The New Yorker: Politics and More

It’s been just over a month since Donald Trump tweeted for the first time about the coronavirus—saying, in essence, that the virus did not pose a substantial threat to the United States. Why did he so dramatically underplay the risks of COVID-19? “With Trump, sometimes the answer is pretty transparent,” The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, Susan B. Glasser, told David Remnick, “and, in this case, I think the answer is pretty transparent. He didn’t want anything to interrupt his...

This month, in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, arts organizations around the country shut their doors. Theatre productions were cancelled, film premières postponed, gallery openings scuttled. Artists and other creative professionals, many of whom are freelance workers with no health benefits and little access to unemployment insurance, suddenly found themselves with no income. The dire economic circumstances have caused some to search for new creative outlets online, but others...

In northern Italy, doctors were forced to begin rationing ventilators and other equipment—a nightmare scenario that could become a reality for medical staff in the United States soon; New York has projected ventilator shortages in the thousands per week. David Remnick talks with Philip Rosoff, a professor of Medicine at Duke University and a scholar of bioethics who has studied rationing. Rosoff believes medical institutions must also consider the needs of those who can’t be saved, and...

The earliest epidemics date back to Neolithic times, and, in the millennia since, viral outbreaks have repeatedly shaped the course of human history, influencing behavior and creating and destroying cultural norms. In the weeks since COVID-19 became a worldwide emergency, people are showing resilience, humor, and creative ways of communicating as governments and businesses struggle to respond. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss differing responses to infectious diseases across...

For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock. But not for Lawrence Wright. A staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al Qaeda, Wright recently wrote a novel—yet to be published—called “The End of October,” about the spread of a novel virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of COVID-19. Wright looked to illnesses of the past to try to understand their enduring consequences, and he mapped those ripple effects onto our...

Donald Trump never really stopped running for President. On the day of his inauguration, in 2017, he filed the paperwork to run for reëlection in 2020. As the Democrats have fought a historically long primary battle, Trump has been gearing up for the general election. In particular, his campaign will take place online—he has tapped his 2016 digital-media director, Brad Parscale, to run his 2020 campaign. Andrew Marantz, who profiled Parscale for The New Yorker, joins Eric Lach to discuss...

Just over a week ago, Bernie Sanders seemed to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Then came some prominent withdrawals from the race, and, on Super Tuesday, the resurgence of Joe Biden’s campaign. (Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the race, but has no chance of winning the nomination.) But the narrowing of the field only highlights the gulf between the Party’s moderate center and its energized Left. David Remnick talks with Amy Davidson Sorkin, a political columnist for The...

Joe Biden’s pitch to voters has been remarkably consistent: he says he can unite older voters, people of color, and moderates into a coalition that can defeat Donald Trump. A series of gaffes, concerns about his voting record, and disappointing results in the early primaries seemed to doom Biden’s candidacy. But big victories in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday have given new credence to his claim that he’s the best person to take on Trump in November. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden...

Eleanor Randolph finished her biography of Michael Bloomberg in June, 2019, just as the former mayor decided not to run for President. “He didn’t want to go on an apology tour,” Randolph tells David Remnick. Bloomberg knew that he would be called to answer for his vigorous pursuit of unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policing, accusations against him of sexual misconduct, and his history as a Republican. Ultimately, Bloomberg did enter the race, and he has spent more than four hundred million...

This week, the former film producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted on two counts of sexual assault in a New York court. Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than ninety women, has become an emblem of misogyny in Hollywood, and of the systems that protect wealthy and powerful men from the consequences of criminal misconduct. Rebecca Solnit joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss whether the Weinstein verdict is a turning point in the #MeToo movement, and what it takes to...

Donald Trump began his Presidential bid, in 2015, with an infamous speech, at Trump Tower, in which he said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” But it was not until a former aide to Jeff Sessions joined Trump’s campaign that the nativist rhetoric coalesced into a policy platform—including the separation of children from their families at the border. Jonathan Blitzer, who writes about immigration for The New Yorker, has been reporting on...

Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist at the Niskanen Center, in Washington, D.C., thinks that most pollsters and forecasters rely on outdated ideas about how candidates succeed. She argues that the outcome has far less to do with the candidates’ ideology than we think it does. Her perspective has been controversial, but in July, 2018, months before the midterm elections, her model predicted the Democratic victory in the House with an accuracy unmatched by conventional forecasters. And it...

Every year, Townsend Harris High School, in Queens, New York, holds a schoolwide election simulation. Students are assigned roles and begin campaigning in September. Every candidate has a staff, raises money, and makes ads for the school’s radio and television network. This fall, the school simulated the Democratic and Republican primaries. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden got into a rap battle. The American Family Association joined the fray and released a rap of its own. The New...

On Tuesday, voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots in the Democratic Presidential primary. Following the debacle surrounding the Iowa caucuses, many Democrats hoped that the results from New Hampshire would bring clarity to the race. Bernie Sanders won, arguably making him the front-runner. But close behind him was Pete Buttigieg, who also narrowly won the Iowa caucuses, and Amy Klobuchar, whose third-place finish gave her campaign renewed energy. Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Eric Lach...

The last time a Democrat won the White House, he had enormous support from black voters; lower support from black voters was one of many reasons Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Marcus Ferrell, a political organizer from Atlanta, tells Radio Hour about the importance of turning out “unlikely voters” in order to win an election, which, for him, means black men. Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and historian, points out that the four Democratic front-runners, all of whom are white, may...

On Monday, at the Iowa caucuses, a new smartphone app was used to report the results from each precinct. The app proved faulty, leading to a catastrophic failure to collect and report vote totals. In theory, advances in voting technology make voting easier and more accessible. In practice, they have introduced new vulnerabilities that can be exploited to suppress or undermine the will of the voters. Sue Halpern joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the recent history of voter suppression and...

In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American democracy, too, staggered,” Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker, “weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation.” Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans rallied to save democracy, and...

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced his Administration’s Middle East peace plan. The unveiling occurred in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial of Trump, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and on the day that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, in three cases. While nominally presenting a two-state solution, the plan heavily favors Israeli interests. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to...

Mass incarceration is now widely regarded as a prejudiced and deeply harmful set of policies. Bipartisan support exists for some degree of criminal-justice reform, and, in some circles, the idea of prison abolition is also gaining traction. Kai Wright, the host of the WNYC podcast “The United States of Anxiety,” spoke about the movement with Paul Butler, a law professor and former federal prosecutor who saw firsthand the damage that prosecution causes; and sujatha baliga, a MacArthur...

Last week, the Senate opened the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. With Republicans standing immovably by the President, the trial is expected to result in Trump’s acquittal. The Framers of the Constitution issued dire warnings about the spectre of “factionalism” and how it could endanger American democracy. Jelani Cobb joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the origins of partisanship in American politics and how it’s playing out in arguments about whether the President should be removed from...