Trump and his administration are improvising a major conflict in the Middle East, as Democrats keep winning in the 2026 redistricting war that is immensely backfiring on the GOP.
Several countries have sought to deepen their links with one another, eschewing commerce with the US.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.In the Texas primaries on Tuesday, Democrat James Talarico triumphed, while on the GOP side, establishment Senator John Cornyn and MAGA whackjob Ken Paxton are headed for a runoff. This outcome caused Donald Trump to explode on Truth Social, where he announced he’ll soon make an endorsement designed to avert a protracted GOP bloodbath. For Democrats, Texas is like baseball—it keeps breaking your heart. Yet Republicans are clearly worried. Whatever is to be in this race, what’s happening there now is highly illuminating about this political moment, and we’re unraveling it all with Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, a veteran of Texas races. Sawyer, nice to have you on.Sawyer Hackett: Great to be with you, Greg.Sargent: So in the Democratic primary in Texas, state legislator James Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. He’s openly religious. He talks about the need to reach out to moderates and independents and even Trump voters. He’s mild-mannered and genuinely seems to believe in his ability to persuade voters to cross over. Sawyer, can you sum up James Talarico for us?Hackett: Yeah, I would say the best summary I could give would be he’s a progressive preacher who can throw a punch. He’s somebody who can level a blistering attack against Trump and Republicans in the Trump era while not shutting the door on voters who may disagree with him on a lot of issues. He’s kind of exactly the kind of candidate that Democrats need to win in a state like Texas, where we do have to win over some of Trump’s voters to pull out a victory. He’s someone who can both excite the base and widen the tent. So I think Democrats are feeling pretty good about his nomination. Sargent: Obviously it’s going to be tough because it’s Texas, but we’ll get to that. Meanwhile on the GOP side, Texas Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton both fell short of 50 percent due to a spoiler. They’re advancing to a runoff. Trump exploded on Truth Social over this. He said the GOP primary “MUST STOP NOW”—all caps, you know, when he’s angry he uses all caps. He added that Republicans have to totally focus on beating Talarico. Then Trump said: “I will be making my endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!...We must win in November!”Sawyer, clearly Trump sees this primary as a threat to GOP chances of holding the seat. Reports suggest Trump will endorse Cornyn even though Paxton is the MAGA die-hard and has the support of Steve Bannon. Your thoughts on that?Hackett: Yeah, it’s funny because you hear a lot, I think, on the Democratic side that the Democratic Party’s got its thumb on the scale—that it’s helping certain candidates and hurting other candidates. And here you have Trump essentially saying, I’m going to pick the nominee and the other candidate’s going to drop out before we even get to a runoff. It is completely Trump’s party. He’s dictating the terms, he’s dictating the candidates, and he’s dictating the message. And frankly, that’s all toxic for Republicans and to Democrats’ benefit.Sargent: Yeah, I would think so. And Republicans are clearly worried about the race. Two of the most hard-boiled GOP operatives, Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio—both Trump advisers—are working for Cornyn. Paxton has a trail of scandal. He’s been impeached by the GOP-controlled Texas House. His wife divorced him for biblical causes, on and on. Cornyn himself has called on Trump to endorse, to settle this thing and get Paxton out of his hair. One Republican operative told The Atlantic that Democratic chances are much better against Paxton. Now, this is a hard race for Democrats. Do you think it is actually easier against Paxton than against Cornyn?Hackett: I think definitely it’s easier against Paxton—just in terms of the kind of person he is, the kind of character he has. You see on the Republican side, frankly, a party that is deeply divided and unhappy. The sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn, who has served four six-year terms in the Senate for Texas, is now headed for a runoff with a far-right, criminally indicted, Republican-impeached fraudster and adulterer who has a toxic political agenda. I think the Talarico camp is kind of hoping and praying that he ends up on the top of that ticket, because I think every Democrat in the country would be excited about that matchup.But frankly, I think even if Trump were to endorse Cornyn and push Paxton out of this race—probably for some sort of cabinet position—I still think the race is going to be extremely competitive for Talarico. Cornyn, I don’t think, is necessarily beloved across Texas. He has a better approval rating than Ken Paxton, but not that much better. He’s not necessarily known for having notched a whole bunch of accomplishments on behalf of the people of Texas. And frankly, I think Trump is the biggest factor in the general election—the most likely factor to determine how Democrats turn out and how excited Republicans are.Sargent: Well, do you expect Paxton to drop out if Trump does endorse Cornyn, which could come as early as when people are listening to this?Hackett: I mean, Paxton is a flunky. He is a Trump die-hard through and through. He is down at Mar-a-Lago every week kissing Trump’s ass. He has been kind of begging for Trump’s support throughout this primary process. And so I honestly do think that he’ll do whatever Trump asks of him. And I think if Trump does ask him to drop out of this race, there will be something waiting for Paxton on the other side of it, whether that’s an envelope of cash or a cabinet position. But yeah, it’s just kind of incredible to see how Republicans can point the finger at Democrats for putting their finger on the scale of these primaries, and then you just have Trump dictating: this is going to be our nominee, this is who we’re running, this is our message.Sargent: Texas is the perennial heartbreaker for Democrats. Beto O’Rourke came within three points of Ted Cruz in 2018, then of course in 2024 it was substantially worse for Democrats. What is the path for Talarico? What has to happen in demographic terms?Hackett: Yeah, I mean, I think the headline coming out of this primary cycle—beyond Talarico’s victory, beyond Paxton and Cornyn headed to this runoff—is kind of the winning Democratic coalition being reassembled, in part thanks to Trump pushing voters toward Democrats, whether that’s Latino voters who showed up big time yesterday for James Talarico, or Black voters who turned out strongly for Crockett in a lot of these key areas across Texas.I think if Talarico is able to reassemble that winning coalition—if he’s able to keep Latino voters on board in the general election, which honestly I think will be dependent on Trump and how he presents his agenda for the next few months—but also if Talarico is able to make inroads and bring those Crockett voters into the fold of his coalition, if he’s able to keep that message that has been resonating in the suburban parts of the state outside of these big cities, among independent swing voters across Texas, of which there are very many. He has shown that he has the ability to assemble this coalition, but he’s going to have to maximize turnout among those key constituencies—Latino voters, Black voters, and I think young voters too.I mean, we saw in this primary, in the early vote, that there were 400,000 new voters who had never cast a ballot in a Democratic primary. I think that’s in large part a reaction to the Trump presidency—a kind of protest vote against what people are seeing on their TVs and their phones every single day. Talarico has to channel all of that energy, and building and assembling and keeping that coalition is the important work of every nominee. But I think in Texas it’s the most important job. And I think Talarico, based on his message and his appeal, has shown that he has the ability to do it. It’s just dependent, I think, on a lot of events happening within the next eight months or so before this race shakes out.Sargent: But just to boil this down—why is Texas so hard for Democrats to win? Why is the wall so high?Hackett: Republicans have done a fantastic job of suppressing the vote in Texas, of keeping voters at home, of making it extremely difficult to vote in the state. And that’s why Texas, I think, today has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. Texas also has a lot of unaffiliated independent voters out there who have tended over the years to vote Republican. Those voters, I think, in large part make up areas in the suburbs outside of the major cities and in parts of rural Texas. Texas has a lot of counties, and Democrats have to compete in all of those counties if they want to win.Democrats have not built the infrastructural support needed to compete in every county throughout Texas the way that Republicans have. I mean, they have 30 years of voter suppression and organization that have brought them to this point and kept Democrats out of power for 30 years. If Democrats want to win, they have to go everywhere. They have to compete everywhere. They have to maximize their voters. They have to divide Republican voters, and they have to win over the sizable number—15 percent or more—of unaffiliated independent voters that are often in the rural and suburban parts of Texas.Sargent: These 15 percent of unaffiliated voters are basically Republican-leaning voters, and that’s one of the big hurdles here? Hackett: They may have voted for Barack Obama and turned around and voted for Donald Trump. They’re unaffiliated—I don’t necessarily think that they’re center-right voters. They’re kind of right in the middle, but I do think that over the years they have tended to support the Republican Party in Texas. And I think in part that’s due to the lack of infrastructure, the lack of attention to these voters by the Democratic Party nationally.Sargent: Yeah. And so one big thing that has to happen here is a major turnout surge for Democrats. And there’s something important that happened in the primaries. The total number of votes for Democrats in the primary was over 2.3 million. The total votes for Republicans in the primary was 2.16 million. Democrats got more than 150,000 more votes than Republicans did. That’s unusual in Texas, right? What do you take from that?Hackett: It’s unusual. And what’s even more unusual is that both Democratic candidates in this race got more votes than either of the Republican candidates. Even Jasmine Crockett, who ultimately lost this race by a sizable percentage, received more votes in the Democratic primary than either of the Republican candidates in the Republican primary.I think that’s in large part due to Trump. I think a lot of voters who cast ballots yesterday did so in protest against what they’re seeing on their phones and on their computers from Donald Trump.That being said, both Democratic candidates showed that they can turn out voters in their own communities and their own geographic locations—but also the coalition that they build in terms of James Talarico turning out Latino voters and Jasmine Crockett turning out Black voters. Democrats are going to need both of those coalitions to win.I think James Talarico knows that he’s going to need Jasmine Crockett’s voters to win. So I think the road ahead is going to be James working with Jasmine Crockett, working with Democrats across the state to maximize turnout among Black voters, among young voters, among Latino voters, while also driving a wedge between Republican voters—which is already a deeply divided and unhappy party right now.Sargent: Well, I want to flag something important about the Latino vote. A big thing happened here. Obviously, Trump made big inroads with Latinos in 2024. And since then, Trump seems to have basically lost whatever gains he made among them. Now we’re seeing that show up in these primaries, right? What did the primary voting in the Latino-heavy counties tell us?Hackett: We don’t have a ton of exit polls from these primary races—I don’t think the news outlets conduct a lot of exit polls. But when we look at the county data, what you saw is that in the predominantly Latino counties of Texas, turnout was both high and strongly in favor of James Talarico.In the I-35 corridor that runs from Laredo all the way past San Antonio—a very heavily Hispanic part of Texas—went for James Talarico. But you also saw in the five different rural majority-Latino counties in Texas, more votes were cast for the Democratic primary than for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. That is a sign of electrifying turnout happening, I think, as a result of Donald Trump, but also as a result of these two kind of viral stars of the Democratic Party bringing their coalitions to bear in a primary.Sargent: Well, these rural Texas Latinos are sort of their own demographic, right? Can you talk about who those people are?Hackett: Yeah, Latino voters in Texas have a deep tradition in Texas politics. They tend to be more religious, I think, than Hispanics at a national level. They tend to be a little bit more conservative in terms of their values, not necessarily their politics.These are communities that have tended to go Democratic by pretty wide margins over the years. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Rio Grande Valley—counties like Starr County, Cameron County, Hidalgo County. These are communities that when Democrats have lost big, they’ve lost big in those counties, as we saw in 2024. When we had that major attrition of Latino voters in Texas, it was predominantly along those communities on the border and up and down the I-35 corridor.I think James Talarico showed that he can compete in those communities. I think his message of faith, speaking to the compassion and integrity of our state and speaking with moral clarity about who Trump is and what he represents—I think that does resonate in the Latino community.I think he’s going to have to maximize those numbers big time in a general election. A primary is different than a general, we know that. But I think the level of enthusiasm we’re seeing in terms of the turnout and in terms of the support for Talarico across those counties shows that he has the ability to do that.Sargent: So the basic formula, the basic path is: win over all those African American voters that won for Crockett, hold onto those big Latino gains in some of those rural Texas majority-Latino counties and elsewhere, and win a big chunk of those right-leaning independents, those Republican-leaning independents. And for that to happen, Trump’s approval has got to really keep tanking and he’s just got to keep being as disastrous as he has been. Just boil this down—what’s the route to winning and what’s the nightmare scenario? What goes wrong potentially?Hackett: Yeah, I think you outlined it pretty well. We have to run up the numbers in these big cities—Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin. We have to have very wide margins in the general election in those communities. We have to run up the numbers in the predominantly Latino counties along the Rio Grande Valley and I-35 corridor. We have to compete in West Texas, in the panhandle, in the rural counties. We can’t just forgo those counties to Republicans.When Beto came within three points in 2018, he did make a lot of inroads in those communities with those voters. I do think Talarico has a very similar skill set to Beto in that respect, and I think he can appeal to those communities.And then you also have to win in the suburbs. I mean, these suburbs have been the target of the Democratic Party in these statewide races cycle after cycle. Sometimes I think we’ve tended to over-focus on the cities and ignore the suburbs. But I think those suburbs are really turning against Trump.If you look at the communities surrounding Austin, surrounding Houston, surrounding San Antonio—those voters did strongly support James Talarico in this primary. So clearly he does have appeal in those communities. He doesn’t turn voters away. I don’t think voters view him as particularly partisan or necessarily in the tank of the Democratic Party. He can appeal to all these different constituencies, all these different communities, but it’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of money, and a lot of infrastructure. That has to start right now.Sargent: And what can go wrong? What’s the nightmare scenario?Hackett: I think the nightmare scenario is something happening at the national level that distracts attention from this race. I think if John Cornyn is able to pull away the primary victory and distance himself from Trump—if he is able to pull that out—I think that would be to his benefit. I don’t know that he’s going to be able to do that.And I think if Talarico or the Democratic Party fails to make inroads with Latino voters, fails to solidify that support that he’s shown he has in this primary—if we’re not able to solidify that in the general, we cannot win in Texas. And I think there’s always just the X factor: something happening in the Supreme Court, something happening with the economy, something happening with these wars that Trump is waging around the globe. There are just a lot of X factors going into a general election.That being said, I think Texans are pretty squarely focused on the issues that affect them—affordability, immigration. And I think James Talarico is speaking to the moment. That’s what these primaries are all about: who can speak to the moment as a candidate. And I think Talarico is doing that.Sargent: Man, it’s going to be fascinating. Sawyer Hackett, thanks so much for that download. We really appreciate it, man. Appreciate the candor.Hackett: Yeah, great to join you, Greg.
The Montana Republican unexpectedly dropped his reelection bid on Wednesday night.
A key precept of the Trumpian ethos is that immigration is a threat not only to American culture but to its prosperity. President Donald Trump and his allies have long used the language of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, the racist belief that white people and Western culture are being “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants.In a similar vein, the Trump administration has warned of another kind of “replacement”: immigrants taking jobs that would otherwise be filled by natural-born American citizens. If immigration is limited and undocumented immigrants are deported, its theory goes, it will result in more U.S.-born workers obtaining jobs. (This is just one of the many matters in which the administration casts immigrants as the villains.)But rather than improving the economic situation for the native-born Americans Trump purports to prioritize, lower levels of immigration and migrant employment could reduce general economic productivity and diminish wage growth and job opportunities for those workers. “With lower immigration, I think it’s very likely that we would see slower workforce growth and slower economic growth and just decreased vitality overall,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. In December, Trump boasted that, in the year since he took office, “100 percent of all net job creation has gone to American-born citizens.” But data contradicts the administration’s assertion that immigrants leaving the workforce has resulted in more jobs for those born in the United States. Even as hundreds of thousands of immigrants left the workforce in 2025, according to Census Bureau data, the unemployment rate for native-born Americans was higher in January 2026 than it was the previous year.With a relatively low American fertility rate, foreign-born workers are vital to maintaining growth in the labor force. A recent report by the Brookings Institute estimated that net migration to the U.S. was close to zero or negative in 2025, and will likely be negative in 2026. An influx of immigrants in 2022 through 2024 led to an increase in the number of jobs, but the reverse is also true: A decline in the immigrant population could lead to slower employment growth. “When immigration is slow, the working-age population growth is also really slow. And if immigration is sufficiently negative, then that group starts shrinking,” said Tara Watson, director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institute.Trump’s immigration policies affect professions that require college degrees and those that do not. In September, the Trump administration instituted a new $100,000 fee for H1-B visas, which allow employers to sponsor college-educated and specialized foreign workers to come to the U.S. on a temporary basis. The H1-B visa, which currently has a small fee and is administered through a lottery system, is widely used by the tech industry to hire foreign workers, with a large percentage originating from India. It also is used by universities to sponsor academics, and can attract foreign-born students to attend American institutions because it offers a pathway to residency after graduation.In the proclamation announcing the change to the H1-B visa, the administration cited research that found that the influx of foreign-born high-skilled workers in the 1990s resulted in lower wages for U.S.-born computer scientists. However, the proclamation did not include the economists’ other findings that the increase in high-skilled workers had a positive effect on productivity in the economy as a whole, and that firms in the information technology sector saw higher profits due to immigration. Other research has estimated that the arrival of H1-B visa holders between 1990 and 2010 was responsible for 30 to 50 percent of all productivity growth in the U.S. economy during that period, and resulted in wage growth for native workers.Despite Trump’s assertion that this change to the H1-B visa will encourage companies to hire more U.S.-born workers, experts say that the previous arrangements had actually been beneficial for domestic workers. Immigrants are more likely to start businesses than those born in the U.S., and nearly half of Fortune 500 companies in 2025 were founded by immigrants or their children.“High-skilled workers tend to produce goods and services and ideas that have ripple effects around the entire economy,” said Michael Clemens, economics professor at George Mason University. “High-skilled workers increase the productivity of all American workers collectively. They do that by patenting new ideas. They do that by starting businesses. They do that by creating new product lines at existing businesses.”The new fee does not apply to preexisting visa holders seeking to extend their time in the U.S., and there are exceptions made for unspecified positions deemed necessary to national security. But for foreign-born students and workers who would otherwise seek to work in the U.S., the new fee could deter them from seeking employment or education here.The fee’s efficacy as a revenue raiser is also under doubt. According to the Department of Justice, only about 70 employers have paid the $100,000 fee for H1-B workers since the proclamation in September. The hit to gross domestic product could be significant: Research co-authored by Clemens found that a one-third decline in foreign-born STEM graduates—due to limits on student and H1-B visas, among other proposed immigration policies—could lead to long-run GDP losses of $240 billion to $481 billion each year over a decade. Immigrants may also already have a positive effect on U.S. GDP as a whole: A recent study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that immigrants have helped reduce deficits every year between 1994 and 2023, in large part because the amount they pay in taxes outstrips the cost of the benefits they receive.Meanwhile, past experience demonstrates that multinational corporations tend to shift focus to other countries when H1-B visas are restricted.“It’s not just a loss of talent for us, it’s a gain in talent, a boon, for other destinations,” said Clemens.One particular area where restrictions in H1-B visas could be felt is health care, potentially exacerbating worker shortages across the country. But it isn’t only college-educated migrants who are crucial to the health care sector. Immigrant workers make up significant percentages of the nursing, home health care, and personal care labor force. Indeed, the health care sector employs a disproportionate number of immigrants. In 2021, immigrants accounted for around 18 percent of the 15 million health care workers in the country, even as they are only around 15 percent of the U.S. population. Around one in six clinical and nonclinical hospital workers are immigrants. The reliance of the health care sector on immigrant workers in turn has an effect on the health of the nation: A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a 25 percent increase in immigration would result in 5,000 fewer elder deaths annually. Because immigrants account for around 40 percent of home health aides, a reduction in immigration could mean fewer elder care workers, which in turn affects longevity, said Brian McGarry, a health services researcher at the University of Rochester and a co-author of the NBER paper.McGarry said that rather than having a “crowd-out” effect on the health care sector, the addition of immigrant workers actually results in a modest increase in the number of physicians. The study found that 1,000 new immigrants would lead to 173 more health care workers overall, of both foreign and domestic origin.“If you could imagine a health care system that can hire more support staff, can hire more nurses, that may potentially create jobs and create opportunities for the hiring of physicians,” said McGarry.The paper co-authored by McGarry was inclusive of both documented and undocumented immigrants, although the latter may be underrepresented. Although undocumented immigrants may be less likely to work as certified professionals in a clinical setting, they could be employed as janitorial or cafeteria workers in hospitals, or paid under the table as home health aides.There is some preexisting evidence about how immigration crackdowns can affect the number of home health care workers and, by extension, elder health. One analysis found that Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement policy implemented during the Bush and Obama administrations, resulted in a 7.5 percent reduction in the number of home health care workers per capita. The research further found that 70 percent of this decrease was due to a reduced supply of immigrant workers. Another paper concluded that, in areas with high percentages of undocumented immigrants, Secure Communities resulted in fewer elderly Americans aging in place.Meanwhile, limits on legal immigration could also have a negative impact on health. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status legal authorization for Haitians to live in the United States could threaten the residency of the thousands of Haitians who work in health care.Other areas of employment that may be particularly affected by immigration crackdowns include the construction, hospitality, and agriculture industries. In a February publication, the San Francisco Federal Reserve calculated that there was a one-to-one relationship between the inflow of unauthorized immigrants and employment growth, and that decreases in the undocumented population particularly affected the construction and manufacturing sector.The Migration Policy Institute’s Gelatt said that the rise of technologies intended to be “labor-saving,” most notably AI, could potentially mitigate demand for immigrant workers in some arenas, such as software coding. But other sectors, such as health and manufacturing, could not have positions easily replaced by AI.It may take some time to see the impact of Trump’s immigration policies on the economy as a whole. But if the U.S. seems less appealing as a destination for foreign-born workers—whether due to restrictions on immigration or the risk of deportation, regardless of whether someone is in the country legally—the number of jobs held by American-born workers will not necessarily increase, and the economy could stutter. Although these policies will not in and of themselves lead to some kind of recession, said Watson, they will contribute to lower demand, and thus decreased economic activity. “Immigrants are both supplying a lot of the goods and services, but they are also demanding the goods and services,” said Watson. “We’re not facing a huge recession … everything is just kind of moving a little more slowly than it otherwise would be.”
Among the Democratic Party rank and file, U.S. policy toward Israel is more salient now than it has been in decades. The Middle East has been in a growing state of turmoil since Hamas’s shocking attack on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 mostly noncombatants and took another 250 civilians, soldiers, and non-Israelis as hostages. Much of the world, appalled by the mass shooting of hundreds of young people at a music festival, briefly sympathized with Israel and conceded it a right of response against the planners and perpetrators of the attack. But Israel did not merely respond. It leveled most of Gaza, eradicating cities, neighborhoods, families, and children. Journalists with their cameras and citizens with their phones memorialized for millions the horror of an advanced military obliterating a captive people.A nominal ceasefire may now be in effect in Gaza, but as of last Friday, things have only escalated further: The United States and Israel have launched an enormous joint military campaign against Iran, composed largely of American air power. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been killed, and President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have jointly called for the Iranian people to topple their own government. Netanyahu has goaded Trump into war, and Trump—free of domestic constraints and backed to the hilt by his party—is thrilled to comply. But there is no reason to believe that the chaos and mass violence they have unleashed in the region will produce a humane and democratic outcome. The question of the wisdom and efficacy of America’s unreserved alliance with Israel has jumped to the center of the national conversation. As these events have transpired, surveys have seen support for Israel collapse among Democrats—especially young Jewish voters and young Democrats generally. Only 17 percent of Democrats sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians (who have the support of 65 percent of Dems). In a Quinnipiac poll, 77 percent of Democrats believe that a genocide has taken place in Gaza. When asked to describe their views on Israel and Palestine in a poll for this magazine, only 6 percent of Democrats responded, “The U.S. should strongly support Israel, including military aid when Israel is attacked.”Yet, despite growing Democratic Party opposition to war in Iran, the habit of reflexively supporting Israel remains deeply entrenched at the highest echelons of the party. The Biden administration squandered its political capital defending the actions of the Israeli government. Last July, 27 Democratic senators voted to block arms sales to the Israeli government, but the measure failed to draw support from many liberal stalwarts, such as Cory Booker of New Jersey and minority leader (and longtime supporter of Israel) Chuck Schumer. Democratic politicians vying for the 2026 midterms have already begun accepting dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. The contradictions in Democratic foreign policy in the Middle East are coming to a head. Kamala Harris half-tried, and failed, to square the circle in her presidential run, but the party wouldn’t even let a Palestinian American Democratic state politician speak for two minutes at the 2024 convention. Harris’s seeming terror at breaking with her boss and saying anything the least bit interesting or courageous on the topic acutely damaged her campaign, especially in Michigan. A Democratic National Committee autopsy of her loss, which the party has chosen to suppress, concluded that the Biden administration’s handling of Gaza cost her significant support among younger and progressive voters. The situation is symptomatic of a full-blown split between pro-Israeli politicians and donors seemingly frozen in amber since the 1967 Six Days War, and the party’s younger, activist left and nonwhite voting blocs, including many young Jewish voters who want a vociferous rejection of a nominal ally that seems to be leading us into an unwanted war. Meanwhile, Netanyahu has tied himself to Trump, and Israel’s ultra-right-wing government cultivates white American evangelicals within the Republican Party like Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Paradoxically, this same Republican Party has a growing infestation of Hitler-worshipping antisemites. The so-called “groypers” have used the unpopularity of Israel’s actions in Gaza to foment rank antisemitism and recruit new converts. While the Israeli government moves rightward, the Democrats’ leadership has triangulated itself into no man’s land. It is neither sufficiently supportive of Israel to propitiate the country’s increasingly radical governing elite nor sufficiently critical of that elite to mollify the base of its own party. All this while many influential Jewish academics, writers, artists, and policy experts are reshaping the old, ideological boundaries that had circumscribed the issue. The Biden administration’s dishonest rejection of its own pious “rules-based liberal order” and Israel’s sharp plunge into authoritarianism have alienated even erstwhile defenders. Obama hands like former State Department official Ben Rhodes and ur-liberal Zionist and Times columnist Tom Friedman have harshly criticized both U.S. policy toward Israel and Israel’s barbarism (if one prefers an “uncontroversial” descriptor) in Gaza and apartheid on the West Bank. Centrist Democratic senators like Mark Warner of Virginia have begun to undercut the Trump-Netanyahu justifications for the aggression against Iran. The old order is breaking apart, but it needs a few bold politicians to give it a hard blow. With the presidential election of 2028 looming, Democrats will have a chance to decisively retake power. To do this, they are going to need a presidential candidate who can inspire the base and respect its policy preferences—and the base no longer supports unconditional support for the Israeli state as it is now constituted. If it does not align with the base, the party risks declining turnout in key states and perversely losing swing voters to a right-wing antisemitism redolent of the Lindbergh movement before the Second World War. But the war with Iran and a shifting consensus among their base will give aggressive politicians more room than ever before to change party policy. The old, lazy mantra of a “two-state solution” seems almost delusional at this point (although, admittedly, so does a secular binational democratic state). But, at a minimum, an energetic, forward-looking policy of a Democratic administration must not reflexively co-sign on all Israeli aggression, depend on the very thin gruel of Israeli good faith, or require a Palestinian polity so enfeebled that it must accept all terms. Instead, it would insist on a pathway for Israel to become what Tony Judt once urged: a “normal state,” not a pariah, nor a new Sparta, as Netanyahu recently mused. It would apply the full weight of the U.S. government, in conjunction with the EU, G7, and regional Arab states, to compel just conditions on the parties conducive to Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination. It would recognize that Israel’s disenfranchisement and brutalization of millions of people of the same ethnicity on the West Bank is apartheid and would advocate and work to dismantle it. It would also cite the work of scholars of modern human rights and affirm that Israel—in a horrific and grim irony of postwar history—committed genocide in Gaza. It would acknowledge, or insist Israel publicly acknowledge, that it is a nuclear armed power. And it would, without fear or favor, apply U.S. law to Israel, rather than give it a winking carve-out. Among the party’s leading politicians, who can bridge the conflict between the base and the elites, and synthesize a new position on Israel? And how much might it matter whether this politician, who would almost necessarily be the party’s presidential nominee in 2028, is Jewish? Below, we undertake a survey of some representative possibilities, noting their general qualities, but focusing on the issue of U.S. policy toward Israel and how that will influence the nomination fight. (For the purposes of this exercise, we do not believe that Kamala Harris, if she runs again for president, has much chance to win the nomination. Her opportunity to break with Joe Biden and change U.S. policy toward Israel has come and gone.) The PatriarchSenator Bernie Sanders should be acknowledged here. A two-time presidential candidate and lion of the party’s “new new” left, Sanders has been a vocal critic of Israeli policy in the West Bank and has come to recognize the war on Gaza as a “genocide.” He introduced the aforementioned bill to block arms sales to the Israeli government. As a prominent Jewish senator from a family of Holocaust survivors, Sanders has been a supporter of Israel as a Jewish state, and an increasingly vociferous critic of it.But Sanders is 84. The person to shift the party’s stance on Israel will need to be a credible 2028 contender. Sanders provides a useful ideological point of clarity. But younger people are required for this great task. The Young SuperstarNew York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders’s nominal protégé, is just 36. AOC is undoubtedly one of the country’s most prominent Democrats, with a massive social media following, a large PAC fund, and increasing influence as a fundraiser and supporter of centrist candidates. AOC has called the destruction of Gaza a genocide and sponsored the “Block the Bombs” Act in the House. She has recognized Netanyahu as a war criminal and frequently criticized her own party for its Israel stance, although some leftists have also criticized her for voting to fund Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. As seen by her highly publicized remarks at the Munich Security Conference, she is trying to carve out a coherent foreign policy that moves beyond the bipartisan postwar consensus.AOC is, like Sanders, a kind of outsider who has become adept at playing the inside game—but updated with the rizz of youth and social media savvy. Yet those proportions may not quite be harmonized such that she can take control of the national party in a bit over two years; for a thirtysomething House member to jump from influential backbencher to presidential nominee might be too much of a stretch. In order to defeat Trumpism, the party nominee must somehow unite the liberal center and social democratic–democratic socialist left. The Zohran Mamdani-Sanders-AOC party faction is ascendant. But it’s not yet clear if it can gain control and thus reorient the party’s Israel policy. With Sanders in winter and Mamdani ineligible to run for president, AOC is the undoubted leader of this faction. She might well galvanize a party desperate to overthrow its gerontocracy. Yet winning Chuck Schumer’s Senate seat remains the easier, though still significant, lift for her to make in 2028. We’ll see what she decides to do.The Leading ManThis brings us to the politician that many consider to be the front-runner for the 2028 election, and the current leader of the Democratic Party: California Governor Gavin Newsom. As the governor of the largest, richest state in the nation, Newsom has fashioned himself into a Trump foil and grassroots-liberal darling. His successful push to gerrymander California congressional maps in response to the passage of new congressional maps in Texas has been viewed as a major political win. Fresh off that victory, Newsom has been barnstorming the country as a sort of preview of his campaign to come when his term as governor ends in 2027. Of all the Democrats we have surveyed, he is certainly the one with the fastest start in the race to 2028. And yes, to an almost hyperreal degree, he looks like Hollywood’s version of a president.What of his position on Israel, though? Newsom has generally been a strong supporter of Israel in both his statements and his actions. Following the October 7 attacks, he met with Netanyahu. On subsequent anniversaries, he has memorialized the victims of the Hamas attacks, but he has not yet recognized Israel’s role in genocide. Following the 2024 campus protests, Newsom quickly signed a new state law to rein in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Last November, he signed a law creating a position to investigate claims of antisemitism in California public schools—a law that critics say conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. Recently, Newsom, understanding the political liabilities of his position, has said that he will not accept money from AIPAC. He has pushed back against the incipient war in Iran and, in an interview on Tuesday, suggested Israel is an apartheid state. But it is unclear that he is prepared to fundamentally rethink the issue of U.S.-Israel policy. Over the past two years, he has maintained his support, even doubled down, as Israel has become increasingly unpopular, including denying that there was a genocide in Gaza, even when prompted. His recent comments signal that Newsom sees not so much the advantage of meeting the Democratic base where it is but the problem of not doing so. Newsom is worth watching here, and he’s obviously a possible nominee. His political instincts are telling. But unifying the party will require a dramatic affirmative reconsideration of his position, as opposed to merely limiting damage caused by current political positioning.The Liberal Dark Horse On the other hand, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen does seem to recognize the contradictions of the party’s current stance and has become one of the most progressive and outspoken critics of Israel. Prior to the October 7 attack, Van Hollen was well within the Democratic mainstream on Israel (affirming its “right to exist”). But, as the Gaza war dragged on, he has substantially changed his position. In addition to supporting multiple resolutions canceling arms sales to Israel, he has called for the Department of Justice to prosecute the Israeli military for the murders of Americans. In one interview, he claimed that then-President Biden had been “played by Netanyahu from Day 1.” Last September, Van Hollen visited the West Bank and reported that Israel was carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign. He has made a clear choice to break with his own party for being insufficiently forward-looking on the question of Israel. Van Hollen is a principled liberal who, if social media is any indication, has some appeal to the social democratic faction of the party. While he doesn’t have the name recognition of a Bernie Sanders, he is a senator from a midsize state and a prominent foreign policy spokesman. He sees his political opportunity on this issue, as well as its moral justification. Perhaps, if AOC chooses not to run, he might be able to pick up the Sanders mantle and energize younger voters. While not an impossibility, Van Hollen is still a long shot, albeit one who has taken an honorable stand on the issue.Three Diaspora Jewish Politicians at the CrossroadsOf course, anybody of any religious or racial background can lead the Democrats in 2028. There are many vital public policy questions that the party will have to confront. But, on this issue, where Jewishness per se is frequently conflated by Zionists and antisemites alike with support for the Jewish state, a Jewish nominee would have unique challenges and opportunities. And so, we have chosen to examine three leading Jewish contenders together.Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is one such possibility. According to Binyamin Applebaum of The New York Times, he is the man for the moment, with a record of “clever political compromises” and a gift for “making centrism sound urgent.” His centrist credentials are bolstered by the fact that he is a strong supporter of Israel. Though he has been critical of Israel’s current government, he is a mostly conventional and uncritical advocate going back to his college years—when he was a volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces. More recently, he refused to call for a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza during the war. He also notoriously used his weight as governor to lean on Pennsylvania universities to be more forceful in their response to pro-Palestine student encampments, including private institutions like the University of Pennsylvania. Shapiro’s identity and political brand are not only about Israel, of course—in 2023, he rapidly rebuilt a fallen bridge in Philadelphia to wide acclaim—but that is a resonant component of them. Shapiro is a genuine political talent—being a popular governor of the key swing state must be given its due—but he is committed to the state of Israel’s sentimental myth of national creation. We are dubious he will be able to reconcile his deeply held views about Israel with the rank-and-file desire to change party policy. At 39, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia is younger than any candidate we have mentioned aside from AOC. He is a sharp, compelling politician and powerful public speaker in the Obama mold who beat an incumbent senator in a tough state in 2020. Ossoff is also Georgia’s first Jewish senator, from a family that fled the pogroms in Europe and harbored Holocaust survivors. He is far to Shapiro’s left on the question of Israel. A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ossoff was warning of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza just weeks after the October 7 attacks. He voted in favor of Sanders’s bill for arms sanctions against Israel. These votes align with those of other liberals like Van Hollen and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but what sets Ossoff apart is that, unlike his blue-state colleagues, Ossoff is facing a tough reelection in 2026.Like nearly every other politician we have discussed, his reliance on typical fundraising mechanisms can put him at odds with the donor class. His criticism of Israel has already cost him support in his home state, where bipartisan members of the Atlanta Jewish community unsuccessfully tried to draft Brian Kemp to run against him. As with Shapiro, attention must be paid to his demonstrated ability to carry one of the only states that, for now, actually matters in our meshuga presidential election system. If he does win again, he will look all the more formidable. But Ossoff’s embracing of a more aggressive stance toward Israel won’t necessarily sway the hidebound members of the Democratic political establishment to join with him. Indeed, so far it seems they are more likely to oppose him than follow his leadership. Which will require him to fight. Will he?The person for this mission likely needs to have a foot in both worlds. There is one candidate whose particular identity, politics, and prominence put him above all the others on this issue: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. (Note: Co-author Trip Venturella was the creator in 2022 of a tongue-in-cheek Twitter account called “Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker.”)Pritzker is an affable pol, a plutocrat with some of the class-traitor instincts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His Chicago accent and heavyset frame give Pritzker a kind of everyman quality. He is an outspoken progressive, having supported legislation eliminating cash bail, banning assault weapons, and prohibiting anti-union “captive audience” meetings in Illinois. He is also a scion of one of America’s most prominent Jewish families. The Pritzkers own Hyatt Hotels and sponsor the Pritzker Prize in architecture. The governor’s sister, Penny, is a former Obama Cabinet secretary who is now the head of Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Pritzker can run against the class hierarchy and privilege of the American political-economic-cultural elite—and, like FDR, he should. But it will never be said of him that he is not to that elite born and bred. Pritzker has also demonstrated a profound commitment to the causes of Zionism and, especially, Jewish remembrance. He served on the board of AIPAC, and some of his closest advisers are AIPAC-affiliated. In multiple profiles, he has spoken of his work helping build the Illinois Holocaust Museum, an effort that he seems to regard as one of his life’s defining endeavors. Pritzker has credibility among the pro-Israel lobby. All of this would seem to make him an extremely unlikely prospect to forcefully shift party policy away from the status quo on Israel.But in Pritzker’s case, his long-standing affiliation with the pro-Israel lobby—never a secret—doesn’t necessarily doom him. In response to the Gaza war, Pritzker seems to be revising his views about Israel, and his recent statements demonstrate, perhaps, a changing position. He has cautiously staked out a place on the party’s left flank, endorsing Sanders’s bill for arms sanctions, for instance. Unlike Newsom or Shapiro, he did not implement new state laws in Illinois cracking down on campus speech in response to the Gaza encampments of 2024. Tellingly, throughout his career, Pritzker has movingly emphasized the horror of the Holocaust—the extermination of European Jewry—rather than cheerleading for Israeli Jewish nationalism. In an extended interview with the Christian Science Monitor, during which he gave the reporter a tour of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, he noted that too little had been done to protect innocent Palestinians, a view he has now expressed in multiple statements. He was even more explicit on a recent episode of the popular I’ve Had It podcast, saying that as a Jew committed to upholding the values of social justice and people’s freedom, “I have to apply that equally to the state of Israel as I do to other countries that have committed atrocities.” From being an “unequivocal” supporter of Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7, he has taken a much more skeptical view.Squint, and you can see the outline of a political strategy begin to take shape. Pritzker, citing his own previous affiliation with AIPAC, could say that the party must find the courage to change course. One could imagine Pritzker giving a major speech along the lines of Obama’s famous Philadelphia speech on American racism, one that outlines his familial background, study of the Holocaust, and universalist ethos, and concludes by saying that continued, unconditional support of Israel by the Democrats would violate those very principles. He has flown to these rhetorical heights in the past. To quote one memorable line from his 2025 State of the State address, “If we don’t want to repeat history—then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.” Of the politicians we have surveyed, his shift would be the most forceful, and it would have an organic power that no non-Jewish candidate could match. Furthermore, as a billionaire, Pritzker doesn’t need the support of an organization like AIPAC (which spent more than $53 million in the 2024 election cycle in campaigns across the country) or wealthy Democratic donors for whom maintaining the Biden-Harris status-quo policies was a threshold issue. He has spent the past several decades leveraging his own wealth to support Democrats across the country, and if he does change his stance on Israel, his dual identity as a donor and a major candidate can shift the giving patterns of other donor organizations. A real-life blackjack shark, Pritzker’s side of the table is full of chits owed to him on account of this largesse. His wealth gives him flexibility and national reach, and his past positions give him credibility. Moreover, it might be easier for Pritzker to blow off the anxious calls of Chuck Schumer or Reid Hoffman than a politician who hasn’t spent a lifetime in the orbit of the powerful and influential. A change in his views will ignite rageful opposition from centrist and conservative Zionists. But this bar mitzvahed student of the Holocaust and former AIPAC board member, a Pritzker, will be hard to smear—Pritzker’s position will be vehemently opposed, but nobody can sanely imply he is antisemitic or a “self-hating Jew.” Only the famously anti-Communist Nixon could go to China. Only LBJ, the white, drawling, native son of Texas, could promote and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Pritzker may well be similarly singular regarding Israel.But beyond his unique positioning, another question hovers: Would it be politically wise for Pritzker to change his stance? The answer is yes. Such a position is obviously advantageous for Pritzker’s presidential ambitions for the reason noted at the outset of this piece: The Democratic Party’s base has dramatically shifted and no longer requires (or even wants) unqualified support for the policies of Israel. The party electorate of the 2028 primary is going to be extremely engaged, and likely even less favorable toward Israel than the electorate of today—as Israel continues to violate international law, displace Palestinians in the West Bank, and co-prosecute an unpopular war helmed by Donald Trump. The situation reminds us of the 2008 Democratic primary, when Obama’s early opposition to the Iraq War might well have been the key issue that resulted in his close victory over Hillary Clinton. The old shibboleths are dying, and the party is ready to be led in a new direction.Right now, Pritzker is one of maybe a dozen plausible Democratic nominees, including ones we haven’t mentioned here, such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, California Congressman Ro Khanna, and Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. All of these candidates, with the possible exception of Newsom, need something—a governing move, a viral media moment, a galvanizing issue—to break loose from the pack. If Pritzker aggressively seizes on the issue of Israel and Palestine from the left, he will retain first-mover advantage as an establishment Democrat willing to buck conventional wisdom. Pritzker’s former links to Israel, typical for mainstream American politicians, have fairly opened him to attacks by skeptical journalists and some left-wing activists. But even the skeptics might credit him for changing his views and thus alienating influential family associates and friends. Other politicians, Jewish and non-Jewish, have already made similar shifts. Van Hollen, for instance, has shown courage and persistence on the issue. But JB Pritzker affirming “Never again—for anybody,” as the variation on the old credo has it, will land with a power that no non-Jewish politician, no matter how sincere and eloquent, will be able to match. The identity linkage between the U.S. Jewish diaspora and the Jewish state that frames U.S. policy toward Israel can best be loosened by a diaspora U.S. Jewish politician. While Shapiro will likely remain uncritically Zionist for a mixture of personal and political reasons, and while Ossoff might well display the guts and smarts to make this move, we think Pritzker would be the most effective of the three. He is a major donor and a representative of a family exemplifying American Jewish assimilation and success. He would differentiate himself from the field as a Jewish politician unafraid to transform U.S.policy who would challenge the Jewish state in the name of Jewish universalism.Pritzker would make this move from a position of incredible rhetorical and substantive political strength. As a Jewish American whose ancestors escaped the pogroms, as a man who was instrumental to building a Holocaust museum, as a top liberal Trump antagonist, and as governor of a major state, Pritzker is in the strongest position of anybody we’ve surveyed to reshape the Democratic Party’s position on Israel and unite its centrist and leftist factions. Perhaps most importantly, Pritzker will signal to other Democrats that this ethical change is a viable political position and well within the party mainstream. By doing so, he will open a pathway to resolving the intraparty contradiction between the elites and the activist base, unifying the party at the time when that is most needed. He would likely gain an enormous amount of credibility among younger leftist voters and the activist base, while maintaining his stature as the successful, heartland chief executive of one of America’s largest states. After all, a blackjack player collects chits in order to cash them in. The crown, as we sometimes say, is in the gutter, and there is a chance for Pritzker to make an assertive political move regarding Israel. But in this case, the savvy political play is also the right play for American interests in the world, for Palestinian justice and equality, and, whether most Israeli Jews and hard-core U.S. Zionists realize it or not, for Israel too if it wishes to escape the burdens of being a pariah and garrison state. As Pritzker—and the other contenders—plot a path toward a possible run for the presidency, they might consider: Politicians who do the right thing that is also the shrewd thing improve the country—and win elections.The views expressed here are the authors’ own.
I grew up in a house full of magazines. We always had lots of subscriptions—to Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone—and we loved to buy single issues, too. The first two-story Barnes & Noble opened in Pittsburgh at some time in the mid-1990s, with its horizonless rows of magazine stands. Most of what I learned about music (CMJ magazine, with the CD insert) and literature (The Paris Review, The New Criterion) as an adolescent, I learned in those shelves. If you’d asked me what I wanted to do by the time I was going off to college, I would have told you I wanted to start a magazine.Part of that was the influence of Dave Eggers, whose rise as a literary star—and as a literary magazine impresario—came at precisely that time. But part of it, to be honest, was the influence of JFK Jr. I know for certain that we had a subscription to George magazine. Founded in 1995 by Kennedy and Michael Berman, George billed itself as a revolution in political journalism. Brandishing the tagline, “Not just politics as usual,” George was a slick, sexy magazine that combined wonky analysis with pop cultural savvy. The magazine accomplished this mostly by way of aesthetics: provocative interview pairings, candy-colored pop visuals, punchy, vaguely horny headlines like, “Latin Heat!: Salma Hayek and the New Latino Power Brokers Are Making America Sizzle,” or, “Mary Bono: The Republicans Find a Sex Symbol.” The cover of its inaugural issue featured Cindy Crawford dressed as the magazine’s namesake George Washington, with an anachronistically exposed midriff. A later issue luridly featured Drew Barrymore dressed as Marilyn Monroe above a headline that read, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” No matter what other mission statements or theses undergirded the magazine, ultimately, it was all about the Kennedys.JFK Jr. used the power of his name to try to build a new American institution with youthful verve and irreverence. As a child, it struck me as a cool idea. But that’s mostly all it ever became. Beset by behind-the-scenes drama and lacking a clear vision beyond its elevator pitch, George flashed brightly and faded. In retrospect, its insight that politics weren’t just compatible with pop culture, they were pop culture seems prophetic. Before he died in 1999, Kennedy was planning to have the magazine host a series of online interviews with presidential candidates for the 2000 election. Maybe George was on the verge of finding renewed life, and a proper home, within the wild west of the internet. Or maybe Kennedy had just gotten distracted by a different, glossy new thing.George was all I knew of JFK Jr. back then. So perhaps I am the ideal viewer for FX’s new Ryan Murphy–produced miniseries, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. Besides the inner workings of George itself, nearly every detail of the story of JFK Jr. and his up-and-down relationship with Bessette detailed in this magnetic show came as a surprise to me, up until the moment they famously perished in a plane crash. Mining the crevasses of a relationship that was elaborately illustrated in People and Page Six, Love Story is a show about the costs of celebrity, the crushing weight of social expectation, and a romance that thrived in intimate privacy but could never survive in the light of paparazzi flashbulbs. These are all well-worn plots and clichés of the kind of prestige tabloid melodrama from which this show emerges. But, somehow, Love Story is not just TV as usual.One of Love Story’s most important observations is that John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) was kind of a handsome dumb guy. Many viewers, and certainly surviving Kennedy family members, might find this show’s familiar touch with its subjects blasphemous or, at the very least, disrespectful. Long scenes of Kennedy’s and Bessette’s private lives are imagined or cobbled from various gossipy accounts, Naomi Watts delivers what may well be a legally actionable camp performance as Jackie O., but worst of all, the show refuses to paint a portrait of JFK Jr. as a potential future Great Man cut down in his prime. In Love Story, Kennedy is full of the energy, ambition, and charm that seem to run in his family line, but precious little of the talent or intellect or inspiration. He can work a room with an almost supernatural agility, but he doesn’t know what to do with this generational charisma. JFK Jr. is not a promising young man here so much as a young man to whom much was promised.This depiction of Kennedy finds its opposite in the equally charming, equally energetic character of Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon). We meet Bessette as a low-level saleswoman working at Calvin Klein headquarters in Manhattan. In that environment, Bessette is everything Kennedy is not. Initially hovering on the margins of the glitzy world of New York fashion, she quickly distinguishes herself as a style savant. The show credits her with a truly Forrest Gump–like résumé of achievements, from discovering Kate Moss to dressing Demi Moore in her signature oversize blazer to giving Calvin Klein (Alessandro Nivola) the idea to dress women in men’s oxford shirts. I half-expected her to be credited with the invention of boxer briefs. The show sees her as a kind of self-made It Girl, a genius of effortlessness.And so, the soulfully vacuous American legend and the vivacious, brilliant American ingenue meet and fall in love. The show takes its time with their courtship. The two don’t even hook up for the first time until the end of the third episode. And this is an ingenious way of pacing the story. As the Kennedy family’s judgments of them and the press’s judgments of the Kennedy family stress their relationship to the breaking point in the later episodes, the story inevitably veers toward cliché. In that hothouse environment, both Carolyn and John become caricatures of themselves. That isn’t a critique of the show so much as a description of the story the show tells. Fame prevented John from ever developing a personality of his own, and it works hard to scrape from Carolyn the one she’d built for herself.This descent into self-annihilation only works because of the time Love Story devotes to this love story before and as it becomes public. The show’s writing staff—led by creator Connor Hines but featuring outstanding veterans like D.V. DeVincentis and Kim Rosenstock—is best at writing intimate conversations and epic arguments for its two leads. Their first date in a multicolored, twinkle-lit hole-in-the-wall; their secret flirtations refracted by bar mirrors at a Calvin Klein party; their knockdown, drag-out fight in Tompkins Square Park in full view of gossip page cameras—by the time their romance becomes clinically depressed, we have episodes of memories of what their chemistry once felt like, who they were alone and together before.Unlike other recent TV love stories—the tale of two closeted gay professional hockey players, for instance—this tale isn’t just about the couple. Like many series in this genre of biographical drama, Love Story is filled with stunning small performances from supporting actors. Nivola’s turn as Calvin Klein made me wish on a few occasions that the series were actually about him instead. Nivola plays the moment when Klein realizes that his protégé has commissioned her wedding dress from Narciso Rodriguez instead of him with such understated dismay that I actually teared up. Grace Gummer manages to turn Caroline Kennedy into both the press-phobic prophet and judgmental villain of the whole show; Erich Bergen portrays Kennedy cousin Tony Radziwiłł as an oasis of kindness in a desert of country club cruelty; and Constance Zimmer, as Bessette’s skeptical mother, delivers a heartbreaking monologue at her daughter’s wedding that ought to secure her an invite to next year’s Emmy Awards.But Kennedy and Bessette, and thus Kelly and Pidgeon, are the star system around whom these other characters orbit. Pidgeon is staggering here: She has to show us the life drain slowly out of Bessette, but she can only do that because of the twitchy, elegant life she gives to the character in the first place. And then there’s Kelly, who plays Kennedy as a sort of doofus romantic, bursting at the seams with feeling, with desire, with want—unable to make any of it real. The show never condescends to him, but neither does it mask the often inadvertent cruelty of his affections. His JFK Jr. is a nice dude with some nice dreams, but he knows that every time he begins a new relationship, it’s an act of mutually assured destruction.While Love Story is the creation of Hines, it’s also very much an installment in Ryan Murphy’s expanding suite of biographical anthology series. And, from its ostentatiously gliding cinematography to its unfathomably deep music budget, this is absolutely a Ryan Murphy joint. Taken together, Murphy’s three American Crime Story series—focusing on O.J. Simpson, Gianni Versace, and Bill Clinton, respectively—along with the related but less-assured American Sports Story and Feud spin-offs constitute one of American television’s greatest sustained examinations of celebrity and fame. But what’s great about them is neither that they amp up the glamour nor that they humanize these inaccessible beings. For Murphy and his many writers, the moral of the story isn’t “stars, they’re just like us.” Quite the opposite.In these series, and now in Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, the takeaway is precisely that stars aren’t like us. Perhaps they once were, but often, like JFK Jr., they are beings wholly formed within the crucible of public life. A recurring theme of Love Story is that, while John is kind and loving toward Carolyn, he’s simply incapable of actually empathizing with her struggle to retain a sense of herself amid the slings and arrows of celebrity. JFK Jr. was born into fame, and it is his native environment, inhospitable though it may be. John knows this about himself, but that self-knowledge never turns into anything beyond guilt and shame. “I’m always trying to understand what parts are real and what parts aren’t,” he confides to Carolyn. He is a man damned to be able to see himself only through culture’s construction of him.He is, then, a kind of pure Fame Monster, not a civilian ruined by its spell, but an alien creature born from the ruin. As many of these series show us, the notoriety and the “it” factor that makes celebrities shine also irradiates their souls in ways that cannot be repaired. They are different—not better, not superior, but meaningfully separate in ways that both nature and nurture are equally responsible for. They are not relatable, no matter how closely we examine them. In fact, the closer we look, the stranger they become. They are a species of humanity deformed and transfigured by exposure to the media. And that, in and of itself, is an American love story.
War makes climate change worse in many ways, and vice versa. The human costs of the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran—the hundreds of people who have died, including more than 100 girls and teachers killed at an elementary school—are surely a tragedy. The mounting economic risks—disrupted supply chains, spiking energy prices, shaken stock markets—are ominous. The danger that this war of choice launched by two nuclear-armed states will escalate further, drawing in powers across the region and beyond, is alarming. And threaded through each of these concerns is the fact that modern warfare is inextricably linked with climate change. The linkages flow in both directions. Wars unleash gargantuan amounts of planet-warming emissions: Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has generated emissions equal to the annual emissions of France. Those extra emissions drive deadlier heat, drought, storms, and other impacts that wreck livelihoods, destabilize economies, and spur migration, making armed conflict more likely. The British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 warned in January that climate disruption and biodiversity loss, if left unchecked, will cause “crop failures, intensified natural disasters, and infectious disease outbreaks … exacerbating existing conflicts, starting new ones, and threatening global security and prosperity.”The outbreak of any war is bad news for the climate, just as the election of politicians hostile to climate action is. The climate implications of this new war are not the center of attention at the moment, but they are essential context for understanding what’s at stake. At a time when civilization is hurtling toward irreversible climate breakdown, to overlook the climate consequences of three of the deadliest militaries on earth going to war would be journalistic malpractice. Yet war has the perverse effect of pushing the climate story down the news agenda. The news media is event-driven, prioritizing breaking developments and immediate threats. And wars generate powerful images and dramatic narratives, which stoke the public appetite for news (at least in a war’s initial stages). Climate change, by contrast, typically unfolds over longer timescales. Except during acute disasters, such as hurricanes or wildfires, the climate story tends to lack the urgency that garners headlines and boosts audience interest.Is this a war for oil? The fact that Iran possesses the third-largest oil reserves on earth inevitably raises the question, as does the long history of U.S.-Iranian conflict over those reserves, including the CIA overthrowing a democratically elected leader who sought to nationalize them. When the U.S. attacked Venezuela in January, President Donald Trump openly said that he wanted to gain control of that country’s vast oil reserves. Now more reporting is needed to establish just how much of a factor oil was in the decision to attack Iran.What’s beyond dispute is that this war could not be fought without oil. The aircraft carriers, jet planes, and the myriad support systems they require gobble immense quantities of fossil fuels. Which helps explain why the Department of Defense is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases globally, as Neta Crawford, a professor at Oxford University, documents in her book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War. If all of the world’s militaries are counted together, their annual carbon footprint is bigger than all but three of the world’s countries.Given this war’s immense implications—for the climate emergency and so much else—the question of why it was launched in the first place demands scrutiny, especially in view of the wild shifts in the Trump administration’s stated rationales. Within 24 hours of the first missile strikes, The Washington Post cited four sources in the administration while reporting that “U.S. intelligence assessments saw no immediate threat” from Iran. Nevertheless, Trump opted to attack, the Post reported, “after a weeks-long lobbying effort” by Israel, which views Iran as a bitter enemy, and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s long-standing regional rival and fellow petrostate. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared on March 3 that it found no evidence of a “structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” in Iran.As with most wars, so with climate change: The poor and the innocent suffer most, often far from the titular battlefields. Climate change is not peripheral to but structurally embedded in modern warfare. Journalists cannot fully and fairly cover a war this carbon-intensive, destabilizing, and consequential if its climate dimensions are treated as optional add-ons rather than as core fact. This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.