Obama, Pegged

Why Would Jared Kushner Trust Russian Officials So Much?

Adam Serwer

A Washington Post report suggests the president's son-in-law and adviser sought to give Moscow information he wanted to conceal from America's own intelligence agencies.

Why did Jared Kushner seemingly trust Russian officials more than he trusted the U.S. government?

Friday evening, The Washington Post broke the story that, according to an intercepted report by the Russian ambassador in Washington to his superiors in Moscow, Kushner sought to use secure communications facilities at the Russian Embassy to correspond directly with Russian officials. The Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, reported that the proposal was made in December, after Trump won the election but before he had taken office. The conversations reportedly involved Michael Flynn, the former Trump national-security adviser who was fired after it was revealed that he lied to administration officials about the content of his conversations with Russian officials.

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

Trump's Moral Holiday

David Frum

The permissiveness of Republican leaders who acquiesce to violence, collusion, and corruption is encouraging more of the same.

In the annals of the Trump era, May 25, 2017, will deserve a special mark. Four remarkable things happened on Thursday, each of which marks a way that this presidency is changing the nation.

The first remarkable thing was President Trump’s speech at the NATO summit in Brussels. Many European governments had hoped—which is a polite way to say that they had suggested and expected—that Trump would reaffirm the American commitment to defend NATO members if attacked. This is the point of the whole enterprise after all! Here’s how it was done by President Obama at the NATO summit after the Russian invasion of Crimea:

First and foremost, we have reaffirmed the central mission of the Alliance. Article 5 enshrines our solemn duty to each other—“an armed attack against one … shall be considered an attack against them all.” This is a binding, treaty obligation. It is non-negotiable. And here in Wales, we’ve left absolutely no doubt—we will defend every Ally.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as 3 or 4. But a new clinical approach offers hope.

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish.

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At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory—the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family—Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands. “I wanted the whole world to myself,” she says. “So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people.”

Trump Remains a NATO Skeptic

Thomas Wright

While he avoided major blunders in the Middle East on his first foreign trip, he may come to regret his failure to affirm U.S. support for the alliance.

Presidential trips are hard to assess. George H.W. Bush threw up on the Japanese prime minister; he was sick. Bill Clinton went to China without going to Japan, a big no-no. Someone threw a shoe at George W Bush; he ducked. President Barack Obama failed to meet with human-rights activists in China. His speech was censored on Chinese television.

These all passed for big problems. Then again, those were different times.

The bar for President Donald Trump on his foreign trips this past week was, by comparison, unusually low. Everyone expected problems. Trump famously knows very little about foreign policy. In his March 17 meeting with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, he confessed he had never heard of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or the G-20. She made him a colorful map of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, which he apparently liked. So, when Trump embarked on a nine-day trip of five countries, it seemed particularly ambitious. Most new presidents go to Canada or Mexico.

The Trump Organization Says It's 'Not Practical' to Comply With the Emoluments Clause

Russell Berman

The president’s business tells lawmakers it is too difficult to track all its foreign revenue in accordance with constitutional requirements, and it hasn’t asked Congress for a permission slip.

Days before taking office, Donald Trump said his company would donate all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, part of an effort to avoid even the appearance of a conflict with the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Now, however, the Trump Organization is telling Congress that determining exactly how much of its profits come from foreign governments is simply more trouble than it’s worth.

In response to a document request from the House Oversight Committee, Trump’s company sent a copy of an eight-page pamphlet detailing how it plans to track payments it receives from foreign governments at the firm’s many hotels, golf courses, and restaurants across the globe. But while the Trump Organization said it would set aside all money it collects from customers that identify themselves as representing a foreign government, it would not undertake a more intensive effort to determine if a payment would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on public office holders accepting an “emolument” from a foreign state.

The Dos and Don’ts of Cultural Appropriation

Jenni Avins

Borrowing from other cultures isn’t just inevitable, it’s potentially positive.

Sometime during the early 2000s, big, gold, “door-knocker” hoop earrings started to appeal to me, after I’d admired them on girls at school. It didn’t faze me that most of the girls who wore these earrings at my high school in St. Louis were black, unlike me. And while it certainly may have occurred to me that I—a semi-preppy dresser—couldn’t pull them off, it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t.

This was before the term “cultural appropriation” jumped from academia into the realm of Internet outrage and oversensitivity. Self-appointed guardians of culture have proclaimed that Miley Cyrus shouldn’t twerk, white girls shouldn’t wear cornrows, and Selena Gomez should take off that bindi. Personally, I could happily live without ever seeing Cyrus twerk again, but I still find many of these accusations alarming.

洛拉：我家的奴隶

Alex Tizon

她与我们家人一起生活了五十六年。她带大了我和我的兄弟姐妹，从早到晚做饭做清洁，从来没有工资。十一岁的我，一个典型的美国孩子，意识到她其实是我们家的奴隶。

她的骨灰装满了一个黑色塑料盒子，如烤面包机一般大小，重三磅半。去年七月，我用一个帆布口袋把这个盒子包起来，装在行李箱里，横越太平洋，飞去了马尼拉。我要从那里坐车去一个小乡村，去把这个在我家为奴五十六年的女人的骨灰交出去。

The Lesser Part of Valor

Adam Serwer

Preston Brooks, Greg Gianforte, and the American tradition of disguising cowardice as bravery

You wouldn’t say that Preston Brooks sucker-punched Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber in 1856—but only because he used a cane. Brooks, a South Carolina congressman, began bludgeoning Sumner, the anti-slavery Massachusetts senator, while Sumner wasn’t looking, and beat him unconscious as Sumner was still bent under his desk trying to stand up.

Brooks and his supporters in the South saw the incident as an act of great valor, as the historian Manisha Sinha writes. Brooks bragged that “for the first five or six licks he offered to make fight but I plied him so rapidly that he did not touch me. Towards the last he bellowed like a calf.” The pro-slavery Richmond Enquirer wrote that it considered the act “good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequence.” Other “southern defenders of Brooks,” Sinha writes, praised Brooks for his “manly spirit” and mocked Sumner for his “unmanly submission.” It would have been manlier for the unarmed Sumner not to have been ambushed.

Gregg Allman, the Sound of Southern Rock

J. Weston Phippen

The founding member of the Allman Brothers Band passed away in Savannah, Georgia.

Founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, Gregory LeNoir "Gregg" Allman, who with his Hammond B-3 organ, and soft but growling voice helped create a sound that was simultaneously jazz, rock, blues, and parts San Francisco jam band, and that became the defining tone of Southern rock music, died on Saturday. He was 69.

His death was announced on his website, and gave no official cause. Allman struggled much his life with health issues and drug addiction, and the statement on his death said, “During that time, Gregg considered being on the road playing music with his brothers and solo band for his beloved fans, essential medicine for his soul. Playing music lifted him up and kept him going during the toughest of times." It added that he “passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia."