Category: Politics

The Woman Who Bought a Mountain for God

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Photographs by Olivia Crumm This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. On the day she heard God tell her to buy a mountain, Tami Barthen already sensed that her life was on a spiritual upswing. She’d recently divorced and remarried, an improvement she attributed to following the voice of God. She’d quit traditional church and enrolled in a course on supernatural ministry, learning to attune herself…

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It’s Abortion, Stupid

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Last month, during a meeting of Democrats in rural southwestern Iowa, a man raised his hand. “What are three noncontroversial issues that Democrats should be talking about right now?” he asked the evening’s speaker, Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor and a minor state celebrity. I watched from the side of the room as Sand answered quickly. The first two issues Democrats should talk about are new state laws dealing with democracy and education, he told the man. And then they should talk about their support for abortion rights. “People in…

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The First MAGA Democrat

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This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech is warbling, crackling, scratchy—sort of like Marge Simpson’s. His voice, he told me, is “fucked up.” The official medical diagnosis is spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the larynx. He didn’t always sound this way; his speaking style changed when he was in his 40s. Kennedy has said he suspects…

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Why Not Whitmer?

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Why doesn’t Gretchen Whitmer just run for president? Or at least humor the suggestion? Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, sat cross-legged on the couch of a darkened TV studio in East Lansing, where a local PBS program called Off the Record is taped—a weird name for an interview show watched by 100,000 people. “I know!” agreed Whitmer, who wore a camouflage sweatshirt with Michigangster scripted across the front. We met here on a recent evening for an interview in which I would ask her—on the record—several variants of the above…

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‘She’s Going to Be Famous for a Long Time’

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For many judicial nominees, a Senate confirmation hearing is one of life’s most grueling experiences—an hours-long job interview led by lawmakers who are trying to get them to face-plant on national television. Not for Aileen Cannon. When the federal judge who will oversee former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial testified in 2020, the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t go easy on her so much as they ignored her. Cannon, then a 39-year-old prosecutor, appeared on Zoom alongside four other nominees, her face framed by a wall of diplomas on one side…

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Will Trump Get a Speedy Trial?

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Settle in, America: This could take a while. When Special Counsel Jack Smith announced last week that a federal grand jury had indicted former President Donald Trump, he made a point of saying that the government would “seek a speedy trial in this matter, consistent with the public interest.” Whether Trump gets one could determine whether he goes to prison for his alleged crimes. In just over 18 months, Trump could be serving as president again, at which point he’d be in a position to attempt to pardon himself or…

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