Issue April 27, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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Main storiesEditor’s letterPeople in the journalism trade (like me) are fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson’s statement that he’d rather have “newspapers without government” than “government without newspapers.” As a 25-year veteran of newspaper work, I’m inclined to agree—and this year has vividly proven Jefferson’s point. Power corrupts, public servants sometimes lie, and institutions hide their dirty secrets. To function properly, a democracy needs the impertinent watchdogs of the free press to challenge authority and hold it accountable. For proof of that, consider the contributions made by the winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, announced this week. Among them: the stories that finally brought Harvey Weinstein’s monstrous predations to an end.With months of painstaking work, reporters from The New Yorker and The New York Times tunneled under the wall of threats,…2 min

Main storiesTrump still wants out of SyriaWhat happenedPresident Trump signaled this week that he was sticking to his plan to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria in the coming months, after launching a limited set of missile strikes on the Syrian regime in response to a chemical-weapons attack that killed more than 40 civilians in Douma. In a joint pre-dawn mission with France and the U.K. last Saturday, the U.S. and its allies fired 105 Tomahawk and other missiles to destroy three facilities linked to the Syrian government’s chemical-weapons program. To avoid provoking Russia—which along with Iran is backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—the Pentagon avoided hitting any targets near Russian forces. The strike came only 10 days after Trump told the Joint Chiefs of Staff he wanted to remove all U.S. troops in Syria by…5 min

Main storiesTrump’s ‘fixer’ in growing legal jeopardyWhat happenedAmid mounting alarm and anger from President Trump, a federal judge this week denied requests from his lawyers to review materials seized from his longtime personal lawyer and self-described “fixer,” Michael Cohen. Federal Judge Kimba Wood is weighing whether to appoint an independent lawyer to review the seized materials to see if any documents are shielded under attorney-client privilege before they are handed to investigators. The Justice Department revealed that Cohen had been under criminal investigation for several months over his business dealings when the FBI seized documents and hard drives from his office and home in early April. Among the records investigators were looking for were materials related to a $130,000 payoff to p*rn star Stormy Daniels and communications about the notorious Access Hollywood tape. Trump’s advisers believe…3 min

Main storiesIt wasn’t all badA Girl Scout troop from New York City is being saluted for its cookie-selling skills. Troop 6000 was founded in 2016 to offer youngsters who live in homeless shelters the Girl Scout experience. Last week, the group began its first ever cookie sale, and hoped to sell 6,000 boxes. Within two days, the girls had shifted 17,000, with hundreds of buyers queuing up at their stall. “It’s important to show other girls that it doesn’t matter where they’re from, they could still be a Girl Scout,” says 10-year-old Sanaa, a Troop 6000 member.In her day job, Lhakpa Sherpa washes dishes at a Connecticut Whole Foods. For fun, she climbs Mount Everest. The 44-year-old single mom holds the world record for summits of Everest by a woman and plans to return…1 min

Controversy of the weekComey: What his book actually revealsThis isn’t the first time we’ve had to ask this question, said Alex Shepard in NewRepublic.com, but “is James Comey helping?” When President Trump fired him as head of the FBI last May, Comey was already notorious for spotlight-grabbing intrusions into the 2016 presidential election that helped get Trump elected. Now here comes Comey again, with a new memoir, A Higher Loyalty, and a barrage of media appearances in which he is hammering his contention that Trump is “morally unfit to be president.” Trump, Comey writes in his book, is a serial liar who inhabits a “cocoon of alternative reality” and runs his administration like a Mafia boss, complete with “loyalty oaths” and an “us-versus-them worldview.” In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Comey stopped just short of accusing Trump…3 min

Controversy of the weekGood week/bad weekGood week for:Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after a coffin containing the Romantic poet’s remains was discovered in a London wine cellar. “You could see it as appropriate,” commented Richard Coleridge, great-great-great-grandson of the hard-drinking author of Kubla Khan.Close shaves, when an asteroid nearly four times the size of one that leveled 500,000 acres of Siberian forest in 1908 missed Earth by only 119,500 miles last weekend. Startled astronomers had detected it less than a day earlier.Louisiana’s animals, after the state Senate passed a bill banning bestial*ty. “[If] you vote against this bill, good luck explaining it,” said Sen. J.P. Morrell. Ten senators then voted against it.Bad week for:Scott Pruitt, when Congress’ Government Accountability Office ruled that the scandal-plagued head of the Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when he installed a…1 min

Issue April 27, 2018 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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