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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.”

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?”

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 a Man Takes a Body Slam

James Hamblin

In an assault in Montana, two very different ideas of masculinity

On Wednesday the Republican congressional candidate in Montana’s special election Greg Gianforte physically assaulted Ben Jacobs, a reporter from The Guardian, according to Jacobs himself and Fox News reporters who were present.

Jacobs recorded the interaction and published the audio, tweeting “Listen to me get body-slammed in Montana.”

The question Jacobs had asked Gianforte was about the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the new health-care bill. Gianforte can be heard saying, “I’m sick and tired of you guys,” and then there’s what sounds like an altercation, and then “The last time you came here you did the same thing. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here.” Then Jacobs says, as if narrating for the audio recorder, “You just body-slammed me and broke my glasses.”

President Donald Trump speaks beside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the start of the NATO summit. — Christian Hartmann / Reuters

Trump Declines to Affirm NATO's Article 5

Rosie Gray

Speaking in front of the leaders of its member-nations, the president fails to make clear the United States still has the alliance’s back.

Updated at 5:07 p.m.

BRUSSELS — President Trump did not explicitly endorse the mutual-aid clause of the North Atlantic Treaty at the NATO summit on Thursday despite previous indications that he was planning to do so, keeping in place the cloud of ambiguity hanging over the relationship between the United States and the alliance.

Speaking in front of a 9/11 and Article 5 Memorial at the new NATO headquarters, Trump praised NATO’s response to the 9/11 attacks and spoke of “the commitments that bind us together as one.”

But he did not specifically commit to honor Article 5, which stipulates that other NATO allies must come to the aid of an ally under attack if it is invoked.

The only time in history that Article 5 has been invoked was after the September 11 attacks, a fact that Trump mentioned. The memorial Trump was dedicating is a piece of steel from the North Tower that fell during the attacks.

First He Became an American—Then He Joined ISIS

Seamus Hughes and Bennett Clifford

When the FBI discovered a network of Bosnian-Americans giving support to terrorists, they also discovered Abdullah Ramo Pazara, a U.S. citizen and a battalion commander in Syria.

Abdullah Ramo Pazara had a craving for packets of instant hot cocoa. The Bosnian-American former truck driver was, at the time, a commander of an Islamic State tank battalion in Syria. Apparently, even foreign fighters who reject their former lives in Western countries for a chance at martyrdom for ISIS sometimes long for the creature comforts of their previous homes.

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In 2013, six Bosnian immigrants in the United States allegedly sent money, riflescopes, knives, military equipment, and other supplies to jihadists in Syria and Iraq through intermediaries in Bosnia and Turkey. According to the U.S. government’s allegations, individual ISIS fighters would make specific requests—mostly for money and military equipment—and the group would then raise funds and send supplies to Syria. The requests included what was surely an unexpected revelation of nostalgia—packets of Swiss Miss hot cocoa. By sending the cocoa mix and other supplies, federal prosecutors argue, these U.S.-based Bosnians provided what is known as “material support” to terrorists, in violation of the Patriot Act.

Republicans Reckon With a Rushed Health-Care Vote

Russell Berman

The Congressional Budget Office’s damning report on the party’s replacement for Obamacare stunned some GOP lawmakers. They shouldn’t have been surprised.

House Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned.

As party leaders rushed to pass their American Health Care Act earlier this month, they ignored a chorus of calls—from Democrats, yes, but also from independent analysts and some in their own party—to wait for a final assessment from the Congressional Budget Office, a customary step before voting on any major legislation. The nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper had run the numbers on two previous versions of the bill, but it had not had time to examine the impact of two late amendments. One would weaken Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions by allowing states to opt out of federal mandates, and the other sought to plug a hole that change could create by setting aside $8 billion to help cover costs for the affected population.

America's Friendship With Europe Has Been Horribly Damaged

David Frum

It’s not all Donald Trump’s fault. But he has in every way already made the situation gravely worse.

“In battle, nothing is ever as good or bad as the first reports of excited men would have it.”
—Field Marshal Viscount Slim

Let’s hope that same caution applies to presidential transition geopolitics too, because the first reports from the Trump transition are very bad indeed.

Among America’s oldest and truest allies, the reaction to the election of Donald Trump has ranged from horror to terror, sometimes including large elements of each. Nowhere, though, does the reaction look more dangerous than inside the most powerful state on the European continent, Germany.

The morning after Donald Trump’s victory, German Chancellor Angela Merkel released a cooly diffident pledge of cooperation to the new American president. The key passage:

The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes

Asher Elbein

A recent push for diversity has been blamed for weak print sales, but the company’s decades-old business practices are the true culprit.

Marvel Comics has been having a rough time lately. Readers and critics met last year’s Civil War 2—a blockbuster crossover event (and a spiritual tie-in to the year’s big Marvel movie)—with disinterest and scorn. Two years of plummeting print comics sales culminated in a February during which only one ongoing superhero title managed to sell more than 50,000 copies.* Three crossover events designed to pump up excitement came and went with little fanfare, while the lead-up to 2017’s blockbuster crossover Secret Empire—where a fascist Captain America subverts and conquers the United States—sparked such a negative response that the company later put out a statement imploring readers to buy the whole thing before judging it. On March 30, a battered Marvel decided to try and get to the bottom of the problem with a retailer summit—and promptly stuck its foot in its mouth.

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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A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Nicolas Pollock

Uncovering the link between early trauma and lifelong illness

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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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Looking for Energy Innovation? Look to Materials Science

About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

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

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

How a Man Takes a Body Slam

Trump Declines to Affirm NATO's Article 5

First He Became an American—Then He Joined ISIS

Republicans Reckon With a Rushed Health-Care Vote

America's Friendship With Europe Has Been Horribly Damaged

The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Looking for Energy Innovation? Look to Materials Science

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About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

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

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

How a Man Takes a Body Slam

Trump Declines to Affirm NATO's Article 5

First He Became an American—Then He Joined ISIS

Republicans Reckon With a Rushed Health-Care Vote

America's Friendship With Europe Has Been Horribly Damaged

The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump