April 2, 2017

OUR VERY WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE LEADER, PAUL RYAN. TWEET, OCT. 11, 2016

LOOK AT CONGRESS, WHICH HAS AN UNDERSTANDABLY NEGATIVE REPUTATION

AMONG AMERICANS. CRIPPLED AMERICA: HOW TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, 2015

WHAT A STIFF, WHAT A STIFF, LINDSEY GRAHAM. SOUTH CAROLINA CAMPAIGN RALLY, JULY 21, 2015

TRULY WEIRD

SENATOR RAND PAUL OF KENTUCKY REMINDS ME OF A SPOILED
BRAT WITHOUT A PROPERLY FUNCTIONING BRAIN. TWEET, AUG. 10, 2015

THE SAD TRUTH IS SOME REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS ARE

COMES TO NEGOTIATION.
CLUELESS
TWEET, DEC. 21, 2011
WHEN IT

THE GREAT STATE OF ARIZONA, WHERE I JUST HAD A MASSIVE RALLY (AMAZING PEOPLE), HAS A VERY WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE

SAD!
SENATOR, JEFF FLAKE. TWEET, SEPT. 4, 2016

THE SHACKLES ARE SOME OF THE ESTABLISHMENT PEOPLE THAT ARE WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE PEOPLE. BILL OREILLY INTERVIEW, OCT. 11, 2016

I WILL TEACH THEM!

THEY DONT KNOW HOW TO WIN TWEET, OCT. 11, 2016

. @ LINDSEYGRAHAMSC AND LYIN TED CRUZ ARE TWO POLITICIANS WHO ARE VERY MUCH ALIKE

ALL TALK AND NO ACTION! TWEET, MARCH 24, 2016

THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY DOESNT POSSESS THE LEADERSHIP OR THE NEGOTIATING

SKILLS NECESSARY. CRIPPLED AMERICA: HOW TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, 2015

TED IS THE ULTIMATE HYPOCRITE ANOTHER FOR VOTES.

. SAYS ONE THING FOR MONEY, DOES
TWEET, JAN. 16, 2016

. @ SENJOHNM C CAIN SHOULD BE DEFEATED IN THE PRIMARIES. GRADUATED LAST IN HIS

CLASS AT ANNAPOLIS
DUMMY! TWEET, JULY 16, 2015

RUBIO IS TOTALLY OWNED BY THE LOBBYISTS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS. A LIGHTWEIGHT

SENATOR WITH
THE WORST VOTING RECORD IN SENATE. LAZY! TWEET, SEPT. 30, 2015

. @ BENSASSE LOOKS MORE LIKE A GYM RAT THAN A U.S. SENATOR. TWEET, JAN. 29, 2016

HE RAN AGAINST CONGRESS. NOW HE NEEDS THEM. By Robert Draper

 S U P E R - S M O O T H F L AVO R

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April 2, 2017

First Words Identity Theft On the internet, where information is power, By Amanda Hess
11 were all at risk of getting owned exposed as vulnerable,
ignorant or worse.

On Sports Diamonds and Rust Baseball is flirting with new rules. By Jay Caspian Kang
14 But if it really wants to embrace change and speed things
up it should look to its ancient, woolier past.

The Ethicist Going for Broke Should you intervene when a friend is By Kwame Anthony Appiah
18 bankrupting herself?

11 20 14
00 00

Letter of Life Magazine A youthful love of its articles and By Paul Theroux
20 Recommendation photographs led the writer to a life of travel and to
an unexpected encounter with a fellow adventurer.

Eat Larger Than Life Jim Harrisons appetite was legendary. By Sam Sifton
22 His stew ought to be, too.

Talk Phillipa Soo The Tony Award-nominated actress doesnt Interview by Dave Itzko
54 leave it all onstage.

Behind the Cover Jake Silverstein, editor in chief: Layering the list of Trumps 6 Contributors 21 Tip
attacks on Washington over Chris Andersons portrait of the presidents steely glare gives 8 The Thread 50 Puzzles
a vivid sense of the challenges he faces as he tries to enact an ambitious legislative 13 New Sentences 52 Puzzles
agenda. Photograph by Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times. 17 Poem (Puzzle answers on Page 51)
18 Judge John
Hodgman

Continued on Page 4 3
April 2, 2017

Radical Ambition Maajid Nawaz believes his past as an Islamist can help By Thomas Chatterton Williams
24 him combat extremism in Europe today. If only everyone
didnt hate him.

Trump vs. Congress After the president suffered his first defeat on Capitol Hill, can By Robert Draper
30 the White House still make good on its legislative promises?

Apostates For young ultra-Orthodox adults who decide to leave By Ta y Brodesser-Akner

36 Anonymous their cloistered communities, daily life becomes a struggle
over questions of food, faith and sex.

The Code Rush Why does American health care cost so much? One big By Elisabeth Rosenthal
42 reason: an arcane, sprawling classification system that doctors
and hospitals have learned to game.

What hes going

to learn is
that members of
Congress are
Photograph by Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times

unwilling to take
the tough votes.
PAGE 30

4 Copyright 2017 The New York Times

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Contributors

Christopher Anderson Cover Portrait Editor in Chief JAKE SILVERSTEIN

Deputy Editors JESSICA LUSTIG,
BILL WASIK
Managing Editor ERIKA SOMMER
Christopher Anderson is a photographer and
Design Director GAIL BICHLER
a member of Magnum Photos. He is the Director of Photography KATHY RYAN
author of four books of photography, including Features Editor ILENA SILVERMAN
Stump, an examination of American politics. Politics Editor CHARLES HOMANS

In 2000, Andersons images of Haitian immigrants Special Projects Editor CAITLIN ROPER

sailing to America made on assignment for Story Editors NITSUH ABEBE,

MICHAEL BENOIST,
The Times Magazine were awarded the Robert
SHEILA GLASER,
Capa Gold Medal. He photographed President CLAIRE GUTIERREZ,
Donald Trump for the cover of this weeks LUKE MITCHELL,
issue. His goal was to create a portrait of Trump DEAN ROBINSON,

that had never been seen before. My hope WILLY STALEY,

was to make an image that feels intimate and SASHA WEISS

Associate Editors JEANNIE CHOI,
unlike the caricatures we normally see of
JAZMINE HUGHES
him, good or bad, Anderson said. One that
Chief National Correspondent MARK LEIBOVICH
Photographed by Kathy Ryan at The New York Times on somehow communicated the experience I Staff Writers SAM ANDERSON,
May 31, 2016, at 5:45 p.m. had of meeting him. EMILY BAZELON,
SUSAN DOMINUS,

Taffy Brodesser- Apostates Anonymous, Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer MAUREEN DOWD,

Akner Page 36 for the magazine. She last wrote about NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES,
JONATHAN MAHLER,
the television host and producer Andy Cohen.
WESLEY MORRIS,
JENNA WORTHAM
Robert Draper Its Going to Be Robert Draper is a writer at large for the Writers at Large C. J. CHIVERS,
a Very Big Thing, magazine. He last wrote about the Republican JIM RUTENBERG
Page 30 David Carr Fellows
battle to repeal Obamacare. JOHN HERRMAN,
GREG HOWARD
Art Director MATT WILLEY
Amanda Hess First Words, Amanda Hess is a David Carr fellow at The
Deputy Art Director JASON SFETKO
Page 11 Times. She last wrote a First Words column Designers FRANK AUGUGLIARO,
about how trolls stole Washington. BEN GRANDGENETT,
CHLOE SCHEFFE

Elisabeth Rosenthal The Code Rush, Elisabeth Rosenthal is editor in chief of Digital Designer LINSEY FIELDS
Page 42 Kaiser Health News and a former senior Deputy Photo Editor JESSICA DIMSON
Associate Photo Editors STACEY BAKER,
writer at The Times.
AMY KELLNER,
CHRISTINE WALSH
Thomas Chatterton Radical Ambition, Thomas Chatterton Williams is a contributing Virtual Reality Editor JENNA PIROG
Williams Page 24 writer for the magazine. He last wrote Photo Assistant KAREN HANLEY
about the novelist John Edgar Wideman. Copy Chief ROB HOERBURGER
Copy Editors HARVEY DICKSON,
DANIEL FROMSON,

Dear Reader: How Often Do You MARGARET PREBULA,

ANDREW WILLETT
Check Email on Vacation? Head of Research
Research Editors
NANDI RODRIGO
ROBERT LIGUORI,
Every week the magazine publishes the results RENE MICHAEL,

of a study conducted online in June by LIA MILLER,

33% Several STEVEN STERN,
The New York Timess research-and-analytics times a day MARK VAN DE WALLE
department, reecting the opinions of 28% Once a day
Production Chief ANICK PLEVEN
2,563 subscribers who chose to participate. 11% Several Production Editors PATTY RUSH,
4% Once a week times a week
This weeks question: How often do you check HILARY SHANAHAN
your work email while on vacation? 24% Less often Editorial Assistant LIZ GERECITANO BRINN

Publisher: ANDY WRIGHT Associate Publisher: DOUG LATINO Advertising Directors: MARIA ELIASON (Luxury and Retail) MICHAEL GILBRIDE (Fashion, Luxury, Beauty and Home) SHARI KAPLAN
(Live Entertainment and Books) NANCY KARPF (Fine Arts and Education) MAGGIE KISELICK (Automotive, Technology and Telecom) SCOTT M. KUNZ (International Fashion) CHRISTOPHER REAM
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(Los Angeles/San Francisco/Northwest) JEAN ROBERTS (Boston/Northeast) JIMMY SAUNDERS (Chicago/Midwest) ROBERT SCUDDER (Washington) KAREN FARINA (Magazine Director) MARILYN
M C CAULEY (Managing Director, Specialty Printing) THOMAS GILLESPIE (Manager, Magazine Layout). To advertise, email karen.farina@nytimes.com.

6 4.2.17
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The Thread
Readers respond to the 3.19.2017 issue.
RE: THE NEW PARTY OF NO
Charles Homans wrote about the Demo-
crats in Congress and how they have slowly
embraced their new role.
Although I am happy that the Democrats
in Congress nally understand the power
of resistance thanks to a grass-roots
shove I am distressed by the lack of
ideas for how to take back the House in
2018. The Democratic National Commit-
tees website and the website devoted to
taking back the Senate focus on asking
for money and your contact information.
Not enough about ideas.
The problem of being the party of no
is that you never gure out what moti-
vates people to vote for a candidate.
Joan Savitt, Wellesley, Mass.
I read Charles Homanss piece on the
state of the Democratic Party with con-
sternation over the fact that the Dem-
ocrats dont seem to recognize their
direct path to the majority, and jour-
nalists seem to be reifying that dazed
confusion. The problem the Democrats
face is not a lack of popular support. The
problem is a lack of judgment when it
comes to strategy.
Bernie Sanders was the only Dem-
ocrat I considered capable of handily
beating every Republican from the cam-
paigns plenary phase all the way until
he conceded to Hillary Clinton. Clinton
was never destined to prevail, but Sand-
ers was. Thus, the election problem is
how to chose the right candidate. Thats
how the White House will be regained.
As to politics between now and then,
the Democratic platform is the choice of
the majority, or at least a viable plurality,
8 4.2.17
and the party should play to that strength.
The Republicans cannot say as much. So
the strategy for Democratic participation
in legislation until 2020 should be to say
no, not as a matter of course not as a
function of obstructionism and partisan-
ship but because specic things that the
Republicans want to do are inimical to
the well being of a majority of the Amer-
ican people. Let the Republicans ounder
around with health care. And if they pass a
bill, and Trump signs it, let them live with
it in 2018 and then in 2020. In the interim,
put a bill on the oor of the House or the
Senate that will save Obamacare. Com-
pose a bill that inserts the public option
into the Aordable Care Act and let the
Republicans kill it. It wont take long for a
vast majority of Americans to realize that
if the Republicans had just been willing to
provide the modicum of support that was
required, Obamacare with the public
option was always the best solution our
politics will allow.
Michael Wolf, South Windsor, Conn.
Buried in the middle of the article is
the plain statement by Elizabeth War-
ren: People want someone to ght for
them thats why they voted for Donald
Trump. He might not actually do it, but
he said he would ght for them.
Resisting Trump eectively would
mean ghting for voters, and being seen
to ght for them. Do we see that? No. We
see outrage and Hillary really won, but
not ghting for the voters.
Mark Thomason, Clawson, Mich.
RE: FIRST WORDS
John Herrman wrote about the proliferation
of the word weaponized, which makes it lack of popular
dicult to gure out what to actually fear.
Illustrations by Grotesk
Use whatever metaphor you want, but
at the end of the day, there is truth, par-
tial truth, misrepresentation of truth
and fabrications.
For a long time, American political dis-
course has been mostly partial truths and
some misrepresentations. Team Trump has
THE STORY,
moved the needle to the point at which fab-
ON TWITTER rications and misrepresentations are their
go-to strategies. A majority of Americans
Long, but worth
reading. Call it an
can tell the dierence and wont stand for it.
evolution story. B., San Antonio
@KcNightfire
When I heard Donald Trump make his
grab em by the pussy declaration, I
thought that would be the end of him.
Then I heard the softened language of
the newspeople: Donald Trump disre-
spects women!
Could Herrmans linguistic fog of
war go backward, making the initial wea-
ponization a conversation that, instead
of focusing on a man who used rhetoric
that might have incited violence, instead
turns into a criticism of violent rhetoric?
The news media took the weaponized
rhetoric Trump himself placed in the lap
of the Democrats and turned it into tod-
dler potty talk, instead of what it actually
was, thereby scrambling power in ways
that tend to favor the actually violent.
And that has made all the dierence.
Teddy Brown Harrison, Honolulu
CORRECTION:
An article on March 26 about Hawaii misstated
the location of Sea Life Park. It is 15 miles east
Lettering by James Victore
The problem not west of Waikiki on the Kalanianaole
the Democrats Highway. The article also incorrectly referred
face is not a to lava as magma. Once magma emerges from
the earth, it is properly called lava.
support. Send your thoughts to magazine@nytimes.com.
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How the news should sound.
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Hosted by Michael Barbaro.
This moment in history requires an explanation.
So weve created an audio show that seeks
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Michael Barbaro, The Daily delivers an
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First Words

On the internet, where information is power, were all at risk of getting owned exposed
as vulnerable, ignorant or worse. By Amanda Hess

Identity Theft
In the escalating rhetoric of public shaming, being embarrassed online
is tantamount to being wiped from the face of the earth. Whenever
a late-night host upbraids a public gure in a monologue or a pundit
bests another in a Twitter ght, onlookers crowd around to declare
the loser DESTROYED! or EVISCERATED! or ETHERED! or ANNIHILATED! But
alongside these symbols of destruction has risen another, more apt
metaphor for the dynamics of the modern media power play. In this
one, the defeated party wasnt killed, but possessed: They got OWNED.
When the white nationalist Richard Spencer approvingly posted a
song from Cabaret on Twitter in March, former Missouri Secretary
of State Jason Kander swooped in to say: Hey, buddy, that song you
love was written by my uncle. Hes been married to my other uncle for
40 years. And hes a Jew. A Twitter bystander waded into Spencers
mentions and observed: You get publicly owned with astonishing
frequency, its really wonderful. Ownage can be politically urgent
or purely irreverent. When the Slate editor Gabriel Roth complained
4.2.17 11
First Words

about Merriam-Webster Dictionarys

overly laid-back attitude toward changes
in usage I feel like @MerriamWebster
is turning into the chill parent who lets
your friends come over and get high, he
wrote on Twitter the account replied:
No one cares how you feel. Dozens piled
on to rub it in: You got owned by the
dictionary. On the internet, where rhe-
torical victories are so eeting, the phrase
is oddly satisfying: Its a passing but dra-
matic staking of argumentative ground.
Owned is borrowed from hacker
slang. If you got owned, that meant some
hacker jimmied the lock on a virtual back
door, snooped around your property and
ried through your stu. The word speaks
of a literal possession: annexing another
persons virtual space and stealing pri-
vate information. But you got owned
also animates a simple theft with a violent
spark. Owning someone isnt just about
taking his things; its about diminishing
him as a person. With enough specialized
technical knowledge, you can actually
seize control of another human being,
or at least the persons virtual presence.
Among hackers, ownage often works
as a form of community discipline. In the
early aughts, underground online zines
like Zero for Owned ZF0 for short
emerged as sites for hackers to detail how
they broke into the systems of prominent
security professionals and fellow hackers
to shame them for overstating their skills. fake news and political memes churned Owning as oblivious, uninformed or incompe-
We believe actions speak louder than out by Russian trolls lay bare the fact that tent works like a virtual Panopticon to
words, the rst issue of Zero for Owned our beliefs are controlled by the data we someone isnt keep people in a state of anxiety, keen to
announced. While you were talking trash, consume. Information silos make us vul- just about guard their own insecurities as they poke
we were sifting through your les, read- nerable to being owned not only because taking at other peoples aws.
ing your conversations, owning more of our ignorance the things we dont
boxes computers on your networks, know but also because of how little his things; For thinkers throughout history, own-
and you had no idea. The zines spread control we have over the things we do its about ing things was seen not just as useful and
around their targets website code and know. Were constantly open to expo- diminishing pleasant, but also as a source of human
personal communications as punishment. sure. The hacking and release of emails virtue. Aristotle argued that the meaner
By nding gaps in the technological skill of from Hillary Clintons campaign chair- him as sort of workman, by virtue of his lack
famous hackers, the creators of these zines man, John Podesta, and from the Demo- a person. of possessions, was too degraded to
justied the release of the private infor- cratic National Committee didnt reveal participate in politics and contribute to
mation the hackers had failed to protect. any bombshells, but they succeeded in society. Hegel thought that owning things
Now, as information security has scandalizing through the simple act of was a way for people to externalize their
become increasingly central to both making the private public. personal freedom. It is in possession rst
global politics and personal relation- Now President Trump tweets conspir- of all that the person becomes rational,
ships, owned has migrated from the atorially about leaks and wiretapping, he wrote in Philosophy of Right. And of
online underground to the mainstream. xated on the idea that his political rivals course there is the obvious strangeness in
There has never been a stronger relation- have acquired or released his secrets talking about people owning one anoth-
ship between who we are perceived to be and obsessed with the suggestion that he er online in a nation where, for a very
and what kind of information we have. is somehow an illegitimate president. The long time, people did own other people
Recent concerns over lter bubbles, threat of getting owned being revealed and where many of them argued that

12 4.2.17 Illustration by Derek Brahney

 this was an ennobling endeavor for every-
one involved. The antebellum statesman
John Calhoun defended owning slaves as
a positive good.
More recently, our celebration of
ownership has pointed inward. We speak
approvingly of coming into ones own or
being ones own person. To be self-pos-
sessed is to be condent and poised.
Ownage just turns that self-condence
back outward: Now we wield our supe-
rior knowledge and skills over our rivals.
In the hacking context, owning
someone is all about a display of supe-
rior technological abilities. When the
word migrated from hacking to gaming,
owned became a mantra for those who
had mastered the game play or bested
opponents. Now it extends to rhetorical
force a well-timed and withering joke
or an irrefutable debate line. After the
Saturday Night Live comedian Leslie
Jones was hacked her private photo-
graphs were stolen and spread across the
web Complex magazines Daniel Barna
said that she owned her hackers in an
S.N.L. monologue.
Ownage radiates power. Owned and
its derivative, pwned (pronounced any
number of ways, but mostly poned), are
bits of leetspeak leet as in elite. If
pidgin languages create a simplied slang
to foster cross-cultural communication,
leetspeak deliberately complicates the
root language, replacing letters with
numbers and symbols and swapping
characters. Its an ideal code for people
who believe their mastery of the inter-
net has raised them to a higher plane of
existence. Pwnage creates an in-group
and an out-group, and furthers the fetishi-
zation of specialized knowledge down to
the level of casual conversation.
The mainstreaming of owned has
always come with a bit of a wink, an
acknowledgment that those most eager
to lord their superior knowledge over
others often have the biggest blind
spots. That was the dynamic that fueled
the hacker zines, in which the owners
got owned. As the usage of owned
Illustration by Kyle Hilton
spread, it also was mixed with stereo-
types of hackers and gamers as being
socially awkward. That underlying par-
adox of the gamer persona fueled the
long-running web series Pure Pwnage,
which followed a kid named Jeremy who
was highly skilled at video games but a Owning budget was headlined Trumps Bud-
failure at real life. Now ownage commu- get Makes Perfect Sense and Will Fix
nicates dominance, but it also belies an
someone sets America, and I Will Tell You Why
underlying impotence. you up to be except the article was satirical. That was
All of this has set the stage for ownages owned yourself, a presidential self-own.
latest twist: the rise of the self-own. If an The most successful ownage nds
own exposes another persons ignorance, sometimes in hubristic targets, people who think they
a self-own reveals your own oblivious- the same breath. know more than they do. But ownage is
ness. During the campaign, Bobby Jindal itself a hubristic act it turns knowledge
tried to insult President Trump on Twit- into a tool for exploiting another per-
ter but ended up suggesting that only sons lack thereof. Owning someone sets
fools would donate to Jindals campaign: you up to be owned yourself, sometimes
We have met. You wrote a check. A fool in the same breath. The self-own and
& his money are soon parted. A fool & a related concept, You played yourself,
his dads money are parted sooner. Jin- the refrain of the motivational Snapchat
dal owned himself. Recently Trumps user DJ Khaled is a double entendre.
White House communications team In the self-own, you let yourself down by
circulated a attering Washington Post being so nakedly yourself. You fail, in the
article about how great the presidents end, by being you.
New Sentences By Sam Anderson
Youre so quiet youre In a poem about the agonies
of love, Ocean Vuong gives us a setup
almost tomorrow. that, in another context, could easily
tee up a joke: Youre so quiet. There
Ocean Vuong, Into the Breach, are infinite possible payoffs. Youre
from Night Sky With Exit Wounds so quiet you should wear white gloves
and live in an invisible box downtown.
Youre so quiet even SETI gave up
monitoring you. Youre so quiet youre
like Beethovens 10th.
But Vuong is obsessed with
displacement. His family immigrated
to the United States from Vietnam
when he was a toddler, and his poetry
tends to map the way that lines
between points (life and death, here
and there, father and mother, gay and
straight) are rarely direct.
This is one of stand-up comedys So Vuongs sentence itself is
purest structures: X is so Y its Z displaced. It makes a quick sideways
in which Y is an adjective (fat, lazy, motion: Y and Z stretch into different
tall, poor) and Z is some extreme dimensions. He sets up with sound
consequence of that adjective. Rodney (quiet) and pays off with time
Dangerfield worked the form the way (tomorrow). This has its own comedy,
Shakespeare worked sonnets. We a comedy of mismatching, and in
were so poor, in my neighborhood the that disjunction, something profound
rainbow was in black and white. happens. The readers mind does
The joke is a little logic game: How a little exploratory somersault in the
far can Z stretch the implications space between Y and Z. How,
of Y without snapping the connection? exactly, is tomorrow quiet? Because
Poetry, like jokes, often builds its not here yet? Does that mean
itself out of logic games. But of course yesterday is noisy? And what sound
it plays them differently. does today make?
The New York Times Magazine 13
On Sports By Jay Caspian Kang

In 1857, 14 baseball clubs met at Smiths

Baseball is irting with new rules. Hotel on Broome Street in Manhattan to
draft a new set of rules and regulations. In

But if it really wants to embrace an eort to make the game more manly
and scientic, members of the Knicker-
bocker Club, New Yorks most inuential
change and speed things team, proposed that the ball must weigh
not less than 6 nor more than 6 ounces

up it should look to its ancient, avoirdupois and that no person shall be

permitted to approach or to speak with
the referee, umpires or players, or in any
woolier past. manner to interrupt or interfere during
the progress of the game. Most signi-
cant was the rule that changed the terms
of victory. The winner was no longer the
rst team to score 21 runs, but the one
that accrued the most runs after the end
of nine innings. The reasoning behind the
change was simple and logical: Fielding,
which had been a stone-handed disas-
ter during baseballs earliest days, had
improved rapidly, making it hard for any
one team to reach 21 before the sun went
down. The modern nine-inning game was
one of the rst ocial attempts to make
baseball games go faster.
It may be time for another get-together
at Smiths Hotel. Baseball will always
have its staunch traditionalists, but
their usual grouchy reasons for resist-
ing change the sanctity of the record
books; the games intergenerational
history; the fact that Cubs and Red Sox
fans wanted their teams to win a World
Series played by roughly the same rules
as when they last won championships,
in the early 1900s have all evaporated
over the past two decades. In 2017, its
hard to know what hallowed numbers
like 61, 300, 714 or 755 (or idioms like
the Curse of the Bambino) mean, and
while some records might still matter
Joe DiMaggios 56-game hitting streak,
possibly the chatter generated by a
great hitter approaching his 500th home
run or 3,000th hit has become muted.
Photograph of Joe DiMaggio: Bettmann/Getty Images

Baseball hasnt quite gured out what

will replace those conversations, but
while their absence certainly strains
the bonds connecting fans across gen-
erations, the game has never been freer
from the sorts of tired pieties that hold
progress at bay. It cant be a coincidence
that in the two years since Rob Manfred
succeeded Bud Selig to become base-
balls 10th commissioner, bringing with
him various new rules for all levels of the
game, knee-jerk resistance to change
seems to have softened a little. That isnt

14 4.2.17 Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro Next Week: On Technology, by Jenna Wortham
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uncertain waters of
the migrant crisis.
Witness firsthand the efforts of the Bourbon Argos as it
conducts the last of 59 African migrant rescue missions in
the Mediterranean in 2016.

The New York Times is using Samsung Gear 360 cameras to

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On Sports
to say that baseball needs to change;
by many measures, whether TV deals,
quality of postseason play or revenue,
the sport is exceedingly healthy. But if
baseball wants to evolve in the same
way that basketball did by adding the
shot clock and the 3-point line, theres
no time quite like the present.
The proposals coming from Man-
freds oce range from the confusing (a
batter being walked intentionally goes
straight to rst base instead of waiting
for four pitches outside the strike zone)
to the reasonable (a cap on the number
of trips a manager or coach can make
to the mound) to the laughable (limits
on the use of relief pitchers). But other
than a couple of radical suggestions,
like starting extra innings with a runner
on second base, Manfred is really only
putting forward incremental changes.
16 4.2.17
The one controversial rule that will go
into eect in the major leagues this year,
making the intentional walk immediate,
would probably shave only 15 seconds or
so o every third game.
Major League Baseball will always
be the main reason that Major League
Baseball cannot embrace change. The
modern rules of the game took shape
by 1903, once the foul-strike rule nally
went into eect in the American League;
before that, skilled batters could foul
o pitches endlessly without any reper-
cussions. But competition among dif-
fering versions of the sport continued
until 1915, when the struggling Federal
League sued the American and National
Leagues under monopoly laws, leading
to a series of appeals that ended in 1922,
when the Supreme Court validated base-
balls antitrust exemption and allowed
Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro
the National and American Leagues to
operate as a monopoly.
Without competition, those leagues
Photograph of Chris Sale: Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire, via Getty Images
brand of baseball became the sclerotic
and self-important product played today.
Even the designated hitter according to
popular lore, the brainchild of Charlie O.
Finley, the quirky and forward-thinking
owner of the Oakland As in the 1970s
had been debated since 1891, when Wil-
liam Chase Temple, the president of the
Pittsburgh Pirates, brought it up for a vote
before the 1892 season.
In those bygone days, competition
among leagues fostered change, espe-
cially when it came to the interminable
length of games. Baseballs antitrust
exemption has certainly ensured its
nancial health, but at the expense of
Jay Caspian Kang
is a writer at large for enabling variations of the game to push
the magazine. it in new directions.
 The N.F.L. has always felt free to
cherry-pick elements from upstart com-
petitors, like the A.F.L., the XFL, Canadi-
an football or arena football. Professional
basketball evolved through barnstorming
teams, the rivalry between the A.B.A. and
the N.B.A. and the growth of international
basketball, with its modied rules. Had
it aged in the same manner as baseball,
there would be no 3-point line stis
would be laying it up in the paint over
and over again or annual dunk con-
test. Modern baseball has had almost
none of that sort of diversity to borrow
from: Japan, Korea, Latin America and the
minor leagues all play essentially the same
game. And while theres no reason for the
sport to change just for changes sake,
theres also no need to cut o any possi-
ble progress by hiding behind an antitrust
exemption that has long since outlived
its usefulness. Let 100 half-cooked, weird
baseball leagues bloom.
Consider that the 1857 gathering at
Smiths took place during baseballs rst
culture war, one that pitted, predictably
enough, Massachusetts against New York.
Men in both regions women would
start their own clubs less than a couple
of decades later played a game called
base ball that involved a thrown ball, a
bat and bases, but the rules varied wildly
and changed constantly. The Massachu-
setts game featured one-out innings and
overhand pitching, and batters could be
called out by being hit by a thrown ball
while between bases. Typically, the rst
team to score 100 runs won. The New
York game was a bit more genteel and
pragmatic: Games were played to 21, not
100; pitchers had to throw underhand; no
players had balls intentionally thrown at
them; and games concluded before dark.
The debates over which version was
better centered on manliness, decorum
and the pace of play. The Massachusetts
crowd argued that it was manlier for outs
to require some measure of physical pain,
while the New Yorkers said that manliness
could never be extricated from gentle-
manly manners and that only savages ran
around elds pegging balls at one another.
The historians who study baseballs
early days have been unable to gure out
why the New York version triumphed
John Thorn, the ocial historian of Major
League Baseball, attributes it in part to an
extended lobbying campaign that asked
men if they truly wanted to be savages
Baseball throwing balls at one another but as the and turning and circling back, and its
professional leagues consolidated over hard to see where one thing begins and
isnt linear the next 20 or so years, the original rules one ends. The history of the game pro-
its more of the Knickerbocker Club were adjusted: ceeded through intelligence, but also
an evolutionary Hits caught on one bounce were no lon- through inadvertence.
ger considered outs; the number of balls Its not clear that early baseballs pio-
bramble bush it took to be awarded a walk went from neers picked the right version of base ball.
where you have nine to four; pitches hit out of the park In his duties as ocial historian, Thorn has
twisting and went from fouls to home runs. played in re-enactments of both the old
The 19th century provided a lot of New York game and the old Massachu-
turning and experimentation, Thorn told me. Base- setts game. To be completely honest, he
circling back. ball isnt linear its more an evolutionary said, a bit resignedly, the Massachusetts
bramble bush where you have twisting game was a lot more fun.
Poem Selected by Matthew Zapruder
This poem is one section of a long sequence, The Baudelaire Variations, named after
the 19th-century French Symbolist poet who famously wrote: You must always be drunk.
. . . But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk. Simonds seems to
have taken his advice, becoming drunk on her capacity to make poetry through metaphor.
Drunk as well on a temporary freedom from domestic responsibility, she addresses
throughout the long poem a companion of indeterminate gender, Felix, whose name in
Latin means happy. The whole sequence becomes a gleeful, antic, tragic allegory for our
distance from the boxed wine paradise of our dreams.
8. I Love Wine!
By Sandra Simonds
Today, omg, Im just so spaced out and splendid
as I walk this earth without death, without an apron,
without being a wife and so my queer heart transforms into the nostrils of a
winter
workhorse whose exhalation breaks through the iced tulip sky.
Why does everyone want to torture me?
All people care about are calendars, clocks, wallets
to cut o and time the esh; Well, I cant take it!
So here ich bin, unbalanced and delirious, here je suis,
tapping into some long forgotten intelligence
Oh Felix, lets go to the Oregon coast
and relax inside the boxed wine paradise of our dreams.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of four poetry collections and Why Poetry, coming from Ecco.
He teaches poetry at Saint Marys College of California and is editor at large at Wave Books. Sandra Simonds
in the author of ve books of poetry, including Further Problems with Pleasure, published in February by the
University of Akron Press.
Illustration by R. O. Blechman 17
The Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah
My Friend Is
Bankrupting
Herself. Should
I Speak Up?
Ive been friends with Cindy for 15
years. Shes in her early 60s and never
married. Because of job stress, she took
early retirement and lives on a reduced
pension. Despite not having a lot
of money, she is generous, spoiling
her family and friends with gifts.
Two years ago she became romantically
involved with a man, Sean, who was
bankrupt and homeless. He started staying
with her right after they met. Cindy
reveled in having a lover for the rst
time in 30 years. Sean helped her
lose weight and exercise. However, he
is a complete loser in my view: Not
only does he rely on her for his cash,
transportation and cellphone needs, but
he is also habitually drunk by 4 p.m.
More than a year ago Cindy started
using what credit she has to start a
business with Sean from scratch. She is
spending thousands on manufacturing,
shipping and storage and long hours
hawking and doing administrative
work. Theres no indication that they
are making any prot; she admitted this
and said she would give it one year, but
she is now saying two. Cindys life is
endless work and nancial outlay the
conditions are worse than what made
her want to take early retirement.
To submit a query: I spoke to a mutual friend about my
Send an email to fears for Cindys nancial future.
ethicist@nytimes She agreed that Cindy might go bankrupt
.com; or send mail
to The Ethicist, but pointed out that Cindy does have
The New York Times a mortgage-free home. So Ive remained
Magazine, 620 silent. Recently I found out Cindy was
Eighth Avenue, New
recovering from a minor stroke. Her fridge
York, N.Y. 10018.
(Include a daytime was almost empty, and I could see
phone number.) the bloom had worn o the relationship
18 4.2.17 Illustration by Tomi Um
with Sean. While he chided her about to let you talk to her about a situation that
her eating habits, she complained of his
constant drinking.
When he moved in with her, she seemed
is probably a source of shame. If you real-
ly think that hes just taking advantage of
her, though, the time to speak up is now.
cautious; she talked about how in the
province of our country there is a legal
Its what friends do.
entitlement to spousal support after
cohabitation for three years. As this date
approaches, I am racked by the belief that
Many years ago, a dear friend of mine
told me she engaged in behavior I consider
abusive. She was a high school teacher. She
I must do something to help her break free.
I thought of contacting her siblings, with
whom I have no relationship, to see if they
would consider some sort of intervention,
got drunk and took pills with two recent
graduates (both 18) and then engaged in a
cutting ritual with one of them. They spent
the night in bed cuddling to comfort
but should I mind my own business? each other over the cuts theyd inicted. She
found it a very arousing experience. I
Name Withheld reacted strongly, told her she could go to
jail, that she had to quit her job, that she
This is a sad story, and in its outlines, could no longer be a teacher. She kept
alas, not an unfamiliar one. Given that insisting it was O.K.: The girl was 18, and
Cindy is a mentally competent adult and it was consensual. I had a moral impulse to
a friend of yours, though, the obvious tell her principal, but in my loyalty to her,
person to talk to is not a sibling of hers I did not. Nothing happened. She kept her
but Cindy herself. I dont mean that it job and never expressed much regret. Her
would necessarily be wrong to express lack of responsibility infuriated me, and
your concern to a member of her family. our friendship zzled. I was left with the
But to do so without rst talking to her moral discomfort of failing to report her.
would be disrespectful. If she insists that Recently, she wrote to me because she is
you not talk to her family, you should suering from a degenerative disease and
take her wishes seriously. wants to make amends in case anything
The modern ideal of autonomy means happens. She also says she has dissociative
that we think each person should be in identity disorder, which I am not surprised
charge of her own life. But this doesnt by. She mentions a few things that
mean that friends and family should happened between us that she regrets, but
avoid stepping in: Advice given out of nothing about the cutting incident. I
love and concern for us is no aront to forgive her for all these other things; there
our autonomy if it helps us think through are things I could ask her for forgiveness
our situation more rationally. for, too. The one thing I cant get past is her
All that granted, its hard to intervene taking no responsibility for abusing
in cases like this. Youre asking someone her student. My question is: Is it ethical
Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman
Olivia writes: I leave a jar of peanut butter at my office and
often eat a spoonful (or several) when I am too lazy to pack
lunch. My fianc badgers me, saying that it is not sufficient
in nutrients or volume. I eat a well-rounded diet otherwise.
Please order him to stop making fun of my lunch choices.
Your fianc is being very kind to throw nutrition-themed
shade at you for a practice that is, simply, gross. Do you
think your judge has not eaten peanut butter straight from
Illustration by Kyle Hilton
the jar with a spoon? Of course I have, but only alone, my
shame cloaked by night, after cocktails. It is one of the most
delicious transgressions in the world, but not something
your co-workers need to see. And because youre keeping
your stash at the office, I guarantee your jar has long
ago been breached by other tongues. Buy some crackers.
for me to bring it up? She is sick, and
now ocially mentally ill. She may have
suppressed the memory. Could bringing
it up be a dangerous trigger? Is it ethical
to confront a mentally ill person about
an abuse she committed years ago when
the abuse had nothing to do with you?

Name Withheld

I agree that your friends behavior sounds

worrisome. But I dont see that it was
wrong merely because the other party had
been a student of hers. Once a student is
an ex-student, and outside the relation-
ship of trust that exists between teachers
and students, sexual or semi-sexual acts
like these are the business of the partic-
ipants provided there is full consent.
When pills and alcohol are involved,
consent can be hard to establish. And
of course, in all relationships, there can
be forms of power that it is abusive to
exploit. If any of that was the case here,
what happened was wrong. Was it ille-
gal? When it comes to state intervention,
the critical questions are: Was one of
the parties in a position of authority or
trust over the other? and Was there
genuine consent?
If your reaction was based on con-
siderations about consent or abuse of
power (and not just on the weirdness
of what went on), you were right to be
critical. But your comments suggest
that these considerations arent all that
moved you. You wish you had done more
at the time; youre angry that she doesnt
acknowledge the episode that so dam-
aged your relationship. Thats why you
want an opportunity to set her straight
about what happened.
I have no idea whether, in her current
mental condition, she remembers what
happened or is capable of responding rea-
sonably to your discussing it. What mat-
ters, though, isnt whether shes mentally
ill. Its whether she can understand the
issues you want to raise with her, as well as
the issues she herself has raised. If she can
understand and isnt too distressed by
it you should feel free to tell her whats
weighing so heavily on your mind. But
rst, I think, you should try to get clear
about why it weighs so much.

Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy

at N.Y.U. He is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.
Letter of Recommendation
Life Magazine
By Paul Theroux
Life magazine was like life itself for me
for about 12 years of my early youth, until
we stopped renewing our subscription. I
remember the images of the Korean War,
the movie Cleopatra, the funeral of Wil-
liam Faulkner (reported by William Sty-
ron), the space program and the Vietnam
War. Lifes photographs were brave and
brilliant, capturing the human moment.
Reading Life in a bungalow in Medford,
Mass., I beheld a world that was remote
and alluring, places I would never see,
parties I would never attend, millionaires
20 4.2.17
and up-and-comers I would never know.
It was how the mass of people lived,
vicariously, following the fortunes of
famous names in magazines; how they
still live, overlooked, grinding away, not encounter with a
celebrated, not up-and-coming.
Thirty years passed, in the course of
which I published 30 books. Eventual-
ly, I fetched up in Hawaii, a place I rst
saw in Life hula girls, luaus, volcanoes,
big surf. I had paddled a kayak for years,
and the folding kayak I owned was one I
rst saw in a cover story in Life magazine
Photograph by William Mebane
A youthful love of in 1957, the Klepper kayak paddled by
Life magazine led
Hannes Lindemann in his epic ocean
the writer to a life
of travel and voyage. That issue also contained an
to an unexpected article about racial strife in the Deep
South. All I knew about segregation
fellow adventurer.
then I learned in Life. When I was a boy,
most of what I knew of other cultures,
of celebrity, of literature, of politics and
war, I discovered in the intensity of Lifes
stories and photographs. In many ways,
its witness and authority pushed through
the letter slot vitalized me for the life of
travel I was about to live.
 In Hawaii, some fellow paddlers said
I should meet Gardner McKay a pad-
dler and also a writer. The word got to
Gardner. He invited me for a drink in
Honolulu, at a bar on Makaloa Street.
He was way over six feet tall, handsome,
deeply tanned, 10 years older than I, with
a paddlers broad shoulders. Like me, he
wore an aloha shirt, a pair of shorts and
the ip-ops known in Hawaii as slip-
pers. Because of the street name, we
talked about Jack Londons tale On the
Makaloa Mat. We groused a little about
Hawaii the trac, the crowds as
local haoles do.
He drank the last of his beer and said:
So how about dinner? Come home with
me. My wifes a gourmet chef.
I gured we were just having a drink.
He laughed he had a great boom-
ing actors laugh and said: Yeah. I
thought, if you turned out to be a pain,
it would be just a drink. But you seem
O.K. Hey, come on. Dinner.
So this was a sort of interview, and he
was gauche enough to crow about it. I
found this annoying: being tested, then
told I was being tested, nally told I
passed the test.
I said, Ive got other plans.
I never went paddling with him. Even-
tually, he sent me his rst novel, Toyer,
with a note: Let me know what you think,
even if you hate it. I didnt hate it, but it was
not to my taste. It was about a psycho who
toys sadistically with his victims. Instead
of telling him that I was not entertained
by sadism against women, I encouraged
him to write another book, because clear-
ly he had a gift.
I did not see Gardner again, though
I heard from him, always a note in his
bold penmanship, often complimenting
me on something I had written. That he
was a passionate reader gave us a com-
mon language, but it remained episto-
lary. In a later message, Gardner said he
was ill. My paddler friends elaborated:
prostate cancer. In 2001, he died. His
wife asked me to speak at his memorial
service. Though I had hardly known him,
I agreed, because I had not oered him
the hand of friendship when he was alive.
The service in a large theater in Hono-
lulu was well attended. In the Hawaiian
tradition, everyone wore colorful clothes
and were garlanded with leis.
The grieving eulogists lled in Gard-
ners biography, and it was there at his
Cover lines from memorial service that I got to know
Life magazine in
him. He was praised as a yacht skipper,
the 1950s:
a drama critic, a sculptor, a professional
Astronauts Wives:
photographer, an actor. I remembered
Their Inner
Thoughts, Worries; him as the man patronizing me in the bar
Sept. 21, 1959. on Makaloa Street, but now I saw that he
Blouses Under $5; had lived a full life. When my turn came,
April 24, 1950. I extolled him as a writer and a paddler
Teen-Age Dope; and mentioned how I gathered from the
June 11, 1951. previous speakers that he seemed a gold-
There Is a Case en boy. I summoned the Robert Frost
for Interplanetary poem Nothing Gold Can Stay from my
Saucers; memory and recited it.
April 7, 1952.
Leaving the hall, I passed through
Step by Step to the the foyer, where an easel was propped
Top of Everest With
Hillary and Tenzing;
with many photographs of Gardner
July 13, 1953. pinned to it, and on a table, surround-
ed by orchid blossoms, a copy of Life
magazine: Gardner McKay on the cover,
handsome in a white knit sweater.
Tip By Malia Wollan
How to Run for
Local Office
Never miss the ham breakfast or the chili
supper, says Nicole Galloway, the state
auditor of Missouri, a position she was
appointed to after serving as treasurer
of Boone County. Months before you le
your candidacy with the local elections
oce, get out and meet as many voters,
elected ocials and party representatives
as you can. Tell them about your vision,
but dont just talk at them. Spend a lot of
time listening, Galloway says.
Ninety percent of the 500,000 or so
elected oces in the United States are
held by white people, and men occupy
71 percent of those seats. If you dont
see someone who looks like you on your
school board or City Council, it does not
mean that you dont belong there or that
Illustration by Radio
Above his portrait: How About Him,
Girls? The New Challenger for Ameri-
can Good Looks.
I did not need to open the magazine
to know what was in it, the story of a ris-
ing star in Hollywood, a yachtsman and a
traveler. Seeing that copy of Life, I vividly
recalled poring over that article, miser-
ably, in the summer of 1959, having just
graduated from Medford High School
with only the gloomiest prospects.
I remembered it all, because the New
Challenger was one of the stories in
Life that made me feel overlooked and
unregarded, with an uncertain future.
I often thought of this handsome man
on the Life cover, whose name I had for-
gotten, and wondered what happened
to someone of such promise, someone
I had envied.
you cannot win. Be bold, says Galloway,
who at 34 is the youngest woman ever
to serve in statewide oce in Missouri.
Instead of asking yourself, Can I do this?
ask, Why not?
When deciding what seat to run for, be
guided by your passion and skill set, but
be calculating too. It is usually easier, and
cheaper, to win an open seat than to chal-
lenge an incumbent. Even in a small town,
running for oce costs money. Find out
through your secretary of states website
or from your county clerk how much the
last person elected spent. Figure out how
much things like yard signs and stickers
cost, and put together a budget. Ask for
money. Even a $5 donation is an invest-
ment in you and your ideas. Before raising
a dime, look up your states campaign-
nance laws and follow them carefully.
You will need to speak in public and
should do so at every opportunity. Still,
extroversion is not a requirement. Shy
people can run for oce, too, Galloway
says. Rehearse a speech until you can stand
up and say something articulate, maybe
even inspiring, at a moments notice.
Research your opponents, but dwell more
on your own message. Dont be intimidat-
ed by journalists; think of them as conduits
to your constituency. You might be consid-
ering elected oce because you are angry
with those in power. Indignation can be
a motivator to run but not to govern. If
you win, Galloway says, youll need more
than anger to keep you going.
21
Eat By Sam Sifton

Larger Than Life

Jim Harrisons appetite was legendary. His stew ought to be, too.

22 4.2.17 Photograph by Gentl and Hyers Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Wilson.
You tamper I was staying in a square cinder-block
house on a dirt road outside the Lovely
with my recipes Bay settlement on Acklins Island in the
at your peril. southern Bahamas. This was a number of
years ago, a shing trip, long days spent
out on the ats of the Bight of Acklins
with a local guide named Fidel Johnson.
Each night we returned to eat ery stews
prepared by his sister, Doramae John-
son. They were bright crimson aairs,
perhaps familiar to those who have
spent time eating in the islands of the
Bahamas and Lesser Antilles. Doramae
ginned them up from canned goods
and fresh conchs, lobster, sometimes
chicken or pork shipped in from Nas-
sau, and served them on a small table in
her brothers kitchen. They were bewil-
deringly delicious. I begged her for a
recipe. She only smiled. I tried to come
o the water early to cook with her. She
was onto me. The stew was nished, left
warm in the oven, and she was gone, her
secrets kept.
The writer Jim Harrison, who died
last year at 78, did not to my knowledge
ever eat or cook with Doramae. In 1981,
when he published a recipe for what he
called Caribbean stew in the literary
magazine Smoke Signals, she was only
a child. But when I came across that
recipe in Harrisons new posthumous
collection of food writing, A Really Big
Lunch, published last month, it sent me
directly back to that kitchen on Acklins,
to the aromas and avors of the place,
and to the deep satisfaction I had eating
there, night after night.
It was not easy cooking, at rst, to
make it right. In Smoke Signals, Harri-
son shared pages with Terry Southern,
Charles Bukowski and Patti Smith. His
job was to be ribald and wild. Hed get
to the recipe eventually. In his essay
Eat Your Heart Out, he rst outlined might only have conch, or a tray of fro-
a fantasy about Meryl Streep (Then I
slipped on my fty-dollar Key West pig
mask and stalked her pealing laughter
through the penthouse etc.) and deliv-
ered the address, in Ann Arbor, Mich.,
of a woman who made a hot sauce he
admired (Clancys Fancy, still around).
And, a point of order: No one is
allowed to use cocaine before the meal
when I cook, he wrote. Afterward, quences. Spoon o the excess when
O.K. Cocaine creates a sort of bubble-
gum nimbus that slaughters the palate
and sensuous capacities, in addition to
Comment: nytimes.com/magazine
shrinking the wee-wee and tearing holes
in the social fabric. As for the recipe,
he wrote: Do not change or substitute!
Above my desk hang a crow wing and
a pink rubber piglet with a green drake
trout y stuck in its ass, and a coyote
tooth in its mouth. Ive written a new
novel called Warlock. You tamper with
my recipes at your peril.
I had to, though! The recipe didnt real-
ly work. Ingredients were missing. (Add
onions. What onions?) Or they were cra-
zily specic not just that Clancys Fancy,
but tablespoons of basil vinegar from a
particular shop in Paris. (Harrison liked
his specialty groceries.) Fiddling was
needed. Adjustments were made.
I believe that Harrison would be all
right with that. Cooking is in the details
and is not for those who think they must
spend all of their time thinking large, he
wrote in a 2011 essay for Playboy, which
is also in the collection. This morning I
burned my Jimmy Dean hot-pepper sau-
sage patty because I was on the phone
speaking with a friend about another
friends cancer. Yesterday morning I
ruined a quesadilla by adding too much
salsa because I was busy revising a poem.
So yes, Ive made some revisions
myself. What hasnt changed, though,
is the sheer exuberance of the resulting
stew, and the base-line excellence of
the avors within it onions and garlic
sauted in chicken and pork fat, then
caramelized with a full can of tomato
paste and the scorching sweetness of
hot-pepper sauce, the whole lot mixed
with lemon juice and Worcestershire,
chile powder and paprika, then poured
over the meats and baked covered in the
oven until it is fragrant beyond measure
and easily spooned over rice.
The meats, plural. In the islands you
zen chicken purchased in town at an
exorbitant price. For Harrison, though,
youll buy out the butcher for ribs, Italian
sausages, chicken thighs. These oer a
delightful variety of textures and avors
in the pot.
Also, it must be said, more than a lit-
tle fat, for Harrison cooked as he lived,
largely and with little heed for conse-
in the case of the chicken and the ribs, pulling
youre done cooking, he advised, or suck
it o with a straw. Vintage Harrison: Eat
your heart out.
Jim Harrisons Caribbean Stew
Time: 2 hours
1 pounds pork spareribs, cut into single ribs
2 tablespoons neutral oil, like canola
or grapeseed
4 chicken thighs, bone-in and skin-on
Kosher salt and freshly ground black
pepper, to taste
4 Italian sausages, hot or sweet
1 large yellow onion, peeled and sliced
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
cup tomato paste
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon red-wine
vinegar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons hot-pepper sauce, ideally
one made with Scotch bonnet peppers,
or to taste
1 cup chicken stock, homemade or
low-sodium
teaspoon white sugar
4 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoons chile powder
1 teaspoons paprika
1. Place spareribs in a pot, and cover with
water. Place pot over high heat, and bring
to a boil. Lower heat slightly, and cook,
covered, for 15 or 20 minutes, then remove
ribs to a large bowl and discard the water.
2. While the ribs cook, pour the oil into
a Dutch oven set over high heat, and swirl
it around. Season the chicken thighs with
salt and pepper, and when the oil begins
to shimmer and is about to smoke, add them
to the pan, skin-side down. Brown the chicken
aggressively, about 5 to 7 minutes per side,
then add the chicken to the bowl with the ribs.
Repeat with the sausages, browning them on
all sides for approximately 5 to 7 minutes, then
add to the bowl with the chicken and the ribs.
Cook the onions and garlic in the fat remaining
in the Dutch oven, stirring occasionally until
they soften and begin to brown, approximately
5 to 7 minutes.
3. Heat oven to 300. Add the tomato paste,
vinegar, lemon juice, hot-pepper sauce,
chicken stock, sugar, Worcestershire sauce,
chile powder and paprika to the onions and
garlic in the Dutch oven, then stir to combine,
and allow to cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the
meats to the Dutch oven, stirring and tossing
them so that they are well covered with the
sauce, then cover the pot, and place in the
oven to cook, undisturbed, for approximately
90 minutes, or until the meats are tender and,
from the bone.
Serves 4-6.
23
 Maajid Nawaz believes his past
as an Islamist can help him combat
extremism in Europe today.
If only everyone didnt hate him.

By Thomas Chatterton Williams

Photograph by Sian Davey
Credit by Name Surname The New York Times Magazine 25
 on a drizzly afternoon in religion and political dogma; in his book, Islam and the Future of Toler-
M E T M A A J I D N AWA Z
March, tucked in a corner of the restaurant at ance (co-written with the prominent new atheist Sam Harris), insisting
the central London members club he uses as that Islamism does have something to do with Islam and that ISIS in fact
a satellite oce. He was dabbing the chicken possesses a plausible if terribly ungenerous interpretation of the Quran. But
from his Caesar salad into a mound of yellow whatever role Nawaz enjoys as a public intellectual is inextricable from his
English mustard, which he stopped doing for personal celebrity as a former fundamentalist. His work is his story, and his
long enough to load a video on his iPhone and story is his celebrity. In order to make his case against radicalism, he nds
slide it across the table. It showed the Southern himself in the not entirely enviable position of nonstop self-promotion.
Poverty Law Centers Heidi Beirich, speaking at On this front, hes as busy as ever. He is nishing a documentary based
Duke University about him. Let me just give on his book with Harris, but foremost on Nawazs mind these days is the
you an example of Maajid Nawaz our prob- 2017 opening of the rst new chapter of his anti-extremist organization, the
lem with him, she says. He believes that all Quilliam Foundation, in the United States. Lots of Muslims in America are
mosques should be surveilled. In other words, basically liberals, but if you dont have a visibly anti-extremist presence,
his opinion is that all Muslims are potential ter- then the Trumps of this world win through fear-mongering and misrepre-
rorists. Nawaz, a Muslim himself, bristled with sentation, he says. Our presence is needed in America to reassure the main-
frustration at the claim. In fact, he explained, he is on record making the stream, whereas our presence is needed in Europe to stop radicalization.
case against collective surveillance. Despite such deliberate armations
A former Islamist, for the past nine and qualications, there is nonetheless
years Nawaz has made a name for himself confusion as to where Nawazs sympathies
as an indefatigable anti-extremist activist. actually lie. According to Vice News, he
These days he blends seamlessly into the has earned a terrorism designation on
sort of cosmopolitan circles that extrem- Thomson Reuters World-Check, a risk-as-
ists decry; at his club, dressed in an olive sessment database. (Thomson Reuters
bomber jacket over tted workout sweats, would not conrm this.) But, last October,
he could have been a senior marketing exec the Southern Poverty Law Center took the
or a music-video director. At 39, Nawaz is incredible step of including him on a Field
handsome and vaguely famous looking in Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, which
person, prematurely silver-haired, with a they published with three other research
widows peak and Mephistophelean soul- organizations. The guide listed 15 public
patch that punctuates a politicians easy gures, and Nawaz was the only Muslim
smile. Whenever I saw him, he dapped among them. (This is why Beirich brought
me with one of those handclasp-half-hugs him up at Duke.) He was visibly furious
that, to anyone of a certain age, serves as whenever the topic came up and told me
shorthand for an adolescence steeped in he plans to crowdfund a legal response.
the manners of hip-hop. Though he and his allies, and even some
For Nawazs detractors, of whom there of his opponents, have complained to the
are many, its this very chameleon quality, S.P.L.C. there is a change.org petition to
this at-homeness in disparate roles and remove him and the Somali-born atheist
spaces, that has earned him a reputation Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which has garnered almost
as something of a charlatan, a preening 12,000 signatures the group has not
opportunist cashing in on his own sen- wavered on its position, the costs of which
sational travails by means of societys have already been real for Quilliam. Nawaz
abundant anti-Muslim bias. This unchar- claims that the listing has compromised
itable narrative has shadowed him from some funding for the organization. I con-
the outset, yet his point of view has only From left: Imran Amed, Freida Pinto and Maajid Nawaz sider myself a liberal and wanted to work
grown more relevant after an exceptionally attend a dinner in December in Oxfordshire, England. with liberals, he said, shaking his head.
Opening pages: Nawaz near Russell Square in London.
violent 2016 that saw coordinated suicide In reality, his views on Islamic extrem-
bombings in Brussels and Istanbul; mass ism are more complex than these labels
shootings in San Bernardino and Orlando; the ambush and execution of a allow, which is, arguably, one of the more compelling reasons to listen to
police ocer and his partner near Paris; a Bastille Day slaughter in Nice; ax him on the subject.
Photograph by Samir Hussein/Getty Images

and suicide bomb attacks in Bavaria; the throat slitting of a Catholic priest
in a church in Normandy; pressure-cooker bombs in Manhattan and New
Jersey; and a massacre at a Christmas market in Berlin. And on March 22
this year in London, a man mowed down pedestrians with his car near
Parliament before stabbing a police constable to death. E A R LY I N N AWA Z S 2012 memoir, Radical: My Journey Out of Islamist
With each grisly new assault and the specter of Syria and the Islamic Extremism, theres an eyebrow-raising scene. The narrator, an irreligious,
State looming beyond it the voices of hatred and reaction in the United N.W.A.-loving child, has resorted to strapping a knife under his shirt for fear
States and throughout Britain and Europe found not only sympathetic ears of the gangs of skinheads that stalk his Essex suburb, Southend. He is 15,
but also willing hands to pull levers in the voting booths. Throughout the and on this afternoon, he is with his older brother, Kaashif (identied by a
upheaval and backlash, Nawaz has remained a constant presence in the pseudonym in the book), and a friend who has converted to Islam. Neigh-
media: on Real Time With Bill Maher, trying to draw a distinction between borhood racists have chased the boys with baseball bats and now have them

26 4.2.17
 cornered and outnumbered. The skinheads leader steps forward and asks until the latter eventually conceded defeat. Nawaz writes, I felt that I had
to talk. Kaashif gestures to the side of the road, where he and the skinhead saved many future lives.
fall into a tense and private discussion. When the two return, the skinheads In 2004, Amnesty International adopted Nawaz as a prisoner of con-
begin to retreat. Incredulous, Maajid demands to know what his brother has science and secured his return to London two years later. His was not an
told them. Kaashif says he told the skinhead, Were Muslims, and we dont overnight epiphany, but within two more years, he had graduated from
fear death and, furthermore, that he was carrying a bomb in his backpack. the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London,
The anecdote, which surfaces repeatedly in Radical and ultimately renounced Islamism and H.T. and publicly reinvented himself as an advocate
swells to the dimensions of a creation myth, is quintessential Nawaz. On for liberal democracy: a media-savvy expert on preventing radicalization.
one hand, its a distillation of his larger rhetorical project, capturing the His enemies, a long list made up of family members, ex-friends and former
confused and painful textures of contemporary Muslim experience that can H.T. associates, have publicly questioned his conversion narrative. Ian Nis-
lead to the embrace of Islamism: an initial lack of familiarity with religion; bet, a white convert to Islam who was jailed with Nawaz in Egypt, told a
local grievance spun into a narrative of global victimization; a tribal relation reporter from Alternet that Nawaz remained a fanatical Islamist after he was
to other Muslims beyond racial and ethnic categorization; the illusion of freed. Indeed, back in England, Nawaz appeared on the BBCs Hardtalk
empowerment through threat of violence. On the other hand, it has become program and declared that his experience in Egypt left him convinced
emblematic of the cantankerous, highly personal discourse that clings to that there is a need to establish this caliphate as soon as possible. In his
the man himself: For a number of reasons more on which later many defense, Nawaz claims that making a clean break with a former life is both
of his critics have come to allege that the dicult and genuinely confusing. He rather
anecdote is pure fabrication. colorfully compares it to a breakup with
Whats indisputable is that soon after a lover. (Nawaz and his rst wife split up
that day in Southend, rst following Kaas- around the time of his departure from H.T.)
hifs example but then with a fervency that He has also insisted that his public posi-
was entirely his own, Nawaz threw him- tions were in part strategic: He didnt want
self into his new identity, falling under the to tip his hand to H.T. until he had his exit
sway of Nasim Ghani, a charismatic young plans in place.
recruiter and future leader of the British Whatever the case, that same year,
branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a multinational alongside a college friend named Ed
Islamic revolutionary organization found- Husain, who had already made a name for
ed in 1953 in Jerusalem. H.T., as Nawaz himself with his own reverse-conversion
refers to it, advocates the imposition of memoir, The Islamist, Nawaz co-found-
Shariah law through bloodless coups in ed the Quilliam Foundation, which they
majority-Muslim countries rst and ulti- named for William Quilliam, a British
mately in the West as well. In other words, convert who opened one of Britains rst
these were Islamists but not jihadists, and mosques in the late 1880s. Quilliams rst
the distinction isnt frivolous. Still, the line headquarters occupied the ground oor
is a porous one: Two H.T. leaders, Anjem of a brick-and-terra-cotta rowhouse over-
Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammad, looking the verdure of Russell Square,
would go on to lead a splinter group of a practically the same view T. S. Eliot would
far more deadly variety. have had when he worked at Faber & Faber,
In September 2001, after stints of orga- and just a block from two of the sites of the
nizing and recruiting for H.T. in London 7/7 attacks. As his critics constantly stress,
and Pakistan, Nawaz took his rst wife Nawazs timing was convenient; the British
and their infant son to Alexandria, Egypt, government was then looking to nance
where he posed as an Arabic-language anti-extremist organizations and provided
student while secretly proselytizing for Quilliam with early funding.
the group. Though H.T. is legal in Britain, Maajid Nawaz at 12, in Southend, England. Nawaz, then, is somewhat like British
it is banned in many majority-Muslim Petroleum when it is tasked with cleaning
countries, including Egypt. In 2002, at up a catastrophic oil spill: His main quali-
24, Nawaz was forcibly removed from his cation to do this kind of decontamination
home, blindfolded and thrown in the back of a van, one more Islamist work is precisely his experience as a contaminator. As recently as the mid-
caught up in the wide and extralegal international crackdown on extrem- 1990s, Islamist ideology was unpopular in British Muslim communities.
ism in the wake of 9/11. He spent his next four years in Egyptian prisons, We would have to convince people of something that is strange to them,
where he claims to have witnessed torture and where, in his solitude, he he told me of those days. We had to really hone our argumentative skills
was able to memorize half of the Quran. and our ability to convince and inuence people as that vanguard of the
Photograph from Maajid Nawaz

A pivotal moment in Nawazs moral education came when news of Islamist movement in the West. He insists his background as an Islamist
the 7/7 attacks in London reached the inmates at Tora, Egypts prison is what allows him and others at Quilliam today not only to pinpoint Isla-
notorious for holding political dissidents. Four attackers bombed a bus misms weaknesses but also to employ the very same tenacious ability to
and three subway trains, claiming 52 lives. Nawaz writes that he suddenly communicate ideas and inuence people for the purpose now of advocating
felt revulsion at the human cost of his ideas. A man Nawaz calls Omar, a liberal values. Theyre transferable skills is how he once put it to me. What
Dagestani bomb maker, had celebrated the slaughter. Nawaz is a hero in Nawaz seems to understand better than any of the other critics of Islam
his own telling of the ensuing exchange: He claims to have debated Omar hes so often lumped with is that Islamism is cool and it is cool in some
for the entirety of the day about the legitimacy of killing British civilians, of the same ways that punk rock and gangsta rap and macho rebellion in

The New York Times Magazine 27

general, whether symbolic or real, are perennially seductive. As a result,
countering it will have to mean nding ways to, as he puts it, make it cool
to be a liberal Muslim.
And that may be harder than it seems. While the vast majority of British
Muslims today are certainly not ocking to join groups like H.T. and many
who have never been attracted to the ideology justiably nd it irritating
to be lectured by a man who was a sobering number nonetheless have
expressed views that would be very much at home in even more extreme
precincts. An online poll done in Britain following the 7/7 bombings, for
example, showed that more than a fth of British Muslims felt some sym-
pathy for the bombers feelings and motives; more than half said they could
understand the bombers behavior; and nearly a third agreed that Western
society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it
NAWAZ ARGUES THAT THE DISTINCTION
BETWEEN VIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT
ISLAMISM IS FAR LESS RIGID THAN MANY
LIBERALS WOULD LIKE TO THINK.
to an end by nonviolent means. One incredible Gallup report from 2009
found that 0 percent of British Muslims viewed homosexual acts as morally
acceptable. Though it is not at all clear what pushes any given individual to
cross the line into violence, attitudes like these are what Nawaz and Quil-
liam have controversially described as the mood music to terrorist acts.
It is this last contention that seems to be the crux of the S.P.L.C. complaint
against Nawaz, along with the disclosure that, in 2010, Quilliam provided
a list of nonviolent Islamist organizations to a British counterterrorism
ocial. But Nawaz justies the move by arguing that the distinction between
violent and nonviolent Islamism is far less rigid than many liberals would
like to think. Now when these guys are joining ISIS, the arguments have
been made, he told me. What theyre doing is just putting that last piece
in the jigsaw: Im going to go and ght for this cause. But the ideologys
already been established. The surveys and the polls tell you that.
late last year to an undisclosed location for security
B E FO R E Q U I L L I A M M OV E D
reasons, I visited Nawaz on several occasions. The organization hummed
with the energy and sense of mission of a tech start-up. On one side were
doors leading into a large and crowded room where 20-odd analysts, aca-
demics and imams were doing the intellectual grunt work that the founda-
tion demands. On the other was the modest oce Nawaz used for himself.
Though he is the face of the organization, he is hardly the only employee
with an exotic rsum. On my rst visit, my eyes xed on a small prayer
rug draped neatly over the arm of a desk chair. Oh, thats for him! Nawaz
quickly claried, referring to his ocemate, Noman Benotman, the current
president of the organization and a former jihadist who fought the Soviets
in Afghanistan, tried to violently depose Muammar Gadda in the 1990s
and later worked with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri in Sudan.
Back across the hall there was also Dr. Usama Hasan, the head of Islamic
studies at the organization. The son of a conservative and inuential Sala
sheikh, Hasan used a break from his studies at Cambridge to engage in jihad
against the Soviets in Afghanistan (on a scale of one-to-ISIS, he told me,
our group maybe got up to about ve). And yet, in 2011, after waging holy
28 4.2.17
war in the east and after 25 years of service at his fathers London mosque,
that kind of eort didnt count for very much when he came under attack
by hard-liners. He was forced to stop delivering Friday prayers when 50
Muslim protesters stormed his lecture and openly called for his execu-
tion. His oense had been to venture that Islam could be compatible with
modern theories of evolution and that Muslim women should be allowed
to uncover their hair in public.
Aside from the life experience of some of its members and the issuance
of the occasional counter-fatwa, Quilliam is a standard left-of-center think
tank: a body of experts conducting research and providing advice and ideas
on specic political or social problems in support of liberal democracy. The
group works to shape public opinion from the top down, making frequent
media appearances, publishing reports that aim for the highest levels of
government (such as a critical 2009 investigation into the ways British pris-
ons incubate extremism) and periodically advising government ministers
and heads of state on matters of terrorism. But they also engage ordinary
Muslims and non-Muslims alike through outreach work, organizing debate
and training programs in Europe and the Middle East.
All of this ought to make Quilliam a natural ally of progressives and of
institutions like the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose mission, after all, is
to advocate for the vulnerable. Yet that has not been the case. Nawazs layered
arguments and concessions his insistence, for example, that Islam does
have something to do with Islamism provoke a visceral suspicion among
those who are concerned with ghting Islamophobia above all. A term that
you will hear with frequency from Nawaz is the regressive left, as in pur-
portedly progressive institutions like the S.P.L.C. that, often starting from a
legitimate concern that Muslims en masse not be persecuted for the actions of
a few, nonetheless embody a perplexingly backward mind-set when it comes
to Islam. Its an Orientalist fetish, Nawaz says, a deeply socially conserva-
tive Muslim who is medieval in their outlook is a real Muslim, and anyone
whos challenging that status quo is a sellout. The left has, in Nawazs view,
forfeited whats best about the liberal project, entirely conceding the right
to speak in moral absolutes and about universal values. The problem is you
cant draw a line with that reasoning: Why is what ISIS is doing bad, then?
A core idea Quilliam espouses is that space must be claimed for secular
identities within Islam; the measure of Muslim authenticity would then be a
matter of individual imagination and will, not a test to pass or fail. In other
words, he would like to see many more Muslims thinking, speaking and
acting like him. Which is a big part of the reason its impossible to think
of Quilliam independent of the outsize gure cut by its co-founder, and
why so much debate about the validity of the organizations ideas comes
down to a question of being for or against Nawaz.
Attack pieces about Nawaz have practically become their own literary
genre. In the summer of 2015, The Guardian ran a deeply critical story about
him, which questioned the integrity of Nawazs work with the Cameron
administration and took him to task for, among other misdeeds, sipping a
skinny at white coee in front of the reporter. This was followed, in January
2016, by a hard takedown at The New Republic, whose writer, Nathan Lean,
had earlier referred on Twitter to Nawaz as Sam Harriss lap dog. Roughly
a week after that piece came a longer, even more personal attack at Alter-
net, which stood out in its attempt to debunk, scene by scene, the events in
Radical. The authors revisited the subject of the bomb in the backpack and
quoted Nawazs older brother as well as an anonymous cousin, who called the
story imaginary. (Many of the sources in the Alternet article seem concerned
that Kaashifs ruse in the anecdote might be taken literally.) When I asked
him about it, Nawaz was dismissive. You go to a deeply wounded brother
that loved me all of his life, and I turn out to be not who he aspires for me
to be, he said. As a journalist, you can exploit that. He shrugged soberly.
It is undeniable that one advantage, and shortcoming, of memoir as a
form lies in its ability to dominate the reader through an empirical imbalance
that can never be resolved in its entirety. Arguments, when unsound, can
 be negated, but who can negate another persons lived experience? It is a leader of Hezbollah and the Bay Area rapper Lil B. The room darkened and
rhetorical tactic that is, in fact, most at home on the left, where personal quieted, and Nawaz, brimming with life, stepped into the middle of the
stories of grievance and oppression are typically set in opposition to the crowd, whose diversity he lauded, and thanked them all for coming. Like
status quo in the wider society. Perhaps, then, this is why so much attention the B-boy he once aspired to be, he thrills to the sound of his own voice
has been paid to Nawazs biography. If his life story can be shown to be owing through the microphone. The rst thing they do is try to silence
contrived, the deeper message, however compelling, can be pre-emptively us, and the rst to suer are the creators! he told the room to enthusiastic
dismissed: Not only is the messengers life is not a genuine Muslim life, when applause. But while you throw gays o the rooftops, we who are Muslims
seen from this angle, it may even prove to be an anti-Muslim life. want to respond like this!
As I watched Nawaz bask in the applause of his most earnest admirers
and glanced back at the walls adorned with such unbearably unhip art,
the enormity of his task pressed itself upon me. After all, Islamism, like
good art, is innately subversive; it captures diuse feelings of alienation
I SAW NAWAZ in New York in September, while he was in town fund-raising in a way that is dicult to fabricate. And therein lies the biggest challenge
for Quilliams American chapter. We had made plans to meet at a Soho hotel confronting Quilliam in Europe and, as it seeks to expand, in America:
for a drink, but he was running late. When I asked after him, the concierge Though Nawaz himself is a star, there is something both noble and perilous-
either didnt know his real name ly square about this kind of eat-
or pretended not to. Nawaz and your-peas forced secularism.
Benotman have been targeted Yet Im convinced that
by Al Qaeda and ISIS aliates, Nawaz really does have his n-
and he travels under an alias. ger on the pulse of one of the
When he nally arrived, we most urgent problems of the
went down to the bar, and he contemporary era, a problem
was in wonderful spirits. Hes that is far too often mishan-
been criticized in the British dled or greeted with at-out
press for drinking and receiv- denial, through ignorance,
ing a lap dance at a strip club, hatred and fear, certainly, but
but in situations like this, its also as a result of the very best
strange to think of Nawaz as of intentions. Without having
having been anything like a planned to, I found myself
humorless extremist. Yet the at the hotel bar in New York
bind he has made for himself opening up to Nawaz about a
is a real one: He has to prove recent train ride my wife and
that liberal, moderate Islam can I made in France. I watched an
be cool, while not coming o agitated young Arab man and
as too hip to convince the left his wife, in full abaya, shut
of his Muslim authenticity. He themselves inside the bath-
runs the very real risk of satis- room along with all of their
fying no one. Maajid Nawaz speaks on stage at a fashion-industry event about luggage. When they opened
It reminded me of an obser- global issues in December in Oxfordshire, England. the door, the hair on my neck
vation that had been running stood up, and I braced myself
through my head since the for a fusillade that never came.
previous winter, when Quil- Even as I chastised myself for
liam opened an art exhibit in London called The Unbreakable Rope. overreacting, I was convinced that the man continued to behave strangely.
Billed as an exploration of sexuality in Islam, the show was co-curated My shame increased with each moment nothing happened.
by Nawazs second wife, Rachel Maggart (the couple had their rst child Nawaz listened intently to my story, but his eyes showed hed long since
in January), a lanky 32-year-old brunette from Tennessee by way of N.Y.U. arrived at his answer. Youre caught in a classically Catch-22 situation,
In addition to the regular Quilliam bodyguards, there were plainclothes he said. Youve got two competing forces, which are entirely legitimate.
counterterrorism ocers monitoring the site. Inside the venue, a shirtless, One is not wanting to racially prole, and the other is not wanting to be the
tattooed Kuwaiti performance artist did preparatory stretches with his neighbor of the San Bernardino shooter who didnt want to prole and, as
assistant and a crystal ball. He would eventually be tied up in a corset and a result, people lose their lives. Or, more urgently, [you] just dont want to
left on the oor for guests to contemplate. The crowd sipped wine and soft be the rst person to catch a bullet! On a human level, that is a perfectly
Photograph by John Phillips/Getty Images

drinks and milled about the sparsely hung, mildly provocative artwork, natural reaction. The fact that youre having these doubts is a good thing.
which was in fact beside the point. The point, of course, was that they were Though he meant this defense of human prejudice to reassure me, it did
even daring to do this in the rst place. not. I almost wish he had accused me of Islamophobia at least then the
I fell into conversation with Nawazs mother and little sister and lost conversation might have achieved a certain black-and-white clarity. But
track of time as the space lled up all around us. There were whites, blacks, Nawaz, the consummate in-between thinker, then took care to add several
Persians, Arabs; people looked devout and nondevout, gay, straight, young shades of gray to the conversation. I literally just tweeted, ve minutes
and old. Standing next to me was a man with the voluminous beard of a before coming to see you, a picture of a blond ISIS child a child with
cleric, turned out in an ankle-length djellaba, ironed as crisply as a bed- blond hair helping to execute people, he said, producing on his phone
sheet at the Ritz, a pair of Nike Air Force 1s and a at-brimmed New Era a shocking image of a very young, Eastern European-looking boy holding
cap printed with a four-letter expletive. He looked like a cross between the a gun in the desert. I said, Trump, how you gonna prole this? 

The New York Times Magazine 29

TRUMP VS. CONGRESS
AFTER THE PRESIDENT SUFFE
CAPITOL HILL, CAN THE WHIT
ON ITS LEGISLATIVE PROMISE

30
FERED HIS FIRST DEFEAT ON
TE HOUSE STILL MAKE GOOD
SES?BY ROBERT DRAPER
PHOTOGRAPH BY
CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON
ON Monday, Jan. 9, less than two weeks before Pres-
ident Trumps inauguration, the House speaker,
Paul Ryan, hosted a dinner at his oce in the Cap-
itol with members of Trumps inner circle. The
guests included the president-elects chief White
House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon; his son-in-
law and family consigliere, Jared Kushner; his chief
of sta, Reince Priebus; his economic adviser, Gary Cohn; his nominee for
Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin; his incoming deputy chief of sta, Rick
Dearborn; and his legislative-aairs director, Marc Short. The ostensible
purpose of the dinner was to discuss the details of Trumps legislative agen-
da in particular, the prospects for a sweeping tax-reform measure that
Republicans, and especially Ryan, have been coveting for the past decade.
It was hoped that the dinner could also establish some sort of common
ground between Ryan and Bannon, the two gures who would arguably
wield the greatest inuence over how Trumps campaign promises became
law or didnt. Ryan was a xture among establishment Republicans even
before joining Mitt Romneys presidential ticket in 2012, his previous labors
on the House Budget Committee cementing his reputation as the charts-
and-graphs wizard of scal conservatism. Bannon, by contrast, was a ren-
egade autodidact who read Plato and had seemingly materialized from
nowhere to become the intellectual architect of Trumps campaign and,
later, administration.
Up to this point, Ryan had epitomized to Bannon everything that was
wrong with the Republican Party. Discussing the two parties shortcomings,
Bannon later told me, Whats that Dostoyevsky line: Happy families are
all the same, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique ways?
(He meant Tolstoy.) I think the Democrats are fundamentally alicted with
the inability to discuss and have an adult conversation about economics
and jobs, because theyre too consumed by identity politics. And then the
Republicans, its all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics,
limited government which just doesnt have any depth to it. Theyre not
living in the real world.
Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet Bannon ran before becoming
the chief executive of the Trump campaign in August, had described Ryan,
referring to his position on immigration, as arguably the most pro-amnesty
G.O.P. lawmaker in Congress an apostasy of nearly impeachable pro-
portions from Bannons perspective. Worst of all, Ryan all but abandoned
Trump during the 2016 campaign. After the leak in October of the damaging
Access Hollywood tape, Ryan told fellow Republican House members
on a conference call, I am not going to defend Donald Trump not now,
not in the future. A Republican lawmaker on the call told Trump what
Ryan had said, yet another reason for Bannon to regard himself as Ryans
worst enemy.
But as the dinner progressed, it became clear that Bannon and Ryan
actually had some ideas in common. Over memorably bad chicken Par-
mesan, Ryan described his vision for a border-adjustment tax, which
would levy taxes on imports while oering exemptions for exports. His
tax package would include immediate expensing, he explained, in which
capital expenditures would be written o against prots in the rst year
rather than over time. It also would abolish the alternative minimum tax
and the estate tax.
These were ideas Ryan had been pushing since 2008. Now they had
Bannons attention. Taken together with a drastic reduction in corporate
taxes, Bannon believed, Ryans scheme would spur a renaissance of a
manufacturing-based export economy, producing high-income labor in
keeping with Trumps populism. I would actually say, Bannon remembers
observing admiringly, that this tax reform comes as close to a rst step
of economic nationalism as there is.
I would call it responsible nationalism, Ryan said, according to
Bannon.
Bannon laughed. Youre going to have a lot of folks in the Senate say
this is breathtakingly radical.
32 4.2.17
He meant it as a compliment. To Bannon, the entire world order from
the two political parties to the Wall Street reliance on leveraging to mul-
ticulturalism was undergoing an extraordinary realignment, one made
manifest in the 2016 election. According to Bannons vision, economic
nationalism would reorient priorities to the working classs benet. Trade
deals, jobs programs, tax incentives, immigration restrictions, environmen-
tal deregulation and even foreign policy would ultimately serve to restore
the primacy of those Trump called the forgotten Americans.
In March, when I spoke to Trump by phone, I asked him what the term
economic nationalism meant to him. Compared with Bannons revolu-
tionary fervor, his reply was surprisingly cautious. Well, nationalism I
dene it as people who love the country and want it to do good, he said.
I dont see nationalism as a bad word. I see it as a very positive word. It
doesnt mean we wont trade with other countries.
Trumps tone was genial but also a touch defensive. His postelection
honeymoon had been short, if it existed at all. There were the administra-
tive intrigues and self-inicted Twitter drama, along with the questions
about his campaigns contacts with Russia, which had already forced the
resignation of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Still, Trumps
legislative liaisons and their counterparts on Capitol Hill were doggedly
negotiating a rollout of the Trump Era, one that would fulll his most
signicant campaign promises those that could not be done with just a
stroke of Trumps own pen but required acts of Congress.
First, Obamacare would be repealed and replaced. Next, an austere bud-
get would be passed, with emergency funds allotted for the construction
of a wall along the Southern border. Then would come a tax-reform plan,
presumably of the type Ryan and Bannon discussed. And nally, a bipartisan
coalition would deliver a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan to Trumps desk.
If all this came to pass by the end of 2017, it would lend some credence
to Trumps pledge that this would be the busiest Congress weve had in
decades. But by March, this timetable was looking like a formidable if.
Trump himself seemed prone to distraction as he spoke to me from the
Oval Oce. Though I was asking about his policy aims, his musings swerved
o to other vexations. More than once he denounced as fake news reports
about his administrations supposed disharmony. He brought up his speech
before the joint session of Congress in February, which I hope you liked,
but I certainly have gotten great reviews even the people who hate me
gave me the highest review. During the call, I could hear Priebus nearby,
occasionally murmuring encouragement.
Trump sounded more clipped and less jaunty on the call than he did
during the discursive chats I had with him
last year on the campaign trail. The business
PRESIDENT TRUMP
DELIVERING HIS FIRST of governing had little to do with any trade
ADDRESS TO A JOINT he had previously practiced. In Congress, he
SESSION OF CONGRESS
ON FEB. 28. was grappling with an arcane and famously

STEPHEN K. BANNON inecient ecosystem over which he had little if
IN THE WHITE HOUSE any control and people he incessantly derided
ON MARCH 13.
on the campaign trail as being all talk and no
action. I asked him if he still felt that way. Its
like any other industry, he replied, somewhat morosely. Ive met some
great politicians and some, to be honest, who arent so hot.
Trump wanted to make sure that he was given adequate credit for his
achievements, even in his administrations infancy. Weve only been here
for a tiny speck of time, he said, and what Ive done with regulations,
moving jobs back into the country, what Ive done with airplane pricing and
buying is amazing. Weve done a lot. I think weve done more than anybody
for this short period of time. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and
Lyndon Johnson would take exception to this claim. And Trumps signi-
cant actions to date have consisted entirely of executive orders. What he
has not yet demonstrated is his ability to actually shepherd a bill into law.
The only major legislation that congressional committees have even seen
thus far is a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, which met with a stunning
rebuke from Trumps own party, forcing Ryan to withdraw the measure on
the afternoon of March 24. At this stage of his presidency, Barack Obama
had already signed into law his $787 billion economic-stimulus package
and had moved on to holding White House meetings on health care. Its
conceivable that Trump could hit Day 100 with only minor symbolic legis-
lative achievements to his name. For him to avoid this ignominy, the 45th
president will have to develop a rapport with Washingtons 535 federal
deal makers, including the ones who arent so hot.
Whether Trumps agenda succeeds will also depend in no small measure
on the ability of Bannon to expand his game beyond 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave. At 63, and with a fortune reported to be in the tens of millions
of dollars partly through his investment in the company that owns
the syndication rights to Seinfeld Bannon is regarded by Trump as
a peer in the way that, say, the 45-year-old lifelong politico Priebus is
not. He is also approvingly seen as a fellow workaholic by the president
(whose only known hobbies are golf and hate-watching CNN). And he is
a deft operator who has learned from the successes and failures of other
Trump advisers. He has carefully not claimed credit that the president
would wish for himself and avoids giving expansive interviews on his own
controversial views that might detract from his bosss celebrity. Like the
former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Bannon understands that
power in Trump World derives mainly from close and sustained physical
proximity to the boss. Unlike Lewandowski, Bannon immediately grasped
the importance of maintaining close relations with Jared Kushner, who
factored heavily in Lewandowskis dismissal from the Trump campaign
last summer.
But like Kushner, Bannon has never worked in government or at a
policy-making institute and has no meaningful experience when it comes
Left: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. Above: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
to getting legislation passed. On the Hill, he has a few random associations
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative John Culberson of
Texas among them. Otherwise, he remains a looming but indistinct pres-
ence to the lawmakers who will be needed to pass most of Trumps agenda.
Bannons interest in this agenda predated his association with Trump.
One evening in January 2013, two guests showed up for dinner at the Cap-
itol Hill townhouse that Bannon liked to call the Breitbart Embassy. One
was the man Bannon would later describe to me as his mentor: Senator
Je Sessions of Alabama. The other was Sessionss top aide and protg, a
jittery 27-year-old named Stephen Miller.
Two months earlier, Obama decisively defeated Mitt Romney in the pres-
idential election, prompting Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican
National Committee, to commission an analysis of the state of the party
and its future, known colloquially in Washington as the autopsy, which
would be delivered that spring. The only certainty was that the report
would urge Republicans to court the growing Latino electorate which
had voted for Obama by a 44-point margin that November by champi-
oning comprehensive immigration reform. The three men at the dinner
table that night were among the few Republicans in town who thoroughly
rejected that conclusion.
Bannon wanted to talk to Sessions and Miller about a dierent report:
an article written by Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst for the
website RealClearPolitics, titled The Case of the Missing White Voters.
Trende observed that Obamas victory was less a function of increased
minority turnout than of the fact that 6.6 million white voters who par-
ticipated in the 2008 election stayed home in 2012. The reason for this
drop, Trende argued, was that white working-class voters who did not
approve of Obama but were alienated by Romneys perceived elitism
had not voted.
These votes were gettable, Bannon believed. As he would later tell me:
The working class, and in particular the lower middle class, understands
something thats so obvious which is that theyve basically underwritten
the rise of China. Their jobs, their raises, their retirement accounts have
all fueled the private equity and venture capital that built China. Because
Chinas really built on investments and exports, right? People are smart
enough to know that theyre getting played by both political parties. The
two may be dierent on social issues, but when it comes to fundamental
economics, theyre both the same. Thats why the American working class
is interested in trade. Its linked to their lives.
Sessions shared Bannons belief that the Republican Party needed to
emphasize immigration reduction, border security and the preservation of
working-class jobs through trade policy rather than courting Latino voters
with a bill he regarded as amnesty. As Sessions would write in a memo-
randum to his Republican colleagues six months later, This humble and
honest populism in contrast to the administrations cheap demagoguery
would open the ears of millions who have turned away from our party.
At some point during the ve-hour dinner, Bannon recalls blurting out
to Sessions, We have to run you for president. Just two years earlier, in
2011, he made a similar pitch to Sarah Palin, after completing a documen-
tary about her called The Undefeated. Palin demurred. She was enjoying
her life of celebrity and wealth, she had done little to immerse herself in
policy minutiae and she was no doubt unsettled by Bannons warning that
she stood little chance of defeating Obama.
Now he delivered a similar message to Sessions. Look, youre not going
to win, he recalls saying. But you can get the Republican nomination.
And once you control the apparatus, you can make fundamental changes.
Trade is No. 100 on the partys list. You can make it No. 1. Immigration is
No. 10. We can make it No. 2. Acknowledging that the drawling Alabama
senator lacked Palins charisma, Bannon said, Youll be the anti-candidate.
But Sessions told Bannon he did not see himself running for president. It
was pretty obvious by the end of the night, Bannon recalled, that another
candidate would have to do it.
Two months later, on March 15, 2013, Bannon happened to be attending
The New York Times Magazine 33
the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington when Trump
took the stage. Trump had been a marginal gure at most in politics up to
that point, entertaining a Reform Party run in the 2000 election when he
speculated that he would probably take more votes from the Democratic
candidate than the Republican one and leading a conspiratorial crusade
in 2011 to force Obama to release his birth certicate. The possibility that
he might be a suitable host body for Bannons worldview had not occurred
to Bannon before Trump spoke.
But Trumps grousing references to Chinas economic superiority, to 11
million illegals and to the erosion of Americas manufacturing sector were
right out of Bannons playbook. From his desk in the Russell Senate Oce
Building, Stephen Miller, too, watched Trumps speech. By 2014, Miller
was sending emails to friends expressing the hope that Trump would run
for president. By the time Trump announced his candidacy, in June 2015,
Sessions was ocially uncommitted but privately of the view that Trump
was best suited to tap into the movement that he, Miller and Bannon dis-
cussed over dinner more than two years earlier.
Bannons early support for Trump was manifest in Breitbarts breath-
less coverage of his candidacy. In an email he sent on Aug. 30, 2015, to
his former lmmaking partner Julia Jones, Bannon explained that while
Republican candidates like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson and Carly
Fiorina were all great, Trump represented a superior choice, because he
is a nationalist who embraces Senator Sessionss plan on immigration.
Still, recalls Sam Nunberg, Trumps rst campaign strategist, Steve kept
all of his cards. He added: He was respectful to some of the other ones
who were running, like Walker and Cruz and Carson. He didnt want to
be seen as Trump-bart. When Trump publicly disparaged John McCains
war-hero credentials, Bannon himself a Navy veteran called Nunberg
and demanded that Trump issue an apology. (Trump did not.)
Bannon was well positioned as a supportive but not sycophantic observer
by Aug. 13, 2016, when the Trump donor Rebekah Mercer read with alarm
a New York Times account of the Trump campaigns inability to handle its
mercurial candidate. At Mercers behest, Bannon (whose website Mercers
family helped underwrite) and Kellyanne Conway (who at that point was
receiving money from both a Mercer family political action committee
and the Trump campaign) ew out that day to East Hampton, N.Y., where
Trump was attending a dinner fund-raiser at the home of the New York Jets
owner, Woody Johnson. After the dinner, Bannon and Conway huddled
with the candidate. Bannon remembers telling Trump, who at the time was
trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in the polls, As long as you stick
to the message by which he meant economic nationalism you have
a 100 percent probability of winning.
A week after the election, in an interview with the journalist Michael
Wol, Bannon oered a bold, sweeping sketch of what the vision might
mean in policy terms: Like [Andrew] Jacksons populism, were going to
build an entirely new political movement. Its everything related to jobs. The
conservatives are going to go crazy. Of course, some of the conservatives
Bannon intended to drive crazy possessed the congressional votes Bannon
and Trump would need to advance this agenda. Representative Jim Jordan
of Ohio, a leading conservative in the House, told me in March, I would
argue that populism, as long as its rooted in conservative principle, is a
darn good thing. Jordan was smiling as he said it, but the note of warning
was hard to mistake.
The last time the Republican Party controlled all branches of government
in Washington was from 2003 to 2007. During that period, the United States
military toppled Saddam Hussein, Congress delivered tax cuts for the
wealthy and President George W. Bush appointed the reliably conservative
jurist Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court.
But in the collective view of conservatives, these years of the Bush
presidency were mostly characterized by betrayal and disappointment.
Goaded by Bush, congressional Republicans passed into law a new federal
entitlement (prescription drugs for senior citizens, also known as Medicare
34 4.2.17
A WORKING LUNCH Part D), ran up the decit, promoted democratic
AT THE WHITE HOUSE
ON MARCH 1. ideals overseas in the feckless manner of Wood-
row Wilson, considered a pathway to citizenship
for undocumented immigrants and conrmed a
Supreme Court chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., whose swing vote would
later save Obamacare from judicial evisceration. My go-to line when I rst
ran in 2008 was, Republicans had the House, the Senate and the White
House and they blew it, Representative Jason Chaetz of Utah, the
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
told me. Now weve got all three again, and Im the guy whos in Congress,
not running for it. I dont want to be in a position where were going to
blow it one more time.
Chaetz and other House conservatives freely acknowledge that Trump
is not cut from their cloth, but they say they could not care less as long
as he gives them what they want. Selecting Judge Neil Gorsuch to ll the
Supreme Court seat once held by Justice Antonin Scalia was the best
thing the president did in his rst 50 days, Chaetz told me. He and his
conservative colleagues have been cheered by Trumps recruitment of
former House colleagues and conservative stalwarts like Vice President
Mike Pence; Tom Price, the health and human services secretary; and Mick
Mulvaney, the Oce of Management and Budget director.
When Chaetz and I spoke in March, he had met with the president
twice so far access he considered such a huge sea change from the
stony silence Republicans say they encountered from the Obama White
House. Most important, the Trump agendas rst three projected legisla-
tive moves the Obamacare repeal and replacement, an austere budget
and tax reform were intended to keep conservatives happily in Trumps
camp. In turn, when the agenda moved on to less conservative items like
infrastructure and trade agreements, Trump and Bannon would fully expect
Republicans, including Ryan, to remember whose message resonated most
with working-class voters last year.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, is Trumps
chief point of contact on the Hill. When McCarthy was a college student and
budding entrepreneur in Bakerseld, Calif., in the late 1980s, his girlfriend
at the time, now his wife, Judy, gave him an autographed copy of Trumps
The Art of the Deal. I thought it was great, he told me. In McCarthys
view, Trump is a master of todays media, much as Lincoln and Kennedy
were in their own times. Hes mastered instantaneous Twitter, he said.
Its like owning newspapers.
Trump has found a kindred spirit in McCarthy, a coastal extrovert of
ambiguous ideological portfolio who (unlike Ryan) would far rather talk
about personalities than the tax code. And as the former minority leader in
the California Legislature during the governorship of Arnold Schwarzeneg-
ger, McCarthy is experienced in the care and feeding of celebrity egos.
Above: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Right: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images.
Since Trumps nomination, the two have spoken frequently by phone to
date, Trump has never been known to directly email or text anyone about
the cast of 535 characters with whom the president must now deal.
But in the end, what Trump needs from the majority leader is not gos-
sip but votes 216 of them, to be exact, in the House. And McCarthys
recent track record in obtaining majorities has not been the greatest. In
his previous capacity as House whip, he was thwarted by members of his
own party when it came to subjects as diverse as reauthorizing a Patriot
Act they deemed too intrusive, a farm bill they considered too expensive
and a border-security bill they regarded as too lenient. His most reliable
obstacles have been the three dozen or so House conservatives known as
the Freedom Caucus, a two-year-old group of scal hard-liners. Early this
year, McCarthy predicted to me that the new president would quickly sub-
jugate the Freedom Caucus. Trump is strong in their districts, McCarthy
told me. Theres not a place for them to survive in this world.
When we spoke on the morning of March 7, Trump assured me that
he would not bully the Obamacare-replacement bills loudest Republican
critics, like the Freedom Caucus chairman, Representative Mark Mead-
ows, on Twitter: No, I dont think Ill have to, he said. Mark Meadows mandatory spending or devoted to defense. And for all the Republicans
is a great guy and a friend of mine. I dont think hed ever disappoint me,
or the party. I think hes great. No, I would never call him out on Twitter.
Some of the others, too. I dont think well need to. Now, theyre ghting
for their turf, but I dont think theyre going to be obstructionists. I spoke
to Mark. Hes got some ideas. I think theyre very positive.
But on March 21, in a meeting with the Freedom Caucus about the
bill, Trump called out Meadows by name, saying, Im going to come
after you, but I know I wont have to, because I know youll vote yes. N.E.A. grants thats a re-election killer. The campaign commercials
Meadows remained a no on the bill, and among conservatives, he was
far from alone. One of the Freedom Caucuss most outspoken members,
Representative Ral Labrador of Idaho, believes that the Trump White
House was led astray by Ryans condence that he knew what conserva-
tives wanted when drafting the bill. The legislation has to go through
the body, not the top, Labrador told me. And if our leadership thinks
now that were a unied body, that they can do things while ignoring us,
thats not going to happen.
Labrador is an aable but decidedly stubborn 49-year-old Mormon and
former immigration lawyer who moved as a child with his single mother
from Puerto Rico to Las Vegas. He was interviewed by the president-elect
for the post of interior secretary at Trump Tower last December though
Trump selected Labradors House colleague
Ryan Zinke for the post a few days later.
REPRESENTATIVES
RAL LABRADOR, For now, Labrador and other Freedom
MARK MEADOWS AND Caucus members have been willing to blame
JIM JORDAN AT THE
CAPITOL ON MARCH 24. House leaders like Ryan and McCarthy for
drafting a health care bill that was not to conservatives liking. They aspire
to remain philosophical whenever Trumps daughter Ivanka persuades her
father to propose initiatives like paid family leave, as he did during his
joint-session speech. I didnt stand up when he said that, Labrador said.
Thats the only part of the speech where I thought, Thats not even close
to what my party stands for.
To House conservatives like Labrador, the Republican Party stands for
limited government. To Trump and Bannon, big-ticket items like a border
wall and infrastructure take priority over shrinking Americas debt. As
Chaetz admitted to me, On the spending front, things could slip away
really quickly.
Trumps budget blueprint is regarded by decit hawks as fundamental-
ly unserious, because it does not touch entitlements. Instead, it ravages
perennial (and already pint-size) conservative piatas like foreign aid, public
broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to
downsizing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Depart-
ment cuts that focus on the 27 percent of the federal budget that is not
chesty rhetoric on cuts like these over the years, as a top House Republican
sta member told me, even the cabinet secretaries at the E.P.A. and Interior
are saying these cuts arent going to happen. Theyre going to protect their
grant programs, their payments to states, their Superfunds. So how do you
cut 31 percent of the E.P.A. out of the 5 percent that isnt protected? And
a bill that cuts all money for the N.E.A. will not pass. For Republicans in
the West states whose vast rural areas benet disproportionately from
write themselves.
Labrador says he would defend Trumps cuts but doubts that many of his
colleagues would. What hes going to learn is that members of Congress
are unwilling to take the tough votes, he told me. When he learns that,
whats going to be the next step? In Labradors view, Trumps only sane
recourse will be to accept the need for entitlement reform. At some point,
the reality of the budget is going to have to hit him, he said. You can have
this economic nationalism Bannon is very smart, he clearly helped him
with his messaging, it was so successful but at some point, that theory
is going to hit reality.
When I spoke with Trump, I ventured that, based on available evidence,
it seemed as though conservatives probably shouldnt hold their breath
for the next four years expecting entitlement reform. Trumps reply was
immediate. I think youre right, he said. In fact, Trump seemed much
less animated by the subject of budget cuts than the subject of spending
increases. Were also going to prime the pump, he said. You know
what I mean by prime the pump? In order to get this the economy
going, and going big league, and having the jobs coming in and the
taxes that will be cut very substantially and the regulations thatll be
going, were going to have to prime the pump to some extent. In other
words: Spend money to make a lot more money in the future. And thatll
happen. A clearer elucidation of Keynesian liberalism could not have
been delivered by Obama.
The one clear point of agreement between the Trump economic nation-
alists and the House conservatives is the one Ryan and Bannon identied
over dinner in January: tax reform. But in so doing, they will be picking a
ght that may prove perilous to Republicans. The border-adjustment-tax
proposal that Ryan oated to Bannon has never been able to get past K
Street lobbyists and wealthy Republican donors like the Koch brothers.
When I asked Trump if he was a fan of the border-adjustment tax, he
replied: I am. Im the king of that. Almost no other country grafts an
import tax onto a corporate tax, and its possible that enacting a border-
adjustment tax might well be in violation of the World Trade Organiza-
tions agreements. Of course, Bannon has openly advocated abandoning
the W.T.O. anyway, because of Chinas membership in it. Still, the spec-
ter of new taxes on American corporations, higher (Continued on Page 48)
The New York Times Magazine 35
 APOSTATES

36
 For young ultra-Orthodox adults
who decide to leave their
cloistered communities, daily life
becomes a struggle over
questions of food, faith and sex.

ANONYMOUS

By Tay Brodesser-Akner Photographs by Elinor Carucci

 O
n Thursdays, the nonprot organization Foot-
steps hosts a drop-in group for its membership
of formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews, who mostly
refer to themselves as o the derech. Derech Are there rules for this? A few of them made sex
means path in Hebrew, and o the derech, jokes. The O.T.D.ers, newly alive in a world of
or O.T.D. for short, is how their ultra-Orthodox
families and friends refer to them when they
break away from these tight-knit, impermeable
communities, as in: Did you hear that Shain-
dels daughter Rivkie is o the derech? I heard
she has a smartphone and has been going to
museums. So even though the term is burdened
with the yoke of the very thing they are try-
ing to ee, members remain huddled together
under O.T.D. on their blogs and in their Face-
book groups, where their favored hashtag is
#itgetsbesser besser meaning better in
Yiddish. Sometimes someone will pop up on
a message board or in an email group and say,
Shouldnt we decide to call ourselves some-
thing else? But it never takes. Reclamations
are messy.
At the drop-in session I attended, 10 men and
women in their 20s and 30s sat around a coee
table. Some of them were dressed like me, in
jeans and American casualwear, and others wore
the clothing of their upbringings: long skirts and
high-collared shirts for women; black velvet skull-
caps and long, virgin beards and payot (untrimmed
side locks) for men. Half of them had extricated
themselves from their communities and were nav-
igating new, secular lives. But half still lived among
their Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox sects in areas of
New York City, New Jersey and the Hudson Valley
and were secretly dipping their toes into the sec-
religious upbringing. He allowed the attendees
to democratically settle on a loose theme for the
evening. One woman in her early 20s brought
up sexuality. She had started to date and wasnt
quite sure what the norms were. A young man
talked about how hard it was for him to interact
with women casually outside his community,
since he was taught that sexual desire outside
the intent to procreate means that one is a sexual
predator, so anytime he was attracted to some-
one, he worried he was going to do something
untoward, or that he was a kind of monster. The
young woman who had suggested the theme said
she didnt know when exactly to submit to kiss-
ing the rst date? The second? Is she a slut if
she kisses at all? Is it still bad nowadays to be a
slut? Shed heard girls talking on the subway and
calling each other sluts, and they were laughing.
student named Malkie Schwartz, who grew up in
the Lubavitch sect in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,
puns and innuendo, love a junior-high-grade sex
joke. The social worker narrowed his eyes and
pursed his lips and tapped a nger to his chin
and nodded and opened the question up to the
group. (I was allowed to document the meeting
on the condition that I wouldnt publish anyones
name or descriptive information.)
Another woman in her early 20s, sitting on the
sofa in jeans with one leg slung over its arm, told
us she had spent most of her life being molested merly religious friends what she was doing.
by her father. She told the group that recently she
had taken to advertising online, saying she fol- ing. Soon they had a G.E.D. study group and a
lowed the laws of family purity going to a ritual
bath after menstruation, not having sex during
her unclean week and that she was available normally taught to the ultra-Orthodox only in
for sex in exchange for money. Ultra-Orthodox
men visited her at all hours, and they cheated
on their wives, having sex with this ritually pure
young woman in her apartment. When the men
nished, they told her what a shame it was that
she was o the derech, that she seemed nice, that
she should try again at a religious life.
A man, 30ish, still with a beard that he now
trimmed closely to his face, talked about staying
with his religious wife, who knew he was no lon-
ger religious but wouldnt join him on the other
side. He knew the marriage should be over, but
he wouldnt leave, and he couldnt bring him-
self to cheat on her, and he wanted to know if
he was unable to cheat on her because he was
They went around in circles for many minutes,
most of them summoning scriptural sources on
whether morality is inherent, then other sources
to make or disprove that point, then laughing
at the fact that theyd summoned Scripture. The
married man who was deciding if he should
have sex outside his marriage put his head in his
hands, then through his hair and made a great,
guttural noise of frustration.
They all took a breath and laughed at them-
selves again, and then they went silent, and in
their silence was their uncertainty, now famil-
iar, of whether these questions would ever be
answered, and if they could talk enough about it
to the point where they would ever feel normal.
God, would it ever feel normal?
FOOTSTEPS WAS STARTED in 2003 by a college
and who knew after high school that she wanted
to step o the communitys moving walkway to
marriage and motherhood. She moved in with a
grandmother who wasnt religious and enrolled
at Hunter College on the Upper East Side.
But just because she left her community
didnt mean that she felt part of the secular
one. She started Footsteps as a drop-in group
right there at Hunter and told a couple of for-
About 20 people showed up to the rst meet-
human-sexuality-and-relationships group, so that
they could learn about sex education, which was
the days leading up to their weddings. Footsteps
became a chrysalis for them through which they
would leap into their new lives, just as soon as
they gured out exactly how to live them.
Schwartz eventually left the organization in
the hands of nonprot professionals Footsteps
was a chrysalis for her, too and went to law
school. Today, Footsteps is a 501(c)(3) with an
executive director, social workers, scholarships,
court-companion programs and special events
like fashion nights, at which members learn about
modern style outside the realm of black-and-
white dresses and suits and hats. Ultra-Orthodox
communities, whose leaders stand vigil against
outside inuences, know about Footsteps; about
Photograph by Elinor Carucci for The New York Times

ular world attending these meetings, but also
doing things as simple as walking down the street
without head coverings, or trying on pants in a
clothing store, or eating a nonkosher doughnut,
or using the internet. They had families at home
who believed they were in evening Torah learning
sessions, or out for a walk, or at synagogue for
evening prayers. On the coee table were two piz-
zas, one kosher, one nonkosher. The kosher pizza
tasted better, but only a couple of people ate it.
The group was facilitated by a Footsteps social
worker, Jesse Pietroniro, soft-spoken and kind,
who had told me that he had his own conicted
bound up by his religious values or because he
was innately a good person. Another married
man said that you dont need to be taught in a
religious context not to cheat on your wife its
a tenet of secular marriage as well, and what the
whole operation often depends on.
I guess I just dont know if Im a good person
because Im a good person, said the guy who
wanted to cheat but might not, or if Im a good
person because I was taught to be a good person.
Page 36: A Footsteps member removes his
tellin, a ritual object worn during prayers.
half the people I met in Footsteps rst heard of
it when they were accused by someone in their
family of being a member.
Its hard to talk about O.T.D.ers as a group,
because like the rest of us, like ultra-Orthodox
people, too, they are individuals. No two peo-
ple who practice religion do it exactly the same
way, despite how much it seems to the secular
world that they rally around sameness; and no
one who leaves it leaves the same way, either.
In the region of New York City, New Jersey, and
the Hudson Valley that Footsteps serves, 546,000
ultra-Orthodox Jews live in one of about ve

38 4.2.17
dierent sects. With a few exceptions, like the
Skver sect in New Square, N.Y., which has actual
boundaries and operates its own schools, the
ultra-Orthodox live not in cloistered neighbor-
hoods, but among secular America in Crown
Heights, Flatbush and Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
and beyond. Perhaps its easiest to think of them
as living in a dierent dimension occupying
the same space but speaking a dierent language
(Yiddish, for the most part), attending dierent
schools, seeing their own doctors, handling judi-
cial issues among themselves and eating their
own food from their own markets.
So once they leave, if they leave, they learn how
ill equipped they are for survival outside their
home neighborhoods, and that has a lot to do
with the ways that ultra-Orthodox communities
are valuable and good: the daily cycle of prayer
and school and learning; how people share goals
about family and values; how neighbors support
one another during times of need. Once thats
gone, and all a person has is her mostly Juda-
ic-studies education and little familial support and
no real skills, life gets scary. For those who leave
and are married with children, the community
tends to embrace the spouse left behind and help
raise funds for legal support to help that person
retain custody of the children. You could be some-
one with a spouse and children one day and nd
yourself completely alone the next.
I learned about Footsteps in 2015, after the very
public suicide of one of its young members. Her
name was Faigy Mayer, and on a hot night in July,
she went to the top of 230 Fifth Avenue in the
Flatiron district, where theres a rooftop bar, and
jumped. In death, she became something of a brief
symbol (and also a lightning rod) for the O.T.D.
movement, with her story plastered across local
papers, many illustrated by a Facebook image of
her holding a paintbrush and standing in front of
a newly painted mural that said Life is Beautiful. of her death, the lights stayed on at Foosteps,
A drop-in meeting for former ultra-Orthodox Jews at Footsteps.
As news of her death broke in the New York
tabloids and the Jewish papers, seemingly all the
ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox people I know
(who number in the hundreds but more on that
later) converged on my Facebook page to wonder
if the suicide of Faigy Mayer was a case of mental
illness or if suicidal tendencies were a condition
inherent to the kind of person who would leave
a secure and comfortable community in favor of
a large world with no guarantees, a world that
youd been warned would reject you. What kind
of person wants to leave safety and start from
the beginning, sounding dierent from everyone
else, not knowing what to say, not knowing how
to make a living not knowing how to read past
a sixth-grade level, because English is taught as
an afterthought, if at all, in many of these schools?
The conversation on my Facebook page was
like the ones that happen between Republicans
and Democrats after mass shootings: Half the
posts said that we should not be looking at reli-
gious society as a cause of mental illness. The
other half responded that in many ultra-Orthodox
communities, the mentally ill dont get help not
because it isnt available to them but because
theres a stigma of bad genetics that could make a
person less attractive in later marital matchmak-
ing. And does someone have to be mentally ill to
feel hopeless after being rejected by her family?
Does someone have to be extraordinarily sick
to succumb to the despair she feels after having
ventured out into a world where she is all alone,
without the skills to survive?
I CANT THINK of many members who havent,
at one time or another in their journeys, contem-
plated suicide because they have felt they have
no other options, says Lani Santo, the execu-
tive director of Footsteps. Meaning, by the time
Faigy died, they were used to this. On the night
and members came in for an impromptu drop-
in group. The social workers reached out to the
members they knew to be struggling and encour-
aged them to come in and talk. They planned a
memorial for a few weeks later.
There were two notable O.T.D. deaths in the
last few years. A year and a half before, it was
Deb Tambor, who overdosed on pills and vodka,
surrounded by the pictures of the three children
she lost custody of when she left her Skver sect
in Monsey. A year after that, Joey Diangello, 34,
overdosed after becoming a powerful force in
protesting child abuse in ultra-Orthodox com-
munities; he said he was raped in a ritual bath
by an adult when he was 7.
After I heard about Faigys death, I inter-
viewed people who knew her, hoping to be able
to paint a portrait I ultimately couldnt. Her fam-
ily relationships had been too contentious, and
only a few of her family members would speak
with me. Her friends told me dierent stories,
but ultimately, the only thing I could say about
her was that she was sick and didnt get the care
she needed. On the night of a Footsteps Thanks-
giving celebration, I returned home to news that
Faigys older sister, Sara, who was religious and
had just been released from a psychiatric facility,
had hanged herself in her parents home.
Shmuly was among the Footsteps members
who knew Faigy. By the time of her memorial ser-
vice, he had been O.T.D. for several years, having
understood since elementary school that there
was a world beyond 60th Street in Borough Park,
Brooklyn. All he ever wanted was to know more
about it. He was afraid of being married o after
high school and so went to Israel for yeshiva (and
then to India and then to Thailand) and staved o
marital oers, until one day he found Footsteps
and enrolled in the G.E.D. course there.
Shmuly had known he wanted to go to col-
lege ever since he was sneak-reading $7 best
sellers he found on the rack at Duane Reade. He
loved the story The Cop and the Anthem, by
O. Henry; he read the abridged version of The
Call of the Wild over and over. But his school
would not release his transcripts for college
applications, and so he spent a year of intense
study in the computer labs at Footsteps, start-
ing with the English language and basic long
division and ending with his G.E.D. He couldnt
learn enough about philosophy and art. He loved
the 20th-century avant-garde, like secessionist
art and Dadaism; he loved the tension between
the old and new ideas of the art world, and how
certain art was rejected as if it were corrupting
or dangerous. He enrolled at Hunter College to
study art history.
Hes 27 now, tall and smiley and soft-spoken
and polite. His English is noticeably inected
with Yiddish: His T is aspirated and dentalized
instead of glottalized in certain and button,
he pronounces the T, whereas most Americans
just swallow it in the back of our mouths. His O
The New York Times Magazine 39
vowel is less diphthongized than most American
speech, and he tends to avoid contractions. He
says words like hair and bear as hear and good for me, and then they never want to break
beer. It doesnt bother Shmuly that he sounds
dierent; Yiddish is very hipster now, he says.
I also met Malky, who knew Faigy Mayer but
hadnt been close with her. Malky was from a
prominent family who lived in an Israeli commu-
nity so strict that when tourists walked through
in short sleeves and shorts, they literally stoned
them. In the summer, Malky would complain
about the black tights she had to wear, how hot
a Middle Eastern July could be, and her mother
would say, Well, hell is hotter. When they
moved to the States, Malky taught art classes
to ultra-Orthodox children and wore skirts that
were not black, and this marked her as a dicult
marital match. Finally her parents found some-
one who would marry her, but Malky took one
look at him and said no. It wasnt her choice,
though. Her parents, whom she loved very much,
promised her to this man anyway. Whos going
to want you? she remembers her father, who
was equally bereft, telling her. Youre 22. Youre
wearing green skirts. We had no choice.
Malky planned to kill herself before her
wedding. Six weeks before the big day, or her
deadline, as she calls it, she read an article in
an Israeli newspaper about Footsteps. She called
the group and told the counselor who answered
that her parents were going to marry her o, and
the counselor asked, Well, what do you want?
Nobody had ever asked her this before. She went
through with the wedding, because she loved
her family and couldnt imagine that they didnt
deep down know what was best for her in a way
that she didnt.
Her parents told her that she would get used
to the man once she was married. On her wed-
ding night, as her husband approached her,
Malky ran to the bathroom and cut her gums,
smearing the blood on her underwear and com-
ing out and saying she couldnt consummate the
marriage because she had her period. The day
after her wedding, Malky went to her parents
house, and her mother shaved her head, a cus-
tom in some sects. Malky begged her mother
to let her come home, but her mother pleaded
with her to make her marriage work. Malky con-
tinued to refuse her husband, and after seven
weeks, she again found Footsteps.
She left her husband, got a divorce and went to
live on her own, but she remains vexed by her love
for her family and her fear of embarrassing them.
Shes an artist now, but for the longest time she
wouldnt put her name on her paintings or partici-
pate in an art show, because she knew how much
that would damage her familys reputation. On
Friday nights she covered her head and walked
over to her parents house, where her nieces and
nephews would ask where her husband was and
why she didnt have children. She still goes every
Friday night, but they dont ask anymore.
40 4.2.17
Do you know when people are in love and
they say, This person is going to kill me, hes not
something approaching good. In the ultra-
up? she asked me. She cried and shook her head Orthodox school I attended in ninth grade, I
helplessly. When we spoke, her hair was curly,
and highlighted, but still growing in after being
shaved. This is what I have with my family. Its
like, I love them so much, but they are horrible
for me. They stop me in everything in my life.
Three and a half years ago, Shmuly and Malky
met at a Footsteps-sponsored birthday party,
and they became friends and running partners.
Shmuly realized he thought of Malky as more than
a friend, but Malky wouldnt consider a romantic
relationship with him; she told me she couldnt
allow herself to belong to a man ever again.
MY MOTHER BECAME Hasidic when I was 12,
after years of only desultory High Holy Days
observance (my parents were divorced), and I
was sent to yeshiva high school and Orthodox
summer camps. My sisters followed and became
religious, too; none of us were ever forced into
any of it, which is why my sisters religiousness
baled me. My mother has long told me that she
did it because she wanted her daughters to have
a life that wasnt cheap and immodest that she
found secular culture was becoming too crass;
my sisters tell me it makes their lives more mean-
ingful. Almost 30 years later, I still challenge them
on this in a way that they must nd tedious but
are kind to me about.
It was clear to everyone that religious practice
just never took with me, and I waited out my time
in my house until the day I left for college, when I
swore Id never wear a skirt again or rush around
in anticipation of sundown on a supposed day of
rest. I swore I would rid myself of the vestiges of
what was taught to me, which was to be afraid
of an angry God who made me a certain way
and then disavowed that way in the hope that Id
be some ideal of a person who committed arbi-
trary acts of blind devotion eating kosher food
only; not turning the lights on during Saturdays;
not wearing linen and wool together, which is
an actual and serious Torah law. Ive been only
marginally successful in keeping this oath.
IT DOESNT
BOTHER
SHMULY THAT
HE SOUNDS
DIFFERENT;
YIDDISH
IS VERY
HIPSTER NOW,
HE SAYS.
I was taught that I was innately bad and that
I had to work at these rules in order to become
was taught to use the bathroom quickly, lest my
exposed unmentionables lead me to sinful acts
of self-examination. I left that school, but in a
more modern one, I received more or less the
same lessons. I was taught that humans were the
ultimate intellectuals, unless you asked questions
that extended beyond what was in the Torah. I
was taught that if I ever ate a legume or a piece
of risen wheat on Passover, my children would
be cut o from their legacy as Jews. No one
knew for sure what that meant, but over the
years, the collected guesses I got from teachers
included: infertility, miscarriage and having to
watch my children die before I did. I no longer
keep a strict version of Passover, yet each time a
legume passes my lips during those eight days,
I wonder if I should be hedging my bets, and
so an internal war ares inside me over some
hummus. After years of confused and at times
contentious discussion, my husband and I now
identify as something like Conservative Jews;
we are incredibly ambivalent but active (read:
dues-paying) members of a synagogue.
When I left Orthodoxy, there was some shock
of re-entry into regular society, even though I
never really left it. I had negotiated to keep a
TV in my mothers house, and my mother, may
God and all the rabbis whose graves she prays
over bless her a million times, understood that
fundamentalism wasnt something I could get
behind. So I watched Beverly Hills, 90210, and
Twin Peaks and A Dierent World to see how
regular secular Americans related to one another.
I had friends who werent as lucky some
who had to change out of pants into skirts as
they rode the elevators up to their apartments
as teenagers; some who still cant visit their par-
ents on a holiday if theyre going to drive. And
yet even under my best-case-scenario O.T.D.
circumstances, so much of my previous life
remained part of me that even when I didnt
wear a skirt and even when I didnt observe
Shabbat and even when I just went right out
and ate nonkosher foods like shrimp, the fears
and worries persisted that I was doing some-
thing wrong, that I had only departed because
Photograph by Elinor Carucci for The New York Times
there was something lazy about me, that I was
too prone to evil inclinations. Even in my lucky
circumstances I am left with ickers of supersti-
tion and magical thinking, no matter how long
it has been since Ive realized that most of what
I was taught as a child is not something I agree
with as an adult. And still, every night, I place
my hand over my sleeping childrens eyes and I
recite the Shema bedtime prayer on their behalf.
Every year, I fast on Yom Kippur and apologize
for the ways I cant bring myself to be what I
was told God wanted. I do it just in case, or
because Im a coward, or at least because Im not

Shmuly and Malky in their apartment.
as courageous as your garden-variety Footsteps for the family, and the community would come
member. All of which is to say that I dont know to their home to pray for seven days.
if it will ever feel normal. The morning of Faigys funeral, her father
stood up next to the wooden box that held her
ON THE NIGHT Faigy Mayer died, her body lay body. Her O.T.D. friends werent allowed into
on Fifth Avenue until it was wrapped up with the service at rst, but one of them spoke to the
all the blood and tissue around it, according to bouncerlike guy at the front and assured him, in
Jewish tradition, and sent to Borough Park to Yiddish, that they didnt want any trouble. They
her bewildered parents and their local funer- just wanted to mourn their friend. Before Faigys
al home. Women from the community stayed father began the eulogy in Yiddish, he addressed
with her body all night, washing and guarding them, notable for their lack of black hats and
it. Others would organize weeks worth of meals their lack of beards. Thank you very much for
coming, he said. I didnt prepare anything in
English, and Im sorry.
After the funeral, the cedar box that held
Faigys body was taken to New Jersey, o a main
road in view of a Coca-Cola bottling plant, where
she was buried among other Hasidim, which, it
seems safe to say, is exactly where she never want-
ed to be. The gravestone carries an acrostic of
her name, talking about how she suered, how
good she was. One line reads, May the psalms
she read with such devotion bring peace to her
dear soul. When I visited the site, next to her was
a freshly lled grave with a temporary marker
for her sister, Sara. The two graves were a sight
that, though I knew to expect it, made me step
backward and put one hand to my mouth. I said
Kaddish from muscle memory, though Im sorry
for it, because I feel fairly certain Faigy wouldnt
have wanted that, either.
When her friends left her funeral, one of them
noted what a pageant the whole ceremony
was, and then they went to a pizza place that
she loved, to remember her. Some of them later
took a train to the city, to the place where Faigys
body had landed, the site of her last stand against
this life. They grew quiet and somber all over
again, and they found themselves wondering if
you could ever really escape the circumstances
you were born into. What if it doesnt get besser?
What if hell is hotter? They had only one another
to help answer these questions. In that way,
Footsteps is a lot like the organized religion its
designed to help its members transition out of:
Each exists to make sense of an utterly baling
world. But whereas religion seeks to reassure
you that youre not alone, Footsteps seeks to
reassure you when you realize that you are.
Malky had planned to go to dinner the next
night, with Shmuly and another friend, at the
French restaurant Daniel for her birthday. Malky
and Shmuly loved learning about new foods and
wine outside ritual use. But the day came, and
Malky felt that having such an extravagant meal in
light of the news was unseemly. When she called
the restaurant to reschedule, however, she learned
that it was booked so far out that they werent
taking new reservations. They kept the date.
That night, they luxuriated in the lives that
they were somehow still living, having come out
on the other side of something. So much had
happened to them, but they were young, and
one day, the years of living the lives they want-
ed would outnumber the years theyd lived the
lives they didnt want. They drank ve bottles of
wine among the three of them, and when it was
time to go home, Malky and Shmuly decided to
take a yellow cab back to Brooklyn instead of a
train. They stopped rst to drop o Malky before
heading to Shmulys house, but when Malky got
out of the car, she asked Shmuly if he wanted to
come upstairs with her. He left the car, and she
took his hand and led him up the stairs, and he
has remained there, with her, ever since.
The New York Times Magazine 41
 Why does
H R American health
care cost
E C O D E U so much? One big
reason: an
arcane, sprawling
classification
S system that
doctors and
H hospitals have
learned to game.

By
Elisabeth
Rosenthal

Illustrations
by Paul Sahre

43

catastrophe struck Wanda Wickizer on Christ-
mas Day 2013. A generally healthy, energetic
51-year-old, she suddenly found herself vomit-
ing all day, racked with debilitating headaches.
When her alarmed teenage son called an ambu-
lance, the paramedics thought that she had food
poisoning and didnt take her to the emergency
room. Later, when she became confused and
groggy at 3 a.m., her boyfriend raced her to Sen-
tara Norfolk General Hospital in coastal Virgin-
ia, where a scan showed she was suering from
a subarachnoid hemorrhage. A vessel had burst,
and blood was leaking into the narrow space
between the skull and the brain.
During a subarachnoid hemorrhage, if the
pressure in the head isnt relieved, blood accumu-
lates in that narrow space and can push the brain
down toward the neck. Vital nerves that control
breathing and vision are compressed. Death is
imminent. Wickizer was whisked by helicopter
ambulance to the University of Virginia Medical
Center in Charlottesville, 160 miles away, for an
emergency procedure to halt the bleeding.
After spending days in a semi-comatose state,
Wickizer slowly recovered and left the hospital
three weeks after the hemorrhage, grateful to be
alive. But soon after she returned home to her two
teenage children, she found herself confronted
with a dierent kind of catastrophe. Wickizer had
had health insurance for most of her adult life:
Her husband, who died in 2006, worked for the
city of Norfolk, which insured their family while
he was alive and for three years beyond. After his
death, Wickizer worked in a series of low-wage
jobs, but none provided health insurance. A minor
pre-existing condition she was taking Lexapro,
a common medicine for depression meant that
her only insurance option was to be funneled into
the high-risk pool (a type of costly insurance
option that was essentially rendered obsolete by
the Aordable Care Act and now gures in some
of the G.O.P. plans to replace it). She would need
to pay more than $800 per month for a policy with
a $5,000 deductible, and her medical procedures
would then be reimbursed at 80 percent. She felt
she couldnt aord that. In 2011, she decided to
temporarily stop working to tend to her children,
which qualied them for Medicaid; with trepida-
tion, she left herself uninsured.
And so in early 2014, without an insurer or
employer or government agency to run inter-
ference between her and the hospital, she began
receiving bills: $16,000 from Sentara Norfolk (not
44 4.2.17
including the scan or the E.R. doctor), $50,000 for
the air ambulance. By the end of January, there was
also one for $24,000 from the University of Virginia
Physicians Group: charges for some of the doctors
at the medical center. I thought, O.K., thats not
so bad, Wickizer recalls. A month later, a bill for
$54,000 arrived from the same physicians group,
which included further charges and late fees. Then
a separate bill came just for the hospitals charges,
containing a demand for $356,884.42 but little in
the way of comprehensible explanation.
In other countries, when patients recover from
a terrifying brain bleed or, for that matter,
when they battle cancer, or heal from a serious
accident, or face down any other life-threatening
health condition they are allowed to spend
their days focusing on getting better. Only in
America do medical treatment and recovery
coexist with a peculiar national dread: the strug-
gle to gure out from the mounting pile of bills
what portion of the fantastical charges you actu-
ally must pay. It is the sickness that eventually
alicts most every American.
Whats less understood is the extent to which
our current medical-billing system itself is respon-
sible for the high prices patients are charged. There
are, of course, many factors that have led to the
United States record-breaking $3 trillion health
care bill: runaway drug prices, excessive testing
and sky-high charges for even the most basic med-
ical interventions. But all of those individual price
increases have been enabled indeed, aided and
abetted by the complex system of billing and
coding that underlies bills like those sent to Wick-
izer. That system, with its lines of alphanumeric
codes and arcane medical abbreviations, has given
birth to a gigantic new industry of consultants,
armies of back-room experts whom medical pro-
viders and insurance companies deploy against
each other in an endless war over which medical
procedures were undertaken and how much to
pay for them. Caught in the crossre are Ameri-
cans like Wanda Wickizer, left with huge bills and
indecipherable explanations in languages they
cannot possibly understand.
originat-
D I S E A S E - C L A S S I F I C AT I O N S Y S T E M S
ed during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in
17th-century London epidemiologic constructs
to classify and track causes of death and prevent
the spread of infections among populations that
spoke dierent languages. In the 1890s, the
French physician and statistician Jacques Ber-
tillon further systematized death reporting by
introducing the Bertillon Classication of Causes
of Death, the rst medical-coding system, which
was adopted and modied in many countries. It
became an ocial global eort, which was peri-
odically revised by an international commission.
During the rst half of the 20th century, the num-
ber of entries naturally increased with improved
understanding of science, and many countries
began tabulating not just causes of deaths but
also the incidence of diseases.
In the 1940s, the World Health Organization
took over stewardship of Bertillons system and
renamed it to reect a new, broader focus: the
International Statistical Classication of Diseases,
Injuries and Causes of Death (ICD). The codes
became an invaluable tool, a common language
for epidemiologists and statisticians to track
the worlds alictions. But over the last several
decades in the United States, codes gradually took
on a bedrock nancial function as the basis for
medical billing. In 1979, the government decided
to use what by then were called ICD-9 codes
which specify the patients diagnosis in adjudi-
cating Medicare and Medicaid claims, with some
modications added specically for that purpose;
the United States version was called ICD-9-CM.
(The country has recently moved to a new itera-
tion, ICD-10-CM.) For its beneciaries, Medicare
pays a xed fee for inpatient hospitalization based
primarily on the ICD-CM code, which is translat-
ed into a DRG (diagnosis-related group) code
which is the immediate basis for reimbursement.
Other insurers followed in making codes the
basis for billing. Coding systems begot new cod-
ing systems, because few hospitals wanted to be
paid according to Medicares relatively low DRG
standards. And because strategic coding meant
increased payment, that begot coding specialists
and coding courses and coding degrees. There
are now dierent increasingly complex coding
languages that dene payment for dierent kinds
of services: CPT codes, for oce visits delivered
by doctors, as well as HCPCS, ICD-PCS-CM and
DRG, for charges that are incurred in the hospi-
tal. There are tens of thousands of codes in each
lexicon that have become increasingly specic.
For example, there are dierent codes for in-oce
earwax removal depending on the method used
(irrigation or instruments), dierent codes for
delivering dierent vaccinations and a code for
each injection delivered in the hospital. Dierent
insurers also use dierent coding systems. While
Medicare would have most likely considered
Wickizers brain bleed as DRG 021, if billed to a
commercial insurer, it could result in more than a
dozen ICD codes and hundreds of HCPCS entries.
Seemingly subtle choices about which code to
use can have large nancial consequences. If after
reviewing a hospital chart of, say, a patient who
has just had a problem with his heart, a hospi-
tal coder indicates the diagnosis code for heart
failure (ICD-9-CM Code 428) instead of the one
for acute systolic heart failure (Code 428.21), the
dierence could mean thousands of dollars. In
order to code for the more lucrative code, you
have to know how it is dened and make sure the
care described in the chart meets the criterion,
the denition, for that higher number, says one
experienced coder in Florida, who helped with
Wickizers case and declined to be identied
because she works for another major hospital.
In order to code for acute systolic heart failure,
the patients chart ought to include supporting
documentation, for example, that the heart was
pumping out less than 25 percent of its blood
with each beat and that he was given an echocar-
diogram and a diuretic to lower blood pressure.
Submitting a bill using the higher code without
meeting criteria could constitute fraud.
Each billing decision, then, can be seen as a
battle of coder versus coder. The coders who
work for hospitals and doctors strive to bring in
as much revenue as possible from each service,
while coders employed by insurers try to deny
claims as overreaching. Coders who audit Medi-
care charts look for abuse to reclaim money or
fraud that needs to be punished with nes. Hos-
pital coders teach doctors and doctors pay to
take courses to learn how they can upcode
their charts to a more lucrative level with minimal
eort. In a doctors oce, a Level 3 visit (paid, say,
at $175) might be legally transformed into a Level
4 (say, $225) by performing one extra maneuver,
like weighing the patient or listening to the lungs,
whether the patients illness required that or not.
While most hospitals and insurers set their
own rates for each level of care, adding a step
when interacting with a patient can also bring
windfalls. E.R. doctors, for example, learned that
insurers might accept a higher-reimbursed code
for the examination and treatment of a patient
with a nger fracture (usually 99282) if in addi-
tion to needed interventions a narcotic pain-
killer was also prescribed (a plausible bump up
to 99283), indicating a more serious condition. CPT, the code used by doctors. It publishes coding She remembers nothing before February, she says,
Toward the end of the 20th century and into books and dictionaries. It also creates new codes but relied on help from her parents, who live near-
the next, as strategic coding increased, a new when doctors want to charge for a new procedure. by, and her boyfriend, who is retired from the
industry thrived. For-prot colleges oered med- It levies a licensing fee on billing companies for Navy. She did her best to address the onslaught of
ical-coding degrees, and internships soon fol- using CPT codes on bills. Royalties for CPT codes, bills that began appearing in her mailbox.
lowed. Because alphanumeric coding languages along with revenues from other products, are the First, she took stock of her nances. She paid
are as distinct from one another as Chinese is associations biggest single source of income. the rent for the Norfolk apartment that she and
from Russian, dierent degree tracks are neces- Patients with good health insurance are often her children lived in by renting out a townhouse
sary, along with distinct professional organiza- blissfully unaware and mostly unaected by the that she and her deceased husband had bought in
tions that oer their own particular professional jockeying that goes on over how to code their Virginia Beach; after paying property tax, insur-
exams, certications and licensing. Hospital sys- bills. But uninsured patients like Wickizer, or ance and maintenance on the townhouse, she
tems and insurers which have become huge, (increasingly) those with high deductibles, are just broke even. She also received about $2,000
Hydra-like enterprises now all employ room- stuck with no insurer to argue on their behalf. a month in Social Security survivor benets
fuls of coding-program graduates to perform Her experience with the University of Virgin- because of her husbands death. In addition, she
these tasks. Membership in the American Acad- ia Medical Center is not unique: Studies have had about $100,000 from her husbands life insur-
emy of Professional Coders has risen to more shown that hospitals charge patients who are ance in a retirement account, which she was also
than 170,000 today from roughly 70,000 in 2008. uninsured or self-pay 2.5 times more than they hoping would help pay for her childrens college.
Individual doctors have complained bitterly charge those covered by health insurance (who With medical bills totaling nearly $500,000 and
about the increasing complexity of coding and the are billed negotiated rates) and three times more no health insurance, the numbers didnt add up.
expensive necessity of hiring their own professional than the amount allowed by Medicare. That gap My dad said: Theyll never expect you to pay
coders and billers or paying a billing consultant. has grown considerably since the 1980s. that, Wickizer told me. But they did.
But they have received little support from the med- As a sign of good faith, she quickly paid $1,500 to
ical establishment, which has largely ignored the WHEN WICKIZER ARRIVED home from the hospi- the hospital and $1,000 to the doctors and sought
protests. And perhaps for good reason: The Amer- tal in January 2014, she had trouble concentrating to make sense of the bills. Patients today are told to
ican Medical Association owns the copyright to and nding words; she spoke deliberately, slowly. be good medical consumers, but they are asked to

Illustration by Paul Sahre The New York Times Magazine 45

write checks for thousands of dollars in this case
hundreds of thousands with little explanation of
what theyre for. Wickizer did what she would have
done with a credit-card statement: She contacted
the hospital and requested an itemized bill. Her
idea was that if she could understand how much
she was being charged for each procedure, she
could compare the fees with the reimbursements
that Medicare or another insurer would pay for
those services and begin some kind of negotiation.
A month later, on March 19, the hospital nally
sent a list of charges, using medical abbreviations
and terminology but not revealing the all-import-
ant alphanumeric codes. Despite being 60 pages
long, the tally seemed incomplete, leaving out
doctors charges and including other fees that
seemed incidental, like charges for catheters,
wires and oxygen. Room charges were vastly
dierent on dierent days.
Nearly simultaneously, she received a one-page
bill for the hospital portion of her care, broken
down only into the broadest categories, including
$111,162 in room charges, $34,755.75 for pharmacy,
$19,653 for labs, $8,640 for the operating room,
$8,325 for anesthesia, $1,143 for the recovery
room, $44,524 for medical supplies and $40,489
for radiology services, totaling $356,884.42. The
bill informed her that the medical center was pre-
pared to oer her its standard 20 percent discount
for patients who are uninsured, leaving a what
you owe now fee of $285,507.58. It noted that the
hospital could oer some additional nancial assis-
tance, but only if her household of three had assets
of less than $3,100 (such as bank or retirement
accounts), which disqualied Wickizer and very citing patient privacy, as governed by HIPAA
likely most Americans who have ever held a job.
Next, she did her best to nd out what Medi-
care or another insurer would have paid for her
hospitalization, hoping to oer the hospital that
amount from her retirement account. To under-
stand the Medicare codes, she had to learn a bit of
coding language. Would her hospitalization count
as Medicare DRG 020 or 021? She estimated that
in 2013, her subarachnoid hemorrhage (most like-
ly coded, she determined, as intracranial hem-
orrhage or cerebral infarction disorders, DRG
021, with procedures and major comorbidities
or complications), would have been reimbursed
by Medicare for about $80,000. Had a member of
the armed services experienced the same con-
dition, Tricare, the military insurer, might have
paid closer to $70,000. But to know how much a
commercial insurer would have paid, she would
have to gure out what HCPCS codes the hos-
pital used to calculate her bill, and the hospital
did not send those. Hospitals tend to treat their
billing strategies codes and their master price
list, called a charge master as trade secrets vital
to their business. State laws and judges tend to
respect that as proprietary information.
When the billers called insisting on payment of
the full $285,507.58, Wickizer explained, I dont
have this kind of money. She oered the hospi-
tal and its doctors the $100,000 in her retirement
account. They declined and suggested that she
sign up for a payment plan of $5,000 a month to
the hospital and a second $5,000 plan for the
physicians group. It was an untenable amount.
In October 2014, a sheri axed a summons to
Wickizers front door, saying that the university
was suing her for nonpayment. Eric Swensen,
a spokesman for the University of Virginia,
declined to answer questions about the case,
rules. But he noted that the university provides
$270 million worth of free care to patients who
meet its criterion for assistance and sets up inter-
est-free payment plans for those who dont.
After receiving the summons, Wickizer resort-
ed to a technique followed by many a frustrated
customer: She went on Facebook, posted her
story and solicited advice. (The Facebook group
Paying Till It Hurts, where she posted her story,
was created in 2014 in connection with a New
York Times series that I wrote with the same
name.) A handful of experts patient advo-
cates, billing professionals, lawyers and a coder
volunteered their help pro bono to try to get
more information from the medical center and
translate the coding that yielded the unaordable
gure. (One notable aspect of our commercial-
ized health system is that for every person who
is pushing to prot, there is another who is doing
his or her best to protect patients.)
In vetting Wickizers bill, the experts encoun-
tered roadblocks from the medical center at every
turn in a contentious battle that lasted for over a
year. Multiple legal requests to review Wickizers
chart and complete bill with its coding elucidat-
ed were refused. Nora Johnson, a retired hos-
pital bill-compliance auditor from West Virginia
who volunteered to help Wickizer, noted that not
revealing the billing codes constituted a violation
of federal law. No insurer would have paid the bills
without seeing them, allowing at least a rational
attempt at negotiation. As Wickizers team wrote
to the University of Virginia in one of their letters:
No Codes = No Pay. The University of Virginia
Physicians Group, which independently charged
Wickizer $54,000, eventually turned over its billing
codes. Wickizers experts were able to use the bill
fragments they had received in discovery, supple-
mented by those codes, to get a better idea of what
medical procedures Wickizer received during
her three-week hospitalization. From there, they
tried to extrapolate how the hospital had, perhaps,
coded her case. By examining the cost reports
the University of Virginia hospital must le with
Medicare, which indicate the amount it spends
delivering certain types of care, Christine Kraft,
another medical-billing expert, estimated that
even by its own calculations, the medical center
spent less than $60,000 treating Wickizer.
between hospitals and
T H E S T E A LT H B AT T L E
insurers over bills for each hospitalization, oce
visit, test, piece of equipment and procedure is
costly for us all. Twenty-ve percent of Unit-
ed States hospital spending the single most
expensive sector in our health care system is
related to administrative costs, including sal-
aries for sta who handle coding and billing,
according to a study by the Commonwealth
Fund. That compares with 16 percent in England
and 12 percent in Canada.
That discrepancy comes, in part, from the pro-
longed negotiations over payment and the huge
number of coders, billers and collectors who have
to be compensated: Their salaries and loans from
those years of training in obscure languages are
folded into those high charges and rising premi-
ums. In addition, as is often the case in warfare,
the big conventional army can be at a disadvan-
tage: The insurance companies and government
seem to be always one step behind the latest guer-
rilla tactics of providers coders.
For years, creative coding has been winning
over what the government calls correct coding,
meaning coding that gives providers their due,
but without exaggeration. Indeed, each attempt
by the government to control questionable cod-
ing to enhance providers revenue has seemed
to only fuel more attempts. In 1996, for example,
Medicares National Correct Coding Initiative
made it clear that certain codes couldnt appear
on the same bill because they were inherently part
of the same procedure. As a rule, an anesthesiol-
ogist could not, for example, separately bill for
anesthesia and checking your oxygen level during
your surgery. But the government created Modi-
er 59 a code that could be appended to other
codes to allow doctors to take exceptions to that
rule in unusual cases. Modier 59 could be used to
allow for two payments in certain situations, such
as when an oncology nurse needed to insert two
separate IVs for two dierent purposes one to
administer chemotherapy, say, and another hours
later because the patient seemed dehydrated.
Such cases were expected to be exceedingly rare.
But just as entrepreneurial corporate tax
lawyers search each new tax code for econom-
ic advantage, entrepreneurial coders and bill-
ers nd loopholes to exploit at the edge of the
law. An investigation by the Health and Human
Adapted from An American Sickness: How Health-
care Became Big Business and How You Can Take It
Back, to be published this month by Penguin Press.
Illustration by Paul Sahre
Services Oce of the Inspector General in 2005
found many instances of Modier 59 abuse. Forty
percent of code pairs billed with Modier 59 in
2003 were not legitimate, resulting in $59 mil-
lion in overpayment. Similarly, when Medicare
announced that it would pay only a set fee for
the rst hour and a half of a chemotherapy infu-
sion and a bonus for time thereafter a raft
of infusions clocked in at 91 minutes.
Like nearly every area of medicine, coding sci-
ence has advanced though not to the patients
benet. Commercial computer encoder pro- basis whether or not to report nonpayment to
grams maximize income from coding and make
helpful suggestions (That could be billed for Level
3, or Did you forget Code 54150, indicating a lien on real estate, we do not seek to sell the
circumcision on a bill for a male newborn). Today
many medical centers have coders specializing
in particular disciplines joint replacement or
ophthalmology or interventional radiology, for
example. Advanced coding consultants advise
lesser coders. The Business of Spine, a Texas-based
consulting rm with a partner oce in Long Island,
advises spine surgeons billers about what coding
Medicare and commercial insurers will tolerate,
whats legal and not, to maximize revenue. The
evolution of this mammoth growth enterprise
means bigger bills for everyone whether through
increasing premiums and deductibles on insur-
ance policies or, as in Wickizers situation, deplet-
ing the savings earmarked for childrens college.
ike many medical centers, the Uni-
versity of Virginia Health System
L has turned at least some of its bill-
ing and debt collection over to pro-
fessionals, third-party contractors
who have no pretense of the charitable mission
espoused by the University of Virginia, founded
by Thomas Jeerson in 1819 to educate leaders
in public service. The collectors are often paid a
percentage of the money they recover. They tend
not to care whether a procedure was coded well
or poorly. Their task is usually to go after the total
sum the hospital says it is owed.
In Wickizers case, the hospital brought in a
law rm that specialized in debt collection, then
called Daniel & Hetzel and based in Winchester,
Va. For a year and a half, Wickizers team of experts
dissected the bills and negotiated with the hospi-
tal and its representatives at the law rm over its
charges and coding strategies just as insurers do
behind the scenes on patients behalf. The experts
laid out their logic for what might constitute rea-
sonable payment in a detailed report based on
what they could discover about Wickizers care:
how it could be coded and what other hospitals
and insurers would have paid. They helped her
local lawyer, Kelly Roberts, write motions for dis-
covery and legal letters and made oers of pay-
ment between $65,000 and $80,000, which they
calculated should provide the hospital a prot on
the services rendered to Wickizer.
But the hospital did not accept any of the
oers. In a letter, Peter Hetzel, an attorney at
the rm, said his client would accept only just
over $225,000, saying the University of Virginia
Medical Center was the victim here. He noted,
too, that the small rental property that Wickizer
owned appraised at $90,200 in 2014 was
considered fair game for the hospital to seize
as payment. Swensen, the spokesman for the
university, said that it decides on a case-by-case
credit agencies or to pursue civil cases against
patients in court. He added: If we obtain a
property if it is the patients primary residence.
In February 2016, Wickizer received a letter
from the state of Virginia saying that the medical
center would be dunning money from any tax
refund she might get. At one point, in exasper-
ation, Wickizer wrote to her group of experts:
More than likely I am going to have to declare
bankruptcy by the time this is all said and done,
and I just would like to have everything settled.
I want to pay them what I have and what is fair.
By then, Wickizer was recovering physically
and had married her boyfriend. But she was still
struggling with stress from the uncertainty of
the mammoth bills hanging over her. With court
dates scheduled and postponed, motions led
and denied, she and her pro bono lawyer from
Chicago, Tom Osran, along with her local lawyer
were nally scheduled to face o in court with the
University of Virginia Medical Center on April 29,
2016. The day before trial, after Osran was prepar-
ing to book his plane ticket to Virginia, and after I
called the hospital inquiring about attending the
court session, the case was dismissed. The terms
of the settlement are sealed.
Nearly a year later, Wickizer remains exhaust-
ed by the ordeal. Her speech, which was hesi-
tant when I rst spoke with her more than two
years ago, sounds uid now, and she is funny and
thoughtful, though she says she still occasionally
needs to search to nd the right word, a form of a
condition known as aphasia. Now working part-
time as a clerk in a small store, she would like to
go back to her previous work as a bookkeeper,
she told me when we spoke in March. But she has
failed to secure a job; she worries that her barely
noticeable speech problems make her job inter-
views less than optimal. Or perhaps, she frets, the
problem is her credit rating, which (unknown to
her at the time) dropped more than 200 points
after the doctors who cared for her reported her
unpaid bills to credit agencies. That black mark
will remain until 2021, even though her legal case is
resolved and she now has military health insurance
through her husband. And, she notes with a sigh of
resignation, Im the kind of person whos always
tried to do everything right.
The New York Times Magazine 47
Trump
(Continued from Page 35)
prices for consumers and a jump in
the dollars value may compel an
unusual confederacy against the
tax-reform plan.
Labrador predicts that the
border-adjustment tax will have
very little political legs in the
conservative House, while Senator
Lindsey Graham said in Febru-
ary that even in the Republican-
controlled Senate, Ryans tax plan
wont get 10 votes. Senator Heidi the new administrations bellicosi-
Heitkamp, a North Dakota Demo-
crat who has been outspoken in her
willingness to work with Trump in
spite of the broader stance of her
party, says, Let me tell you, I rep-
resent farmers, and anyone who
tells me that farm country benets
from a high dollar needs to have a
discussion with me.
Perhaps the Republican faction
most alarmed by Bannons eco-
nomic nationalism is Washing-
tons military hawks. John McCain
is among those not mollied by
Trumps pledge of enacting one
of the largest increases in national-
defense spending in American
history. McCain scoed when I
brought this up to him. Of course
thats simply not true, he said.
When you look at 1981 and Rea-
gans commitment to rebuilding the
military, theres no comparison to
this 3 percent increase. Its a shell
game, my friend.
Despite his obvious dierences
with Trump, McCain was willing
to work with him but Bannons
presence seemed to confound
such prospects. Its kind of inter-
esting, McCain said, because I
have decades of experience with
Kelly, with Mattis, with Dan Coats,
McMaster, referring to Home-
land Security Secretary John Kelly;
Defense Secretary James Mattis;
Dan Coats, the director of nation-
al intelligence; and H. R. McMas-
ter, the national security adviser.
We discuss issues all the time. I
think this is probably the nest
national-security team that Ive ever
observed. Its almost schizophrenic,
in that I obviously dont have con-
versations with Steve Bannon, but I
do with Reince Priebus he was my
Republican chair in Wisconsin in
my 2008 presidential campaign. So
48 4.2.17
its almost a schizophrenic thats as well. Republicans enjoy a precar-
not the right word. A very divided ious 52-to-48 advantage in the Sen-
kind of relationship. Paradoxical. ate. On matters like the Supreme
McCain acknowledged to me Court, Trump can count on all 52.
that economic nationalism was a On votes requiring a simple major-
global movement and therefore not ity, any two of those Republicans
entirely the making of some mem- could fall away, and Pence could
bers of the Trump entourage. He preserve the win with a tiebreaking
then said: But it is an articulation vote. But a trio of scal hard-liners
that I believe is strongly reminiscent (like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike
of the 1930s. It certainly has unset- Lee), military hawks (John McCain,
tled our allies and friends around Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio)
the world, theres no doubt about or social moderates (Susan Collins,
that. Already, the senator asserted, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore
Capito) could deny Trump a major-
ty toward Mexico has increased the ity, unless he could swing at least
likelihood that its citizens will elect one Democrat to his side.
a very left-wing, anti-American That February afternoon in the
president. As for an import tax Roosevelt Room, Donnelly thanked
of the sort favored by Bannon and Trump for negotiating with Carrier,
Ryan, talk about harkening back to the manufacturing company based
the 1930s, he said. Its unbelievable in Indiana that had threatened to
to me that they somehow think if move jobs to Mexico before Trump
we start taxing goods coming across arm-twisted it into keeping many
the border, that thats somehow not of them in Indiana. But Donnelly
going to be responded to by the urged him not to view that epi-
Mexicans. Please. History shows sode as a one-o. He requested
this sort of action gets you into a the presidents support for his End
trade war. Outsourcing Act, which would give
preferential treatment in awarding
Listening to McCains tirade, I federal contracts to businesses that
found it evident that the Bannon kept jobs in America.
Eect might well cost the Trump The words were scarcely out of
White House at least one Repub- Donnellys mouth before Trump
lican Senate vote on a number of said, Im 100 percent for that, and
central issues this at a time when Ill do everything I can to help get it
Republicans are clinging to a slen- passed. He then asked Pence, who
der majority in the upper cham- was in the room, What do you
ber. In such cases, Trump could think, Mike? Trump was appar-
nd himself asking for something ently unaware that Pence, as the
Obama was never able to count on: governor of Donnellys state, had
votes from the opposition. refused to back the senators initia-
Early in the afternoon of Feb. tive, claiming instead that burden-
9, several Democratic senators some federal regulations were to
met with Trump in the Roosevelt blame for outsourcing. According
Room of the White House to dis- to Donnelly, Pence gamely replied,
cuss the Gorsuch nomination and If its like what Joe describes, Ill do
other matters. Among them were everything I can to help.
Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly of Donnelly, a thick-handed Irish
Indiana, Joe Manchin of West Vir- Catholic with a barroom guaw, had
ginia and Jon Tester of Montana. All met Trump once before. In January
four are moderates who are up for 2011, he was among the so-called
re-election in 2018 in states Trump Blue Dog Coalition, composed of
carried in 2016 by titanic margins conservative House Democrats
the least of which, in Donnellys what remained of them, anyway,
state, was nearly 20 points. If Dem- after the previous Novembers
ocrats are to nurture any hopes of disastrous midterms who trav-
retaking the Senate majority, they eled to New York for their annual
will need to hold these four seats. retreat. At a hotel conference room
But if Donnelly, Heitkamp, Man- in Midtown Manhattan, the 20 or
chin and Tester need to be seen so Blue Dogs received a procession
back home as willing to work with of guests, including Mayor Michael
Trump, the president needs them Bloomberg and former President
Bill Clinton. Only one of their
scheduled appointments required
that they go to their guest and so
they did, by bus, to Trump Tower.
Trump greeted them in his
boardroom, with its command-
ing view of Central Park. He was
charming but also brash. Remem-
ber, at that point he wasnt really
talking about running for oce,
recalls one attendee, former Rep-
resentative Dan Boren of Oklaho-
ma. But what strikes me was how
he talked about the same issues
the wall, China that became his
stump speech years later.
It was evident to the Blue Dogs
that Trump was no Clinton or
Bloomberg when it came to the
issues. Says former Representative
Ben Chandler of Kentucky, who was
also in attendance: The dierence
in terms of detailed knowledge of
policy was stark. Trump just made
bald assertions, really. Particu-
larly memorable to Chandler was
Trumps insistence that one of
the best things the country could
do was slap a massive tari on the
Chinese. Chandler continued: He
seemed not to understand that this
would probably cause the entire
world economy to melt down by
causing a huge trade war. What I
remember more than anything else
was our general reaction afterward.
And it was one of disbelief.
Today Donnelly remains oend-
ed by what he calls Trumps crazy
stu, as well as the alternative to
Obamacare that Trump supported.
But he does not begrudge Trump
his showmanship. He came to the
Carrier plant, Donnelly said. Ive
been working on that issue since
Day 1. I was begging people in the
Obama administration to come out
and talk to our workers. Donald
Trump came out there. And Don-
ald Trump talked to our workers.
You can tell people you care. But it
matters if you show up.
The Senate Democrat who, to
outward appearances, seems clos-
est to Trump is Joe Manchin, who
met face to face with the president-
elect in Trump Tower in December.
Before the meeting, Bannon took
the West Virginia senator aside.
The thing you need to know
about Trump, Bannon said, is he
doesnt care about the Republican
Party and he doesnt care about the
Democratic Party. He just wants
to put some wins on the board
for the country. In the meeting,
Trump asked Manchin what could
be done for coal miners. Manchin
replied that he should support
his Miners Protection Act, which
would secure health benets and
pension funds for retired miners.
According to Manchin, Trump
replied that he would thoroughly
support such a measure.
Later that month, Manchin went
on Morning Joe the one show be doing. So its not just a political
on MSNBC that Trump has been
known to watch to discuss, on the
occasion of the fourth anniversary
of the Newtown school massacre,
the need to expand background
checks on gun purchases. Within an
hour after Manchin was oscreen,
his cellphone rang. It was Trump.
Manchin was not completely forth-
coming about the conversation, but
he did tell me that he envisioned
a complete opportunity for new
gun-safety legislation. Unlike with
Obama, he said, no one thinks Pres-
ident Trump would do anything that
would take away your gun rights.
In his conversations with Man-
chin and Donnelly, Trump was
essentially throwing his support
behind a Democratic initiative
without rst checking with the
Republican Senate majority lead-
er, Mitch McConnell, to ask what
he thought of those proposals. Had
he done so, the answer in each
case would have been: not much.
(Though on the coal miners legis-
lation, Manchin said: Were seeing
Mitch McConnell go from a No, no
and hell no to now dropping his
own bill. Which is ne, so long as
we get it.) Still, Trump may have
little choice but to indulge Demo-
crats on some of their pet issues,
given that he will need their votes
on two of the most critical pieces
of his agenda: infrastructure and
trade deals.
Until now, Trump has divulged
few details about this trillion-
dollar infrastructure venture. On
the campaign trail, he frequently
cited Americas crumbling roads
and bridges. He bemoaned the
potholes deling the runways at La
Guardia Airport, where he parked
his two planes. During Donnellys
visit with Trump in the Roosevelt
Room, the president talked about
the Queens-Midtown Tunnel with
the tiles falling o, which he would
see on his way to La Guardia, Don-
nelly recalled. (The Metropolitan
Transportation Authority denies
that tiles are falling o the tunnel.)
When I asked Trump for more
specics, he gingerly oered a few
morsels: This is something thats
going to be a real infrastructure bill,
where real work is going to be done
on bridges and roads and airports
and things that were supposed to
forced the cancellation of the Bre-
piece of paper. Were going to do
infrastructure, and its going to be
a very big thing.
Trumps description struck me
as uncharacteristically modest.
Bannon had evoked a more gleam-
ing vision when he told me: Look,
economic nationalism is predicated
on a state-of-the-art infrastructure
for the country, right? Broadband
as good as Korea. Airports as good
as China. Roads as good as Germa-
ny. A rail system as good as France.
If youre going to be a world-class
power, youve got to have a world-
class infrastructure.
When I asked the president if his
initiative might include such fea-
tures, he replied: Yes. It could, it
could. You look at Japan and China,
where they have the fast trains, and
we dont have any. You look at other
countries where we used to be the
leader, and now were the laggard.
Its not going to happen anymore.
What also may not happen is
House Republicans supporting
a trillion-dollar bill that is at least
somewhat reminiscent of the stim-
ulus bill they unanimously opposed
eight years ago. Its also possible
that even moderate Democrats in
swing states may face pressure not
to come to Trumps rescue. After
all, the president remains intense-
ly unpopular among Democrats,
who continue to nurture hopes
that Trump is one Russia connec-
tion away from impeachment. As
a senior White House ocial told
me of Gorsuchs nomination to the
Supreme Court: The comment we
often get from Democrats is, Thats
a great nominee. Oh, so youre vot-
ing for him? I cant. Why not? My give up on multilateral deals.
base would go crazy, and Id be pri-
maried. That environment has to
change before we can have any of
these conversations.
On the morning of Feb. 2, two
Democratic leaders on trade issues,
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and
Representative Richard Neal of Mas-
sachusetts the ranking members
of the Senate Finance and House
Ways and Means Committees met
with Trump, along with a few of his
advisers and Republican lawmakers.
Trump had already greeted the day
by threatening to yank federal fund-
ing from the University of California
at Berkeley after acts of violence had
limits of their nationalist rhetoric.
itbart editor Milo Yiannopouloss
speech on campus, and by taunting
Arnold Schwarzeneggers poor rat-
ings on The Apprentice during the two-thirds of the Senate. Scroung-
National Prayer Breakfast. Disquiet
lingered from Trumps travel ban on
refugees and his surly phone con-
versation with the Australian prime
minister the previous week. Amid
this chaos entirely to Bannons lik-
ing and grating to nearly everyone
else in Washington actual legisla- lican lawmakers along the Southern
tive activity was slowly unfolding.
Trump began the meeting by
condemning the trade deals negoti-
ated by his predecessors. The press
pool was then ushered out before
the Democrats could say anything
in front of the cameras. When Neal
was given a chance to speak, he
informed Trump, Pence, Bannon,
Kushner and Commerce Secretary
Wilbur Ross that America had in
fact prospered as a result of past
trade deals. Neal emphasized the
crucial role that the Panama Canal
played in the economic vitality of
the Eastern Seaboard. Other than
Ross, no one on Trumps team
seemed aware of this. They were
a bit surprised, Neal later told me.
He was also struck by the White
Houses abhorrence of multilateral
pacts, which seemed to him to be
nave. The idea that youre going
to negotiate 148 bilateral agree-
ments with W.T.O. members does
not seem realistic, Neal said. The
idea that were all of a sudden going
to have a free-trade agreement
with Great Britain, thats going to
take years to do. Later, Neal said,
Ross privately assured him that the
Trump administration would not
could derail all of that.
Neals lecture signied the start
of what is likely to be a long and at
times contentious reckoning on the
part of Trump and Bannon with the
Of all the legislative lifts, none will
be heavier than renegotiating trade
agreements, which require fully
ing up 15 Democratic senators who
are willing to vote along with 52
Republicans would be a formidable
enough task on any issue. But just as
Democrats like Neal in the North-
east would ght for a trade deal that
benets their region, so will Repub-
border rebel at an eort to repeal
Nafta. As McCain told me, If you
negated Nafta, it would send my
state into a severe recession. He
assured me that Trumps national-
ist posture would not provoke only
regional opposition. He conjured
up another Republican era not
Reagans, not Bushs, but instead
that of Herbert Hoover, when two
Republican lawmakers joined with
a Republican president to design
a protectionist initiative that ulti-
mately caused American exports to
plummet during the Great Depres-
sion. Somewhere, McCain said
with a dark chuckle, Mr. Smoot
and Mr. Hawley are smiling.
On Thursday, March 23, Trump
hosted a morning meeting of Free-
dom Caucus holdouts in the Cabi-
net Room. Je Duncan, a congress-
man from South Carolina who was
present, told me that Trump told
them: I need you guys. We need
to put up a win. Its not just about
needing to repeal Obamacare
though we do. Its also that a win
here sets up a win for tax reform
and gives us momentum going into
infrastructure. And if the bill fails, it
With customary bravado, Trump
told the conservative members
that he didnt want to squeak by
with just a (Continued on Page 51)

The New York Times Magazine 49

Puzzles

SPELLING BEE VOWELS OUT NURIKABE

By Frank Longo By Patrick Berry By Wei-Hwa Huang

How many common words of 5 or more letters can you
spell using the letters in the hive? Every answer must
use the center letter at least once. Letters may be reused
in a word. At least 1 word will use all 7 letters. Proper
names and hyphenated words are not allowed. Score
1 point for each answer, and 3 points for a word that
uses all 7 letters.
Rating: 9 = good; 16 = excellent; 23 = genius
The answer to each clue below can be reduced to a
sequence of five consonants by removing all the vowels
(and spaces, if any). Each answers sequence will exactly
match one other answers sequence. For instance, CAR
POOLS (CRPLS) would match ACROPOLIS (CRPLS). Record
the sequences of the answers; then cross off their
matches as theyre found. No answer contains a Y.
Ape of Borneo and Sumatra (9) ________________________
Black leopard (7) _______________________________________
Carefully weigh all the options (10) _____________________
Paint some cells black, representing ocean, leaving
the remaining cells white, representing islands.
Island cells connect left/right and up/down, but not
diagonally. The same is true of ocean cells. Each island
must contain exactly 1 numbered cell, which describes
its area in number of cells. When the puzzle is done,
all the ocean cells must be connected. No 2x2 group of
cells can be completely ocean (although they can be
completely island).
1 1
4 4

>
3 3
Cellphone sound (8) ____________________________________
A Comic strip set in an office (7) __________________________
5 5

2 2
8'2" yellow Sesame Street character (3,4) ____________
T E Fine china (9) ___________________________________________
1 2
Frigid (4,2,3) ____________________________________________
U Great Plains burrower (7,3) _____________________________
Not yet decided (2,2,3,3) _______________________________ 6 1 3

R I Residential street with little traffic (3-2-3) _______________ 1

Rival of Expedia and Travelocity (9) _____________________ 2
M Scarce commodity for workaholics (5,4) ________________ 1 5
Sugar substitute a.k.a. NutraSweet (9) ___________________
Surfing platform only about 40" long (6,5) ______________
3 4
Our list of words, worth 28 points, appears with last weeks answers. What Goldilocks eats during her visit (8) ________________

ACROSTIC
1 L 2 S 3 V 4 T 5 H 6 D 7 B 8 A 9 O 10 R 11 C 12 I 13 E 14 N 15 L 16 U 17 T 18 Q 19 J 20 H 21 K

22 P 23 A 24 R 25 S 26 C 27 D 28 O 29 E 30 L 31 V 32 J 33 G 34 P 35 K 36 A 37 U 38 M 39 F 40 O 41 I 42 N

By Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon 43 C 44 D 45 T 46 B 47 H 48 P 49 V 50 G 51 Q 52 S 53 E 54 U 55 F 56 K 57 O 58 I 59 L 60 J 61 M 62 C 63 H 64 D 65 T

Guess the words defined below and 66 Q 67 N 68 G 69 V 70 B 71 U 72 I 73 A 74 L 75 P 76 K 77 S 78 Q 79 C 80 M 81 O 82 R 83 J 84 F 85 T 86 L 87 U

write them over their numbered
dashes. Then transfer each letter to 88 I 89 S 90 P 91 D 92 G 93 M 94 C 95 B 96 J 97 K 98 V 99 E 100 L 101 F 102 T 103 I 104 U 105 A 106 O 107 H 108 J 109 C
the correspondingly numbered square
in the pattern. Black squares indicate 110 R 111 G 112 D 113 M 114 L 115 N 116 S 117 E 118 T 119 I 120 F 121 A 122 V 123 K 124 P 125 H 126 C 127 D 128 B 129 U 130 G 131 N 132 M

word endings. The filled pattern will

133 R 134 J 135 A 136 F 137 V 138 T 139 O 140 K 141 B 142 Q 143 H 144 P 145 S 146 E 147 D 148 N 149 M 150 C 151 L 152 G 153 R 154 F 155 U
contain a quotation reading from left
to right. The first letters of the guessed
156 V 157 A 158 J 159 T 160 Q 161 I 162 E 163 S 164 M 165 H 166 B 167 N 168 K 169 O 170 L 171 D 172 A 173 P 174 U 175 R 176 T 177 V 178 I
words will form an acrostic giving the
authors name and the title of the work.

A. 1974 action film with four sequels F. Satire based partly on its authors L. Teleporting skill taught at Hogwarts R. Lily-livered, yellow-bellied
(2 wds.) New Zealand sojourn ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 100 15 74 59 30 86 1 151 114 170
153 110 133 10 24 82 175
105 172 8 157 135 36 121 73 23
120 101 136 154 39 55 84 M. Cephalopod with a shell
G. Pain reliever derived from ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ S. Rookie, greenhorn, apprentice
B. Evergreen with edible red berries willow bark 113 93 132 38 149 80 164 61
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ N. Roy Orbison top 10 hit of 1964 52 145 163 116 2 25 89 77
128 46 166 70 95 141 7 33 130 92 50 111 68 152 (2 wds.)
H. Euclid or Benoit Mandelbrot, e.g. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ T. Symbol of elite detachment (2 wds.)
C. Scenic overlook; perspective
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 42 115 14 131 67 148 167
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 125 143 63 47 5 107 20 165 O. Feudal upper class 65 159 45 118 176 17 102 85 138 4
150 79 26 126 62 109 11 43 94 I. Break in a shift (2 wds.) ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
D. Wanderlust (2 wds.) ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 40 28 9 106 81 169 57 139
U. Sport making its Olympic debut in
Sydney in 2000
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
72 103 12 119 58 88 41 178 161 P. Noncombatant member of
J. Dogs age, month of Sundays the military ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
6 171 147 127 27 44 112 91 64
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 87 54 37 71 129 155 174 16 104
E. French officer convicted of treason 96 60 158 32 19 83 134 108 22 90 75 144 173 48 34 124
in 1894 V. Like a good detective
K. Tubes in a kitchen Q. Hot, hot, hot (2 wds.)
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
13 146 117 162 53 29 99 56 21 76 168 97 140 35 123 51 66 78 18 142 160 177 31 69 3 137 122 156 98 49

50
Answers to puzzles of 3.26.17 Trump the rst time in his life, sitting across the table
(Continued from Page 49) from a president who was personally appealing
MIXED RESULTS
for his support. The White House was oering
W A S P T A N K U P L O L C H O P
O S T E R S N O O T Y O D E H A L L
one-vote victory. I want all 237 of you, he said, concessions and agreeing to them in writing.
W H I T E P A N T H E R S H O W O S L O according to Duncan, referring to the entire Duncan left the meeting and spent a few hours
S E C E D E E E L A T A R I W H I T House Republican conference. That included pondering, as he would later put it, the greater
S K Y C A M R A M E N S E D G E S
the more moderate members, who had told opportunity we as Republicans have. By that
A L O E A M I E D E R
A S K E D B A D B A D L E R O Y R E D Trump they felt that the White House wasnt evening, Trump had won Je Duncans vote.
L E O N I R E I N R O U S S E A U paying sucient attention to their concerns. It wasnt enough. The next afternoon, Ryan
E M A I L A L L D E C A N T N T H Later in the day, Trump hosted another meet- pulled the House health care bill, conceding that
S I N G L E T T E A R A T A M U S E S
M A L L C O P S T O P G A P ing with the moderates, where Representative neither he nor the White House could muster
A B B A C Y L I E G E S T E N D B A R Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania informed Trump enough votes.
P A L S P A D E R U S A D I R G E that he remained a no. According to an attend- You get about nine months to do the big
B R U I S E R S E R I E A K I R A
R E D P E O P L E E A T E R R E G A L
ee, Trump angrily informed Dent that he was things, Kevin McCarthy, the House majority
H O E L U T Z S A R I destroying the Republican Party and was leader, told me at the beginning of the year.
P S E U D O C A N S O J U N T A S going to take down tax reform and Im going Nine months seemed like a long time then,
A H A B K E A N U R C A D R Y I C E
to blame you. the calendar spacious and the legislative deal-
P A R T A C L O C K W O R K Y E L L O W
A N T I P O M H E I N I E D E E R E Until that day, Duncan had been an unyield- making possibilities plentiful. But more than
W E S T I N S S A T N A V R Y E S ing no on the bill. The previous week, he deliv- two of those months are gone already and
ered an impassioned speech to the vice presi- the path to future wins, as Trump foresaw in
KENKEN
dent and other Republicans, insisting that this his meeting with the Freedom Caucus, is now
vote constituted our generations rendezvous more complicated. When he took oce, Trump
with destiny a real chance to roll back the size relished the prospect of becoming a new kind
and scope of the federal government, returning of deal maker in the White House. By the time
some liberty back to the people through our I spoke with him in early March, however, he
actions to repeal Obamacare. In a text to me, already seemed to be taking stock of the limits
Duncan pointed to history: 39 men in a hot to his powers. He still saw himself as the closer
room in 1787 had the courage to break from the in chief but then that was typical, I would
norm and empower a nation. think, of a president, he mused. Some more
But now the four-term congressman was, for than others.

PUNS AND ANAGRAMS

A R A F A T G O G O B A R
L E N O V O S A M E H E R E
A C T I O N C L A M M E A T
B I L L W I T H E R S F B I
A P E S C A M V A I N
M E R E G O D S E L S A
A S S E S S S A N D L O T S
R U I N M A R C
B A S I N B O Y P E R I L S
R E E L S T E P O N E L
A R M Y A I L S H O E
P O I C L O S E A T H A N D
A S P I R A N T Y E A B I G
D O R M A N C Y E R M I N E
S L O P P E D R E S T E D

FREEWHEELING CAPSULES

F O L
2 C
3 F
2 F
5 F1 F
4 J1
I R G
L
4 C
5 C1 C
4 F
3 D
5 J
3
S E L L
3 C
2 3
A D
2 D1 D
4 J
2
E H A E
E S R M L1 H
4 A1 A
4 A
5 D
3 E
5
H T O H
2 H
3 A
2 B
3 E
2 E
4 E1
C A N H1 H
5 G1 B
4 B1 B
5 E
3
R P
4
G G
2 G
3 B
2 3I 2I 1I

Answers to puzzle on Page 50

SPELLING BEE

Immature, terrarium (3 points each). Also: Amateur,

armature, atrium, aureate, auteur, erratum, maturate,
mature, murmur, mutate, mutter, muumuu, tauter,
trauma, tritium, truer, turret, tutee, umami, ureter, uteri,
utter. If you found other legitimate dictionary words
in the beehive, feel free to include them in your score.
Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz

INITIAL DESCRIPTION 1

19
2 3 4 5 6 7

20
8 9 10 11

21
12

22
13 14 15 16 17 18

By Jerry Miccolis
23 24 25

ACROSS 64 Once in Love 121 One of the 26 27 28

1 Ascribes, with up With ____ Wahlbergs

29 30 31 32 33
7 Title lm 65 Objectivist Rand 122 One way to pay
character played 66 Fat-substitute 123 Introversion 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
by Tyler Perry brand 124 Idol worshiper
12 Hails 67 Pride-parade 125 Yoga poses 43 44 45

19 Showy gymnastics letters

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
maneuver 69 Self-referential DOWN
20 Togalike Roman 71 Fifth-century 1 Musical Mama 55 56 57 58 59
cloak pope dubbed 2 Cut
22 In an attentive the Great 60 61 62 63 64 65
3 Something
manner 73 An evergreen delivered by a diva 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
23 SWAN 74 Martinique, 4 Droopy
26 Crunchy green par exemple
5 Capital of Uganda 73 74 75 76 77
vegetable 75 Exist
6 Nearly out?
27 Protable 76 Musical 78 79 80 81 82 83
7 Gullet
28 Sportscaster instruments
that lie at 8 Second rst lady 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
Johnson
78 TRIO 9 Foolish oldsters
29 Show up
84 Jose ____ (tequila 10 K thru 12 91 92 93 94 95 96
31 Wet blanket?
brand) 11 King who spoke
33 They contain at Kennedys
97 98 99 100
libidos 85 ____ the Explorer
inaugural ball
34 MARS 86 Chapel Hill sch. 101 102 103 104
12 Lugs
43 Largest city of 87 Its a long story
13 Samuel Adams, e.g. 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116
Yemen 91 Squealed
14 Rich supply
44 French region 93 Really bothers 117 118 119
15 Natl. Guard
now part of the 96 Drew useful counterpart 120 121 122
Grand Est material from
16 Small, as Beanie
45 Ally (with) 97 OKAY

4/2/17
Babies 123 124 125
46 Hershey product 101 Fiery end? 17 1961 title role for
similar to 103 ____ es Salaam Charlton Heston
a Heath bar 104 Of a heart 18 A comic called 34 Publishers pile: 39 Land next to 74 Pressed 99 Airport amenity
47 Part of a chamber Wanda Abbr. Peru: Abbr. 75 Apothegm 100 Realm chronicled
domain name 105 Direct 21 Burglar frightener 40 Obligation 77 Global sports org. by C. S. Lewis
35 ____ Park, Ill.
49 Gists 108 Stop, in sailors 24 ____ Nui 41 Drop a line, say
36 Commercial 79 German for rst 101 ____ expected
51 Foreboding lingo (Easter Island) 42 Raise 80 Cole Porters (predictably)
atmosphere lead-in to Caps
112 Shudder of 25 Mooers mouthfuls 47 Banned insecticide Well, Did You 102 1991 Wimbledon
55 ATLAS emotion 30 Muse of lyric 37 ____ Boom-De-Ay ____?
48 Desdemonas champ Michael
60 Fixed fee 117 WASP poetry 38 Certain house husband, in opera 81 Actress Anderson
106 Ghostbuster
63 Spa sound 120 Opening letters? 32 Flight of fancy or house dressing 50 Candidates goal 82 They may match Spengler
52 Bobby of the Black
presidential
administrations 107 ____ Prval, two-
Panthers time president
KENKEN 53 Stephenie who
wrote the
Twilight series
83 Train
88 Nonspecic
amount
of Haiti
109 Say further
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each 89 Mild exclamation 110 Brandy grade,
heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication 54 Periodic table gs.
90 Supplemental briey
or division, as indicated in the box. A 5x5 grid will use the digits 15. A 7x7 grid will use 17. 56 Actor Holm
work for actors 111 Volcano at the
57 Where cultures
92 Golden ____ meeting point of
thrive?
(General Mills the African and
58 Horse bit cereal) Eurasian plates
59 Wonder Woman 94 Winter Olympics 113 Pet-protection
is one activity agcy.
60 City, but not 95 Willa Cathers 114 White House
county, leader? My ____
spokesman Spicer
61 Yale of Yale 96 Bad-mouths
University 115 Greek peak
97 Writer who coined
62 La ____ (notre the term banana 116 Some degrees
plante) republic (1904) 118 Bad start?
68 Neuter 98 Drab songbird 119 Col.s superior
69 Med. scan
70 Poetic time
Puzzles Online: Todays puzzle and more
71 Stop: Abbr. than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords
72 That life evolves, ($39.95 a year). For the daily puzzle commentary:
to Darwin nytimes.com/wordplay.
KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 2017 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

52
The truth is hard.
The truth is hidden.
The truth must be pursued.
The truth is hard to hear.
The truth is rarely simple.
The truth isnt so obvious.
The truth is necessary.
The truth cant be glossed over.
The truth has no agenda.
The truth cant be manufactured.
The truth doesnt take sides.
The truth isnt red or blue.
The truth is hard to accept.
The truth pulls no punches.
The truth is powerful.
The truth is under attack.
The truth is worth defending.
The truth requires taking a stand.
The truth is more important now than ever.
Talk

Phillipa Soo House, I got to watch Chris Jackson

sing One Last Time right in front of
the portrait of George Washington, while

Doesnt Leave Barack and Michelle Obama are sitting

right there.
The nal scene in Hamilton, where

It All Onstage Eliza reconciles with her dead hus-

bands legacy, is pretty emotionally
overwhelming. Did you need to rush
back to your dressing room and decom-
Interview by Dave Itzkoff
press in silence? Some days. Doing a
show eight times a week is kind of like
doing yoga or tai chi. A vinyasa is the
same every single time you do it, but
depending on how youre feeling, it tells
you a lot about whats happening in your
life. So, there were days where Id come
ostage and be like, Lets go out and
Not two years ago, you made your drink. But you learn little tricks here and
Broadway debut in Hamilton and there. Some nights Id say to myself, I
received a Tony nomination for playing dont know if I can watch my son die.
Eliza, the wife of Lin-Manuel Mirandas But you learn that you dont have to go
title character. Now youre starring in a there every night; the writing does that.
Broadway musical adaptation of Am- You reunited with your Hamilton
lie. You graduated from Juilliard in co-stars Rene Elise Goldsberry and
2012 what does all of this feel like? Jasmine Cephas Jones to sing America
Theres the cool factor, right? You see the Beautiful at the Super Bowl. Was it a
your face on a sign or your name on dierent experience to perform for tens
something, like: Ahh! Here I am! And of millions of people? Im looking out
then theres a huge responsibility and the and going, Thats a lot of people. But I
scary part of it, which is like, Now what didnt really get nervous. Once we got up
happens? And then you realize, Oh, there, we couldnt actually hear anything.
yeah, this is my job. All we could hear was our own voices.
Did you grow up obsessed with musi- And I was like: O.K., well, hopefully it
cal theater? On long car rides, we would sounds good. Am I even performing? Can
always listen to the Blues Brothers you guys hear me?
soundtrack and try to emulate everything Amlie originated as a French come-
that Aretha Franklin was doing. There dy lm in 2001. Why do you think people
was soul and grit in it that I think a kid are still thinking about it? It helps that
from the suburbs really needed. there are no iPhones in it. Its set in a
Your rst professional stage role was time where pay phones still existed. It
playing Natasha in the original produc- really asks a great question: What have
tion of Natasha, Pierre & the Great we lost since then?
Comet of 1812, which is now also a Do you worry that message gets lost on
Broadway hit. Was there a moment younger audience members? I remem-
during its run that you realized the ber doing a workshop of Amlie, and we
show was catching on? Once we start- had a prop of a rotary phone. The little girl
ed running, it was this wonderful little who was playing young Amlie looked at
secret, because it was performed in such it and was like, What is this?
Interview has been condensed and edited.

a tiny, O Broadway theater. There was a Does it ever frustrate you as a perform-
night that everybody was acting weird, er to look into a theater and, invariably,
and I asked, Whats going on? Brittain see someone in the audience glancing
Ashford was like: You dont want to at a cellphone? I wonder, is there ever
know. Well tell you after. Stephen Sond- Age: Soo is a Tony Her Top 5 Female room where people desire a break from
heim was there, but I couldnt see him. 26 Award-nominated Singer-Songwriters: that phone? Have we gone so far that we
Im sure you had many more illustrious Occupation:
actress. She 1. Regina Spektor arent even excited to turn it o ? When
currently stars in 2. Joni Mitchell
visitors during your run in Hamilton. Actress I go into a theater, Im very excited to
Amlie, a new 3. Janelle Mone
When the Obamas came, that was pret- Hometown: Broadway musical. 4. Sara Bareilles turn o my phone. But then, of course,
ty special. When we visited the White Libertyville, Ill. 5. Anais Mitchell I get anxiety.

54 4.2.17 Photograph by Andrew T. Warman

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 For Giuseppe Bausilio, performing on Broadway is more than
just his livelihood, it is his life. He has been singing, acting, and
dancing since the age of 11. So when Giuseppe received the news
that he had a spinal tumor, and it would likely keep him from the
stage, he was understandably devastated.
Giuseppes tumor was different than most. He had a vascular
tumor, which is made up of tiny, interwoven blood vessels, making
removal very complicated. Normally, a vascular spinal tumor is
treated with a procedure known as a laminectomy, which involves
removing part of one or more vertebrae. This can lead to kyphosis,
a curving of the spineobviously not something that is compatible
WE
WERE DETERMINED THAT A
SPINAL TUMOR WOULDNT BE THIS
BROADWAY PERFORMERS LAST ACT.
BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN
with an active lifestyle or career. To preserve the spinal structure,
the doctors at the Mount Sinai Health System performed a very
rare and challenging minimally invasive procedure that required a
team of multidisciplinary specialists. The operation was successfully
performed in September. Just three months later, Giuseppe was
once again enjoying his lifelong passion: performing on Broadway.
For you. For life.
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mountsinai.org/neurosurgery
NYTM_17_0402_SWE2.pgs 03.21.2017 18:10