Magazine Work

The drama in Michigan raised fundamental questions about the health of our political system and the sturdiness of American democracy. Why were Republicans who privately admitted Trump’s legitimate defeat publicly alleging massive fraud? Why did it fall to a little-known lawyer to buffer the country from an unprecedented layer of turmoil? Why did the battleground state that dealt Trump his most decisive defeat—by a wide margin—become the epicenter of America’s electoral crisis?

Surveying America's societal upheaval, Tim Scott sees “a wave of negative hostility, and a wave of opportunity, all hidden in the same room.” He finds himself hopeful of two things: first, that by virtue of his diverse experiences he is uniquely positioned to help broker a peace between the warring tribes; and second, that if successful, not only will today’s tumult lead to “a healthier country” in the long run, but that those who follow in Scott’s footsteps might be liberated from the racial paradigms he has struggled to transcend.

Nothing could so neatly encapsulate the religious right’s backsliding as Jerry Falwell Jr. giving a thumbs-up in front of the very magazine his father had singled out as symbolic of America’s moral decay—while standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who had appeared in a softcore porno flick and who reportedly, as Jimmy Carter might have put it, screwed a bunch of women outside of marriage, including a Playboy model and hardcore adult-film actress. And it highlighted something else just as striking: the total abandonment of pornography as a battleground in America’s culture war.

In sweeping to the nomination, Trump took a sledgehammer to the party’s elite consensus on immigration. Now the fear among GOP strategists isn’t just that his no-holds-barred, ad hominem campaign will hurt Republicans with Hispanics in 2016 — but also that it’s antagonizing a generation of voters Republicans will need if they ever hope to reoccupy the White House. According to the Pew Research Center, 4 million Hispanics have become eligible voters since 2012. That pace will only accelerate. With the youngest population in the U.S., Hispanics will drive the number of eligible minority voters ever higher, eclipsing white eligible voters by 2052.

In certain wings of the hall there was more MAGA merchandise for sale than weaponry: Trump shirts, Trump socks, Trump bumper stickers, Trump posters, Trump flags, Trump scarves. There was even Trump currency—his likeness on a $2020 bill. And people were buying this stuff. Lots of it. Some of them didn’t need to: Scores of attendees came wearing a hat or a shirt supporting Trump. It reminded me of NFL fans wearing their team’s jersey to a game. In an era when communities have been ravaged, Trumpism offers a sense of fraternity, a sort of membership card to something edgier than the Knights of Columbus or the Lion’s Club.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar represents the unapologetic new guard of progressivism, pushing the party’s establishment to embrace tactics and positions that have heretofore been considered outside of the mainstream. Yet she faces resistance not just from party elders but from many of her fellow freshmen, centrists who campaigned as fixers not firebrands, moderates who are watching warily as the Democrats’ brand is being hijacked by the far left. One of these members is Omar’s neighbor in Minnesota: Dean Phillips, a wealthy businessman who represents the 3rd District.

All the major news organizations have called the presidential race for Joe Biden, but Donald Trump is refusing to concede. Instead, the president is digging in, alleging a conspiracy of unfathomable proportion, conceived and executed right beneath our noses, to deny him a second term in the White House. His evidence for this? Invisible. But no matter. The man who swore Barack Obama was born in Kenya, the man who insisted that millions of illegal votes were cast in 2016, has never been deterred by a lack of proof.

It was the strangest of smoke-filled rooms, a Central Park château populated by the renowned party strategist alternately called “Boy Genius” and “Turd Blossom” by his former boss; the financier and casino tycoon who would soon become a high-profile casualty of the country’s sexual harassment crackdown; and the rookie politician who had heckled and hoodwinked his way to the Republican nomination for president. It wasn’t quite how Jack and Bobby had picked LBJ, or how Reagan had settled on George Bush Sr., but a seed was planted that day.

A self-described journalist, James O’Keefe looks in the mirror and sees a muckraker in the mold of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly, taking bold, unconventional steps to expose what no mainstream reporter ever could. O’Keefe spent years courting and craving recognition from those he considered peers. But despite his many objective successes—leading political reporter Dave Weigel to write in Slate that O’Keefe “had more of an impact on the 2012 election than any journalist”—the validation never came. Newsrooms decried his methods, questioned his ethics and summarily dismissed him as unreliable. Spurned, O’Keefe is targeting the media itself.

And then I asked Calvin Johnson Sr. the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “So tell me,” I began, nodding toward his herculean offspring standing 20 yards away, “I’m a new father—what’s the secret to raising a successful kid?” The elder Johnson gave me blank expression. I held his stare, confused by his confusion. Then he turned toward his son, turned back toward me, and cocked his head to the side. “Calvin?”

The newspaper is but a shadow of the behemoth it once was. A decade's worth of layoffs and buyouts have gutted the editorial operation and purged the administrative staff crucial to running a metro daily. The institutional knowledge critical to covering a state—and paramount to reporting on the Iowa caucuses—has been all but eradicated. The only thing saving it: the global obsession with Iowa’s role in choosing leaders of the free world.

Will Hurd is too young, too talented, too ambitious not to push the limits and enter the arena with bigger and better competition. But first, he has to hang onto the toughest seat in Texas, one of the toughest in America, where Democrats will continue to invest millions of dollars in hopes of taking it back and kneecapping his rapid ascent inside the Republican Party. Hurd is growing more confident every single day, with every new social media post and every new voter he meets, that this district belongs to him. “If you want it,” Hurd says, “come and get it.”