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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.”

An Apple employee poses with a personal computer in 1986. — Corbis Historical / Getty

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Deirdre Clemente

The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that.

Americans began the 20th century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts—the most radical shift in dress standards in human history. At the center of this sartorial revolution was business casual, a genre of dress that broke the last bastion of formality—office attire—to redefine the American wardrobe.

Born in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s, business casual consists of khaki pants, sensible shoes, and button-down collared shirts. By the time it was mainstream, in the 1990s, it flummoxed HR managers and employees alike. “Welcome to the confusing world of business casual,” declared a fashion writer for the Chicago Tribune in 1995. With time and some coaching, people caught on. Today, though, the term “business casual” is nearly obsolete for describing the clothing of a workforce that includes many who work from home in yoga pants, put on a clean T-shirt for a Skype meeting, and don’t always go into the office.

Michael Flynn Invokes the Fifth

Matt Ford

President Trump’s former national security adviser won’t comply with the Intelligence Committee’s demand for Russia-related documents, his lawyers said Monday.

Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday he won’t comply with their May 10 subpoena of materials related to the Russia investigation, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

“The context in which the committee has called for General Flynn’s testimonial production of documents make clear that he has more than a reasonable apprehension that any testimony he provides could be used against him,” Flynn’s lawyers wrote in a letter to the committee. “Multiple Members of Congress have demanded that he be investigated and even prosecuted.”

Flynn’s response comes less than a month after the committee issued a formal demand for any documents “relevant to the committee’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.” The committee noted it had asked him to voluntarily turn over the documents in April, but his legal counsel declined.

Reports of an Explosion in Manchester

The Editors

U.K. police said a number of people are dead and injured following the incident at Manchester Arena.

Here’s what we know:

—Greater Manchester Police said “there are a number of confirmed fatalities and others injured” following reports of explosions at the Manchester Arena.

—The venue was the scene of an Ariana Grande concert.

—This is a developing story and we’ll be following it here. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -4).

President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver remarks before a dinner at Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on May 22, 2017. — Ariel Schalit / Reuters

Trump Goes After 'the Ultimate Deal'

Rosie Gray

The American president has surprised everyone with his enthusiasm for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But he might not understand what he's getting into.

JERUSALEM—Is Donald Trump the last best hope for the peace process?

As a candidate, Trump was an iconoclast in many ways, but by and large he hewed to the positions on Israel typical of Republican presidential candidates. Trump promised to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and railed against the Iran deal.

Trump’s promises reassured the Israeli right and the pro-Israel American right. He earned rave reviews from figures like the Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, who declared after the election that “Trump's victory is a tremendous opportunity for Israel to immediately announce its intention to renege on the idea of establishing Palestine in the heart of the country—a direct blow to our security and the justice of our cause.”

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。

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.”

A victim of domestic violence at a safe house in Nevada County, California — Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Mother, Wife, Slave

Sarah Jeong

Lola and the universality of women’s exploitation

“Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from,” Alex Tizon wrote in his Atlantic essay “My Family’s Slave.”

A thousand objections can be leveled against that piece, and in the few days since it was published, those objections have materialized from all quarters. It’s a powerful story, and its flaws and omissions have their own eloquence. For me, the most important failure is that Tizon seems to attribute Lola’s abuse entirely to another culture—specifically, to a system of servitude in the Philippines—as though he believes, This doesn’t happen in America. But that system is not only in America, it’s everywhere. It ensnares not only immigrants, but everyone.

President Donald Trump — Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Trump’s Budget Is an Aristocratic Con

Derek Thompson

The president’s tax-and-spend plan isn’t just a reversal of his campaign promises. It’s also a deeply unpopular blueprint for the country.

President Donald Trump’s first major budget proposal comes out on Tuesday, but many of the details are already public. The budget would reverse several of Trump’s campaign promises—like his pledge to preserve Medicaid and Social Security—by dismantling welfare for the poor and sick, while ensuring that rich Americans keep more of their income.

At this point, the proposal is just that—a proposal, and Congressional Republicans, some of whom have balked at the president’s blueprint, hold the power of the purse. But if followed, the plan would reportedly cut anti-poverty programs by $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years in an attempt to balance the budget, according to the The Washington Post and Axios. In addition to $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid—which comes directly from the House’s Obamacare replacement—the budget would also let states use “work requirements” to limit eligibility and spending on programs like SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps), CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), and Social Security Disability Insurance. There is little question that these policies would raise the number of uninsured Americans (the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates suggest by more than 20 million), expose more households to medical bankruptcy, and push more families into poverty.

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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Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making

Daniel Lombroso

A Catholic news outlet is fighting to save Americans from sin, while its founder grapples with his own complicated past.

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Gawker Is Taking the New Jersey Governor and Fox News to Court

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My Family’s Slave

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洛拉：我家的奴隶

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Mother, Wife, Slave

Trump’s Budget Is an Aristocratic Con

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making

Gawker Is Taking the New Jersey Governor and Fox News to Court

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About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Michael Flynn Invokes the Fifth

Reports of an Explosion in Manchester

Trump Goes After 'the Ultimate Deal'

洛拉：我家的奴隶

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Mother, Wife, Slave

Trump’s Budget Is an Aristocratic Con

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making