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    <title>Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder Talk Climate Change at &#39;Hand in Hand&#39; Hurricane-Relief Telethon - The Atlantic</title>

    

        
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            <h1 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Apolitical Politics of the Celebrity Hurricane Telethon</h1>
            
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        <section id="article-section-1"><p>The most famous moment of pop-culture political protest in recent memory happened at a post-hurricane telethon, with Kanye West using his spot in a 2005 Katrina-victim fundraising effort to tell the nation, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”</p><p>There was no such memorably inflammatory moment at Tuesday night’s “Hand in Hand” telethon for those affected by hurricanes Harvey and Irma. As is the case with these sorts of affairs, the hour was largely a showcase for supergroup performances (<a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7964718/hand-in-hand-telethon-chris-stapleton-miranda-lambert-george-strait-texas" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'0',r'539697'">check out </a>George Strait, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Lyle Lovett, and Robert Earl Keen closing the show with “Texas”). There was also the surreal sight of dozens of superstars smilingly answering phones: George Clooney and Julia Roberts switching handsets, Nicki Minaj making fans squeal, Justin Bieber mugging in the guise of an <a href="https://static.spin.com/files/2017/09/bieber-oprah-1505264077-640x418.jpg" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'1',r'539697'">’80s Miami drug-cartel accountant.</a> So far, the event has raised $44 million to be distributed by <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=https://comicrelief.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1505402871727000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFO2TJNB8qDOF2LrUoO8QtoUBSSdA" href="https://comicrelief.org/" target="_blank" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'2',r'539697'">Comic Relief USA</a> to charities including the Rebuild Texas Fund, Habitat for Humanity, and Save the Children.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector1" targeting-pos="boxinjector1" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-2"><p>But sprinkled in were a few statements that were remarkable in what they show about our divided times. Many viewers may have heard them as anodyne; others likely reacted a bit <a href="http://p1cdn04.thewrap.com/images/2014/05/kanye-west-comment-on-bush1.jpg" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'3',r'539697'">like Mike Myers did </a>standing next to Kanye West 12 years ago.</p><aside class="callout" data-omni-click="r'article',r' ',d,r'related',#data-omni-index,@data-article-id"><hr><h4>
        
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    <p><a href="/politics/archive/2017/09/hurricane-harveys-public-health-nightmare/538767/" data-omni-index="0" data-article-id="842016" data-omni-click="inherit">Hurricane Harvey’s Public-Health Nightmare</a></p>
    

    <hr></aside><p>The broadcast began with Stevie Wonder offering an invocation that gradually moved from unifying to confrontational. “We’ve come together today to love on the people who have been devastated by the hurricanes,” Wonder said, warming up for a rendition of “Lean on Me.” “When love goes into action, it preferences no color of skin, no ethnicity, no religious beliefs, no sexual preferences, and no political persuasions. It just loves.”</p><p>So far, fairly inarguable. But then: “And anyone who believes that there’s no such thing as global warming must be blind or unintelligent. Lord, save us all.”</p><p>In the wide swaths of America where climate change is taken for granted and the latest back-to-back catastrophes that have killed dozens and displaced millions seem <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/an-extraordinary-week-in-north-american-weather/539544/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'4',r'539697'">more than a spooky coincidence</a>, Wonder’s is not a particularly provocative statement. Other swaths—those who’d just been called blind or unintelligent—obviously felt differently. Write-ups on conservative news sites were almost immediate, with <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/12/hurricane-telethon-gets-political-right-at-the-start-video/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'5',r'539697'"><em>The Daily Caller</em></a> reporting that the telethon was “getting political” from the start.</p><p>(In the clip of the full telethon MTV <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MkC65emkG4" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'6',r'539697'">posted on YouTube</a>, Wonder’s opening comments aren’t included; a representative said the omission is from a glitch that may be repaired soon.)</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">Messages like Beyoncé’s, whatever their political implications, seemed first intended to strike against complacency.</aside><p>A pre-taped segment from the Houston native Beyoncé was also notably pointed. Many of her celebrity colleagues used their spotlight moments to call out specific instances of bravery (Selena Gomez <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAJEFSoTyWs" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'7',r'539697'">was movingly choked up</a> discussing the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/us/texas-saldivar-family-swept-away-ebof/index.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'8',r'539697'">swept-away Saldivar family</a>) or particular needs (the plight of pets, in Eric McCormack’s case). Beyoncé gave a more big-picture view, connecting Harvey and Irma with other recent distressing developments in the headlines.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector2" targeting-pos="boxinjector2" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-3"><p>“During a time where it’s impossible to watch the news without seeing violence or racism in this country, just when you think it couldn’t possibly get worse, natural disasters take precious life, do massive damage and forever change lives, leaving behind contaminated water, flooded hospitals, schools, and nursing homes,” she said. “Natural disasters don’t discriminate. They don’t see if you’re an immigrant, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, wealthy or poor. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Third Ward or River Oaks, we’re all in this together. Seeing everyone of different racial, social, and religious backgrounds put their own lives at risk to help each other survive restored my faith in humanity.”</p><blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Watch: Beyoncé's heartfelt message on natural disasters &amp; climate change. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HandInHand?src=hash" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'9',r'539697'">#HandInHand</a> <a href="https://t.co/B0McFh21Dt" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'10',r'539697'">pic.twitter.com/B0McFh21Dt</a></p>
— BEYONCÉ LEGION (@Bey_Legion) <a href="https://twitter.com/Bey_Legion/status/907762415374348290" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'11',r'539697'">September 13, 2017</a></blockquote><p>She was dressed in radiant white—which, naturally, was the focus of <a href="http://hollywoodlife.com/2017/09/12/beyonce-hurricane-relief-telethon-appearance-hand-in-hand/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'12',r'539697'">certain coverage</a> more than her words were—but her rhetoric was that of someone feeling drained by current events. Then she picked up on Wonder’s theme of speaking out for the scientific consensus, saying, “The effects of climate change are playing out around the world every day. Just this past week, we’ve seen devastation from the monsoon in India, an 8.1 earthquake in Mexico, and multiple catastrophic hurricanes.” (If the list seems to contain a non sequitur, note that there is evidence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/16/climate-change-triggers-earthquakes-tsunamis-volcanoes" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'13',r'539697'">seismic activities and climate change may be linked</a>, though it’s hard to <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/36268-earthquake-mexico-hurricane-irma" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'14',r'539697'">claim a connection</a> in the case of this latest quake.)</p><p>Messages like Beyoncé’s, whatever their political implications, seemed first intended to strike against complacency by talking about the specific circumstances of this era. Another pop giant with Houston connections, Drake, sent a message more explicitly seeking to interrupt apathy. “These days it seems as one issue is ending, another is beginning” he said. “I know it can be extremely overwhelming. But your attention and your assistance is of extreme importance.”</p></section>
    
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Selfishness Is Killing Liberalism</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The path to its revival lies in self-sacrifice, and in placing collective interests ahead of the narrowly personal.</p>
        
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            <p>The death of liberalism constitutes the publishing world’s biggest mass funeral since the death of God half a century ago. Some authors, like conservative philosopher Patrick Deneen, of <em>Why Liberalism Failed</em>, have come to bury yesterday’s dogma. Others, like Edward Luce (<em>The Retreat of Western Liberalism</em>), Mark Lilla (<em>The Once and Future Liberal</em>), and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (<em>How Democracies Die</em>) come rather to praise. I’m in the latter group; the title-in-my-head of the book I’m now writing is <em>What Was Liberalism</em>.</p>

<p>But perhaps, like God, liberalism has been buried prematurely. Maybe the question that we should be asking is not what killed liberalism, but rather, what can we learn from liberalism’s long story of persistence—and how can we apply those insights in order to help liberalism write a new story for our own time.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Burden of Trump's National-Security Staff</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Those toiling inside this administration are fooling themselves if they think they can somehow rise above the character and temperament of this president to shepherd this country through to a more normal time.</p>
        
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            <p dir="ltr">What a contrast.</p>

<p>I woke up on Sunday morning and first read the news accounts of National-Security Adviser <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/mcmaster-says-evidence-of-russian-meddling-is-now-really-incontrovertible-as-he-woos-european-allies/2018/02/17/4a27f560-10e8-11e8-a68c-e9374188170e_story.html?utm_term=.1063880e7f2c">H.R. McMaster’s cogent speech</a> to the Munich Security Conference. I then read the president’s tweets. And some more tweets. And, just when I thought he was done, some more tweets.</p>

<p>As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-foreign-policy/549671/">I have written before</a>, you have to give this administration some credit for having assembled some pretty good foreign policy talent. The Republican Party arguably didn’t have the deepest bench on foreign policy in 2017, having been out of the executive branch for eight years, and some of the best talent available to the administration after Trump was elected was ineligible for having signed <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/">one of the infamous Never Trump letters</a> over the course of the 2016 campaign.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Excesses of Call-Out Culture</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The outrage directed against the <em>New York Times</em> writer Bari Weiss is the latest illustration of a culture that undermines the causes it seeks to advance.</p>
        
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            <p>One of America’s best attributes wasn’t fully real to me until I studied abroad in Seville, Spain, with Asian American classmates. Their answers to the question “Where are you from?” were often met with confusion by locals, who had trouble even conceiving of a nation without an ethnic conception of citizenship. As a Californian, I knew not only that people of Asian descent were as American as white people like me, but that many of their ancestors arrived before mine. And I saw why Americans who don’t grasp those truths offend.</p>

<p>Another of America’s best attributes concerns those who immigrate here. People who become U.S. citizens later in life—as did Albert Einstein, Desi Arnez, and Patrick Ewing—are no less American, no more “other,” than the native born. In fact, when my friend Andrew Sullivan was finally granted U.S. citizenship, as well as when efforts began to secure legal protections for undocumented immigrants brought here as children, I realized that my own conception about what it means to be an American is even broader than the legal definition: I’d long considered people like Andrew as well as those kids to be “one of us.”</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">America Is Under Attack and the President Doesn't Care</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Trump’s gravest responsibility is to defend the United States from foreign attack—and he’s done nothing to fulfill it.</p>
        
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            <p>As the rest of America mourns the victims of the Parkland, Florida, massacre, President Trump took to Twitter.</p>

<p>Not for him the rituals of grief. He is too consumed by rage and resentment. He interrupted his holidaying schedule at Mar-a-Lago only briefly, for a visit to a hospital where some of the shooting victims were treated. He posed afterward for a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/964724390637244417">grinning thumbs-up photo op</a>. Pain at another’s heartbreak—that emotion is for losers, apparently.</p>

<p>Having failed at one presidential duty, to speak for the nation at times of national tragedy, Trump resumed shirking an even more supreme task: defending the nation against foreign attack.</p>

<p>Last week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian persons and three entities that conspired to violate federal election law, to the benefit of Trump and Republican congressional candidates. This is not the whole of the story by any means. This Mueller indictment references only Russian operations on Facebook. It does not deal with the weaponization of hacked information via WikiLeaks. Or the reports that the Russians funneled millions of dollars of election spending through the NRA’s political action committees. But this indictment does show enough to answer some questions about the scale and methods of the Russian intervention—and pose a new question, the most important of them all.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM</h3>
    </a>
    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/olga-khazan/" itemprop="url" title="Olga Khazan" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Olga Khazan</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-18T08:00:00" />
    <meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2018-02-19T12:50:54" />

    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">A new study explores a strange paradox: In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>Though their numbers are growing, only <a href="https://medium.com/@codeorg/girls-set-ap-computer-science-record-skyrocketing-growth-outpaces-boys-41b7c01373a5">27 percent of all students</a> taking the AP Computer Science exam in the United States are female. The gender gap only grows worse from there: Just <a href="https://medium.com/anybody-can-learn/university-computer-science-finally-surpasses-its-2003-peak-ecefa4c8d77d">18 percent</a> of American computer-science college degrees go to women. This is in the United States, where many college men proudly describe themselves as “male feminists” and girls are taught they can be anything they want to be.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 percent of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math—or “<span class="smallcaps">STEM</span>,” as its known—are female. There, employment discrimination against women is rife and women are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/algeria-police-tell-woman-go-back-abusive-husband-human-rights-watch-a7696221.html">often pressured </a>to make amends with their abusive husbands.</p>

<p>According to a report <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/there-are-only-3-countries-where-girls-feel-more-comfortable-with-math-than-boys/284272/">I covered a few years ago</a>, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were the only three countries in which boys are significantly <i>less </i>likely to feel comfortable working on math problems than girls are. In all of the other nations surveyed, girls were more likely to say they feel “helpless while performing a math problem.”</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Ban the Olympics</h3>
    </a>
    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/julia-ioffe/" itemprop="url" title="Julia Ioffe" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Julia Ioffe</span></a></span></li>
        

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        <p class="dek">They encourage profligate spending and help dictators burnish their prestige. Who needs them?</p>
        
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            <p>Other than fuel corruption, make countries spend pointlessly and profligately, inflame nationalist sentiment, act as onanistic stand-ins for geopolitical tensions, and cloak authoritarian leaders in legitimacy, what have the Olympics ever done for us?</p>

<p>It is my real and very honest question every two years: What are the Olympics good for? Why do we continue to have them? Certainly for the athletes participating they can represent the pinnacle of a career worth of hard work; maybe even a life’s ambition realized. But for the rest of us, what is the point? Aside from the temporary flash of sumptuous spectacle, there’s little good that ever comes of the Games. If anything, they exacerbate some of the worst of human nature.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Russia's Troll Operation Was Not That Sophisticated</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
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        <p class="dek">“If the Internet Research Agency were a startup media company, they probably would not be picking up a fresh round of venture capital.”</p>
        
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            <p>It might be nice for Democrats and #NeverTrumpers to believe that Russia’s troll factory brought Donald Trump the 2016 Presidential Election.</p>

<p>But no.</p>

<p>Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/rosenstein-mueller-indictment-russia/553601/">indictment of 13 Russians associated with the Internet Research Agency</a> definitively shows, given current evidence, that while a small team in St. Petersburg ran a successful audience development campaign mostly on behalf of Trump, that campaign was neither targeted nor sizable enough to change the election’s result.</p>

<p>Make no mistake: this was self-described and actual “information warfare.” The point was to sow discord and distrust in the American electorate. And with a few dozen people—around 80 at the peak—they managed to reach 150 million people through Facebook and Instagram. In September 2016, the indictment states that the monthly budget of the unit that contained the US election interference operation was $1.25 million. That’s pretty good bang for the buck.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Trump's Furious Tweetstorm Backfires</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/david-a-graham/" itemprop="url" title="David A. Graham" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">David A. Graham</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-18T10:41:36" />
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        <p class="dek">The president tried to distance himself from the story of Russian interference—and in the process, thrust himself right back into the center of the narrative.</p>
        
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            <p>Donald Trump didn’t have any control over the decision by Russia’s Internet Research Agency  <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/mueller-roadmap/553604/">to mount</a> what it called “information warfare against the United States of America.” As the indictment released on Friday stated, the effort began in 2014, long before Trump was a declared candidate—much less a serious one—for office.</p>

<p>But by refusing to take information warfare seriously—in an attempt to distance himself from it and any questions it might raise about the legitimacy of his election—the president has paradoxically made the story about himself again and again.</p>

<p>This solipsism was on display Saturday and Sunday morning, as Trump, at Mar-a-Lago and far from the strictures and structures of the White House, unleashed his most aggressive and scattered tweetstorm in some time. In theory, the things he said were designed to push the story away from himself and downplay any connection. In practice, he forced himself into the middle of the story, inextricably linking himself to it.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">America Is Not a Democracy</h3>
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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-01-31T08:00:00" />
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        <p class="dek">How the United States lost the faith of its citizens—and what it can do to win them back</p>
        
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            <p class="dropcap"><span class="smallcaps"><span class="caps">For </span></span><span class="caps"><span class="smallcaps">years, </span></span><span class="smallcaps">the residents of </span><span class="caps"><span class="smallcaps">Oxford, </span></span><span class="smallcaps">Massachusetts,</span> seethed with anger at the company that controlled the local water supply. The company, locals complained, charged inflated prices and provided terrible service. But unless the town’s residents wanted to get by without running water, they had to pay up, again and again.</p>

<p>The people of Oxford resolved to buy the company out. At a town meeting in the local high-school auditorium, an overwhelming majority of residents voted to raise the millions of dollars that would be required for the purchase. It took years, but in May 2014, the deal was nearly done: One last vote stood between the small town and its long-awaited goal.</p>

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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">It's Not Illegal Immigration That Worries Republicans Anymore</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/peter-beinart/" itemprop="url" title="Peter Beinart" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Peter Beinart</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-18T06:00:00" />
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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">The Trump-era GOP cares more about the national origin and race of immigrants than the methods they used to enter the United States.</p>
        
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            <p>A few weeks ago, the contours of an immigration compromise looked clear: Republicans would let the “dreamers” stay. Democrats would let Trump build his wall. Both sides would swallow something their bases found distasteful in order to get the thing their bases cared about most.</p>

<p>Since then, Trump has blown up the deal. He <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-calls-senate-support-grassley-bill-oppose-bills-fail-deliver-american-people/%20https:/www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-calls-senate-support-grassley-bill-oppose-bills-fail-deliver-american-people/">announced</a> on Wednesday that he would legalize the “dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, only if Democrats funded his wall <em>and</em>  ended the visa lottery and “chain migration.” He would support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants only if Congress brought the number of legal immigrants down.</p>

<p>There’s an irony here, which was pointed out to me by CATO Institute immigration analyst David Bier. Until recently, Republican politicians drew a bright line between illegal immigration, which they claimed to hate, and legal immigration, which they claimed to love. Florida Senator Marco Rubio <a href="http://time.com/3820475/transcript-read-full-text-of-sen-marco-rubios-campaign-launch/">launched</a> his presidential campaign at the Freedom Tower, Miami’s Ellis Island. Texas senator Ted Cruz, who in 2013 proposed a five-fold increase in the number of H1B visas for highly skilled immigrants, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/ted-cruz-turns-legal-immigration-n463226">declared</a> in April 2015 that, “There is no stronger advocate for legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am.” Mitt Romney <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Mitt_Romney_Immigration.htm">promised</a> in 2007 that, “We’re going to end illegal immigration to protect legal immigration.”</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Problem With #MeToo’s Agenda</h3>
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