Hey Plus! How was your week? I know, I know.
An underdiscussed theory from this Vanity Fair post on Jared and Ivanka: Trump administration craziness peaks between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, when the Kushners are observing Shabbat and thus unavailable to help regulate the president’s temperament. Guess we’ll find out over the next 24 hours!
From Slate
On the Trump administration:
- Why the Trump administration keeps screwing up.
- Trump is violating court orders against his Muslim ban. What happens if the administration keeps ignoring the courts?
- A very personal piece from Jacob Weisberg on how the immigration ban feels to American Jews.
- Congress can and should keep Steve Bannon off the National Security Council.
- We published a lot on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
On the resistance:
- Constituent power is real. Just ask Chuck Schumer.
- The Democrats are finally showing some spunk. They need to be careful with Gorsuch though.
- Deposed Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has been defying politicians for decades, it turns out.
- Democracy is holding up well under Trump’s assaults—for now. Political scientist Yascha Mounk: “Between Trump’s spectacular assault on democratic norms and the furious response it has already unleashed, I no longer worry about a quiet death. The American republic won’t go down without putting up a hell of a fight.”
Other stuff that didn’t fit into either of those categories:
- Fiction writers imagine our Trumpian future, in the Trump Story Project.
- An Episcopal priest on writing his first sermon of the Trump presidency.
- Alternative facts: Turns out a lot of people think Eli Whitney was black.
Not From Slate
- This Ezra Klein post, revisiting a greatest hit from Trump’s stump speech, is kind of chilling. I bet Trump knew he was talking about himself all along.
- We took strong political parties for granted and they started getting weaker and now look where we are.
- What does Jimmy Carter think about all this? The Onion has a surprisingly affecting guess.
- Here’s a very sweet Modern Love column on the bonds between siblings.
- Ben Mathis-Lilley recommends Matthew Shaer’s “M.I.A.” in the Atavist Magazine: “a story that’s about both the epic sweep of history and the weird, almost mundane idiosyncrasies of individual humans.”
- And Josh Keating urges you to watch this Guardian/Frontline dispatch from inside the battle of Mosul, “a shockingly up-close look at urban warfare.”
The second episode of our Slate Academy on the history of fascism is on the site and in your Slate Plus podcast feed now. Tune in to hear Joshua Keating, Rebecca Onion, and June Thomas discuss how a fringe movement moved with startling speed to the center of Spanish politics—a situation that certainly has no particular resonance to the present moment at all
Thank you for your Slate Plus membership, which makes our journalism possible. See you next week.
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus
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