Elon? Tucker? Joe? Whom did you choose as the biggest braggart and blowhard of 2024?

By George Kalogerakis

Trump, in a word. Our overall Attention-Whore champion of 2023 repeated easily in 2024. Running for president, winning—getting shot at to boot—will do that. Bizarre discourses on “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and the optimum way to die at sea (“Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?”) apparently helped, as did a hate-filled, misogynistic, racist, altogether repugnant campaign that 49.8 percent of American voters either approved of or were happy to overlook. (Sorry, there is no third explanation.)

Even if Donald Trump had ended up politically marginalized, he’d have continued grandstanding and monetizing: maybe fleets of branded golf carts, keepsake locks of his hair, Trump Guitars, Trump Fragrance, READ ON

Take it from a good person: when it comes to throwing dinner parties—and dealing with uninvited guests—everyone could benefit from being bad

By Cazzie David

My dad once told me the only way to be happy is to either be a great person or a bad person.

If you are a great person, he says, when someone asks you for a favor, you do it gladly. Of course I’ll pick you up from the airport! I’d be happy to water your plants! It makes them happy to make you happy! If you are a bad person and someone asks you for a favor, you decline and never have another thought about it again because you’re a bad person.

But if you are neither a great READ ON

Rich Cohen had always felt ambivalent about his name—until he attended a convention of Richard Cohens

By Rich Cohen

A name is a kind of prison. What your parents choose for you and what they have themselves inherited sticks like a burr that can determine your role in the world—what you are and what you feel free to become. It can determine how people see you. Because of a name, strangers will form an opinion of you before you enter the room.

It’s my belief that people born with certain names are more likely to fulfill certain destinies. A woman named Emily Bookbinder should not be surprised to find herself with a job in publishing, nor should a man named Jaxson Dart be surprised to find himself playing quarterback at Ole Miss. READ ON

America’s rightward shift is not unique. Countries around the world, from Georgia to South Korea, are playing Fascist whack-a-mole

By Andrew Ryvkin

Two weeks ago, Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, announced it would pause the nation’s accession talks with the European Union until at least 2028 and refuse all E.U. funding until then. The move, contradicting the Georgian constitution, which mandates the country work toward E.U. membership, led to resignations of government officials and sparked widespread demonstrations in the capital, Tbilisi.

For several consecutive nights, thousands of people have been gathering outside the parliament building to protest what they see as a turn away from the West and toward Putin’s Russia. Every night, the protesters are beaten, tear-gassed, and, in the freezing Georgian winter, sprayed with cold water. READ ON

Would a time machine have helped thwart Trump’s re-election?

By Teddy Wayne

You are given a time machine to travel back to four discrete points in recent history, each time assuming the form of another human, in order to prevent Donald Trump from ever becoming president.

1987

You become the cover designer of Trump’s first book, The Art of the Deal. The original cover portrays Trump with Central Park in the background, looking every bit a confident Master of the Universe. Just before the book goes to press, you swap it out for a candid photo you took of a sick Trump blowing his nose into a much-used Kleenex. No one at the publishing house vets the new cover in advance, nor does the author, who is irate at the damage it will do to his public image. READ ON

Bootlegging, drug dealing, Airbnb-ing. Diplomats abandoned by their countries turn to unusual trades to keep the consular lights burning

By John Beck

When Jihyun Park, a North Korean defector who had settled in the United Kingdom as a refugee in 2008, walked into an unremarkable London newsstand, she did not anticipate being confronted by a copy of Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Still, there one was. The headlines spoke of celebrations marking the birthday of the late founding leader and “eternal president,” Kim Il Sung, which had included a military parade featuring missiles and goose-stepping soldiers, all inspected and saluted by Kim Il Sung’s grandson Kim Jong Un. “We were all READ ON

How did Thames Water, the U.K.’s largest water company, turn a foolproof monopoly into a $20 billion money pit, leaving the country short on the very commodity it was responsible for supplying?

By Jonathan Margolis

Players of the property-dealing board game Monopoly have never greatly loved the utilities—the water and electric companies, which sit dour and gray among the more colorful Park Place–type investment opportunities. Ambitious players consider the utility companies boring and worthless, even if a few steadier, less flashy contestants regard them as surprisingly O.K. investments that pay modest dividends.

In real life, though, utility companies—those that deal in water in particular—are potentially terrific financial assets. Literally everyone needs water, and the infrastructure for getting it to people’s taps is so cumbersome that supplying the stuff lends itself to an actual monopoly.

Indeed, one of the most profitable businesses of all time was a private water company in READ ON

The biggest threats to Trump’s agenda won’t be elements of the opposition. They will be his own character—and fate

By Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

We suspect the American flag is flying at half-mast in some areas of the country, if only metaphorically. The most unlikely candidate in history for the nation’s highest office has staged a sweeping comeback victory that almost half the country believes will kill or cripple American democracy—and the other half thinks will save it. How interesting that there wasn’t so much as a whisper of election fraud from the winning party.

This time, there will be no checks or balances to temper the president-elect’s fever grievances. The Senate and the House will be Republican-controlled, the majority of the Supreme Court is already well to the right, and a militia of READ ON

There is a lot at stake this Election Day—not least the legacy of the baby-boom generation

By Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

The generation that started out with so many opportunities and so much promise has failed in almost every respect. The post–World War II baby-boomers—born between 1946 and 1964—vowed to change the world. Instead, we shopped and then Botoxed ourselves crazy. From yippies to yuppies in a single decade.

The generation that a half-century ago embraced saving the environment has left the world in a much sorrier place than it was when we inherited it. Like a billionaire driving an E.V. to his Gulfstream jet, we are more performatively virtuous than actually so.

What Tom Wolfe called the “Me Generation” READ ON

In 1999, fighting globalization was a cause of true-blue lefties. Twenty-five short years later, it’s become a rallying cry for the red-hatted right

By Michael Moynihan

It was probably 1995 when I tried, briefly and with muted enthusiasm, to become a student activist. I pretended to read Marx and Engels, but my politics were (small w) wobbly and uncommitted. The real problem, though, was that my college years fell in the middle of a triumphalist era, with the Soviet Union smoldering on the ash heap and America exulting in its victory over history. Among the undergrad radicals, the mood was bored and distracted, envious of previous generations.

It had been easy for our parents: a global anti-war movement united Vietnam refuseniks in America, soixante-huitards at the barricades in France, and stone-throwing anti-Fascists in Germany. READ ON

Pop stars are now held to the highest moral standards, while politicians are increasingly out of control

By George Pendle

Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would be pausing his troubled presidential campaign and throwing his weight behind the candidacy of Donald Trump, he was received as a “rockstar” at one of Trump’s rallies, according to a reporter for the conservative Web site the Bulwark.

It was an apt description. When one tries to come up with a precedent for R.F.K. Jr.’s multiple debaucheries—the “lust demons,” the heroin addiction, the dead bear cub, the decapitated whale—the only individual who really springs to mind is Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath singer who spent years on a semi-permanent READ ON

Moscow is fighting one war in Ukraine and another one within

By Katya V.

Thirty-two months have passed since Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and each week life in Moscow feels more and more fragmented. There is a war we are constantly reminded about yet, even when it encroaches on Russian territory, seems so far away that most of us do not seem to care. There is the other war, the war with our own government and our own inner demons. This one involves self-censorship, fear of informants, and the necessity to appear conformist to some extent.

Then there is the peace, “normal life,” everyday hustle: foreign products returning to market through resellers, businesses operating as if the supply chain were not endangered by combat, and emigrants returning home, mostly because they ran out of money. READ ON

When Saudi Arabia bought a storied English soccer team, its fortunes on the pitch were transformed. But at what cost to its soul?

By Andrew Hankinson

It’s September 2023. A small group of dissidents gathers in a room above a theater to discuss Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. But this is not Jeddah. This is not Riyadh. This is Newcastle upon Tyne, a working-class city in northern England, where the people are called “Geordies,” “canny” means good, and soccer means everything.

At least to most locals. John Hird is an exception. Hird considers Saudi Arabia’s recent purchase of his local soccer team, Newcastle United, the opposite of canny. He believes the Saudi state is using his team to launder its reputation and make READ ON

My weekend in the Laotian Las Vegas, where an opulent casino lies at the heart of a vast human-, drug-, and wildlife-trafficking operation

By Darius J. Rubin

In July, two friends and I arrived at an immigration checkpoint in the Thai port of Chiang Saen, duffel bags in tow. We were going to the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (G.T.S.E.Z.), a 7,400-acre plot in Laos’s Bokeo Province. Officers in standard-issue military uniforms accessorized with ornate gold jewelry greeted us warmly.

Getting to the G.T.S.E.Z. requires taking a rickety basket boat across the Mekong River, one of the largest and murkiest in the world. From afar, a casino and its surrounding half-built structures serve as a North Star.

This is no regular border. It is the port READ ON

The assassination attempts on Donald Trump show that history is made not just by great men and women but also by insignificant ones

By Adam Kirsch

Who is Ryan Routh, the man arrested on Sunday after apparently attempting to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course? No sooner had his name been released to the public than theories began to percolate on social media. “What are the odds that this shooter, who spent months fighting in Ukraine, has zero links to anyone in US military or intelligence circles? Find them,” Charlie Kirk, of the right-wing group Turning Point USA, demanded on X. Similarly, Laura Loomer posted, “Ryan Routh served in the US foreign legion in Ukraine, which is reportedly tied to the CIA.”

Others theorized that Routh was connected to BlackRock, the asset-management giant. READ ON

In the 1990s, Scott Ritter was a respected U.N. weapons inspector. Now he’s a Kremlin propagandist, defending Russia’s war in Ukraine

By Andrew Ryvkin

On a cold January morning earlier this year in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, a man in his 60s, wearing a black suit and flanked by two massive soldiers holding Russian and Chechen flags, delivered a fiery speech to thousands of troops about to be deployed to Ukraine.

“Chechens are the best people. People who want to live in peace,” said the man as he stared into a sea of camouflage, machine guns, and armored cars marked with the Russian Army Z. “But now is the time to do your job.”

This man wasn’t a general, a politician, or READ ON

The latest victim of crypto hype? Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper

By Paul Goldberger

F

rank Lloyd Wright designed a handful of skyscrapers in his 70-year career. Only one of them was ever built, the H. C. Price Tower in the unlikely location of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. By the standards of today’s super-tall buildings, Price Tower’s 19 stories barely qualify it as a skyscraper, but it looms large in architectural history since, like so much of what Wright designed, it did not so much follow a common genre as re-invent it.

Price Tower is as different from a conventional skyscraper as, say, Wright’s Guggenheim is from a conventional museum. Wright built it not on a READ ON

From bare-chested push-ups to a dead bear in Central Park, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s doomed presidential campaign—condensed into one sentence

By George Kalogerakis

It all looked so promising in April 2023, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared his “history-making” run for president as a proud Democrat, actually, hang on, make that vehemently anti-Democrat independent, and some strong early polling and fundraising, plus that video he posted of himself doing bare-chested push-ups in a parking lot, suggested a serious-ish candidacy but for the fact that it all threw a harsher light on his problematic backstory—the childhood traumas of his father’s and uncle’s assassinations, the expulsion from two boarding schools, the drug dealing, the years of heroin use, the years as an environmental lawyer (an interlude that now seems as out of character on his C.V. as it does in this sentence), the READ ON

Kimberly Guilfoyle’s personal and professional relationships—and their circular connections to Trump—condensed into one sentence

By George Kalogerakis

A

nn Getty, whose son Billy had dated the former Victoria’s Secret model Kimberly Guilfoyle, was (according to Guilfoyle) “like a mother” to her, so perhaps it was no surprise that her (Ann’s) diamond tiara sat atop her (Kimberly’s) head on the day in 2001 when she married not Billy Getty but Gavin Newsom (whose father, Bill Newsom III, had helped deliver the ransom money—small world!—when Billy’s relation John Paul Getty III was kidnapped in 1973), and although Guilfoyle and Newsom divorced after five years, she had by then joined the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, working with Kamala Harris, whom she accused of trying to block her hiring, but in 2006, Guilfoyle, just before marrying the interior-design-company C.E.O. READ ON

America’s historically Black colleges and universities produced Kamala Harris. They also hired Jewish World War II refugees when the Ivy League wouldn’t

By David Christopher Kaufman

There’s a lot of attention—and money—being lavished upon America’s historically Black colleges and universities right now. Affectionately known as H.B.C.U.’s, they’ve educated America’s Black elite for nearly 200 years. Alumni include Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who graduated from Howard University in 1986 with degrees in economics and political science; former surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders (Philander Smith, ’52); Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison (Howard, ’53); and my own grandparents.

Just this month, for instance, Michael Bloomberg donated $600 million to a quartet of H.B.C.U. medical schools, including Howard, a gift that followed the former New York City mayor’s previous pledge of $100 million in 2020. Nine-figure donations have also been recently bequeathed to Spelman College, in READ ON

France’s political order may be cracking up, but its Olympic Games—majestic, ridiculous, welcoming—are the envy of the world

By Ashley Baker

Did Anne Hidalgo crib notes from Taylor Swift? The ambitious mayor of Paris has taken all sorts of flack for her theatrical, grandiose approach to the Summer Olympics. But as the Games round into their second week, who’s laughing now?

Some of the most expensive Olympic Games in history are also shaping up to be the most magnificent. It takes a free spirit and an iron will to say: So what if it rains? Let’s hoist Celine Dion onto the edge of the Eiffel Tower, dangle dancers from a rooftop—by chains—and plop a medalist from Mauritius on a glorified canoe. READ ON

Before satellite phones, cell phones, and smartphones, the author was the last foreign correspondent to file from a war zone via carrier pigeon

By Alan Cowell

Watching the nano-second messaging of modern electioneering from Washington to Paris to London, I couldn’t help but think of pigeons.

Carrier pigeons, to be precise. I was thinking of an earlier era, in an African setting, when I worked for Reuters before embarking on a career as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. In the run-up to the election in 1980 that brought Robert Mugabe to power, I was part of the coverage of the ceasefire in Zimbabwe’s seven-year bush war that preceded the vote.

In the process, I became the last Reuters correspondent known to have sent dispatches by carrier pigeon. READ ON

The Olympic Village by the Seine provided city planners with a chance to create a new, socially equitable, and eco-friendly neighborhood

By Joseph Giovannini

When cheeky Marcel Duchamp signed that urinal in 1917 for an exhibition in New York and called it art, he ushered the concept of the found object (objet trouvé) into the art lexicon (he called it a “readymade”). The architects of this summer’s Olympic Village in Paris did the same, virtually signing the Seine itself by grafting the river as an objet trouvé into their plan for the Athletes’ Village.

Appropriating the Seine helped the city win the 2024 Olympics, but conversely Paris was seeking to leverage the Olympics to transform a rust-belt dockland area into a mixed-use city for 12,000, featuring Paris’s greatest natural asset. READ ON

Who are you going to believe? Joe or your lying eyes?

By Todd S. Purdum

Do the nation’s top Democrats think Joe Biden should go (as they tell each other in terrified private) or stay the course (as they hedge for public consumption)? Is Jill Biden Edith Wilson, an overprotective First Lady clinging to power in the face of her husband’s obvious infirmity? Would Kamala Harris (or anyone else) make a stronger opponent against Donald Trump?

Who knows?

Here’s what we do know: the Democrats have only themselves to blame.

For months, perhaps years, Biden’s closest aides and partisan enablers have indulged their candidate, and our president, with the fallacy of the boiling frog. READ ON