THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

On Monday I spoke with a Republican member of Indiana’s legislature who opposes President Donald Trump’s push for the state to redraw its congressional map to gain two GOP seats and help the party hold its House majority in next year’s midterm elections. Trump, with support from Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, has vowed to back primary challengers against members of the GOP who are, for now, blocking the redistricting plan. The lawmaker I spoke with asked that I not publish his name. He isn’t worried about Trump’s political wrath; he doesn’t plan to run for reelection. His fear of speaking out is much more personal: “I’d rather my house not get firebombed,” he told me by phone.Such a worry is not as far-fetched as it might sound—not in an America that has seen an eruption of political violence over the past few years, and not in Indiana over the… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Is anti-Semitism in American political discourse actually just a carefully cultivated deception? Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X revealed the location of every account on the site, and the results were eye-opening. Viral MAGA influencers ranting about “my tax dollars” funding foreign wars were exposed as Pakistani or Russian. Thirst traps of attractive Israeli soldiers turned out to be run by Indians. Heartbreaking stories of Gazan suffering were found to be posted from Europe. And many overtly racist accounts championing Nick Fuentes, the young white supremacist and Hitler aficionado, were revealed to be foreign-run. This discovery led some to suggest that anti-Semitism on the app was in fact an inauthentic intrusion into the American debate with little organic appeal.  [Read: Elon Musk’s worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors ]“Groypers are in shambles right now,” crowed Eyal Yakoby, a student activist who once testified before Congress about anti-Semitism on college campuses, referring to… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Photographs by Elinor CarucciRobert F. Kennedy Jr. somehow knew, even as a little boy, that fate can lead a person to terrible places. “I always had the feeling that we were all involved in some great crusade,” Kennedy once wrote, “that the world was a battleground for good and evil, and that our lives would be consumed in that conflict.” He was 9 years old when his uncle was assassinated and 14 when his father suffered the same fate. I happened to be sitting next to him this fall when he learned that his friend Charlie Kirk had been shot. We were on an Air National Guard C-40C Clipper en route from Chicago to Washington, D.C., and one of Kennedy’s advisers, her eyes filling with tears, whispered the news in his ear. “Oh my God,” he said.National Guard stewards handed out reheated chicken quesadillas, which Kennedy declined in favor of… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

A junior member of Congress from Georgia announced her resignation last night, ending a brief tenure in the House that produced, well, not a whole lot.Marjorie Taylor Greene is no legislative powerhouse, and in the grand sweep of American history, her five years as a U.S. representative will be a mere blip. She wrote no major laws and had little discernible impact on national policy. (For two of those years, she did not serve on a single House committee, having been booted from her assignments in a bipartisan vote because of comments she made prior to serving in Congress that, among other things, promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the execution of Democratic lawmakers.)Yet if that had been all there was to say about Greene, then her abrupt decision to quit in the middle of her third term would not have made international headlines. In her short time in Washington, she… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The longest-ever government shutdown ended on November 12, but Deairra Tracey is still scared.The disabled mother of three from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, had to visit food banks and skip meals so that her children could eat after the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program abruptly stopped paying out benefits on November 1. After running out of money to buy milk and watching her refrigerator go bare as Congress held a series of failed votes on a funding bill, Tracey told me, she now lives in fear that the federal aid she receives could be cut off again. She is filling her freezer with low-cost items and stocking up on nonperishables in case Congress closes the government again next year.“I’m going to make sure I have everything that I need to make sure my children are good,” she said. “I have been super stressed, but you have to do what you have… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.