Six Flags New Orleans: 5 Years Later

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.

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 Shinha 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.

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.

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.”

Why Didn’t Jared and Ivanka Report Their Art Collection?

Kriston Capps

Is it that they take art so seriously, they don’t think of it as money?

Two weeks ago, Ivanka Trump caught some alone time in Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room. Staged at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the piece is a living room en blanc, a white-out room filled with all-white furniture and personal effects, that visitors are invited to cover over with tiny colorful dot stickers. The piece is mesmerizing, an Instagram sensation; a contemporary art lover like Trump wasn’t likely to miss out on the hottest ticket (and snap) in town.

Trump is an art lover, that much is plain. Her own Instagram feed is chock full of images of contemporary art from the Park Avenue condo she and husband Jared Kushner share. Her affection for art—not normally something even her detractors would likely begrudge her—may have worked against her family this week. As reporters at Artnet discovered, Kushner, a senior White House advisor, failed to report the couple’s extensive art collection in required financial disclosures.

President Trump delivers a speech during the Arab-Islamic-American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 21, 2017. — Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

What Trump's Ramadan Message Was Really About

Yasmeen Serhan

The president urged Muslims to “reject violence” in a statement that contrasted sharply with those issued by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

President Trump wished all Muslims a “joyful Ramadan” in a statement Friday, just hours before the start of the month-long Islamic holiday during which those observing fast from sunrise to sunset.

Though such statements are commonplace among American presidents, Trump’s remarks took on a markedly different tone than did those of his predecessors. While the statement, like those of presidents past, noted the “acts of charity and meditation” that define the holy month, it went on to focus on a topic that has been at the forefront of Trump’s first trip overseas as president: terrorism.

“This year, the holiday begins as the world mourns the innocent victims of barbaric terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom and Egypt, acts of depravity that are directly contrary to the spirit of Ramadan,” the White House statement reads, adding that “such acts only steel [sic] our resolve to defeat the terrorists and their perverted ideology.”

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.

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Olga Khazan

A guide for those on the fence

Isabel Caliva and her husband, Frank, had already “kicked the can down the road.” The can, in their case, was the kid conversation; the road was Caliva’s fertile years. Frank had always said he wanted lots of kids. Caliva, who was in her early 30s, thought maybe one or two would be nice, but she was mostly undecided. They had a nice life, with plenty of free time that allowed for trips to Portugal, Paris, and Hawaii.

“I wasn’t feeling the pull the same way my friends were describing,” she told me recently. “I thought, maybe this isn’t gonna be the thing for me. Maybe it’s just going to be the two of us.”

At times, she wondered if her lack of baby fever should be cause for concern. She took her worries to the Internet, where she came across a post on the Rumpus’ “Dear Sugar” advice column titled, “The Ghost Ship that Didn’t Carry Us.” The letter was from a 41-year-old man who was also on the fence about kids: “Things like quiet, free time, spontaneous travel, pockets of non-obligation,” he wrote. “I really value them.”

Maine's former governor John Baldacci, left, serves spaghetti at a fundraising event to benefit the Preble Street Resource Center, an agency that helps the homeless, in 2010. — Robert F. Bukaty / AP

The People Left Behind When Only the ‘Deserving’ Poor Get Help

Annie Lowrey

Maine attached work requirements and time limits to its safety net, intensifying poverty in the state.

ORLAND, Maine—In the eyes of the state of Maine, Laurie Kane is an able-bodied adult without dependents, and thus ineligible for most forms of government support. In her own eyes, it is hard to see how she is going to find housing, work, and stability without help.

Kane is struggling to put her life back together amid a spell of homelessness that has lasted for three years. She has a severe anxiety condition, along with other health problems, and had suffered a panic attack on the day I met her. But she had not managed to sign up for MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, because she cannot get a doctor to certify her as being disabled. That’s not because a doctor has evaluated her and found her to be fine, but because she’s been unable to get a doctor’s appointment. “I was denied MaineCare because I’m considered an able-bodied person,” she told me. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, you can just get free care.’ They say, ‘You can go to a clinic with a sliding-fee scale, which would be $20 a visit.’ But what if I can’t come up with $20?”

Monks survey the view following an attack on Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery in Minya, Egypt — Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked?

H.A. Hellyer

Egypt’s preexisting climate of pro-Islamist sectarianism is an important, and sometimes overlooked, reason.

Friday is usually the most peaceful day in the Egyptian week, a day most often reserved for time with family. This Friday in particular—the last day before the start of Ramadan—should have been a time of calm reflection and prayer in Egypt. Instead, gunmen killed at least 24 Coptic Christians as they made their way via bus to a monastery in Minya, south of Cairo.

Copts are the largest Christian group in the Middle East, and they represent about 10 percent of the population in Egypt. This is not the first attack that has taken aim at Christians in the country, but it is one of the most shocking, with a high death toll and children among the targets. Sadly, given ISIS’s express declarations that Christians are “infidels” who should be targeted in Egypt, this attack is also unlikely to be the last.

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Nicolas Pollock

Uncovering the link between early trauma and lifelong illness

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Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Paul Rosenfeld

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

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Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Tynesha Foreman and Nicolas Pollock

New data and analysis from PRRI and The Atlantic suggests that it was cultural anxiety more than economic distress that fueled white, working-class support for Trump.

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Six Flags New Orleans: 5 Years Later

About the Author

Most Popular

Trump's Moral Holiday

The Lesser Part of Valor

My Family’s Slave

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Why Didn’t Jared and Ivanka Report Their Art Collection?

What Trump's Ramadan Message Was Really About

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

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

The People Left Behind When Only the ‘Deserving’ Poor Get Help

Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked?

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Six Flags New Orleans: 5 Years Later

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Bob Woodward Tells the Media to Calm Down

About the Author

Most Popular

Trump's Moral Holiday

The Lesser Part of Valor

My Family’s Slave

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Why Didn’t Jared and Ivanka Report Their Art Collection?

What Trump's Ramadan Message Was Really About

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

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

The People Left Behind When Only the ‘Deserving’ Poor Get Help

Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked?

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump