Latest news with #ElizabethBruenig
Atlantic
12-08-2025
- Atlantic
‘The Death Penalty Has No Place in This Country'
Witness In the July issue, Elizabeth Bruenig documented sin and redemption in America's death chambers. I am deeply grateful to Elizabeth Bruenig for her unflinching reporting on the death penalty, and for telling the stories of the men she's met on death row. I have always thought that the death penalty was morally reprehensible and incompatible with American democratic principles. But thanks to people like Bruenig and Bryan Stevenson, whose memoir, Just Mercy, I read as an incoming college freshman, my understanding of the death penalty has shifted from the theoretical to the deeply personal. Their witness has confirmed my belief that the death penalty has no place in this country. On September 24, 2024, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, despite evidence of his innocence. My family, alongside other concerned Americans, petitioned state and local officials on his behalf during the period leading up to his execution. His death haunts me still. Cynthia Wynn Brighton, Mich. Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was tried in federal court. There was no question about his guilt, and his attorneys were eager to trade a guilty plea for a life sentence. Instead, prosecutors insisted on pursuing the death penalty, dragging survivors, victims' families, and the city through a long trial and taking us back through the whole horrible day. Bowers has since been sentenced to die—which will likely mean more appeals, forcing survivors to relive the day again and again. A life sentence, in this case, may have prevented much grief. Jean Martin McKeesport, Pa. Elizabeth Bruenig and I have something in common—we have both witnessed executions in America. I watched a man named Alton Waye die in the electric chair at the Virginia State Penitentiary in 1989. I did so as an employee of the American Correctional Association, an organization that accredits prisons, where I worked at the time. Waye had been convicted of the rape and murder of 61-year-old Lavergne Marshall in 1977. Marshall had been bitten, beaten, and stabbed 42 times before being dumped nude in her bathtub and doused with bleach. Waye confessed to the crime. At the execution, I stood with the warden, the prison chaplain, and others directly next to the electric chair. After Waye had been strapped in, the warden asked for his last words. Waye responded, 'I would like to express that what is about to occur here is a murder,' without a word of remorse for his victim. I wondered if someone had coached him to say that. When the electrical current was administered, Waye quickly lost consciousness. Now, 36 years later, I continue to support capital punishment as an option for aggravated first-degree murder. I've noticed in the intervening years that many condemned inmates are seen as victims, while the real victims are forgotten. I give Bruenig credit for including details of the crimes of the men she watched die, as well as for admitting to 'overidentification' with them. Most death-penalty opponents choose not to. Death-row inmates are human beings, no more or less than the rest of us. On this, Bruenig and I agree. But I respectfully disagree with her on the notion of the 'dignity of human life' applying to all. I was relieved that Waye didn't appear to suffer in his final moments. But I also thought of Marshall and the suffering she had endured, alone, as Waye took her dignity through rape and murder. There are instances when executions should not be dismissed as vengeance, but seen as justice. I was disappointed that 'Witness' does not focus on one of the principal reasons the death penalty ought to be abolished: the possibility that an innocent person might be executed. My brother's case is an example. When he was 20, Subramanyam was arrested for a murder and later convicted on circumstantial evidence. At his initial trial, prosecutors attempted to 'death qualify' the jury, to ensure that they would be open to sentencing him to death. If they had succeeded, he may well have been killed. Instead, he has spent more than four decades incarcerated, trying to prove his innocence. In 2021, the district attorney's office fully opened Subu's case file. Within the more than 3,000 pages of documents, Subu's lawyers say they found materials that had never been turned over to the defense, including some potentially exculpatory evidence. He now awaits a new opportunity to challenge his conviction. Over the past 42 years, my brother has helped hundreds of inmates earn their GED. He started a literacy council and helped with the prison 'Runathon' to benefit the local community. He does yoga daily, keeps abreast of the outside world, and calls his family. He has finished three degrees by correspondence and was, to my knowledge, the first Pennsylvania inmate to earn a graduate degree while incarcerated. But he has had to miss all of our family events and even the last rites of our beloved parents. Subu is a calm, kind, concerned, and brilliant human. He lives in an 8-by-10 cell and somehow stays hopeful. Elizabeth Bruenig replies: The death penalty is a complicated subject that tends to stir strong emotions. I'm grateful that so many readers spent time with this story and reached out to express their thoughts. There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose the death penalty: concerns about the risk of executing innocent people, objections related to race and racial prejudice, a principled respect for human life. I am convinced on every count. But I welcome dialogue with people who disagree—if the death penalty in the United States is going to end, we will need many more voters willing to elect the prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers who oppose the practice, and so people who are against capital punishment must be prepared to patiently make their case. I hope that this story has provided readers with tools for arguing against the death penalty in their own communities, and that we may one day achieve a more just world. Behind the Cover For this month's cover story, 'This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like,' the Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum reported on the civil war in Sudan, accompanied by the photographer Lynsey Addario. America's withdrawal from the world has left a vacuum, Applebaum argues, and greed, nihilism, and violence have filled it. For our cover image, we selected a photograph taken by Addario in El Geneina, a city in western Sudan where thousands of civilians have been killed. Two siblings, Adam Abdullah, 11, and Hawa, 7, sit in a window; Hawa lost her leg in an air strike three months earlier. — Bifen Xu, Senior Photo Editor ' The Clones Are Here ' (July) stated that Panayiotis Zavos was a physician. In fact, Zavos has a doctorate in reproductive physiology.
Atlantic
25-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- Atlantic
An Easy Summer Project Worth Doing
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Earlier this summer, I spent one blissful week on vacation doing some of the best vacation things: lying in the sun with a book until my skin was slightly crisp, making full meals out of cheese and rosé. Of course, when I returned, I felt very, very sad. Real life is rarely as sunny and sparkly and juicy as vacation life. Right away, I found myself wishing that I could somehow preserve those delicious vacation morsels and store them in my cheeks like a chipmunk preparing for winter. Which is when I remembered something important: my own free will. What was stopping me from replicating the joy of vacation in my regular life? So began my quest to do things differently. Call it 'romanticizing my life,' if you want. Or call it self-care—actually, please don't. But soon after returning from my trip, I was living more intentionally than I had before. I was searching for things to savor. I woke up early(ish) and started my day with a slow, luxurious stretch. In the evenings, rather than melting into the couch with the remote, I turned off my phone, made a lime-and-bitters mocktail, and read physical books—only fiction allowed. Less virtuously, I bought things: a towel that promised to cradle me in soft fibers, a new Sharpie gel pen, a funny little French plate that said Fromage in red cursive. The effort was not a complete success. Replicating the exact feeling of holiday weightlessness is impossible; the demands of work and life always tend to interfere. But I did discover that these small changes were making my daily life, on average, a teensy bit happier. Someone once said that you should do something every day that scares you, and I'm sure those words have galvanized many powerful people to action. But regular life is frightening enough. What if we sought out daily moments of joy instead? I asked some of my colleagues how they create their own tiny moments of delight. Here are a few of their answers: Staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig wakes up and starts working the group chats, sending a 'Rise n' grind' to her girlfriends and a 'Goooooood morning lads' to her passel of politics-chat guys. 'It's like starting the day by going to a party with all my friends,' she told me. 'Instantly puts me in a good mood.' On the flip side, Ellen Cushing is working on texting less and calling more. She now talks with her oldest friend, who lives far away, almost every weekday—sometimes for an hour, other times for five minutes. Their conversations, which aren't scheduled, involve two simple rules: You pick up the call if you can, and you hang up whenever you need to. Senior editor Vann Newkirk tends to his many indoor plants: a fiddle-leaf fig, a proliferation of spider plants, a pothos, a monstera, a couple of peace lilies, some different calatheas, an African violet, a peperomia, and a ponytail palm. 'Even on no-water days, I like to check on them,' he told me, and 'write little notes about how they are growing or where they grow best.' For a while, Shane Harris, a staff writer on the Politics team, began each day by reading a poem from David Whyte's Everything Is Waiting for You. The purpose 'was to gently wake up my mind and my imagination, before I started writing,' he told me. 'It's such a better ritual than reading the news.' Staff writer Annie Lowrey decompresses her spine(!) at night, which, she told me, involves bending over to hang like a rag doll, or dead-hanging from a pull-up bar: 'It's the best.' She also journals every morning about the things that she's thankful for, and prays in gratitude for achieving difficult feats. 'Maybe you accepted a vulnerability and your ability to handle it? Maybe you realized you could celebrate someone else's success rather than wishing it were your own?' she said. It's annoying when the 'obvious advice,' such as drinking more water and getting more sleep, is right, she said. But gratitude is, unsurprisingly, good for your mood and mental health. Isabel Fattal, my lovely editor for this newsletter, curates playlists for her morning and evening commutes—which are based less on genre or Spotify's suggestions than on the kind of mood she'd like to be in at that point in the day. 'When I was a college intern in New York, I once managed to go seven stops in the wrong direction on the subway because I was listening to the National (I had a lot of feelings in that era),' she told me. 'I've since improved my spatial awareness, but I maintain that the right music can elevate any experience.' If you have kids, you can include them in your happiness project, as many of my staff-writer friends do. Ross Andersen, for example, has enlisted his kids to make him a cappuccino every morning, which is genius and perhaps also a violation of child-labor laws. Clint Smith and his son spent a summer watching highlights from a different World Cup every day, which, he told me, was 'a fun way to grow together in our joint fandom and also was a pretty fun geography lesson.' And McKay Coppins told me he loves his 2-year-old's bedtime routine, which involves a monster-robot game, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and a good-night prayer. 'Bedtime can be notoriously stressful for parents of young kids—and it often is for me too!' McKay told me. 'But I always end up looking forward to this little slice of my day.' Today's News A shooting at a University of New Mexico dorm left one person dead and another wounded. Law enforcement is searching for the suspect. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the 'largesse' of the Fed's headquarters renovations, just a day after President Donald Trump appeared to ease tensions during a visit to the Federal Reserve. The Trump administration will release $5.5 billion in frozen education funds to support teacher training and recruitment, English-language learners, and arts programs ahead of the new school year. Evening Read Science Is Winning the Tour de France By Matt Seaton For fans of the Tour de France, the word extraterrestrial has a special resonance—and not a fun, Spielbergian one. In 1999 the French sports newspaper L'Équipe ran a photo of Lance Armstrong on its front page, accompanied by the headline 'On Another Planet.' This was not, in fact, complimenting the American athlete for an out-of-this-world performance in cycling's premier race, but was code for 'he's cheating.' At that point, L'Équipe 's dog-whistling accusation of doping was based on mere rumor. More than a decade passed before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency declared Armstrong guilty of doping. His remarkable streak of seven Tour wins was wiped from the record, but misgivings about extraterrestrial performances have never left the event. Culture Break See. Check out these photos of the week from an animal shelter in Colombia, a mountain church service in Germany, a memorial to Ozzy Osbourne in England, the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, and much more. Examine. Hulk Hogan embodied the role of larger-than-life pro-wrestling hero with unwavering showmanship, even as controversy and complexity shadowed his legacy, Jeremy Gordon writes. Play our daily crossword. Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Atlantic 's July Cover Story: Elizabeth Bruenig's 'Witness,' on Sin and Redemption in America's Death Chambers
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. 'Capital punishment operates according to an emotional logic,' staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig writes in her July cover story for The Atlantic. 'Vengeance is elemental. Injustice cries out for redress. Murder is the most horrifying of crimes, and it seems only fitting to pair it with the most horrifying of punishments.' But as a Christian—embracing the doctrine that we're all sinners in need of redemption—Bruenig explains that she is interested in forgiveness and mercy, which are 'some of my faith's most stringent dictates. If those forms of compassion are possible for murderers, then they're possible for everyone.' For her first Atlantic cover story, Bruenig draws on the past five years of her reporting on death row. Bruenig has witnessed five executions of death-row inmates, and has also helped bring attention to the prevalence of botched executions: that is, the seeming inability of executioners in some states to kill the condemned humanely. Further, she has formed relationships, even friendships, with prisoners awaiting execution. In 2023, Bruenig was named a Pulitzer finalist for her reporting on Alabama's death row. Alabama has now banned Bruenig from its prisons. In an editor's note to lead the issue, also published today, The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writes that Bruenig 'possesses an almost-otherworldly toughness that has allowed her to witness, again and again, the unnatural act of state-sanctioned killing,' adding that Bruenig 'does not flinch from any of the ugliness of capital punishment, and, crucially, she does not flinch from the appalling crimes committed by so many of the men on death row.' Goldberg continues: 'For understandable reasons, people turn away from the subject of capital punishment. But Liz has done a remarkable thing here—she has written a propulsive narrative about redemption and sin and invested her story with humanity and grace.' Also accompanying the article is a series of original paintings by The Atlantic's creative director, Peter Mendelsund, including a striking cover image of a corridor leading to an execution chamber, and a prisoner lying on the table within it. When she witnessed her first execution, Bruenig writes: 'The only certainty I had going into the Indiana death chamber in December 2020 was the simple sense that it's generally wrong to kill people, even bad people. What I witnessed on this occasion and the ones that came after has not changed my conviction that capital punishment must end. But in sometimes-unexpected ways, it has changed my understanding of why.' Bruenig writes that 'capital punishment as an institution relies on judgment at every level: judgment about guilt, about fairness, about proportion, about pain and cruelty, about the possibility of redemption. Judgment about how to carry out a death sentence and how to behave as one does so. And then there is the judgment that must be directed at oneself and one's community—the distant, sometimes-forgotten participants. In all of this, I see the arc of my own evolving comprehension.' The cover story also addresses how these questions have touched her own family's life: When Bruenig's sister-in-law was murdered, nearly a decade ago, her husband and father-in-law both stood opposed to the death penalty. (The killer was ultimately sentenced to 40 years in prison.) 'Choosing mercy is the moral path even in the hardest cases—even if you believe that some people deserve execution,' Bruenig writes, 'and even if you know for a fact that the person in question is guilty and unrepentant.' She writes: 'To default to mercy is to impose limitations on one's own power to retaliate, and to acknowledge our flawed nature. To a Christian, mercy derives from charity. And in the liminal space where families of murder victims are recruited into the judicial process—to either bless or condemn a prosecutor's intentions—showing mercy is an especially heroic decision. To think this way is to understand that the moral dimension of capital punishment is not just about what we do to others. It's also about what we do to ourselves.' Elizabeth Bruenig's '' was published today at Please reach out with any questions or requests to interview Bruenig on her reporting. Press contacts: Anna Bross and Paul Jackson | The Atlantic press@ Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
09-06-2025
- Atlantic
's July Cover Story: Elizabeth Bruenig's 'Witness,' on Sin and Redemption in America's Death Chambers
'Capital punishment operates according to an emotional logic,' staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig writes in her July cover story for The Atlantic. 'Vengeance is elemental. Injustice cries out for redress. Murder is the most horrifying of crimes, and it seems only fitting to pair it with the most horrifying of punishments.' But as a Christian—embracing the doctrine that we're all sinners in need of redemption—Bruenig explains that she is interested in forgiveness and mercy, which are 'some of my faith's most stringent dictates. If those forms of compassion are possible for murderers, then they're possible for everyone.' For her first Atlantic cover story, Bruenig draws on the past five years of her reporting on death row. Bruenig has witnessed five executions of death-row inmates, and has also helped bring attention to the prevalence of botched executions: that is, the seeming inability of executioners in some states to kill the condemned humanely. Further, she has formed relationships, even friendships, with prisoners awaiting execution. In 2023, Bruenig was named a Pulitzer finalist for her reporting on Alabama's death row. Alabama has now banned Bruenig from its prisons. In an editor's note to lead the issue, also published today, The Atlantic 's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writes that Bruenig 'possesses an almost-otherworldly toughness that has allowed her to witness, again and again, the unnatural act of state-sanctioned killing,' adding that Bruenig 'does not flinch from any of the ugliness of capital punishment, and, crucially, she does not flinch from the appalling crimes committed by so many of the men on death row.' Goldberg continues: 'For understandable reasons, people turn away from the subject of capital punishment. But Liz has done a remarkable thing here—she has written a propulsive narrative about redemption and sin and invested her story with humanity and grace.' Also accompanying the article is a series of original paintings by The Atlantic 's creative director, Peter Mendelsund, including a striking cover image of a corridor leading to an execution chamber, and a prisoner lying on the table within it. When she witnessed her first execution, Bruenig writes: 'The only certainty I had going into the Indiana death chamber in December 2020 was the simple sense that it's generally wrong to kill people, even bad people. What I witnessed on this occasion and the ones that came after has not changed my conviction that capital punishment must end. But in sometimes-unexpected ways, it has changed my understanding of why.' Bruenig writes that 'capital punishment as an institution relies on judgment at every level: judgment about guilt, about fairness, about proportion, about pain and cruelty, about the possibility of redemption. Judgment about how to carry out a death sentence and how to behave as one does so. And then there is the judgment that must be directed at oneself and one's community—the distant, sometimes-forgotten participants. In all of this, I see the arc of my own evolving comprehension.' The cover story also addresses how these questions have touched her own family's life: When Bruenig's sister-in-law was murdered, nearly a decade ago, her husband and father-in-law both stood opposed to the death penalty. (The killer was ultimately sentenced to 40 years in prison.) 'Choosing mercy is the moral path even in the hardest cases—even if you believe that some people deserve execution,' Bruenig writes, 'and even if you know for a fact that the person in question is guilty and unrepentant.' She writes: 'To default to mercy is to impose limitations on one's own power to retaliate, and to acknowledge our flawed nature. To a Christian, mercy derives from charity. And in the liminal space where families of murder victims are recruited into the judicial process—to either bless or condemn a prosecutor's intentions—showing mercy is an especially heroic decision. To think this way is to understand that the moral dimension of capital punishment is not just about what we do to others. It's also about what we do to ourselves.' Press contacts: Anna Bross and Paul Jackson | The Atlantic
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
When My Teacher Made Me Pray
When I was in second grade, my teacher made us pray that the law would change so that a day at school could once again begin with a prayer. I was 7, but even at that age, I knew there was something nonsensical about praying to be allowed to pray. This was at a public school outside Philadelphia in the 1960s, not that long after the Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools violated the Constitution. In our predominantly Catholic neighborhood, my family, with its three kids, seemed to me to be abnormally small. There were 30 students or more in that class, and I was probably the only Jewish kid. I bowed my head to my desk and mouthed the words the teacher asked us to recite. She also asked us to bring Bibles to class. I don't know why—maybe to ascertain who among us had one at home. We didn't have anything at home we called a Bible. My family attended a Reform synagogue, and we were not particularly observant. But I would have known by then that I was different from my classmates, because we did not celebrate Christmas. I felt singled out as different, Bible-less and unholy, and it caused me to shut down. That year, I came home with C's and D's on my report cards. [Elizabeth Bruenig: Who counts as Christian?] When my parents asked what was wrong, I would say 'nothing.' I was a middle child, and my role in the family was to never be too much trouble. But my silence ran deeper than that. I knew that if I told my parents about my teacher, they would go to my school and raise objections. That would shine an even brighter spotlight on me, which was the last thing I wanted. I must have figured that it was better for my parents to think I was kind of dumb. I've thought about that long-ago experience a lot recently, now that religion, and specifically Christianity, is ascending in public life. A couple weeks ago, Pete Hegseth, the nation's top military leader, led what was called the 'Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service' at the Pentagon. As described in a New York Times story, it sounded like a revival meeting. 'This is precisely where I need to be, and I think exactly where we need to be as a nation, at this moment,' Hegseth said: 'in prayer, on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.' He continued, 'King Jesus, we come humbly before you, seeking your face, seeking your grace, in humble obedience to your law and to your word.' In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign legislation requiring classrooms in the state's roughly 9,000 public schools to be postered with copies of the Ten Commandments. This school year, for the first time, teachers in Oklahoma were ordered to keep a Bible in their classroom: 'Every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,' said the state superintendent. He stressed the historical importance of the text for America's Founding Fathers and suggested that it could be brought into science classes as part of discussions about how it inspired investigations into 'God's creation.' He expected 'immediate and strict compliance' with the mandate. To make the case for more religious content in schools and elsewhere in public life, proponents often argue that the Fathers were men of faith who believed that the nation and even the Constitution itself were divinely inspired. History suggests this is an exaggeration at best. The Founders were men of the Enlightenment, and some, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin, were attracted to Deism—a belief system that stresses rationality over superstition and rejects the notion of a supreme being who intervenes in the universe. That's a long way from the Christian nationalism of Hegseth and others who are now seeking to bring their faith into the public square. [Molly Worthen: What the fastest-growing Christian group reveals about America] But we are of course a Christian nation and probably will always remain so. No one knows that better than non-Christians. It is a fact of life, and not an unhappy one, or at least not for me. I am married to a woman who grew up attending a Presbyterian church. We raised our children in both of our traditions. There is a big difference, however, between the choices we make and the ones forced on us. The aggressive push to flood the nation with religious faith—a specific faith, and a particular strain of that faith—undermines any notion of American plurality. It comes at a cost not just to the nation, but to individual Americans. You want to advance in Hegseth's Pentagon? You would do well to attend one of his prayer services—they are going to be held monthly—to pray, and to do so conspicuously and in full voice. Thirty-one million people live in Texas—67 percent of whom identify as Christian. The rest, about 10 million Texans, are Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or a mix that a Pew Research Center study identified as atheists, agnostics, and 'nothing in particular.' Some children from those families will now have to sit in school while a faith other than their own is pressed on them. They'll feel, as I did, like an interloper—unwelcome in their own classroom. Article originally published at The Atlantic
