1.
“Miriam Adelson’s Unfinished Business,” May 20–June 2
For New York’s latest cover story, Elizabeth Weil profiled Israeli American billionaire Miriam Adelson, assessing whether she would help fund Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and what she might expect in return. Eli Clifton of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft praised Weil’s “fantastic reporting” on “how a far-right vision for Israel (and Palestine’s) future is a driving motivation for the GOP’s biggest donor.” Eric Alterman, the author of We Are Not One, a history of Israel-America ties, observed Adelson provides “a lesson in how to help to destroy democracy in two countries simultaneously with the money from your husband’s sleazy gambling-and-prostitution empire.” Johnwkellet, meanwhile, wrote, “It’s abundantly clear that a lifetime of striving to improve her personal circumstances and to improve the quality of life for drug addicts against a family history of survival has shaped an extraordinary life. It also throws a spotlight onto the absurdity of the glaring transactional nature of US politics and democracy.” Reader 10_27_2011 said, “I hope she sees the irony in her addiction specialization and the hand that fed her.” And Yahzi concluded, “Society has walls — the border. It has a floor — welfare. Now it needs a roof — a cap on the total amount of wealth one person can amass.” On May 30, it was announced that Adelson would revive her Preserve America super-pac, intending to channel more than $90 million to the Trump reelection efforts.
2.
“Chess Brat”
Jen Wieczner chronicled the rise and continuous fall of chess grandmaster Hans Niemann, 20, whom the game’s No. 1 player, Magnus Carlsen, accused of cheating. Reader dim said, “As a chess noob it’s fascinating that (a) ‘proven’ cheating doesn’t really seem to involve actual proof, just an interpretation of suspicious behaviour that could alternatively be explained by intuition, with that interpretation being done highly interested/conflicted parties, and (b) trust and reputation are so important and the game is so unregulated that an individual like Magnus Carlsen can effectively tilt the entire industry against an opponent because he feels like it.” Chrisaherold added, “Doesn’t make Magnus look good. From the outside looks like out of ego and ambition, he called Niemann a cheater, maintaining his (Magnus’s) winning streak and wielding a sledgehammer to Niemann’s career. Which also eliminated a future competitor.” Noting Niemann’s off-the-board behavior, Sarah.kg wrote that he appears to be “just as deranged as his idol Bobby Fischer was. Doing $5,000 of damage to a hotel room because you lost a game is unacceptable behavior in a toddler.” Cali33 agreed: “Hubris is not a mental illness. Underdeveloped social and emotional skills are but one of a cluster of factors that go into a diagnosis. We can feel sorry for this sad little man while also holding him to the same standards of say, an average 12 year old boy.”
3.
“How to Criminalize a Protest”
And Zak Cheney-Rice reported from Atlanta, where prosecutors are targeting protesters of a police-training center. Attorney Akiva Freidlin wrote, “Glad to see the fascist Cop City RICO prosecutions getting national press. Should be an all-hands-on-deck moment for civil society but too many people are sleeping on it.” Hussein Kanji saw the story as a marker of “the regression from that high-water mark of hope in 2020 to the dispiriting state of affairs today, when dissent is being stifled, demonstrators are treated like criminals.” @valkyrie_falls_ said it “highlights the increasing rhetoric against protesters as violent aggressors, and details how APD has manipulated the ‘outside agitator’ narrative.” “Atlanta resident here,” wrote Minervawho. “This is the best coverage I’ve seen on this issue. One might hope that good in-depth journalism on the training center would come from a local venue … It’s much easier to slip unpopular top-down policies into practice when the local press has been totally defanged.” Asphaltdice wrote, “The police around the country will be trained to emulate this model, where the people themselves are the terrorist enemy,” while radio show “Partisan Gardens” said the story drew “a straight line to the questions raised by the encampment movement for Palestine.” Savetherobotz added, “The Georgia RICO law … is far more expansive than the federal version and does nothing but make criminal everyday behavior and raise the stakes on mandatory minimum sentences. The real problem is that people will heap praise on this law when it’s applied to those they disagree with.”
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