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“A treasure. Books about “A brilliant book . How a whip- grief are rarely funny and smart young girl handles the loss of adorable—this one is.” her mother and the reorientation of —PEOPLE MAGAZINE, her family; charming and Book of the Week beautifully written.” —KIRKUS, Starred “In Hartnett’s winning debut, a memorable young narrator’s desire “With this novel, for rationality wrestles with her [Hartnett has] become one grief. Affecting.” of my favorite writers.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, —KEVIN WILSON, New York Times Starred Review bestselling author of The Family Fang “Funny and heartfelt, Rabbit Cake “This is a truly terrific and original manages adult questions with a novel about grief, family, and tween’s sense of wonder.” finding hope in the aftermath.” —MARIE CLAIRE —BOOKLIST “Darkly funny and endlessly smart.” “The most enjoyable novel I’ve —PLOUGHSHARES, read since Mr. Penumbra’s “Must-Reads for 2017” 24-Hour Bookstore!” —PETE MOCK, McIntyre’s Books available wherever books are sold · www.tinhouse.com contents JUNE 2017 UP FRONT 6 Russia’s Weaponized Fake News 22 Inside the Kremlin’s ongoing political influence campaign. BY LAURA RESTON 8 Trump the Job Killer Why is the self-proclaimed economic savior firing people? BY BRYCE COVERT 9 The Trump Tweetometer A highly precise quantitative analysis of last month’s presidential tweets. 10 The New Star Wars Our next global conflict may be fought in outer space. BY SHANNON STIRONE 12 Not So Fast, Blue Cities How Republicans are blocking efforts to raise the minimum wage. BY CLIO CHANG COLUMNS 14 The Great Democratic Divide Can elite liberals learn to embrace middle America? BY MICHAEL TOMASKY 16 The Miseducation of Liberals Don’t like Betsy DeVos? Blame the Path of Most Resistance Democrats. BY DIANE RAVITCH The opposition to Trump is winning. But can it find a way to rebuild the Democratic Party? REVIEW 50 Pew Research BY JEET HEER How to divine the political power of American evangelicals. BY JEFF SHARLET 56 Out of Office Veep tackles the shock of losing the White House. BY SARAH MARSHALL 18 30 42 58 Floatopia The Rumble in “The Only The War on Can libertarians escape government by Richmond Good Muslim Hillbillies taking to the seas? BY RACHEL RIEDERER 61 A Woman’s March Tom Perriello’s insurgent Stripped of the region’s Is a Dead Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant path toward campaign against Ralph coal and ravaged by Muslim” feminist polemic. BY CHARLOTTE SHANE Northam for Virginia drugs, the people of A meatpacking town in governor is the biggest Appalachia are fighting 64 The Teeth Gap Kansas opened its doors Democratic title bout to survive. The devastating effects of dental to refugees. Then a group since Hillary vs. Bernie. TEXT BY SARAH JONES inequality in America. BY ADAM GAFFNEY of Trump supporters PHOTOGRAPHS BY ESPEN BY ALEX SHEPHARD 66 Shimmering Visions plotted to massacre them. RASMUSSEN BY TED GENOWAYS What F. Scott Fitzgerald shared with his era’s great theorists. BY SAM TANENHAUS 72 Backstory PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELLE SIU POETRY 70 Boardwalk Block COVER PHOTOS BY GETTY IMAGES. ABOVE, PAUL MORIGI/GETTY COVER ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN MCCABE BY ADRIENNE RAPHEL JUNE 2017 | 1 contributors Bryce Covert is economic editor at ThinkProgress and a contributor at Editor in Chief The Nation. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Win McCormack Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a 2016 Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus. Editor Eric Bates TRUMP THE JOB KILLER, P. 8 Executive Editor Literary Editor Adam Gaffney is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School Ryan Kearney Laura Marsh and a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Politics Editor Features Directors Alliance. He’s a board member of the single-payer advocacy organization Bob Moser Sasha Belenky Theodore Ross Physicians for a National Health Program. THE TEETH GAP, P. 64 Deputy Editor Ryu Spaeth Senior Editors Brian Beutler Ted Genoways, a contributing editor at the new republic, has written Managing Editor Jeet Heer about the meatpacking industry and immigration disputes in Minnesota, Laura Reston News Editor Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. “The issues dividing the nation,” he says, “are Social Media Editor Alex Shephard playing out in some of the least visible parts of the country.” His latest Sarah Jones Staff Writers book, This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm, will Design Director Emily Atkin Graham Vyse be published in September. This article was produced in collaboration with Siung Tjia Josephine Livingstone the Food and Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative Photo Director Poetry Editor news organization. “THE ONLY GOOD MUSLIM IS A DEAD MUSLIM,” P. 30 Stephanie Heimann Cathy Park Hong Production Manager Espen Rasmussen is an award-winning photographer and photo editor Steph Tan Reporter-Researchers based in Norway. Between 2014 and 2016, he drove thousands of miles Clio Chang Contributing Editors Lovia Gyarkye through America’s Rust Belt, from Detroit to Beckley, West Virginia, to James Burnett, Alexander Chee, Sukjong Hong document the lives of working-class Americans. “I wanted to go to the Ben Crair, Michelle Dean, Juliet Kleber birthplace of the American dream,” he says, “to ask people if they still Siddhartha Deb, Michael Eric Dyson, Paul Ford, Ted Interns THE WAR ON HILLBILLIES, P. 42 Genoways, William Giraldi, believe in it.” Eric Armstrong Dana Goldstein, Kathryn Joyce, Naomi LaChance Suki Kim, Maria Konnikova, Sagari Shetty Diane Ravitch is a historian and professor of education at New York Corby Kummer, Michelle Legro, University. She is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Jen Percy, Jamil Smith, Graeme Wood, Robert Wright Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. THE MISEDUCATION OF LIBERALS, P. 16 Rachel Riederer is co-editor in chief of Guernica. She writes about Director of Marketing Director of Sales and Revenue Suzanne Wilson science, the environment, culture, and policy. Her writing has appeared in Evelyn Frison Associate Account FLOATOPIA, P. 58 The New Yorker and The Best American Essays. Audience and Executive Partnership Manager Shawn Awan Jeff Sharlet is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Eliza Fish Controller Dartmouth College. He has written or edited six books on American Media Relations Manager David Myer religion, the most recent of which is Radiant Truths. His work has appeared Steph Leke Office Manager, NY in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and GQ. PEW RESEARCH, P. 50 Associate Publisher Tori Campbell Art Stupar Sam Tanenhaus is former editor of The New York Times Book Review. He is writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. Publisher Hamilton Fish SHIMMERING VISIONS, P. 66 Michael Tomasky is a columnist for The Daily Beast, editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and frequent contributor to The New York Published by Lake Avenue Publishing Review of Books. THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC DIVIDE, P. 14 1 Union Square West, New York, NY 10003 President Clarification: An article in our April 2017 issue, “Trump’s Fuzzy Border Math,” stated that Jason Win McCormack Richwine’s Ph.D. dissertation “advocated banning Hispanic immigrants because their IQs were lower than those of whites.” It was not our intention to suggest that Richwine advocated banning all Hispanic immigrants. Rather, we meant to observe that his dissertation suggested there is a “genetic component” to lower IQ scores among Hispanics and other groups, and that he For subscription inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 advocated using intelligence tests to bar entry to those with lower IQs. The online version of the article has been altered to clarify his opinions, including his assertion that it is “difficult to argue For reprints and licensing visit www.TNRreprints.com against” the “prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren.” We regret any misunderstanding that our original phrasing may have caused about his views. 2 | NEW REPUBLIC COMING SUMMER 2017 Specially curated wines for New Republic readers, delivered to your door. from the stacks AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected president, journalists were quick to liken him to Hitler, Mussolini, and Vladimir Putin. But four months into his administra- tion, he’s starting to look more like a Georgia peanut farmer whose first term was mired in congressional gridlock. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. explained in the new republic in 1980, Jimmy Carter had cut himself loose from the core principles that had governed the Democratic Party since FDR. He was left ideologically rudderless, mired in foreign quagmires, his domestic agenda stalled on Capitol Hill. ✯ Trump, too, is a victim of his own incompetence. He can’t hold his party together. His health care and tax reform plans are floundering, even though he, like Carter, enjoys majorities in both houses of Congress. On foreign policy, he has flailed from isolationism to intervention- ism, railing against nato one minute and bombing Syria the next. ✯ But as Schlesinger pointed out, Carter’s incompetence actually helped rescue his presidency. By bungling a crisis that prompts Americans to rally round the flag, Trump could do the same. “There are,” Schlesinger concluded, “only two reasons to shudder at the thought of four more years of Carter in the White House. One is foreign policy. The other is domestic policy.” Carter’s foreign policy ineptitude boosted him in the polls. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The Great Carter Mystery APRIL 12, 1980 How does he do it? only by emergency treatment in New York. wistful hopes of those who thought he might Here is an administration in ruins. Here Carter let in the shah, and the Iranians, as learn on the job.