The Trump administration’s release of long-awaited Epstein files didn’t provide what survivors were looking for, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0 Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told Fitzpatrick, with a bit of hope. Just over 24 hours earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available. Meanwhile, survivors learned that “some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions,” Fitzpatrick reports. Sharlene Rochard—who first met Epstein in the mid-1990s, when she was a teenager—told Fitzpatrick that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said. But she didn’t get that.“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.“ “The failure to schedule the call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline,” Fitzpatrick reports.
Read more: theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0 🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Davidoff Studios / Getty, Natasha Breen / REDA / Getty.
Many physicists have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human—one that could redefine the field for the next generation, Adam Frank writes. theatln.tc/WeeWT60x
For most of the 20th century, physicists largely ignored living systems and whole organisms. “Physics students learn about the basic stuff of reality—space and time, energy and matter—and are told that all other scientific disciplines must reduce back down to the fundamental particles and laws that physics has generated,” Frank explains. “This philosophy, called ‘reductionism,’ worked pretty well from Newton’s laws through much of the 20th century as physicists discovered electrons, quarks, the theory of relativity, and so on.”
Over the past few decades, however, progress in the most reductionist branches of physics has slowed. Now, Frank writes, many of his colleagues are beginning to reassess the field’s dismissal of living things.
The study of life “will take us to places we’ve never imagined, opening a path for the future of our field that, for once, unfolds on a level playing field with biologists, ecologists, neuroscientists, and sociologists,” Frank argues. “At its best, the pursuit of fundamental answers about the nature of living things might lead physicists not only to new scientific marvels, but also to an entirely new way of doing science.”
What did Jeffrey Epstein understand about Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”? Pretty much nothing, Graeme Wood writes. theatln.tc/GEgLZ7DF
The late financier and convicted sex offender, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors, flaunted his supposed love of Nabokov’s novel, which is so closely identified with pedophilia that it spawned not one but two words, “Lolita” and “nymphet,” for girls whom grown men find sexually tempting. Epstein owned a first edition and ordered “The Annotated Lolita” for his Kindle 43 days before he was arrested; “Lolita” crops up here and there in the Epstein documents released by Congress.
“Still, I doubt that Epstein ever read ‘Lolita,’ or that he understood it if he did,” Wood continues. The novel’s protagonist, Humbert Humbert, is “one of the most odious and self-absorbed creations in all of literature. He is a rapist, a murderer, a world-class deflector of blame (‘It was she who seduced me’), and a pompous piece of child-molesting Eurotrash.” Humbert and Lolita spend much of the plot traveling in a jalopy and shacking up in motels—unlike Epstein, Wood notes, who flew in a 727 known unofficially as the “Lolita Express.”
“The end of the novel, however, is even more hateful to someone with Epstein’s predilections,” Wood continues. Humbert has become unattractive to himself, even remorseful about his crimes against Lolita; the reader is reminded that he is writing his tale from prison. Before he can face justice, he will be dead of a heart attack, a “parallel to Epstein, who, like Humbert, cheated justice through an early demise.”
“Epstein could, I suppose, have seen himself in Humbert, understood Humbert all too well, and simply not regarded him as loathsome. Epstein was, after all, Epstein, and did not inhabit the same moral universe as you and I do,” Wood continues. “More likely, Epstein confused ‘Lolita’ for some kind of Booker Prize–level version of ‘Penthouse Forum.’”
“There’s something to be said about processing heartbreak by spilling secrets or otherwise setting things ablaze,” Anna Holmes argues. Lily Allen’s new album, “West End Girl,” is a prime example of this tactic.
In October, Allen released a 14-track, 45-minute-long effort that tells the story of the dissolution of her marriage to the actor David Harbour after he supposedly violated the terms of their open marriage. “Allen definitely has a way with words,” Holmes writes. “But her album is hitting such a nerve, I think, not just because of its clever lyrics but also because it can be thought of as an extremely public breakup letter of sorts: sweet-revenge lemonade made from bitter lemons.”
“West End Girl” is raw and over-the-top at times, “but that’s part of the point,” Holmes argues. Allen’s approach with her latest album is a far cry from the concept of “conscious uncoupling,” which a self-satisfied Gwyneth Paltrow popularized a little over a decade ago. “Sometimes,” Holmes adds, “the only way past the hurt is not around the muck, but through it.”
For humanities departments to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it, Thomas Chatterton Williams argues. theatln.tc/9IvAKQvb
Humanities departments seem to be in perpetual crisis, Williams writes: They face low enrollment, the collapse of reading and attention spans, and now Trump-administration funding cuts. In response, many colleges are trying to make the humanities “relevant” by assigning shorter readings or emphasizing their practicality in the face of financial anxieties.
“But such adaptations and compromises only exacerbate perhaps the most insidious threat the humanities face, and one that’s not often discussed,” Williams writes. “As a humanities professor myself, the biggest danger I see to the discipline is the growing perception, fueled by the ubiquity of large language models, that knowledge is cheap—a resource whose procurement ought to be easy and frictionless,” Williams continues. “Indeed, the most useful lesson the humanities have to offer today is a profoundly countercultural one: Difficulty is good, an end in its own right.”
Therapists say that “therapy-speak” has invaded their patients’ sessions and lives—and it’s making things difficult on everyone, Olga Khazan reports. theatln.tc/dOgWoyQI
“Gaslighting” and “love-bombing” are just two of the terms that couples therapists told Khazan their clients are misusing, typically after seeing descriptions of the ideas on social media. But according to the therapist Terry Real, no phrase is used as frequently as this one: “I’m the spouse of a narcissist.”
“True narcissistic personality disorder is marked by, among other traits, an abnormally high sense of self-importance and a lack of empathy,” Khazan explains. “And in reality, it’s very rare.”
Still, the therapists Khazan spoke with said that their clients seem very sure this unusual diagnosis must apply to their spouse. “People are incredibly confident in these conclusions and are not curious, are not open to discussing them and figuring out if they’re accurate,” another therapist told Khazan. “They’re coming in as the experts.”
“Most of the therapists I spoke with said they are glad that people are learning more about mental health,” Khazan continues. But “before the advent of social media, people picked up these ideas in self-help books, psychoanalysis, and pop culture.” Now, therapists say, too many people are getting sucked into online posts about pop-psych concepts—and they misapply them to their own relationships.
“Spouses’ attempts to diagnose each other can become a problem in couples’ sessions, these therapists said, because they distract focus from the dysfunctional patterns that both members of the couple are likely perpetuating,” Khazan writes. As one therapist told her, these labels can, in effect, say: “I’m not gonna change anything about our relationship. You have to change your personality or change all your behaviors to stay with me.”
But therapy-speak language appears to be here to stay. “‘I’ve got issues,’ which originated decades ago as a psychological euphemism for ‘I’ve got problems,’ is now so much a part of the lexicon that it no longer registers as originating in therapy,” Khazan writes. “Perhaps ‘gaslight’ and ‘narcissist’ are headed there too.”
The upkeep of carbon-steel knives is a huge pain. But according to Tyler Austin Harper, the knives “cultivate habits of mind—patience, focus, and repetition—that the pace and shape of modern life make so hard to develop.”
The knives rust easily, react poorly when exposed to acidic ingredients such as lemons and tomatoes, and lose their shine almost immediately. But, Harper writes, after he brought his first carbon-steel knife home and “used it to slice and dice onions, carrots, and mushrooms for Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, I fell in love with the knife’s balance and humble beauty—and, yes, the fact that it was sharp as hell.”
Carbon-steel knives will not necessarily make you a better cook, and they have largely become relics of the past, Harper continues: “They are noticeably out of place in a food culture that includes fast-casual restaurants, meal boxes by mail, 20-minute ‘weeknight recipes,’ and Silicon Valley–approved meal replacements such as Soylent—and that’s exactly the point.”
For 20 minutes last night, Americans watched Donald Trump speak, “drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job,” Tom Nichols argues. theatln.tc/mMLIpITq
“We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor,” Nichols continues. “He vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness.”
The president’s speech “contained no news, other than an example of his contempt for the U.S. military, whose loyalty he thinks he can purchase with a onetime $1,776 bonus check,” Nichols writes. “This is projection: Trump has shown his willingness to be bought off with gold bars and trinkets, and he may think that the men and women of the armed forces are people of equally low character.”
In effect, “Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: ‘Quiet, piggy,’” Nichols argues. “Even by Trump’s standards, this was an unnerving display of fear.”
Donald Trump is considering announcing onetime bonus checks of $1,776 for many military members, Ashley Parker and Nancy Youssef report. The announcement could be made as early as Trump’s address to the nation this evening, though the White House has not reached a final decision on the timing or even whether to go forward with the plan. theatln.tc/5PIQwfnx
The checks, which would go to every service member from the rank of private to colonel or their equivalents, “come at a moment when Trump’s relationship with the military is particularly complicated,” Parker and Youssef write.
Generals and admirals are notably excluded from receiving the potential bonuses, which could cost roughly $2 billion, one administration official told Parker and Youssef. The money would have to come out of the defense budget, but officials have not said what they would cut in order to pay for the bonuses. The White House has declined to comment on the payments, and the Pentagon referred requests for comment to the White House.
“Trump supporters would almost certainly celebrate the bonuses as yet another sign of a commander in chief who appreciates the men and women of the military,” Parker and Youssef write. “But a more cynical interpretation is that the money, although welcome, would represent an attempt by Trump to buy loyalty.”
🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Graphica Artis / Getty; Chip Somodevilla / Getty
Hong Kong’s response to a recent fire that killed more than 160 people suggests that the city is becoming more authoritarian, Timothy McLaughlin argues—and this will only compound problems that “contributed to last month’s tragedy and that raise the risk of future ones.” theatln.tc/GXObiTeE
When China prepared to assume control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, Chinese leaders were concerned that the transition would scare off foreign investors. As a result, these leaders “tried to woo real-estate tycoons and other business elites by giving them key roles overseeing the city’s future governance,” McLaughlin explains. But “as the housing market generated greater wealth for Hong Kong’s tycoons, the construction and real-estate industries achieved growing immunity from regulatory oversight.”
“This dynamic most likely played a key role in last month’s fire,” McLaughlin argues. Hong Kong authorities allege that the construction company that had been renovating the Wang Fuk Court towers for the past year used unsafe materials. “But the city’s authorities, too, bear responsibility,” McLaughlin writes. “They seem to have disregarded warning signs about the multimillion-dollar renovation.”
As part of a criminal investigation into the fire, police have arrested some 20 people, including construction-firm bosses and fire-equipment contractors. “At the same time, however, authorities have stifled public expressions of discontent and suppressed civic-led solutions,” McLaughlin continues.
Meanwhile, as some Hong Kongers still mourned, the city held a “patriots only” legislative election. “Only 32 percent of the city voted, in part because the regime had pre-vetted the candidates, purging older lawmakers from the ballots who had connections to the system that predated Beijing’s clampdown of the city in 2020,” McLaughlin writes. “A new guard of über-nationalists took their place.”
“Both the election and the response to the fire suggest that Hong Kong is moving ever closer to Beijing’s system of repression, which meets crises not with transparency and reform but with threats and censorship,” McLaughlin argues. But “a more authoritarian order almost certainly won’t tackle the deep-seated problems.”
The Atlantic
The Atlantic
The Trump administration’s release of long-awaited Epstein files didn’t provide what survivors were looking for, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told Fitzpatrick, with a bit of hope.
Just over 24 hours earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available.
Meanwhile, survivors learned that “some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions,” Fitzpatrick reports. Sharlene Rochard—who first met Epstein in the mid-1990s, when she was a teenager—told Fitzpatrick that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said. But she didn’t get that.“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.“
“The failure to schedule the call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline,” Fitzpatrick reports.
Read more: theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0
🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Davidoff Studios / Getty, Natasha Breen / REDA / Getty.
2 minutes ago | [YT] | 0
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The Atlantic
Many physicists have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human—one that could redefine the field for the next generation, Adam Frank writes. theatln.tc/WeeWT60x
For most of the 20th century, physicists largely ignored living systems and whole organisms. “Physics students learn about the basic stuff of reality—space and time, energy and matter—and are told that all other scientific disciplines must reduce back down to the fundamental particles and laws that physics has generated,” Frank explains. “This philosophy, called ‘reductionism,’ worked pretty well from Newton’s laws through much of the 20th century as physicists discovered electrons, quarks, the theory of relativity, and so on.”
Over the past few decades, however, progress in the most reductionist branches of physics has slowed. Now, Frank writes, many of his colleagues are beginning to reassess the field’s dismissal of living things.
The study of life “will take us to places we’ve never imagined, opening a path for the future of our field that, for once, unfolds on a level playing field with biologists, ecologists, neuroscientists, and sociologists,” Frank argues. “At its best, the pursuit of fundamental answers about the nature of living things might lead physicists not only to new scientific marvels, but also to an entirely new way of doing science.”
Read more: theatln.tc/WeeWT60x
🎨: Anna Ruch / The Atlantic. Sources: Manuel Nieberle / Miles Matsui Schleifer / Connected Archives; De Agostini / Getty.
6 hours ago | [YT] | 77
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The Atlantic
What did Jeffrey Epstein understand about Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”? Pretty much nothing, Graeme Wood writes. theatln.tc/GEgLZ7DF
The late financier and convicted sex offender, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors, flaunted his supposed love of Nabokov’s novel, which is so closely identified with pedophilia that it spawned not one but two words, “Lolita” and “nymphet,” for girls whom grown men find sexually tempting. Epstein owned a first edition and ordered “The Annotated Lolita” for his Kindle 43 days before he was arrested; “Lolita” crops up here and there in the Epstein documents released by Congress.
“Still, I doubt that Epstein ever read ‘Lolita,’ or that he understood it if he did,” Wood continues.
The novel’s protagonist, Humbert Humbert, is “one of the most odious and self-absorbed creations in all of literature. He is a rapist, a murderer, a world-class deflector of blame (‘It was she who seduced me’), and a pompous piece of child-molesting Eurotrash.” Humbert and Lolita spend much of the plot traveling in a jalopy and shacking up in motels—unlike Epstein, Wood notes, who flew in a 727 known unofficially as the “Lolita Express.”
“The end of the novel, however, is even more hateful to someone with Epstein’s predilections,” Wood continues. Humbert has become unattractive to himself, even remorseful about his crimes against Lolita; the reader is reminded that he is writing his tale from prison. Before he can face justice, he will be dead of a heart attack, a “parallel to Epstein, who, like Humbert, cheated justice through an early demise.”
“Epstein could, I suppose, have seen himself in Humbert, understood Humbert all too well, and simply not regarded him as loathsome. Epstein was, after all, Epstein, and did not inhabit the same moral universe as you and I do,” Wood continues. “More likely, Epstein confused ‘Lolita’ for some kind of Booker Prize–level version of ‘Penthouse Forum.’”
Read more: theatln.tc/GEgLZ7DF
🎨: Colin Hunter. Source: Patrick McMullan / Getty.
8 hours ago | [YT] | 89
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The Atlantic
“There’s something to be said about processing heartbreak by spilling secrets or otherwise setting things ablaze,” Anna Holmes argues. Lily Allen’s new album, “West End Girl,” is a prime example of this tactic.
In October, Allen released a 14-track, 45-minute-long effort that tells the story of the dissolution of her marriage to the actor David Harbour after he supposedly violated the terms of their open marriage. “Allen definitely has a way with words,” Holmes writes. “But her album is hitting such a nerve, I think, not just because of its clever lyrics but also because it can be thought of as an extremely public breakup letter of sorts: sweet-revenge lemonade made from bitter lemons.”
“West End Girl” is raw and over-the-top at times, “but that’s part of the point,” Holmes argues. Allen’s approach with her latest album is a far cry from the concept of “conscious uncoupling,” which a self-satisfied Gwyneth Paltrow popularized a little over a decade ago. “Sometimes,” Holmes adds, “the only way past the hurt is not around the muck, but through it.”
Read more about “West End Girl”: theatln.tc/ZCKolLuh
🎨: Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: Todd Owyoung / NBC / Getty.
9 hours ago | [YT] | 38
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The Atlantic
For humanities departments to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it, Thomas Chatterton Williams argues. theatln.tc/9IvAKQvb
Humanities departments seem to be in perpetual crisis, Williams writes: They face low enrollment, the collapse of reading and attention spans, and now Trump-administration funding cuts. In response, many colleges are trying to make the humanities “relevant” by assigning shorter readings or emphasizing their practicality in the face of financial anxieties.
“But such adaptations and compromises only exacerbate perhaps the most insidious threat the humanities face, and one that’s not often discussed,” Williams writes. “As a humanities professor myself, the biggest danger I see to the discipline is the growing perception, fueled by the ubiquity of large language models, that knowledge is cheap—a resource whose procurement ought to be easy and frictionless,” Williams continues. “Indeed, the most useful lesson the humanities have to offer today is a profoundly countercultural one: Difficulty is good, an end in its own right.”
Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: Godong / Getty
13 hours ago | [YT] | 183
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The Atlantic
Therapists say that “therapy-speak” has invaded their patients’ sessions and lives—and it’s making things difficult on everyone, Olga Khazan reports. theatln.tc/dOgWoyQI
“Gaslighting” and “love-bombing” are just two of the terms that couples therapists told Khazan their clients are misusing, typically after seeing descriptions of the ideas on social media. But according to the therapist Terry Real, no phrase is used as frequently as this one: “I’m the spouse of a narcissist.”
“True narcissistic personality disorder is marked by, among other traits, an abnormally high sense of self-importance and a lack of empathy,” Khazan explains. “And in reality, it’s very rare.”
Still, the therapists Khazan spoke with said that their clients seem very sure this unusual diagnosis must apply to their spouse. “People are incredibly confident in these conclusions and are not curious, are not open to discussing them and figuring out if they’re accurate,” another therapist told Khazan. “They’re coming in as the experts.”
“Most of the therapists I spoke with said they are glad that people are learning more about mental health,” Khazan continues. But “before the advent of social media, people picked up these ideas in self-help books, psychoanalysis, and pop culture.” Now, therapists say, too many people are getting sucked into online posts about pop-psych concepts—and they misapply them to their own relationships.
“Spouses’ attempts to diagnose each other can become a problem in couples’ sessions, these therapists said, because they distract focus from the dysfunctional patterns that both members of the couple are likely perpetuating,” Khazan writes. As one therapist told her, these labels can, in effect, say: “I’m not gonna change anything about our relationship. You have to change your personality or change all your behaviors to stay with me.”
But therapy-speak language appears to be here to stay. “‘I’ve got issues,’ which originated decades ago as a psychological euphemism for ‘I’ve got problems,’ is now so much a part of the lexicon that it no longer registers as originating in therapy,” Khazan writes. “Perhaps ‘gaslight’ and ‘narcissist’ are headed there too.”
Read more: theatln.tc/dOgWoyQI
📸: George Marks / Getty
1 day ago | [YT] | 103
View 16 replies
The Atlantic
The upkeep of carbon-steel knives is a huge pain. But according to Tyler Austin Harper, the knives “cultivate habits of mind—patience, focus, and repetition—that the pace and shape of modern life make so hard to develop.”
The knives rust easily, react poorly when exposed to acidic ingredients such as lemons and tomatoes, and lose their shine almost immediately. But, Harper writes, after he brought his first carbon-steel knife home and “used it to slice and dice onions, carrots, and mushrooms for Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, I fell in love with the knife’s balance and humble beauty—and, yes, the fact that it was sharp as hell.”
Carbon-steel knives will not necessarily make you a better cook, and they have largely become relics of the past, Harper continues: “They are noticeably out of place in a food culture that includes fast-casual restaurants, meal boxes by mail, 20-minute ‘weeknight recipes,’ and Silicon Valley–approved meal replacements such as Soylent—and that’s exactly the point.”
Read more: theatln.tc/BNz8ZRJd
🎨: The Atlantic. Source: Michael Paulsen / Houston Chronicle / Getty.
1 day ago | [YT] | 46
View 12 replies
The Atlantic
For 20 minutes last night, Americans watched Donald Trump speak, “drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job,” Tom Nichols argues. theatln.tc/mMLIpITq
“We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor,” Nichols continues. “He vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness.”
The president’s speech “contained no news, other than an example of his contempt for the U.S. military, whose loyalty he thinks he can purchase with a onetime $1,776 bonus check,” Nichols writes. “This is projection: Trump has shown his willingness to be bought off with gold bars and trinkets, and he may think that the men and women of the armed forces are people of equally low character.”
In effect, “Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: ‘Quiet, piggy,’” Nichols argues. “Even by Trump’s standards, this was an unnerving display of fear.”
Read more: theatln.tc/mMLIpITq
📸: Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg / Getty
1 day ago | [YT] | 1,761
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The Atlantic
Donald Trump is considering announcing onetime bonus checks of $1,776 for many military members, Ashley Parker and Nancy Youssef report. The announcement could be made as early as Trump’s address to the nation this evening, though the White House has not reached a final decision on the timing or even whether to go forward with the plan. theatln.tc/5PIQwfnx
The checks, which would go to every service member from the rank of private to colonel or their equivalents, “come at a moment when Trump’s relationship with the military is particularly complicated,” Parker and Youssef write.
Generals and admirals are notably excluded from receiving the potential bonuses, which could cost roughly $2 billion, one administration official told Parker and Youssef. The money would have to come out of the defense budget, but officials have not said what they would cut in order to pay for the bonuses. The White House has declined to comment on the payments, and the Pentagon referred requests for comment to the White House.
“Trump supporters would almost certainly celebrate the bonuses as yet another sign of a commander in chief who appreciates the men and women of the military,” Parker and Youssef write. “But a more cynical interpretation is that the money, although welcome, would represent an attempt by Trump to buy loyalty.”
🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Graphica Artis / Getty; Chip Somodevilla / Getty
2 days ago | [YT] | 102
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The Atlantic
Hong Kong’s response to a recent fire that killed more than 160 people suggests that the city is becoming more authoritarian, Timothy McLaughlin argues—and this will only compound problems that “contributed to last month’s tragedy and that raise the risk of future ones.” theatln.tc/GXObiTeE
When China prepared to assume control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, Chinese leaders were concerned that the transition would scare off foreign investors. As a result, these leaders “tried to woo real-estate tycoons and other business elites by giving them key roles overseeing the city’s future governance,” McLaughlin explains. But “as the housing market generated greater wealth for Hong Kong’s tycoons, the construction and real-estate industries achieved growing immunity from regulatory oversight.”
“This dynamic most likely played a key role in last month’s fire,” McLaughlin argues. Hong Kong authorities allege that the construction company that had been renovating the Wang Fuk Court towers for the past year used unsafe materials. “But the city’s authorities, too, bear responsibility,” McLaughlin writes. “They seem to have disregarded warning signs about the multimillion-dollar renovation.”
As part of a criminal investigation into the fire, police have arrested some 20 people, including construction-firm bosses and fire-equipment contractors. “At the same time, however, authorities have stifled public expressions of discontent and suppressed civic-led solutions,” McLaughlin continues.
Meanwhile, as some Hong Kongers still mourned, the city held a “patriots only” legislative election. “Only 32 percent of the city voted, in part because the regime had pre-vetted the candidates, purging older lawmakers from the ballots who had connections to the system that predated Beijing’s clampdown of the city in 2020,” McLaughlin writes. “A new guard of über-nationalists took their place.”
“Both the election and the response to the fire suggest that Hong Kong is moving ever closer to Beijing’s system of repression, which meets crises not with transparency and reform but with threats and censorship,” McLaughlin argues. But “a more authoritarian order almost certainly won’t tackle the deep-seated problems.”
Read more: theatln.tc/GXObiTeE
📸: Dale De La Rey / AFP / Getty
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