Latest news with #TheAtlantic
Daily Mirror
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Donald Trump's Defence Secretary 'sent classified info' to a group chat
It made headlines earlier this year after it emerged a journalist from The Atlantic had been added to the chat by mistake Signal messages sent to a group chat by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth contained information from an email marked classified, it has been reported. The information, previewing a US military strike on Huthi targets in Yemen, was sent to the insecure group chat including several high members of the Trump administration. It made headlines earlier this year after it emerged a journalist from The Atlantic had been added to the chat by mistake. The White House and Pentagon have repeatedly claimed no classified information was discussed in the group chat. But according to the Washington Post, the Defence department's inspector general has learned some of the information derived from General Michael "Erik" Kurilla, a top commander in the Middle East. The email in question is said to have been marked "SECRET/NOFORN" - meaning it was classified secret and not to be shown to foreign nationals. The message, sent over a classified network system, contained a rundown of air strike plans for the day, including timings and aircraft and munition types. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, faced calls for his resignation after the scandal broke. But both he and the White House have denied any classified information was shared in the Signal chat. A Pentagon spokesman told the Post: "The Department stands behind its previous statements: no classified information was shared via Signal. "As we've said repeatedly, nobody was texting war plans and the success of the Department's recent operations — from Operation Rough Rider to Operation Midnight Hammer — are proof that our operational security and discipline are top notch.' Get Donald Trump updates straight to your WhatsApp! A White House spokeswoman added: "This Administration has proven that it can carry out missions with precision and certainty, as evidenced by the successful operations that obliterated Iran's nuclear facilities and killed terrorists, "It's shameful that the Washington Post continues to publish unverified articles based on alleged emails they haven't personally reviewed in an effort to undermine a successful military operation and resurrect a non-issue that no one has cared about for months."
Atlantic
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Fight for the Political Center
On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic 's David Frum opens with a warning about President Donald Trump's escalating attacks on press freedom. David discusses Trump's lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, explains how Trump is using presidential power to suppress coverage of his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and argues that Trump's second term represents a deeper threat to the First Amendment than anything seen in modern American history. Then David is joined by Representative Ritchie Torres of New York for a conversation about the future of the Democratic Party. Torres explains why the Democratic center has become too passive; how the far left gained influence through intensity, not majorities; and why slogans alone can't solve America's affordability crisis. They discuss the rise of performative politics, the need for a serious governing agenda, and Torres's personal journey from public housing to Congress. The following is a transcript of the episode: David Frum: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Congressman Ritchie Torres, who represents the South Bronx in the United States House of Representatives. It's such a pleasure and an honor to welcome Congressman Torres to this program. We'll be discussing the contest, the struggle between Democratic centrists and Democratic progressives in New York City, state, and federal politics, and we'll talk, as well, about his vision for the future and direction of American politics, and his beliefs and principles as he's become one of the most important voices in the United States Congress. I want to begin with a few preliminary remarks about a new Trump administration attack on press freedom and press integrity. The Wall Street Journal recently released an important story on the personal connections between Donald Trump, the private citizen—as he then was—and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex trafficker who died in 2019. President Trump, as he now is, responded to the story by filing a massive lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, one of many lawsuits in a long series that Donald Trump has brought against press institutions. Now, a private citizen who feels himself or herself ill-used by the press, of course, has a right to sue for defamation. These suits usually don't go very far. It's difficult to win a defamation suit in the United States, and people usually—while they may file them or threaten to file them—don't proceed. For one thing, they bump into the threat of discovery, where the news organization will be able to say, Well, since you're suing us, we get to ask some questions of you, and the person suing often doesn't want to answer those questions, and that's where the whole thing tends to break down. But President Trump has approached these lawsuits in a very different way. The president of the United States—under Donald Trump, the presidency has become a very different kind of institution from what it ever was before. It has acquired large new immunity from criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court of the United States has made it much more difficult than it ever was to hold a president to account for criminal actions committed by that president, or alleged criminal actions committed by the president. The Court has carved out zones of immunity, in which the president simply cannot be questioned or challenged about criminal activity. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, while he has all those august powers of the presidency, he's using the powers of a private citizen to sue in ways that are augmented by the powers of the presidency. The suits that Donald Trump has brought against ABC News and CBS News were suits he almost certainly was not going to win. The CBS lawsuit was particularly feeble. It was a lawsuit where he said he didn't like the way 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, and he was invoking a Texas consumer-protection statute to attack the way that CBS had edited this interview. Now, the courts, for 50 years, have been very clear about the enormous protection of the right to edit under the First Amendment, and the Federal Communications Commission has made it clear they want no part of second-guessing the editorial judgments of news organizations. This lawsuit would not go anywhere. It's almost guaranteed not to go anywhere. But CBS and ABC have corporate parents, and those corporate parents have a lot of business before the federal government. In the CBS case, the business was especially urgent. Paramount, the owner of CBS, wanted to execute a merger that would need FCC approval. And President Trump's chairman of the FCC had made clear that regulatory approval could hinge on whether Paramount made some kind of settlement with President Trump in his complaint against CBS. So President Trump used his regulatory powers overparent corporations to squeeze settlements out of ABC and CBS. He also extracted a big payday for his family from Amazon. At the beginning of the administration, Amazon announced that it was going to make a documentary or a movie about the life of First Lady Melania Trump and pay her millions and millions of dollars for the film rights for a movie that doesn't look like it's ever going to see the light of day, and maybe was never intended to see the light of day. So the president is immune criminally. He sues, like any private citizen, but his lawsuits are backed up by the regulatory power of the federal government and under his control, exerting powers in new ways, in ways that had never been contemplated before by the Federal Communications Commission. Now President Trump is using the same maneuver against The Wall Street Journal. Shortly before the story appeared, Vice President [J. D.] Vance made a special trip to visit the Murdoch family and presumably, or apparently, to plead the case against the story. So that was another form of pressure. So far, The Wall Street Journal has resisted, but how long they will resist is unclear because the parent corporation behind The Wall Street Journal also has a lot of business before the federal government, and of course, the Murdoch family that owns the parent corporation and President Trump have deep other causes. So what we're witnessing here is an attempt to use federal power by a criminally immune president to snuff out discussion of things that bear on that president's potential criminal liability or potential civil liability. You know, abuses of power by the president tend to bleed one into the other. You start with something small, like I don't want people to know about my connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and pretty soon you're deploying powers over the press, and you're abusing the FBI. I think the point is: There's no easy way out of this for any of us. And I think this is one of the reasons why the Epstein story has become so important. Whatever is the exact truth of what happened between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein—how deeply they were connected, or when their relationship began, when their relationship ended, what happened in between, why it ended, how Jeffrey Epstein's future career, why his prosecution was handled in the way that it was, what happened in the final hours and moments before his death, all of those unanswered questions—in order to protect the present from potential revelations, we're having to break apart all kinds of institutions, beginning with the FBI and ending with the First Amendment. You know, I think a lot of people hope there's some way to box in or limit the Trump presidency to treat it like, you know, not one of one's favorite presidents, not one of America's finest hours, but something that doesn't threaten to do tremendous and permanent damage to the structure of American government. But as this latest story reveals, even in the most intimate and personal aspects of his life, Donald Trump's needs and imperatives, and his attitude toward the presidency are a threat to every American institution. If we're going to come out of this unscathed, we're going to have to have a real reckoning with what Donald Trump did. We're not going to be able to box this in. We're not going to be able to say, Well, that was then, and this is now, or This is his personal life, or These are his personal matters. For him, there is no barrier between the personal and the constitutional. And for the reverse, there's no barrier for those who want to protect the Constitution against the person of Donald Trump. It's going to be one, or it's going to be the other. And that situation—here we are at the very beginning of the second Trump presidency, and it's only likely to become more intense as that presidency continues. Now my dialogue with Congressman Torres, and we'll be talking about some of these very same issues in that conversation. I hope you'll continue to watch. But first, a quick break. [ Music ] Frum: Representative Ritchie Torres is a native of the Bronx, New York. His first introduction to the ugly realities of New York City politics came at an early age. Congressman Torres grew up the child of a single mother in a public-housing project. The mold in the apartment unit inflamed his childhood asthma, but across the way, he could see the city of New York pouring millions of dollars of taxpayer money into subsidies for a golf course. I don't think he's ever quite forgotten that lesson. Congressman Torres's outrage over the misuse of public resources in this way powered his early rise, his astonishingly early rise, in city politics. He was elected to New York City Council at the age of 25: the first openly gay council member from the Bronx. He won election to Congress from New York's Fifteenth District in 2022, age only 32. The Fifteenth is one of the nation's poorest districts, and Representative Torres has worked hard on the bread-and-butter issues that matter most to his constituents, becoming a leading voice for the Democratic pragmatic urban center against the extremes of far left and far right. A champion of civil liberties in every form, Torres has become one of Congress's most effective and untiring voices against anti-Semitism and the defamation of the state of Israel. At a time when Democrats are questioning their future, Congressman Torres has offered one of the most fearless and forcefully argued visions of a way forward. So I'm very pleased and grateful to welcome Congressman Torres to The David Frum Show. Thank you for joining us. Ritchie Torres: Always a pleasure to be here. Frum: I want to ask you about something I've heard you say in a number of your interviews, where you say the Democratic center has acquired this passive personality. The Democratic far left feels it can say whatever it likes. The Democratic center retires and reserves. It reminds me in some ways of what happened in the Republican Party, my party, during the Tea Party uprising, when Republican moderates just yielded the floor. What is going on? Why? Is it a personality issue? Is it an ideological issue? Why is the center so retiring? Torres: Well, look—in politics, intensity is destiny. And it's almost inherently the case that an intensely visible vocal minority will have outsized political power, more political power than a silent majority that largely resides in the center. And so it feels like American politics writ large is dominated by the extremes, by the far right and the far left and the symbiosis between the two. And there's a sense in which the far left is a reaction—the modern far left, the new left—is a reaction to Donald Trump. I would submit to you that there would be no modern far left without the election of Donald Trump in 2016. You know, it's Newton's laws of physics at work: Every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. And it feels like American politics is largely driven by the endless feedback loop between the two extremes in American politics. Frum: Yeah. Well, let me draw an analogy to the Republican Party prior to the politics that I know best. I remember I worked a long time ago for President George W. Bush, and there was a big bill coming up, and there was an important Republican vote that President Bush needed. And the vote was shy because this voter, this member of the House or member of the Senate, this member of Congress, was nervous about the vote. And President Bush asked, What do you need from me to win your vote? Give me a request. Give me an ask, something I can say yes to. Is there anything I can do to give you a member to get your vote? And the senator said, Yes, I need you to make sure that there are 70 votes in favor of this proposition. In other words, he didn't care what the bill said so long as he could be a member of a herd. I sometimes wonder whether, is it that these people are moderates or they're just fearful? Torres: It feels like, should we rename the moderate category 'miscellaneous'? Like, I feel if you were to ask me, 'What does the far right stand for?' I could easily say it's 'America First.' It's 'Make America great again.' It's 'Build the wall,' right? There are simple, repeatable phrases that distill the worldview of the far right. And if you would ask me, 'What does the far left stand for?' Green New Deal, Medicare for All. There are simple phrases that distill the worldview of the far left. I could not tell you what the center stands for. Like, if you were to speak to a hundred center-left Democrats, you would get a hundred different responses about what the center left stands for. And I see that lack of clarity of communication as a real challenge for the party. Just like the Democratic Party cannot simply stand against Donald Trump, We have to stand for something. The center left cannot simply stand against the far left: It has to stand for something. And if the best the center left has to offer is Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams, then that's a challenge that we're going to have trouble connecting with the next generation of voters. Frum: Well, a great student of the politics of New York, Fred Siegel, wrote a book about Rudy Giuliani before his tragic later years in which he said that the secret of Rudy Giuliani's success during the period when he was successful was that he was an immoderate centrist—that is, he had centrist politics, but not a moderate personality at all, not even then. And he was forceful. He was certain. He drove his points home. He was not afraid. Is that the solution? Immoderate centrism? Torres: I thought Giuliani was a vicious person. So there is something to be said for decency. I have profound differences of opinion with a candidate like Zohran Mamdani, but I'm able to separate my appreciation for his skill from my disagreements with his politics—not everyone can make that emotional separation, but I can—and I have to say, I was impressed with the manner in which he ran his campaign. I saw him campaign in the Northeast Bronx a few weeks ago, and he was endlessly smiling. He was visibly enjoying the act of campaigning, the act of interacting with people. I feel like we can all learn from that. Like, we should all project the joy of public service, the joy of campaigning. Like, I prefer that to the viciousness and nastiness of Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s. Frum: Well, look—politics, like every occupation, has things you have to do and things you do less. And I often do see people in politics, and I think, Why didn't you choose, like, accountancy? I mean, you love numbers; you hate people. Why did you choose this line of work? There are a lot of things you can do with your one and only life. So I mean, politics is for people who like going into a room full of total strangers and grabbing hands and introducing themselves and making friends fast. And if you don't like that work, there are a lot of other useful, valuable things you can do with your time on this Earth. Torres: Look—for me, loving public service and loving people go hand in hand and you cannot have one without the other. Look—there are moments when we might be in a foul mood, and we have stressful moments, but it's important to project, at every moment, the joy of public service because it is truly an honor to be a public servant in the greatest country on Earth. Now, I represent 800,000 people, right? I get to vote on behalf of and speak on behalf of 800,000 people, and that's an honor that I take to heart every day. And for me, it's just the greatest gratification of my life because it happens to be the area where I grew up. And so when you keep that perspective in mind, it should inspire you to project the joy of public service and the joy of campaigning. Frum: Well, let me press you a little harder, without going into personalities, with this contest between different visions of the Democratic Party. In 2016 and 2020, there were national contests—Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders, and then Joe Biden against the field—in which there were far-left pressures and kind of old-fashioned, older, from-a-different-time candidates who spoke from a more moderate approach but didn't always speak very forcefully. And the contest hung in the balance, and the people who made the difference were sort of older, more religious, more conservative Black voters who pushed the Democratic Party away from unelectable progressivism toward Hillary Clinton in 2016 and toward Biden in 2020. And I don't know how much credit you give to the state of South Carolina specifically and to any person there, but that does seem to have been the moment where Biden won—and probably the election of 2020 was won. One of the things I've noticed since 2024 is the way that those kinds of voters—older Black voters, churchgoers, people with a stake in the community—they seem to be sort of discounted. I'll give you two data points that have struck me. First, there have been a couple of polls that have showed Pete Buttigieg in first place as a Democratic choice for president in 2028, which is fine; he's a very impressive person. But when you look at, okay, Well, what is Pete Buttigieg's support in the Black community? and the answer is zero, according to those polls—like, literally zero—you think, Okay, how do you get to be in first place in a Democratic preference poll when Black voters are saying, 'Not our guy?' And in the recent Democratic primary in the city of New York, the candidate who won was the candidate who did worst among Black voters. The candidates who did well among Black voters both lost. Is the Democratic Party turning its back on these sort of moderate Black voters? What does that mean? Why is that happening? What does that mean? Torres: Look—it's certainly true that the strongholds of the Democratic Socialists of America, of the left, in places like New York tend to be college-educated, white-progressive or white Democratic Socialist neighborhoods. In New York City, it's the gentrified neighborhoods of Queens and Brooklyn and Manhattan, not so much Staten Island and the Bronx. So that's certainly true. And those voters tend to be much more ideological, much more left leaning. Older Black voters, I find, tend to be more relational than ideological in their voting. And— Frum: As Jim Clyburn said, 'Joe knows us.' Torres: Yeah. You know, there's a great joke about Jim Clyburn that J. C. does not stand for Jesus Christ; it stands for 'Jim Clyburn' because he was the single driving force behind the resurrection of Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary. But, you know, it's often said that familiarity breeds contempt. When it comes to older Black voters, the opposite is true: Familiarity breeds comfort. Like, Black voters were more comfortable with [Andrew] Cuomo because he was a familiar brand name. But I would not mistake a preference for a familiar brand name like Andrew Cuomo for opposition to Mamdani. As Mamdani becomes more familiar in Democratic circles, he certainly is in a position to build support within the African American community. But there is a generational divide. You know, older African Americans tend to gravitate toward more familiar brand names like Cuomo; younger African Americans may be more left leaning and ideological in their politics. So there is a generational divide unfolding within the Democratic Party. Frum: But is there something going on between these ideological, highly educated voters you mentioned and everybody else? So there was this great upsurge of protests in 2020 centered in Black America where it sounded like Black Americans—as a non-Black American, it sounded to me like they're saying, What we want is fair and respectful policing. And a lot of the people who joined up for this movement who were from different communities, who were highly educated, said, Right. What you mean is you want no policing at all. And the people at the center were saying, No, we want fair and respectful policing, but we actually would like—if it is fair and respectful— more of it, not less. And this is one of the things that in the New York primary, that I think one of the big issues between people who said, We want more policing; we want it fair and respectful, but we want more. And those who said, Right, what you mean is you want less, and we know better, and we're telling you. Torres: Look—I'm one of the leading critics of the DSA, and my frustration with the DSA is the lack of self-awareness. There seems to be no acknowledgement that Democratic Socialists are different from most of the country, including most Democratic working-class people of color in places like the Bronx. And, you know, you're entitled to believe whatever you wish, but you should not pretend that your beliefs are orthodoxy or the mainstream in America. I remember, when I would ride the subway as a kid, I would often come across a quote that read Never mistake your field of vision for the world. And I feel like the DSA often mistakes its field of vision for the world, and it often speaks for people of color without actually speaking to them, because if you spoke to people of color in places like the Bronx, you would realize there was never popular support for movements like 'Defund the police' and that there were widespread concerns about the destabilizing impact of the migrant crisis on cities like New York. And so there is a lack of ideological self-awareness on the part of the DSA. The DSA is entitled to have whatever beliefs it wishes, but those beliefs are different from those not only of most Americans, but most Democrats. Now, the one issue where every Democrat is aligned is the concern about the affordability crisis. And the genius of the Mamdani campaign lies in focusing like a laser on the affordability crisis, because it is truly the issue that has the most resonance with most voters. Not everyone agrees on the solution, but everyone agrees—in the Democratic Party, and even beyond—that it's become the central challenge confronting the city and the country. Frum: Well, I'm not sure you're entitled to say you're—well, suppose I say this: Here I am. I'm a politician. I'm from the Democratic Socialists of America, and I'm very concerned about the affordability crisis. Really? Are you? That's great. Well, what is your solution? My solution is these magic wishing beans I have in my pocket. Aren't I entitled to say, If your solution is magic wishing beans, you're probably actually not that revved up about the crisis, because if you cared, you would look for a better idea than magic wishing beans? Torres: Can I challenge—you're putting me in the position of defending the DSA, which is making me uncomfortable. Do you think the average establishment Democrat has a thought-out solution to the affordability crisis? Do you think the average politician thinks deeply about cost-benefit analyses and trade-offs and unintended consequences that don't— Frum: You don't need to think very deeply about the affordability of housing in New York to say— Torres: That's my frustration, though. Frum: You say, Okay, what we need to do is bring in a bunch of people from the industry and say, What would it take to get you to build a quarter of a million units in the five boroughs of New York per year? What would we have to change for you to build a quarter of a million? And then they'd give you a list of a bunch of ideas, and you say, Well, I can't do that one, but yeah, okay, the rest of these we can do. And maybe we won't get a quarter of a million units a year; maybe we'll get 200,000. What is being proposed instead are literally—I mean, to say what we're going to do is take a million dollars of subsidy per apartment, and take the number of subsidized apartments we're building from 10,000 a year to 20,000 a year in a city where 6 million people are applying for housing, that's a magic wishing bean. That's not going to do anything for anybody. Torres: I agree. But Eric Adams has been mayor for four years. Has he had that convening? I mean, it is not enough for center-left Democrats to denigrate the sloganeering of the far left, which I agree is sloganeering. But we have to actually offer and put forward an affordability agenda, right? We should not put ourselves in the position of defending a status quo that is genuinely failing a generation of young Americans. There are young Americans who are struggling to cope with the crushing cost of housing and higher education and health-care, and we have to address their anxieties about the affordability prices. I will just echo what I said earlier: It's not enough for the center left to be against the far left, to sneer at them. We actually have to put forward an affordability agenda. We have to be more introspective about our failures, to be blunt. Frum: Let me ask you about those failures. The Democratic Party is right now doing a big, supposedly, after-action review of the 2024 election. And there are mean stories circulating, which say, Oh, but everything that is actually the questions you'd want to talk about are off the table. We're not going to talk about Biden staying in the race arguably too long. We're not going to talk about having or not having a primary to replace him. We're gonna talk about everything else. And it reminds me a little bit of the 2012 Republican autopsy, where the Republican Party decided the solution to Romney's defeat in 2012 was Jeb Bush. And so it got a team of six people, four of whom had tight connections to Jeb Bush, to write a report saying, What do we need? And they wrote a report that took 80 pages to say, What we need is Jeb Bush. And that turned out, actually, not to be the correct answer, but it was very much the product of an in-group. And it looks like the Democratic Party is doing the same thing. Torres: Look—I feel like we should acknowledge that we screwed up, and then move on. If we deny that there was an issue, it simply serves to perpetuate the story. We should acknowledge that Biden should have decided early on not to run for reelection. There should have been a full primary process. And I happen to believe that the American primary process—which is much longer than the process in Britain is—is an extraordinary character-building experience. It is a test of character. It's a test of resilience. And you know, I often quote Frederick Nietzsche, who said, 'That which does not kill [me], makes [me] stronger.' I feel like you're made better and stronger and wiser by the demands, by the rigors of the Democratic-primary process. And that benefit was denied to Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Frum: Is that right? Because—I'm not a Democrat; I'm observing from outside—but the Democratic Party seems to be a family that can't discuss its business in nondestructive ways. And there's certain families where you say, Maybe family therapy is actually not the right option for you, because you'll kill each other. So I mean, let's see how this would work. Supposing President Biden had done the patriotic thing and said after the election of 2022, We've had this extraordinary result in 2022, much better than anybody had reason to expect. I take that as my personal vindication. I'm pronouncing myself the winner here, and I'm now going to gracefully exit the stage, and I'm declaring an open primary. What would've happened? Well, people would've said, Oh, you're betraying the Black woman. Why wasn't the Black woman you picked good enough? While there would be answers to those questions, no Democrat would easily be able to articulate what the reasons were. And then you turn into a fight of, you know, when Democrats argue, they don't argue about ideas. They don't argue about, even, personalities. They argue about categories. You're a homophobe. You're anti-Black woman. You're anti-this. You're anti-rural, anti —and they would've just ripped themselves to pieces in a bloodbath, which would've left the party in arguably even worse shape in 2024 than it actually was. Torres: I'm not sure about that. I feel if we had more time for a full primary process, we would've had a full process, and we would've respected—we have Democratic primaries where you have a variety of people from every background run, and we conduct those primaries constructively. And infighting is not unique to the Democratic Party. There's no shortage of infighting in the Republican Party. And frankly, I will argue that we manage our infighting more effectively than the Republicans do, just judging by the overwhelming dysfunction of the Republican House. I mean, we did not vacate our speaker. We did not go through 15 rounds of voting—I forget the exact number—the longest vote in 150 years. For all of our infighting, ours is much more manageable than what I'm seeing on the other side of the aisle. Frum: Let me ask you a personal question. You're too modest to mention this yourself, but you didn't go to college. And my wife, who also didn't go to college, likes to work it into the conversation early. (Laughs.) But you don't do that. But does that give you an advantage? Because one of the things I notice about the Democratic world is there's this jargon of the university that works itself into all kinds of weird—they have conversations. They have conversations in spaces. They speak from positions of privilege. They belong to certain categories. And none of this is the way anyone spoke English 15 years ago, and it's the first language of the Democratic Party. Have you sort of acquired immunity to that because of your biography? Torres: You know, it's just my nature to speak simply to the extent that I can. Like, just say someone's hungry rather than food insecure, or say someone is, you know, incarcerated rather than justice-involved. I use a language that's familiar to everyday people rather than a language that originates from the academy. But I attribute my pragmatism to a lack of a college degree. If I had graduated from college, I probably, ironically, would be more ideological in my politics and, I feel like, actually less in tune with Economics 101. Frum: Alright, well, let me get you back to this question of Economics 101, because housing is the supreme issue in your city, and there are people who believe that if you build more housing, housing will become more available. There are people who think if you build more housing, you simply put money into the hands of people we hate who are criminals and who deserve to be expropriated and run out of town. How do you have a conversation between people who hold those two views? Torres: I mean, I disagree with the second view. For me, it's not a morality tale; it's economics. Now, there are certainly unscrupulous landlords who have to be held accountable, but at the core of the affordability crisis is a gap between supply and demand. The demand for affordable housing far exceeds the supply. So we have to build enough housing to meet the demand, and we have to ensure that the housing we build is affordable to the lowest-income families who are often left behind by housing policy in cities like New York. And I'm a proponent of the abundance movement, which, you know, to me is a challenge for the Democratic Party. If Republicans purport to be the party of less government, we as Democrats should not be the party of more government. We should be the party of better, cheaper, and faster government. And we have to learn how to build better, cheaper, and faster, and bigger. And there needs to be introspection. Why is it that Texas builds more affordable housing than New York? I think Houston builds 20 units per 1,000 residents; Austin, 10 units per 1,000 residents; New York, fewer than four units per 1,000 residents. So cities like Houston and Austin are outbuilding New York by orders of magnitude. Why is it that Texas, rather than New York, has emerged as the solar superpower of America? One of the cruel ironies of our time is that the states—it's easier to build clean-energy infrastructure in the states that deny climate change than it is in the states that consider it an emergency. So I feel like the abundance movement is a challenge, is an invitation for Democrats to fundamentally reimagine what it means to govern progressively. And progressive governance should be defined by actual progress. It should be defined not by more spending, but by more supply. What matters in the end is not only more housing spending—I'm in favor of more housing spending—but also expanding the actual supply of housing so that more people have access to homes. Frum: There's a classic novel about American urban politics called The Last Hurrah. And in The Last Hurrah, a young man is being groomed to run for mayor of Boston, and he is given introductions to this aspect of city politics and this aspect of city politics. And then finally, his coaches say to him, Now we come to the most important part: foreign policy. And he says, Foreign policy? Well, why do I need any foreign policy to be mayor of Boston? They say, Don't worry. It's not that difficult. You just need to remember two sentences: 'Trieste belongs to Italy, and all Ireland shall be free.' That's it. And there seems to be something like that going on in New York, where one of the flash points between you and the Democratic Socialists of America is Gaza, which is not one of the five boroughs. And is not only the flashpoint, but almost, like Trieste and Ireland, the only one. They're this world full of complicated, harrowing problems that Americans won't even read about, let alone develop an opinion about. Here's this one flashpoint: Do you ever find there's something kind of arbitrary and bizarre about the way that foreign policy does and doesn't touch the politics of New York City? Torres: Yes and no. If you are Dominican, the Dominican Republic is not a foreign country; it's an important part of who you are, right? If you're Irish, Ireland is an important part of who you are. And if you're Jewish—it's not true of every Jew, but it's true of many, maybe most—that Israel is an important part of Jewish identity. So we're a hyphenated country. We're a country where we love not only America, but we love the country of our ancestors, as well, right? And that's part of the American story. So in that sense, it makes sense to me. Like, even though Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, I care deeply about Puerto Rico because I am Puerto Rican. It's the home of my ancestry. But it is strange. So I'll give you an example of how it can be strange. In the summer of 2020, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America sent out a questionnaire to city-council candidates, and the questionnaire had a foreign-policy section—never mind that the city council plays no role in setting foreign policy—and the foreign-policy section only had two questions. Question No. 1: Do you pledge never to travel to Israel if elected to the city council? Question No. 2: Do you support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel? So in the Democratic Socialist worldview, it is morally permissible to travel to China, which has committed genocide against Uyghur Muslims; to travel to Russia, which invaded a sovereign nation-state like Ukraine; to travel to Iran, which is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. But travel to the world's only Jewish state, that is strictly forbidden. And that, to me, is an example of how anti-Zionism can morph into a form of anti-Semitism. Frum: The two-part question is an example that nothing has changed since—I listened to those two questions, and thought, Huh, Trieste, not there anymore. What happened to that? Torres: Well, I think we've seen a radicalization of progressive politics on the subject of Israel, right? I mean, progressive politics went from embracing a two-state solution to embracing a one-state solution: 'Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.' It went from opposing only offensive aid to Israel to now opposing both defensive and offensive aid to Israel, right? It has become heresy to even support Iron Dome, which exists to protect Israeli Jews and Arabs from acts of terror, from relentless rocket fire. And before October 7, a powerful case could be made that Iron Dome was an effective mechanism for deescalating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Frum: Do you think the tendency to polarization and radicalism can be undone? If we get favorable social circumstances, like a slowdown in inflation and a pickup in wage growth; if the Trump administration is replaced by something more provocative; if the Democrats do well enough in 2026 that the most-progressive members get isolated, and they have to play nice if they want to be influential instead of being part of a very narrow majority, where they're needed—can these things be unwound, or do you think there's something deeper in our society that is pushing politics toward these ever-more-extreme views? Torres: I'm conflicted. I don't know. Part of me says yes, and part of me says no. Part of me says polarization is inevitable because the perverse incentive structure of our politics rewards polarization. It rewards political theater. It rewards the extremes. You know, if you're on the extremes, whether you're the far left or the far right, you're going to generate far more fundraising online. You're going to generate more publicity from cable news and talk radio and elsewhere. You're gonna have a much larger following on social media. The member of Congress to raise the most in the wake of January 6 was Marjorie Taylor Greene after she voted to decertify the election. And so it does feel like the perverse incentives of our politics are conducive to extremism. And it feels like the social-media algorithm, just by its very nature, amplifies extremism and disinformation and outrage. So that's where my concern lies. At the same time, voters can have a moderating effect on political parties, and if we swing the pendulum too far to the left and the voters punish us, we will adjust. When there was a backlash against the 'Defund the police,' even the left has largely abandoned it. I mean, Zohran Mamdani ran away from 'Defund the police' because he knew it was deeply unpopular among voters. The mismanagement of the migrant crisis, I felt like, had a moderating, humbling effect on the Democratic Party on the issue of border security. So I see arguments in both directions, and I haven't settled on what I believe. Frum: You mentioned these incentives, because there's an incentive that has disappeared. It's easy—let's talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene to make this easier to understand by looking at the other party. Thirty, 40, 50 years ago, a character like Marjorie Taylor Greene would've won an election to Congress because as Sam Rayburn said, 'The American people will elect anybody to anything once.' So she's elected to Congress in 1974 or 1984. At that point, somebody important in the party would've come to her and said, Look—maybe you're a genuinely crazy person, and there's nothing anyone can do for you, but maybe you'd like to go to the Senate. Maybe you'd like to be governor. And if that's the case, you need to dial back the crazy, because the crazy can get you to the House, like, once, twice. It won't make you a committee chair in the House, and it certainly won't let you run for anything else. So if you have political ambition, you want to dial back the crazy if it's in you to dial back the crazy. And the Marjorie Taylor Greene of a generation ago, or two, would've had to think about that, if she were capable of thinking about it. And if she weren't, the political system would've washed her away, as it washes away various kinds of people who genuinely are mentally unbalanced who sometimes show up in Congress. That doesn't seem to happen anymore, because people in your party and the Republican Party say, You know, I could be governor, but I'd rather have 12 million Instagram followers. Torres: I think one of the most corrosive trends in politics has been the celebritization of politics. There are growing numbers of Congress who see Congress not as an institution, but as a stage on which to perform, as a theatrical production. And that's a dynamic that's present both on the left and on the right. But the situation is far worse, I believe, on the far right, because the majority of Democrats remain in the center, whereas I feel like the center right has all but collapsed, and the Republican Party has been reduced to nothing more than a cult of personality around Donald Trump. And Donald Trump truly represents the Freudian id of the Republican base. And he has created an atmosphere in which conspiratorial politics can thrive. And you know, we're seeing it with the—on the campaign trail, he spent much of his time stoking the fires of the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy, and now those fires are threatening to devour his own administration. So he's being hoisted by his own petard. Frum: Yeah. There is something so weird about that story. Like, did the people around Trump who made it the central issue in their politics not understand or know that if you go to the very heart of the labyrinth here, the person you're going to find is Donald Trump? Torres: Yes. Yes. Frum: I sometimes wonder whether—well, Donald Trump Jr. was, like, one of the leading voices on this question. I kind of wonder if there's something oedipal going on, that at some level he knew this is the story, If I am excited about it in '21, '22, I look like a super-Trump loyalist, but actually, I know at some deep level that I'm destroying my father, whom I hate because he doesn't respect me. Is there something complicated going on there? I wonder. Torres: Look—I have no insight into the psyche of the Trump family, but here's what I find strange. You know, MAGA is like a religion that sees Donald Trump as the chosen one, right? Donald Trump was chosen to release the Epstein files as a form of revelation and destroy the deep state and drain the swamp. But there's a simple problem with the narrative of Donald Trump as the savior, is: How can you drain the swamp when you are part of the swamp? Like, there is literally no one in Washington, D.C., who has closer and longer ties to Jeffrey Epstein than Donald Trump himself. Even if you ignore The Wall Street Journal story, in 2002 in a New York magazine profile of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump went on record praising his longstanding, 15-year relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and said that Epstein loves beautiful women as much as he does, and 'many of them are on the younger side.' He literally said this in 2002. And so the facts just flatly contradict the notion of Donald Trump as the great savior against the Epstein-led deep state. Frum: Well, this is where I'd like to maybe end then, if you'll allow a personal—if you are willing to undertake a personal note. I haven't heard you speak about this in the interviews I've heard, but I've read this in profiles of you, about the formative experience that, for you, that your politics begin with Donald Trump as—I don't know how young a boy you were when you looked out the window and saw what was going on. Would you talk a little bit about that, your first encounter with Donald Trump and, if you're willing, how it shaped the beginning of your political career? Torres: Yeah, so I should explain the importance of public housing, because public housing is the issue that inspired me to run for public office. It's my raison d'être. It's the issue that matters most to me. So I was born and raised in the Bronx, raised by a single mother, grew up in public housing. And in New York City, we have an institution known as the New York City Housing Authority, NYCHA, which has endured for about 90 years. It's the largest provider of affordable housing in the nation, houses a population of about a half a million people. And most of those people, including my mother, would be homeless without—I mean, now that I have means, I could protect her. But most people who live in public housing would be homeless without it. And so it is a safety net of deeply affordable housing that prevents homelessness—street homelessness—on a catastrophic scale in New York City. Despite the importance of public housing, it's been chronically underfunded at every level of government. So you have children, asthmatic children, who are struggling to breathe in the face of molded and leaking conditions because of government disinvestment. You have children who have been poisoned by lead in their own homes, who have sustained brain damage for the rest of their lives because of government disinvestment. You have senior citizens who are freezing in their homes with their boilers breaking down because of federal disinvestment. You have disabled people who are left stranded in their top-floor apartments with their elevators breaking down because of federal disinvestment. And I grew up in conditions of mold and mildew leaks, and lead, without heat and hot water in the winter. And so I felt that these conditions that I lived and that I saw represent a humanitarian crisis that was overlooked by government. And then in the mid-2000s, the government—this local government—decided to invest more than $100 million in a golf course that was ultimately named after Donald Trump. I remember asking myself at the time, What does it say about our society that we're willing to invest more in a golf course than in the homes of people, of poor people in public housing who are struggling to survive? Like, that, to me, represented just a catastrophic misplacement of our priorities. And so that was the formative experience that inspired me to get my start as a housing organizer and then eventually take the leap of faith and run for public office at age 24. And I spent a whole year doing nothing but knocking on doors. I went into people's homes; I heard their stories. And in a race of about nine candidates, against improbable odds, I won my first campaign on the strength of door-to-door, face-to-face campaigning, and became the youngest elected official in New York City. Frum: Have you ever had a chance to talk to President Trump about his golf course? Torres: I've never spoken to Donald Trump in my life—no. And that would not be the first issue I would bring up if I were to speak to him. Frum: There are a lot of things to talk about. I wonder whether he could even process what you would want to say. Torres: I don't think he cares, and he does not—he doesn't know, and he doesn't care to know. And he doesn't care about—you know, Jacob Riis famously wrote a piece of photojournalism about How the Other Half Lives. Most of the elites of our society, including Donald Trump, do not care about how the 'other half' lives, have no concept of racially concentrated poverty in a place like the Bronx. It makes me cringe to listen to Republican colleagues and the manner in which—the disdainful manner in which they speak about my constituents. They don't know my constituents. I had an argument with Scott Jennings because he gives the impression that everyone on Medicaid is an undocumented immigrant or is a lazy 29-year-old, playing video games. And I said, Most of the nonworking population are caregivers and students. And I can assure you these caregivers are working much harder than you are. Frum: So is this a place where the center and the left reverse themselves again? That there's something intense and personal and unperformative about the way you approach politics? Torres: I think the most successful elected officials are going to be those who defy the simple categorization. And I'm just going to do the best that I can do as a public servant and let the rest take care of itself. But I see the sloganeering of the left for what it is, but I also see the shallowness of the establishment for what it is. I'm not going to put myself in the position of defending an establishment that's genuinely failing communities like mine. Frum: Congressman Torres, thank you so much for your time today. Torres: It was an honor to be here. Frum: Bye-bye. [ Music ] Frum: I thank Congressman Torres for joining The David Frum Show today. Thank you all for watching. I thank The Picton Gazette, whose hospitality I am benefiting from as I record this program here, in Picton, Ontario. I hope you'll subscribe to the program, like it, share it on various platforms. The best way we can bring this kind of content to more people is with the help and assistance of our viewers and listeners. The best way, of course, always, to support the work of this podcast and of me and all my colleagues at The Atlantic is to subscribe to The Atlantic. I hope you'll consider doing just that. Thanks so much for joining today. I'll see you soon, on the next edition of The David Frum [Show]. Frum: This episode of The David Frum Show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grein. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
Hamilton Spectator
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
‘MAGA superstar:' Permits revoked for two of Christian singer's East Coast concerts
HALIFAX - Public officials in Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have cancelled concerts by a U.S.-based Christian musician, citing complaints from residents and planned protests that raised concerns about public safety. Singer Sean Feucht describes himself as a musician, missionary, author and activist. Having spoken out against 'gender ideology,' abortion and the LGBTQ+ community, his religious and political views have grabbed the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. Late on Tuesday, Parks Canada issued a statement saying it received advice from police before revoking the permit for Feucht's performance, scheduled for Wednesday night at the York Redoubt National Historic Site overlooking Halifax harbour. 'Parks Canada has reassessed the conditions of the permit and potential impacts to community members, visitors, concert attendees and event organizers,' the agency's statement said, adding there were 'security challenges' with the site — a British fort built in 1793. 'After careful review, and due to heightened public safety concerns, Parks Canada has notified the organizer that the permit has been revoked.' Parks Canada did not respond to a request for an interview and Feucht could not be reached for comment. On Wednesday, the City of Charlottetown confirmed it had also consulted police before telling Feucht his concert slated for Thursday at Confederation Landing was cancelled due to 'evolving public safety and security concerns.' The Atlantic magazine, based in Washington, D.C., recently described Feucht as a Christian nationalist who has become a 'MAGA superstar.' 'Between praising President Donald Trump as God's chosen one and suggesting that abortion supporters are 'demons,' Feucht has repeatedly advocated for the fusion of Church and state,' the article says. During a 2023 performance in Wisconsin, Feucht is quoted as saying, 'Yeah, we want God in control of government .... We want God writing the laws of the land.' During the COVID-19 pandemic, he performed at Christian-rock concerts in violation of lockdown orders. And in 2020, he was representing the Republican party when he failed to win a congressional seat in California. In response to Parks Canada's decision, Feucht posted a video on his Facebook page saying he was the victim of intolerance. 'This is the classic playbook of the media, of the anti-Christian bigots out there that hate Christians,' he said. 'This is the same, exact place where people gathered for a Pride event last week. But now they're not so tolerant when peaceful Christians come together.' In another social media post, Feucht announced the Halifax-area concert venue would be moved to a site in Shubenacadie, N.S., a rural community about 60 kilometres northeast of Halifax. 'This is not the hour to bow down to the mob,' Feucht said Wednesday on Facebook. 'No, we need to rise up. Tonight, we are going to gather. The show is going on, baby. God is with us.' Feucht has concert dates scheduled for Thursday in Moncton, N.B., followed by a show in Quebec City on Friday, and a string of performances in Ottawa, Toronto and five locations in Western Canada. There was no shortage of support for Feucht's tour on his Facebook page. 'I am also embarrassed and ashamed to hear this is happening,' said one supporter. 'We live near Moncton and can't wait to go see the Lord moving through you here Thursday night.' Another commenter was more blunt: 'Wow, this is just a Christian event. Not political.' But there were detractors as well. 'It has nothing to do with free speech,' wrote one commenter. 'It is directly a reflection of Sean's political views that support the threat against (Canadian) sovereignty.' Before city officials in Charlottetown revoked Feucht's concert permit, they issued a statement saying it was aware of concerns raised about the event, but they said there were legal restrictions on limiting access to public spaces. Still, the officials expressed the city's support for the LGBTQ+ community. 'This week marks the beginning of Pride Fest 2025,' they said. 'The City of Charlottetown stands in full support of our diverse and vibrant 2SLGBTQ+ community.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 23, 2025. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Atlantic
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The One Book Everyone Should Read
What should I read next? If only making that decision were simple: Recommendations abound online and off, but when you're casting about for a new book, especially if you're coming off the heels of something you adored, the paradox of choice can feel intense. You might turn to loved ones to ask which book would be just right for you. Avid readers frequently face a parallel dilemma; they find themselves bombarded by friends and family members who expect a perfectly tailored recommendation. Staffers at The Atlantic get these inquiries a lot—often enough to recognize that for many of us, a pattern emerges. We end up suggesting the same book, again and again, no matter who's asking. Yet each recommender cites a different set of criteria for the work that rises to the top of their list. Some of us pick a read that feels so timeless, and so widely appealing, that it truly does have something for everyone. Others among us evangelize about something so singular that it must be experienced. The 12 books below have nothing in common except for the fact that their advocates have shared them time after time, and believe in their power to delight or captivate readers who have a variety of tastes and proclivities. One of them will, we hope, be the title you pick up next. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka Some people turn to books for history, others for lessons on human nature. They might hope to better understand longing, despair, joy, or love—or simply chase the high of genre fiction (ghost stories, political thrillers, tales of redemption). To all of these readers, I invariably advocate for Karunatilaka's journey into underworlds: both a supernatural realm beyond death and the demimonde of violence and corruption that fueled the Sri Lankan civil war. Seven Moons was the dark-horse winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, beating books by Percival Everett and Elizabeth Strout and rightly claiming its place in the magical-realism canon. The title character is a gay photojournalist with a conscience—which turns out to be a very dangerous combination in 1980s Colombo. In fact, when the novel opens, he's already dead. Before moving on from Earth, he gets seven days of purgatory—during which he must try to influence his living friends to publicize a trove of damning photographs while fending off literal demons and the dark truths he'd rather avoid. My closing pitch to friends: I've rarely read a better ending. — Boris Kachka Made for Love, by Alissa Nutting I love to suggest Nutting's work to people, even though it's been called 'deviant'—if folks avoid me afterward, then I know they're not my kind of weirdo. She has a talent for developing outrageous concepts that also reveal earnest truths about what people expect from one another and why. One of the best examples is her novel Made for Love, perhaps better known as an HBO show starring the excellent Cristin Milioti. The book, too, is about a woman whose tech-magnate husband has implanted a chip in her head, but it grows far more absurd. (A subplot, for instance, features a con artist who becomes attracted to dolphins.) Nutting's scenarios sometimes remind me of the comedian Nathan Fielder's work: You will probably cringe, but you'll be laughing—and sometimes even nodding along. — Serena Dai These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett Here's how I start my recommendation: 'Did you know that Tom Hanks's assistant and Ann Patchett went from total strangers to best friends?' And then, when my target inevitably shows interest in the out-there pairing of a beloved novelist and a Hollywood insider, I put These Precious Days in their hands. The titular essay is about this friendship, but the broader subject of Patchett's book is death: She contemplates the passing of the men who served as fathers in her life; she thinks about the potential demise of her husband, a small-plane pilot; and she considers the mortality of that assistant, a woman named Sooki. After Sooki, who starts her relationship with the author as a long-distance pen pal, is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she moves into Patchett's Nashville house during the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the writing, funny and sharp, follows the two of them as they work on their art, do yoga, take psychedelics—but the sentences get their power from their awareness of the gulf between life and death that will eventually separate the two women. — Emma Sarappo Trust, by Hernan Diaz In 1955, James Baldwin famously pilloried Uncle Tom's Cabin for its 'virtuous sentimentality,' and called its author, the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, 'not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer.' For Baldwin, Stowe's well-intentioned advocacy turned her characters into caricatures who existed only in service of her ideological aims—and as a result, he believed that her novel failed as art. This trap ensnares many fiction writers, and I have spent much time thinking about how they can avoid it when tackling contemporary problems. This is one reason I constantly bring up Díaz's Trust: It navigates the line between politics and artistry with rare skill. Set in New York City's late-19th-century financial world, the book is composed of four fictional texts, each focused on the same people but written from a different vantage point. The question is: Which narrator does the reader believe? Trust 's storytelling is impeccable, full of twists and surprises. The book is also a remarkable criticism of unbridled capitalism—but the story does not exist in service of a doctrine. It remains unlike anything else I've read. — Clint Smith An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo Harjo's poetry collection begins by recounting a horrific event: In 1830, the United States government forced some 100,000 Indigenous people to walk hundreds of miles, at gunpoint, from the southeastern U.S. to lands west of the Mississippi River. Among those on this Trail of Tears were Harjo's Muscogee ancestors, who left Georgia and Alabama for Oklahoma, and whose memory the writer resurrects through poems that collapse the distance between generations, making history feel present-tense. The book deftly expresses both grief for all of the violence perpetrated on American soil and a profound love for all of the beings that inhabit this continent. Ancestors and descendants dance at the perimeter of Harjo's poems, and her definition of relative is wide enough to hold every living thing—panthers, raccoons, tobacco plants. Anyone could spend an afternoon with this book and come away with a refreshed, more capacious view of this country. 'These lands aren't our lands,' Harjo notes. 'These lands aren't your lands. We are this land.' — Valerie Trapp An American Sunrise - Poems By Joy Harjo Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, by Ellen Meloy When Meloy, a desert naturalist, felt estranged from nature, she sought to cure it by stalking a band of bighorn sheep for a year in Utah's Canyonlands wilderness. She begins in winter and feels cold and clumsy. She envies the bighorns' exquisite balance as she watches them spring quickly up cliff faces. She feels 'the power and purity of first wonder.' Meloy's writing is scientifically learned—beautifully so—but this book does not pretend to be a detached study. When she hikes alongside these animals at dawn, she aches to belong. She fantasizes about being a feral child they raised. At first, the band is indifferent to her project. But animal by animal, they begin to let her into their world. To follow her there is to experience one of the sublime pleasures of contemporary American nature writing. Meloy gives an account of their culture, their affections for one another, even their conflicts. All these years after my first read, I can still hear the crack of the rams' colliding horns echoing off the red rock. — Ross Andersen Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth When I picked up this novel some years ago, I'd never heard of Hjorth, and I was drawn to the book simply because of the quiet mood evoked by the cover of the English-language edition—a serene picture of a lonely cabin in the woods at twilight. What I found inside was a story that reads at once as a juicy diary and as a chillingly astute psychological portrait of a dysfunctional family. The story is narrated by Bergljot, a Norwegian theater critic who is estranged from much of her family because they refused to acknowledge the abuse that her father had inflicted on her. A dispute over inheritance brings the whole distant family back into painful contact. The novel was deeply controversial in Norway after Hjorth's family claimed that its contents were too close to reality. Later, Hjorth's sister published her own novelization of their family strife. But the scandal shouldn't detract from the novel itself, which is utterly specific yet universal: The author captures the pettiness of the family's drama and the damage they do to one another with equal fidelity. — Maya Chung Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce The kingdom of Tortall has many of the classic features of a fantasy world: strapping lords, tender ladies, charming rogues, mysterious magical forces that can be used for good or for evil. But what makes Pierce's Song of the Lioness series so timeless and reliable is its heroine, Alanna, who poses as a boy in order to train as a knight. The First Adventure, which introduced her to readers in 1983, serves as an excellent gateway to the fantasy genre. The book covers Alanna's years as a page in Tortall's royal palace, where, from the ages of 10 to 13, she must contend with her girlhood—which means navigating periods and growth spurts—while keeping her identity a secret. Pierce never devalues Alanna's feelings and experiences, and the author isn't didactic about the choices Alanna makes; readers will feel they're being taken seriously, no matter their age. — Elise Hannum Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Love, Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams This book's summary sounds like something out of Black Mirror: An idealist embraces a new form of technology, convinced that it has the potential to change the world, only to become trapped in a hell of her own making. Wynn-Williams, a former director of public policy at Facebook, describes her experiences working at the social-networking giant with dark humor and a sense of mounting panic. I gasped a few times as Wynn-Williams recounted being commanded to sleep in bed next to Sheryl Sandberg, and being harassed by a higher-up while she was recovering from a traumatic childbirth that nearly killed her. But the real shock comes from seeing how Facebook, a site most people associate with college friends and benign memes, helped to amplify and exacerbate hate speech. This is exactly why I keep pressing it on people. The corporation, now Meta, has described some of the book's allegations as 'false'; regardless, Careless People makes a powerful case for why no single company or boss should have this kind of reckless, untrammeled power. — Sophie Gilbert A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific, by Hua Hsu The first thing I like to tell people about Hsu's debut book is that he took its title from a novel that had been lost, or maybe never even existed. The second thing is that it is about America, not China. A Floating Chinaman 's subject, broadly, is Asian American literature between the First and Second World Wars, but its main character is the eccentric novelist and immigrant H. T. Tsiang. Tsiang wrote prolifically at the same time as Pearl S. Buck, the white writer who won a Pulitzer for The Good Earth, her novel about Chinese farmers. Tsiang had high ambitions to combat Buck's rosy portrait of his birth country, but his manuscripts were dismissed again and again, partly for their political radicalism, their criticism of the U.S. and China, and their sheer weirdness. Tsiang had sketched a novel about a Chinese laborer who travels widely—but as far as Hsu can tell, Tsiang's book never materialized. Hsu honors the writer's obsession and perseverance while asking a more pointed question: Were Americans unready to accept an immigrant writer who called out weaknesses in their own country? — Shan Wang The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha Beha's big-swing novel, set in the late 2000s, follows Sam, a young data-crunching blogger from the Midwest who gets hired to work at a legacy New York magazine. He arrives in the city certain that when one has the right information, the world is 'a knowable place'—but he is soon forced to reconsider his rational worldview. Sam encounters an apocalyptic preacher, falls for the daughter of a profile subject (though he's married), and cranks out a near-constant stream of articles while struggling with unexpected doubts. The novel takes on heady themes, but it never feels dull or brainy, and all the people I've shared it with over the years love it too. My New Yorker father told me how well it portrayed the city after the 2008 financial crisis; my friends in journalism affirm its perceptiveness about the industry's 'content farm' days; my church friends appreciate how it takes religious belief seriously. I push it upon pretty much everyone I know. — Eleanor Barkhorn Black Swans, by Eve Babitz Reading Babitz's early work is like being whisked from one glamorous party to another. A fixture of the 1970s Hollywood scene, Babitz transcribed dozens of her own libertine experiences with diaristic recall in autofictional works such as Eve's Hollywood. But by the time she released this 1993 short-story collection, the parties had fizzled out and the scene was over. Retreating from the zeitgeist didn't rob her of inspiration, though. As an older writer, Babitz possessed a new clarity about the meaning of all those youthful nights, and the stories in Black Swans —about former bohemians inching toward the staid life, and romantics bumping up against the limits of love—are told with tenderness that is unusual in her other work. Babitz is often contrasted with her frenemy Joan Didion —Babitz was cast in the popular imagination as the fun, ditzy sexpot, as opposed to Didion's cool, cold-blooded stenographer—but the maturity and thoughtfulness of these stories dispel any lazy stereotypes. Her early work is what made her reputation, but this later collection, in which she's looking back and making sense of it all, is simply better—a trajectory I wish for all writers. — Jeremy Gordon
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Atlantic Festival Announces New Events Across New York City
July 22, 2025—Today The Atlantic is announcing more speakers, events, and the agenda for the 17th annual Atlantic Festival, taking place September 18–20 for the first time in New York City. This year's festival will be anchored at the Perelman Performing Arts Center along with venues around the city, including the Tenement Museum, the Town Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hauser & Wirth, and McNally Jackson Seaport. Among the speakers announced today: actor Robert Downey Jr. and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, in conversation with The Atlantic 's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg; actor Tom Hanks, who voices several historical figures in the new Ken Burns documentary series The American Revolution and who will join the premiere screening of the series at the Town Hall; comedian, writer, and director Richard Ayoade in a conversation moderated by talk-show host, comedian, and producer David Letterman; Executive Producer of The Apollo Kamilah Forbes; Professor of Marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur Scott Galloway; clinical psychologist and Founder and CEO of Good Inside Becky Kennedy; and TV personality, chef, author, and activist Andrew Zimmern. Previously announced Festival speakers include Mark Cuban, Jennifer Doudna, Arvind Krishna, Monica Lewinsky, Tekedra Mawakana, H.R. McMaster, and Clara Wu Tsai. The Atlantic Festival will also host an exclusive first look for Season 3 of Netflix's The Diplomat, which debuts this fall, followed by a conversation with the show's stars Keri Russell and Allison Janney and creator and executive producer Debora Cahn; a sneak peek screening of FX's The Lowdown, along with a talk with creator, executive producer, writer, and director Sterlin Harjo and executive producer and star Ethan Hawke; and a screening of The American Revolution, followed by a discussion with directors and producers Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, along with actor Tom Hanks, who voices several historical figures, and historian Annette Gordon-Reed. New this year: The Atlantic Festival introduces Out and Abouts, intimate events around the city that are ticketed individually. Among the events announced today: Atlantic Reads book talks at McNally Jackson Seaport. Featuring Walter Mosley for his new novel Gray Dawn; Susan Orlean for her memoir Joyride; and a poetry conversation around The Singing Word: 168 Years of Atlantic Poetry, featuring the book's editor and Atlantic contributing editor Walt Hunter, with Singing Word contributor and MIT professor Joshua Bennett. Premiere of Dread Beat an' Blood at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), featuring a live performance by legendary poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. The Big Story Live events, across downtown venues: 'What Does it Mean to Be an American?,' at the Tenement Museum, featuring staff writers Xochitl Gonzalez and Clint Smith, plus more speakers to be announced. 'The Future of the Arts in a Changing World,' at Hauser & Wirth, featuring Jeffrey Goldberg, Noah Hawley, and Kamilah Forbes, with more speakers to be announced. With more to be announced, including a live taping of the Radio Atlantic podcast. The festival's Single-Day Passes and Out and About tickets will go on sale this Wednesday, July 23, at 11 a.m. ET. Atlantic subscribers receive an exclusive 30 percent discount on festival passes and select Out & About programming. Festival sessions will be led by Goldberg and many of The Atlantic 's writers and editors, including Adrienne LaFrance, Tim Alberta, Ross Andersen, Anne Applebaum, Gal Beckerman, Elizabeth Bruenig, Sophie Gilbert, Jemele Hill, Walt Hunter, Shirley Li, Ashley Parker, and Clint Smith. The 2025 Atlantic Festival is underwritten by Microsoft at the Title Level; CenterWell, Eli Lilly and Company, and Scout Motors at the Presenting Level; and Aflac, Allstate, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Destination DC, Diageo, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Hauser & Wirth, KPMG, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation at the Supporting Level.
