26 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus. They did not win their fight to prevent a Republican-controlled Senate from authorizing another $675 million in weapons sales to Israel. But they did move the Democratic Party a little further toward the right side of history, confirming that the relentless campaigning from students on campuses across the country, as well as activism by groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab American Institute, the If Not Now Movement, the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and so many others, is having an impact. ‘The tide is turning,’ said Sanders, after the vote on Wednesday. ‘The American people do not want to spend billions to starve children in Gaza.’” (John Nichols/The Nation)
“For years, Philip Goulder has been obsessed with a particularly captivating idea: In the hunt for an HIV cure, could children hold the answers? Starting in the mid-2010s, the University of Oxford pediatrician and immunologist began working with scientists in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, with the aim of tracking several hundred children who had acquired HIV from their mothers, either during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. After putting the children on antiretroviral drugs early in their lives to control the virus, Goulder and his colleagues were keen to monitor their progress and adherence to standard antiretroviral treatment, which stops HIV from replicating. But over the following decade, something unusual happened. Five of the children stopped coming to the clinic to collect their drugs, and when the team eventually tracked them down many months later, they appeared to be in perfect health. ‘Instead of their viral loads being through the roof, they were undetectable,’ says Goulder. ‘And normally HIV rebounds within two or three weeks.’ In a study published last year, Goulder described how all five remained in remission, despite having not received regular antiretroviral medication for some time, and in one case, up to 17 months. In the decades-long search for an HIV cure, this offered a tantalizing insight: that the first widespread success in curing HIV might not come in adults, but in children.’ At the recent International AIDS Society conference held in Kigali, Rwanda, in mid-July, Alfredo Tagarro, a pediatrician at the Infanta Sofia University Hospital in Madrid, presented a new study showing that around 5 percent of HIV-infected children who receive antiretrovirals within the first six months of life ultimately suppress the HIV viral reservoir—the number of cells harboring the virus’s genetic material—to negligible levels.” (David Cox/WIRED)
“Slavery had been a contentious issue in the United States from at least the time of its founding. The soaring words of the Declaration of Independence caused many people to pause over the spectacle of humankind being treated like property in the ostensible land of liberty. The Constitution, ratified in 1788, seemed to settle the issue, with compromises written into its text that protected slavery and made Union possible. Some of the most prominent members of the founding generation believed that slavery was a dying institution. Yet the debate after the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, and the three-year struggle over the admission of Missouri to the Union as a slave state, between 1819 and 1821, discredited such hopes: not only was slavery growing entrenched but the South intended to extend its dominion by carrying it west. By the eighteen-thirties, Southerners were offering the country a new vision of slavery, as a positive good ordained by God and sanctioned by Scripture. Naturally, abolitionists in the North believed that the Bible told them the opposite: slavery offended the basic tenets of Christianity. Each claimed moral authority, hoping to win over the vast majority of citizens who were not activists on either side. Nothing would change in either direction without the support of these uncommitted and wavering citizens. They had to be persuaded that slavery, one way or another, had moral implications for everyone who lived on American soil. This was the country that Harriet Beecher Stowe addressed in 1852 when she published ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly,’ one of the most successful feats of persuasion in American history. Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the peculiar institution. Nearly every consideration of Stowe mentions what Abraham Lincoln supposedly said when he met the diminutive New Englander: ‘Is this the little woman who made this great war?’ The historian David S. Reynolds, in his passionate ‘Mightier Than the Sword: ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the Battle for America’ (Norton; $27.95), answers resoundingly in the affirmative. But the most fascinating part of his lively and perceptive cultural history is the account of how she did it.” (Annette Gordon-Reed/TNY)
“One morning in March, while driving to Starbase, (Luke) Farritor heard Nat Friedman—former chief executive officer of GitHub—describe the Vesuvius Challenge on a podcast. The volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. also preserved a vast library of ancient scrolls, the Herculaneum papyri, but they were so brittle that most have never been opened. A computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, Brent Seales, had figured out how to virtually unwrap 3D scans of the charred scrolls and, with his graduate students, train artificial intelligence algorithms to detect the presence of ink. Now they were making those scans and data available and offering prizes to anyone who could extract the first words and passages. ‘I think there’s like a 50% chance that someone will encounter this opportunity and get the data and get nerd sniped by it, and we’ll solve it this year,’ Friedman said. And Farritor was like, ‘Oh my goodness, that could be me.’ He thought to himself, ‘You can win money, you can meet Nat Friedman, you can make an impact on history.’ Farritor began working with the scans during evenings and weekends, posting his progress on the group’s Discord, GitHub and sometimes Twitter. So did some 1,500 other people. Businessweek called them a volunteer army of nerds. In mid-October, Farritor accepted the First Letters Prize, and a $40,000 check, at a press conference at the University of Kentucky.” (Susan Berfield, Margi Murphy and Jason Leopold/Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
“In the shadow of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Sudan’s civil war grinds on at a devastating cost. Since fighting erupted in April 2023 in Khartoum between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), more than 150,000 people have been killed and 12 million displaced (some four million are refugees outside the country). Clarke toured relief camps and was one of the few foreign journalists to capture the destruction around the capital — what he calls “the post-conflict, pre-clean-up hell.” Over the course of two trips spanning eight weeks, he photographed desperate families collecting aid, children suffering from malnutrition, and the hellscape of Khartoum, a once bustling city of seven million now inhabited by ‘weary soldiers and a few extremely weary civilians.’ And then there are the graves. During months of fierce urban warfare marked by aerial bombardments and running gun battles, thousands perished. Unable to reach cemeteries, besieged residents buried loved ones in parks, backyards, wherever they could find free space. At the scene of one roadside gravesite, Clarke was told ‘there's probably three, maybe four people underneath each mound, and they hadn't got around to going through them all.’ Authorities have also discovered mass graves around the capital and Khartoum State, some near former RSF bases where evidence of torture and starvation was found. On July 19, Sudan’s prime minister, Kamil Idris, paid his first visit to Khartoum since assuming power in May, pledging to rebuild. Clarke’s stark images show how incredibly difficult restoring the capital will be. ‘The city is completely uninhabitable,’ he says. ‘There are no services, no water, no power.’ Hospitals, schools, and government ministries lie in ruin, entire neighborhoods ‘stripped to the bone’ by RSF looters. The erasure of Khartoum’s cultural heritage is compounded by the loss of judicial and civilian archives: birth and marriage certificates, land registry titles. Scarcely any records remain of life before the war. ‘We did everything on paper,’ a lower court judge told Clarke in Port Sudan, the temporary capital.” (Giles Clarke/Rolling Stone)
“In Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on 23 July, across the road from the Capitol, his congressional loyalists were prosecuting their case to remake the state. Eric Schmitt, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, opened a hearing on ending diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) with a tirade against the civil rights infrastructure established in the Sixties. He said the Civil Rights Act had led to ‘a new racial caste system sanctioned and enforced by the administrative state.’ Nevermind that an actual racial caste system existed before the Civil Rights Act. The Ur-text for Trump’s most revolutionary followers is Christopher Caldwell’s 2020 The Age of Entitlement. In it, Caldwell argues that the civil rights reforms formed “a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible”. This regime, Caldwell thinks, elevated a new social contract centred around anti-racism. ‘I take the Caldwellian view,’ the chief Maga influencer Charlie Kirk told the New York Times earlier this year, ‘that we went through a new founding in the Sixties and that the Civil Rights Act has actually superseded the US Constitution.’ Trump’s disciples, in other words, are pursuing something more radical than Reagan or the Bushes ever conceived: the overthrow of the civil rights settlement that was erected in 1964. In his first week Trump overturned affirmative action and then went on to root out DEI programmes across the government and, by proxy, in those companies the state works with. (Reagan’s team once drafted an executive order to overturn affirmative action but he never signed it.) The assault has also been fought by Trump’s appointed judges: by overturning Roe vs Wade in 2022 and then affirmative action the following year.” (Freddy Hayward/New Statesman)
“Americans working for a little known U.S.-based private military contractor have begun to come forward to media and members of Congress with charges that their work has involved using live ammunition for crowd control and other abusive measures against unarmed civilians seeking food at controversial food distribution sites run by the Global Humanitarian Fund (GHF) in Gaza. UG Solutions was hired by the GHF to secure and deliver food into Gaza. The GHF, with the help of the PMCs claims to have provided nearly 100 million meals to Gaza. Israel put GHF in control of what used to be the UN-led aid mission. The UN, however, has called the new model an ‘abomination’ which ‘provides nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza,’ referring to the 1000 Gazans who have been killed near or at the GHF centers since May. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been accused of shooting and shelling unarmed civilians. The American contractors say they have witnessed it and have been told to use live ammunition in their own crowd control efforts. UG Solutions is one of two American contracting outfits working at the food centers. Both have vehemently denied the contractors’ claims, as has the IDF. The GHF has also put out extensive responses calling the charges categorically false. Needless to say this raises a ton of questions about the use of American contractors in this particular conflict zone, but also about who they are. From all available information about UG Solutions, they are not operating under the banner, nor protection, of a U.S. agency contract, but of a foreign entity. This expansion of scope, I contend, makes UG Solutions a full-fledged mercenary organization and takes the industry down a very dark path.” (Morgan Lerette/Responsible Statecraft)
“Today, we released the Black Women in American Politics 2025 report along with our research partner, The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey — our most comprehensive look yet at the progress, setbacks, and opportunities for Black women’s political leadership across the country … And now, at another pivotal moment following Vice President Harris’s announcement that she will not pursue the governorship of California, we are reminded of the power and complexity of Black women’s leadership. Part of her ability to run, win, and govern — from local office all the way to the White House — comes from her strategic navigation of every step of her political journey. As the highest-profile Black woman in politics, Harris embodies what we call the ‘Kamala Effect’ — serving as a blueprint for how Black women lead and model their own leadership. And much like the ‘Chisholm Effect,’ we won’t fully know the generational impact she will have on women for years to come. Over the past decade, since we first began publishing this report, we’ve seen undeniable progress:
Black women in Congress: From 17 to 31, including a record two in the U.S. Senate.
Mayoral leadership: From 1 Black woman mayor in the 100 largest cities to 8 today.
Statewide officeholders: From 2 to 10 Black women in statewide executive office.
State legislatures: From 240 to 401 Black women holding seats nationwide.
Historic firsts: The first Black woman Vice President, the first Black woman nominated for President by a major party, and the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
These numbers tell a story of resilience, vision, and power. But they also underscore how much work remains. No Black woman has ever served as a U.S. governor.” (Higher heights leadership Fund)
“The Trump administration has attempted to make sweeping use of emergency powers in the areas of immigration, trade, and domestic use of the military. In each case, President Donald Trump has tried to use powers legally reserved for extreme exigencies—invasion, war, grave threats to national security—to address essentially normal political challenges. If he is allowed to get away with them, these abuses would set dangerous precedents and gravely threaten civil liberties and the structure of our constitutional system. Each of these efforts has resulted in litigation, and in each case the administration claims the issues in question are left to virtually unreviewable executive discretion. The president alone supposedly gets to determine whether an emergency exists and (with few or no limitations) what should be done about it. Courts have mostly rejected the argument that the president has the power to define terms such as ‘invasion.’ But they have often been overly deferential to presidential determinations about relevant facts, such as whether an ‘invasion’ (correctly defined) has actually occurred. At least one judge has also embraced the view that these issues are unreviewable ‘political questions.”’ It is vital that courts engage in full, nondeferential review of administration invocations of emergency powers. None of the arguments against doing so outweigh the immense dangers of letting the president invoke these powers at will.” (Ilya Somin/The Dispatch)
“As I reported in the March 28th edition of FOIA Files, Patel directed FBI special agents from the New York and Washington field offices to join the bureau’s FOIA employees at its sprawling Central Records Complex in Winchester, Virginia and another building a few miles away. They were instructed to search for and review every single Epstein-related document and determine what could be released. That included a mountain of material accumulated by the FBI over nearly two decades, including grand jury testimony, prosecutors’ case files, as well as tens of thousands of pages of the bureau’s own investigative files on Epstein. It was a herculean task that involved as many as 1,000 FBI agents and other personnel pulling all-nighters while poring through more than 100,000 documents, according to a July letter from Senator Dick Durbin to Bondi. Senior officials at the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, which handles the processing of FOIA requests, pushed back on the directives. Michael Seidel, the section chief of RIDS who worked at the FBI for about 14 years, was quite vocal, the three people familiar with the matter told me. Patel blamed him for the failure to send all of the Epstein files to Bondi. Then, a couple of months ago, Seidel was told he could either retire or be fired, according to the people. He chose the former and quietly left the FBI, the people said. The details related to Seidel’s exit haven’t been previously reported. Seidel could not be reached for comment.” (Bloomberg)