Such a free and unrestrained press requires a cohort of committed legal advocates. Whether to counter the federal government’s repeated insistence on ignoring freedom of information laws, or the Trump administration’s overt hostility and retaliation against news organizations that confront and debunk its unconstitutional narratives, a robust network of attorneys is needed to protect the press’s constitutional function.

That’s why President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional executive order aiming to punish preeminent United States law firms over their pro bono clients represents an unacceptable attack on the legal profession and poses a threat to an independent press. And that is why 42 media organizations and press freedom advocates, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief Thursday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to affirm four District Court decisions. All four lower courts found the Trump administration’s executive order that imposed sanctions on law firms for representing President Donald Trump’s political opponents unconstitutional.

The amicus brief, authored by Andrew Sellars and Kendra Albert of Albert Sellars LLP, argues that the press plays an essential role as both a proxy for the public and a check on government power. This role requires an oppositional relationship with government interests. The president’s executive orders targeting lawyers with clients opposed to his agenda severely restricts press organizations’ access to legal counsel, particularly for outlets relying on pro bono or reduced-fee representation.

“An independent media requires First Amendment champions to guarantee citizens access to the information necessary to hold our government accountable,” said David Bralow, PFDF’s legal director. “This is why The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, legal advocates, and other partner organizations nationwide filed an amicus brief to prevent the administration’s unconstitutional efforts to intimidate lawyers fulfilling their professional oaths.”

The coalition includes news organizations, press associations, advocacy groups, media law firms, and individual attorneys with over five centuries of collective experience in First Amendment and press freedom issues.

“We are honored to represent this august group of news outlets, advocacy organizations and First Amendment attorneys at the D.C. Circuit. The public needs the press, and the press needs independent counsel, who cannot be subject to sanction because the president dislikes their clients,” said Kendra Albert, partner at Albert Sellars LLP.

“The Press Freedom Defense Fund exists for moments like this one. Alongside 42 coalition partners, we are drawing a clear line: a free press is not a privilege this or any administration may revoke,” said Annie Chabel, The Intercept’s CEO. “It is a constitutional right — and so is the independent counsel required to defend it.”

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The brief, authored by Albert Sellars LLP, notes that this sort of coercive tactic — where a federal agency will launch a pretextual investigation, keep it open as a way to coerce compliance, and resist any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions — has become a troublingly common form of government intimidation under the current administration. From the Justice Department to the Federal Communications Commission, court intervention has been one of the few tools that organizations have to prevent federal overreach. The amicus brief asks the appellate court to uphold a preliminary injunction. Without judicial remedy, such investigations are an acute danger to the nonprofit organizations that Americans rely on for information on matters of public concern. The brief argues that courts must intervene to prevent such investigations from chilling coverage of issues that might be adverse to those currently in power.

“Nonprofit organizations must be aggressively vigilant to protect First Amendment rights in the face of a federal government’s onslaught,” said David Bralow, legal director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund. “The chilling investigation into Media Matters is one of many affronts to free speech. These unabridged regulatory invasions, combined with such other attacks like the arrest of journalists in Minnesota and the invasive seizure of confidential communications in Washington, D.C., demonstrate the perilous state of our democracy.”

The coalition includes a mix of nonprofit research, advocacy, and media organizations, including CalMatters, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, the Dangerous Speech Project, Defending Rights & Dissent, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Lion Publishers, MuckRock Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Open Vallejo, the Project on Government Oversight, Public Knowledge, and Reporters Without Borders USA. 

“The Press Freedom Defense Fund exists to confront exactly this kind of abuse. When the government uses open-ended investigations to drain resources, intimidate funders, and silence critics, the damage goes far beyond one organization — it sends a warning to every journalist and researcher in the country. We’re standing with Media Matters because the First Amendment is not negotiable,” said Annie Chabel, CEO of The Intercept.

For more information, please contact The Intercept’s Miroslav Macala at miroslav.macala@theintercept.com.

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“Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty Book,” Adam Kucharski (2025)

My summer reading was a little unusual this year, because I’m in the middle of writing a book, which is orienting my reading choices (alongside my nagging insecurities, etc.) The book I’m writing is about how our discourses around uncertainty (“these uncertain times” and so on) can risk distracting from some of the more pernicious certainties grounding this grim conjuncture — so I’ve been trying to keep vaguely abreast of the “uncertainty” literature circulating.

Most of it is the very sort of thing I’m arguing against — overtures to unending doubt, which fail to look at what gets held certain, which world-ordering structures get to resist doubt (e.g. borders, property relations, gender binaries), by whom, how, and to what ends. But a very nice, general reader book by mathematician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski, “Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty,” was a breath of fresh air.

In it, he looks at the historically, materially situated activities and assumptions involved, in fields from law, economics, medicine, statecraft, and more, in establishing proof and certainty. He uses great anecdotes and examples — like the time Kurt Gödel (founder of modern mathematics) in his 1947 U.S. citizenship interview declared that he had discovered the ways a formal fascist regime could be established in the U.S., not by a leader eschewing the Constitution, but relying on its inner contradictions.

I’m particularly thinking it’s a great gift for the vulgar positivists and bewildered liberals in your life, who would never read radical theory on truth production but might listen to a bestselling mathematician and epidemiologist. – Natasha Lennard

“The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking,” Olivia Laing (2014)
I’ve re-read this book several times since it was published, and it never disappoints. “The Trip to Echo Spring” is beautifully written and profoundly idiosyncratic. It is deft literary criticism. But also an amalgam of biographies. And it’s a travelogue. And it’s also a memoir.

The book meanders in and out of the lives of six extraordinary writers — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver — who were also extraordinary drinkers. It lists this way and that, wandering into Laing’s life too. Not every author is up to the task of writing about great writers, but Laing more than holds their own. Try not to salivate when you read this passage: “Click in a cube of ice. Lift the glass to your mouth. Tilt your head. Swallow it.” Try to convince your brain not to paint a picture after imbibing this line: “For years, I’d steered well clear of the period in which alcohol seeped its way into my childhood, beneath the doors and around the seams of windows, a slow contaminating flood.”

You don’t need to be a writer or a drinker to enjoy Laing’s book. But if you do happen to be one, either, or both, it’s an especially lovely book to sip and savor. “I’m taking a little short trip to Echo Spring,” says Brick, a character in Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” referencing his brand of bourbon. The book goes down just as warm and smooth — the literary equivalent of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle. But the finish is not without bite. All six men were also laid low by drink-induced decline, dementia, and disease.

“I was beginning to think,” Laing writes, “that drinking might be a way of disappearing from the world.” It’s easy to disappear into the pages of “The Trip to Echo Spring,” and it’s uniquely satisfying as well. It’s almost as enjoyable as spending a weekday afternoon sipping an expertly crafted Old Fashioned at the St. Regis New York’s King Cole Bar, or at your favorite local bar, or at any old tavern, or on your front stoop.

Almost. – Nick Turse

“Hiroshima,” John Hersey (1946)
August 5 and 9 marked 80 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it’s clear that our collective memory of the horror the U.S. government subjected the civilians of those cities to has greatly diminished. As tensions worldwide increase and the Trump administration waffles on its long-standing security commitments to allies, politicians of countries without nuclear weapons programs, including those of Japan, are reconsidering that stance.

That’s why it is so important that everyone reads John Hersey’s book “Hiroshima.” It first appeared as an article in The New Yorker — taking up the entire August 31, 1946, issue. Hersey’s account following six people who survived the A-bomb exposed the American public to the reality of what their government had done.

I first read it as an undergraduate student in a “Great Books of Journalism” class, and Hersey’s vivid descriptions of the aftermath have stuck with me since. This book is graphic, be prepared for that. But with 35 percent of Americans in June 2025 still saying the bombings were justified, compared to 31 percent who say it was unjustified (the rest “aren’t sure”), we owe it to the hundreds of thousands of people who died or suffered in the aftermath to be uncomfortable. No one should have to suffer like that ever again. – Chelsey B. Coombs

“Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power,” Pekka Hämäläinen
A gripping, if scholarly, take on the Lakotas that treats them as central characters rather than bit players. Recommended reading for a road trip through the Upper Midwest and Great Plains. – Matt Sledge

“The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth,” Andreas Malm (2025)
“What, exactly, is it that ties the state of Israel and the rest of the West so closely together? What explains the willingness of countries like the U.S. and the U.K. to collaborate in genocide? Why does the American empire share Israel’s goal of destroying Palestine?” Malm addresses these questions by drawing a line connecting the destruction of Palestine to the U.S. and the West’s control and the extraction of fossil capital from the region, making the genocide of Palestinians a strategic part of U.S. foreign policy and also a point by which we began and continue to destroy the planet through fossil capital. – Jeehan Mikdadi

“On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer,” Rick Steves (2025)
Anyone who travels knows of Rick Steves, but “On the Hippie Trail” shows a totally different side of him. I loved seeing Rick not as the confident guide we know, but as a young, sometimes awkward backpacker trying to find his place among more seasoned adventurers. As a traveler, I loved this book because it captures that raw, unfiltered feeling of being young, curious, and totally open to the world. It’s part coming-of-age story, part snapshot of a very specific moment in travel history — a time where you could journey over land through Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan; a time when Western backpackers could freely travel through cities like Kabul, mingling with locals and other travelers over hashish and tea. It reminded me of why I love traveling: meeting new people, navigating the unexpected, and letting travel shift the way I see things. It’s not polished or overly romanticized, and that’s exactly what made it feel so real. – Lauren Schilli

“Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes,” Leah Litman (2025)
The summer has become a gloomy period among lawyers, as we wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to close out its session and release its final flurry of rulings. How did we get to the point where we refresh our feeds to see what’s left of bedrock constitutional precedent? Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan and co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, unpacks the conservative turn on the SCOTUS bench in recent decades, blending legal history with her signature snark. – Shawn Musgrave

Fiction

“The Buried Giant,” Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
It’s a weird read. While it has a dragon and Sir Gawain, it is not a fantasy as much as an allegory framed like the Arthurian grail stories. I think the book is about deceit and betrayal on a macro and micro scale: entire nations and the people we love. It’s a sad, reflective book, like most of his works. – David Bralow

“Anam,” André Dao (2023)
Ideology is too blunt an instrument for André Dao’s “Anam.” This is one of those meta-novels that uses the process of its own writing to propel the plot, slipping the reader between phases of empire via the narrator’s family research mission to Hanoi, interviews with his refugee grandparents in Paris, and distracted afternoons at Cambridge University, where he’s pursuing a degree for which he’s forced his tiny daughter and unhappy wife to move. At its heart is the narrator’s dead grandfather, a Vietnamese anti-communist who spent a decade imprisoned by the same regime over which the U.S. torched and poisoned the country and still failed to defeat, whose memory forces the narrator to grapple with his own left politics and his dissatisfaction with his family legacy.

Dao confronts that inherently egotistical fixation — a legacy — by having his narrator admit how exploring his family’s past has blocked his ability to prioritize a different extension of the self: his offspring. “How terrible has my pursuit of the past been,” he wonders, “if it has led to the total occlusion of the future?” His wife, the primary caretaker of his child, serves also as chief caller of bullshit: Challenging his patriarchal focus, she questions why the family story revolves around his grandfather rather than his grandmother. All storytelling is revealed as inherently reductive, the choosing of any main character as reliant upon the sidelining of others. Picturing his grandfather chained to the wall in a prison cell, the narrator admits: “I think that the image really is too reductive, victimising, gratuitous — basically that it’s tacky.” But it really happened, he thinks, despite any aesthetic objection, and despite the fact that both the family history and the narrator’s essentially self-centered fixation on it are inconvenient for his politics. “And if that really happened,” he allows himself, “then how can it not be at the heart of things?” – Maia Hibbett

“The Sisters,” Jonas Hassen Khemiri (2025)
This family saga follows the lives of the three charismatic Swedish-Tunisian Mikkola sisters and a shy Swedish-Tunisian boy who grows up alongside them. Across decades and continents, the sisters are haunted by a family curse, while the boy — named Jonas Khemiri, like the author — attempts to reclaim the singular connection he felt to the Mikkola sisters as a child. The novel is told in six sections ranging from a year to a single minute. Through this structure, the author plays with the notion of time and expectations, reveals the identities we adopt and shed, and upends the sanctity of family legacies. It’s an elegant and compelling read, and you won’t even notice it’s over 600 pages. — Celine Piser

“Circe,” Madeline Miller (2018)
I’ve read “Circe” multiple times, including this summer. It’s by the same author as “The Song of Achilles,” which I also loved. The real world can be a little dark, and this book is perfect Greek Mythology escapism. – Jessica Washington

“The Boy and the Dog,” Seishū Hase (2020)
Friends recommended “The Boy and the Dog” after I told them I wanted to make a fictional short film about the adventures my pup would get into: traversing through California landscapes trying to find his way home, making friends both human and furry along the way. Hase’s novel traces the journey of another extraordinary dog, separated from his person after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. 

Known by many names, the dog is steadfast in his search, yet along the way he brings unexpected solace to the people he meets, whose own lives are full of chaos, drama, and the ordinary ups and downs life also brings. As Miwa, one of the book’s distinctive characters observes, “It’s your dog magic, I suppose. Dogs don’t just make people smile. They give us love and courage, too, just from being at our side.” – Laura Flynn

“Operation Shylock,” Philip Roth (1993)
“Martyr!” Kaveh Akbar (2024)
I would like to witness these two writers (or their doppelgängers) hashing it out in a talk-show format — Legacy! Identity! Generational trauma! Unreliable narrators! And of course, martyrdom! — much like the conversations imagined by the “Martyr!” protagonist in his attempts to fall asleep. – Fei Liu

“The Oligarch’s Daughter,” Joseph Finder (2025)
I tore through this. It’s a modern-day spy thriller set in New York that puts a twist on Cold War intrigue. – Akela Lacy

Poetry & Art

“The Essential June Jordan,” by June Jordan (2021)
When reading the poetry of June Jordan, I may be crying of heartbreak, laughing, teeming with rage, and abandoning my desk for the streets to join a protest all at once and in no particular order. Jordan wrote prolifically (28 poetry collections) about themes of love, home, politics, motherhood, and loss. But perhaps what sets her most apart in literary and American history is how truthfully she reckoned with our position in the imperial core. She recognized the United States as a nation built on genocide and slavery, but also as an actor of genocidal horrors on the other Black and brown peoples of the world — from U.S. ties to apartheid South Africa to its unconditional support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine — a politics steeped in unflinching global solidarity.

In her 1985 poem “Moving towards Home,” Jordan intimately embodies this solidarity: “I was born a Black woman / and now / I am become a Palestinian.” And she asks us to undergo a similar reckoning, by first turning toward the comfort of our “living room … where my children will grow without horror,” turning toward ourselves.

Following the U.S. bombing campaign of Iraq, she wrote in her 1997 poem “The Bombing of Baghdad,” which I read as a prescient indictment on neoconservatism that continues to color U.S. foreign policy: “And all who believed that holocaust means something / that only happens to white people / And all who believed that Desert Storm / signified anything besides the delivery of an American / holocaust against the peoples of the Middle East / All who believed these things / they were already dead / They no longer stood among the possibly humane.”

When my writing, whether journalism or poetry, feels stuck or stale, reading June Jordan’s poems offers me a path back to myself and toward the urgency of liberation — that is, toward something ultimately affirming of life. In “The Bombing of Baghdad,” she ends her poem with these lines: “And here is my song of the living / who must sing against the dying / sing to join the living / with the dead.” – Jonah Valdez 

Too Negative
Too Negative is a ’90s art zine from Japan. A typical issue is a carnivalesque cavalcade of the Chapman Brothers, Manuel Ocampo, and Joel-Peter Witkin, all interspliced with tabloid grotesquery and vintage medical ailments. The constant confabulatory barrage of de-formation bubbles forth a monstrous in-between sensationalism of both ultra- and non-humanism. Recommended for daily nightly consumption to make the earthly news cycle we’re exposed to more palatable — just go ask Alice’s mangled torso, “after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs!” – Nikita Mazurov

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Reporters and photojournalists are critical to informing the public about matters of significant public interest, yet they have faced unprecedented, and even targeted, violence while documenting the recent immigration demonstrations. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 27 attacks on journalists covering protests in Los Angeles took place in the protests’ first three days. 

“Freelancer reporters and photographers and small outlets are on the front lines of these protests making sure the public knows what is going on. We stand in solidarity with the brave journalists, and we are proud to offer emergency funding,” said Intercept CEO Annie Chabel. 

The fund will provide financial assistance for emergency medical support, legal support, equipment replacement, and other resources for affected journalists. Journalists seeking assistance can contact Celine Piser at celine.piser@theintercept.com. All requests will be processed confidentially.

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“We are thrilled to welcome Maia back to The Intercept. Her experience and skills will help us take on powerful interests and produce journalism with real impact,” said Ben Muessig, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. 

Hibbett was most recently the politics editor for Gothamist & WNYC, where she directed coverage of the ongoing scandals surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams and expanded a statewide coverage network. Before that, she was managing editor at New York Focus and participated in ProPublica’s Investigative Editor Training Program. Hibbett served as an associate editor on The Intercept’s politics team from March 2021 to October 2022. At The Intercept, she oversaw award-winning reporting on the poultry industry’s mass culling practices during bird flu outbreaks, edited investigations on topics from Sen. Joe Manchin’s coal investments to the killing of Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres, and reported on controversial research that drew scrutiny during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her reporting and editing experience spans the globe, covering political developments in Asia and Latin America. 

“For years, I’ve admired The Intercept’s fearless reporting and commitment to holding the powerful accountable — no matter who is in office,” Hibbett said. “I’m so excited to return to The Intercept and help this team draw attention to the scandals and injustices that would otherwise go unexposed.”

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“As global power dynamics are being profoundly reshaped, Nick’s work has never been more essential. The Intercept has always questioned mainstream coverage about American military power, and there is no one better than Nick to provide the kind of nuanced, incisive coverage that our readers want and deserve right now,” said CEO Annie Chabel. 

“Nick is a thoughtful, thorough, and curious journalist with deep expertise reporting on U.S. military and national security,” said editor-in-chief Ben Muessig. “I look forward to working with him more closely in 2025.”

Related

Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings

Turse, who is also a fellow at Type Media Center, has written for The Intercept for a decade, publishing more than 150 articles. He was part of the award-winning team that produced “The Drone Papers,” a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. He received the 2022 Military Reporters & Editors Association Award for Best Overseas Coverage for “The AFRICOM Files,” which revealed how the Pentagon undercounts and ignores military sexual assault in Africa. In 2023, The Intercept published a searing four-article exposé about former U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger’s direct role in U.S. attacks on Cambodian villages in the 1970s that were previously unknown to the outside world, based on decades of reporting by Turse, who was the first person to interview victims and survivors in 13 villages that suffered relentless attacks. He received the 2024 Deadline Club Award for Reporting by Independent Digital Media for “Kissinger’s Killing Fields.” 

In 2023 and 2024, Turse reported that a 2018 U.S. drone strike in Somalia killed up to five civilians, including a mother and her 4-year-old daughter, and that the Pentagon found no one at fault. Following Turse’s investigation, two dozen human rights organizations and several members of Congress urged then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths. Turse is a finalist for the 2025 Fetisov Journalism Award for Outstanding Contribution to Peace for this article and several follow-up pieces published this year.

“I am thrilled to be joining The Intercept in this expanded role. Watchdog journalism is more necessary than ever and I can’t think of an outlet more committed to holding power to account,” said Turse. “I’m excited to get started.”

Turse has received a number of honors for his work including a Ridenhour Prize for Investigative Reporting, a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and an I.F. Stone “Izzy” Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Journalism. He is a two-time finalist for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting.​​ He has a Ph.D. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University.

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That is why 61 media organizations and press freedom advocates, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund and Freedom of the Press Foundation, filed an amicus brief today urging the court to strike down an executive order that imposed sanctions on the Perkins Coie law firm for representing President Donald Trump’s political opponents and enforcing the Voting Rights Act.

The amicus brief, authored by Albert Sellars LLP, argues that the press plays an essential role as both a proxy for the public and a check on government power, which requires an oppositional relationship with government interests. The president’s executive orders targeting lawyers with clients opposed to his agenda would severely restrict press organizations’ access to legal counsel, particularly for outlets relying on pro bono or reduced-fee representation.

“An independent media requires First Amendment champions to guarantee citizens access to the information necessary to hold our government accountable,” said The Intercept’s Chief Legal Officer David Bralow. “This is why The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund and Freedom of the Press Foundation, along with partner organizations nationwide, filed an amicus brief to prevent the administration’s unconstitutional efforts to intimidate lawyers fulfilling their professional oaths.”

“Newsrooms are broke and FOIA is broken. Journalists face the threat of SLAPP suits, subpoenas, arrest, and, these days, even deportation, just for doing their jobs,” said Seth Stern, Freedom of the Press Foundation’s advocacy director. “Now more than ever, reporters need access to quality pro bono representation to overcome these obstacles and hold the government accountable. If an anti-free speech president can shake down law firms that represent clients he doesn’t like, press freedom will suffer immeasurably, and the American public will be less informed.” 

The coalition includes news organizations, press associations, advocacy groups, media law firms, and individual attorneys with over five centuries of collective experience in First Amendment and press freedom issues. 

“The signatories of this brief champion the public’s right to information — democracy’s cornerstone. The Intercept and Press Freedom Defense Fund defend this principle both through our investigative reporting and our vital work safeguarding independent journalism,” said Annie Chabel, The Intercept’s CEO. 

For more information, please contact the press team at The Intercept.

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Among the topics they discussed were Trump’s conspicuous silence on Israel’s war on Gaza, Nikki Haley’s positioning on U.S. support for Ukraine, the Project 2025 plan by conservative groups to overhaul the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win, the growing ambivalence among young Democrats toward voting for Joe Biden, and the next primary race in New Hampshire.

“[The Iowa results were] probably the best of all worlds for Donald Trump,” Grim said. “Nikki Haley, who was his biggest threat in New Hampshire … finished third place. That hurts her heading into New Hampshire. [Ron] DeSantis doesn’t have a path that I can see to any victory in any state.”

Looking ahead to the November election, Klippenstein and Thakker said that even if Trump doesn’t win another term, the demand for his brand of politics among Republican voters will endure.

“Just from the results we have, there are two ways of looking at it: One is Trump versus non-Trump votes. … Another frame is if you think of it as MAGA and MAGA-adjacent politics versus non-MAGA,” Thakker said. “That reminds you that there might be some people who are tired of Trump and his tweets or he could be a little less brash … but regardless, there still seems to be an appetite for it.”

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“The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance,” Rebecca Clarren
That Rebecca Clarren’s Jewish ancestors escaped antisemitic persecution in Russia, received free land from the U.S. government at the turn of the 20th century, and settled in South Dakota is a foundational part of her family lore. What went unquestioned over the years is whether they had any right to that land in the first place. In this timely and unflinching book, Clarren investigates how her family benefited from genocidal U.S. policies against the Lakota and other Indigenous peoples. Crucially, as a beneficiary of stolen land, Clarren also consults with her rabbi and Indigenous elders about how to begin to repair those harms. That yearslong process resulted in, among other things, a reparations project to help “return Indian lands in the Black Hills (He Sapa) to Indian ownership and control.” As Israel rains bombs on Gaza, it’s hard to read this book and not reflect on the ongoing consequences of land theft, whether in the United States or in Palestine. — Maryam Saleh

“Camino a la Fosa Común (Journey to the Common Grave),” Memo Bautista
The concept of a “common grave” conjures an image of large, World War II-type trenches, where piles of unidentified bodies are discarded and buried. But in 21st-century Mexico, common grave burials are a strict process. Due to the high levels of violence, with tens of thousands of people disappeared, common graves in Mexico are heavily guarded and meticulously organized, in case authorities need to access remains for an investigation. It is a grim reminder of how the Mexican drug war violence persists, violence typically perceived through faceless statistics.

Journalist Memo Bautista’s Spanish-language book, difficult to find outside of Mexico City, gives life to the numbers of dead in Mexico, not just for those who have died of drug war violence, but also ordinary working-class Mexicans. 

As Bautista writes in his introduction, many of us have an image of how we want our own death to look like: We’ll spend a day eating our favorite foods, playing our favorite games, surrounded by our favorite people, and then pass away peacefully in our sleep. Often, that is not the case. Bautista’s collection of nonfiction stories chronicles how the living deal with the aftermath of untimely deaths: from the sanitation officials who clean the Mexico City subway after someone is struck, to the grieving mother whose teenage son is killed in a rural community’s agrarian conflict, to the young workers embalming lifeless bodies in Mexico City.

Bautista’s eponymous story is about a charming and complicated homeless man, Escalera, who Bautista follows for a period of years. After dying of hypothermia in Mexico City’s historic center, Escalera’s journey ends in the “common grave.” — José Olivares

“Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim,” Stephen Sondheim
We all know Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the bottom, there are physiological needs, such as food and shelter. Then there are psychological needs, including love, societal prestige, and self-actualization. Finally, at the very top, there is the need for the musicals of Stephen Sondheim.

This is only partly a joke. Sondheim’s work is generally for people whose other needs have been met. But if they have — wow, it is going to make your life exquisitely vibrant. You’ve been to the shows. You’ve bought the albums. You (I) have delivered your monologue accepting an imaginary Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award for Private Sondheim Shower Interpretation. Next, you need “Hat Box.” It’s a two-volume memoir by Sondheim, except it’s purely about his work, and includes essentially all the lyrics he wrote through 2011, plus all the detail you could ever wish about how this spectacular, subtle artist made his spectacular, subtle art. — Jon Schwarz

“Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11,” Maha Hilal
In quiet moments, photographs I’ve seen from Getty Images and social media race behind my eyes in vivid detail, showcasing an unstoppable flow of atrocities in Gaza. How is it possible that Israel’s actions still maintain such fervent and radical support? How is it possible the United States continues to send endless weapons and military support to their genocidal campaign in Palestine in defiance of global protest? In thinking about how the lives of civilians — nearly 10,000 children — can matter so little, I have been rereading my friend Maha Hilal’s brilliant book “Innocent Until Proven Muslim.”

Israel’s rampage in the wake of an act of shocking violence on its own homeland feels like a repeating, almost too clearly, of America’s actions in the wake of 9/11. I wish I was shocked — but I’m not. I’ve spent my adult life thinking about the long shadow of the “war on terror.” This genocide in Gaza seems to be the logical extension of the demonization and dehumanization of Muslims that the U.S. has so intentionally perfected. Hilal’s book, a devastating exposé of how we’ve ended up here, at the very least provides a path forward. With meticulously researched examples, Hilal shows exactly how three administrations since 9/11 have painted Muslims as inherently violent at home and abroad. She weaves through American policy from the Patriot Act to CIA torture, Guantánamo Bay, FBI entrapment cases, and beyond, challenging readers to question the narratives perpetuated by policymakers and media that have brought injustice and indignity for decades. Her final radical argument that the very framework of the “war on terror” must be abolished is a powerful antidote to the injustice we feel today. — Elise Swain

“Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World,” Malcolm Harris
It’s a history of a small town. Of the Bay Area. Of a state. Of the American West. Of America. Of the West. It’s a history of empire, of conquest and genocide, of war-making and profiteering, of racism and eugenics, of moral bankruptcy and giant returns on investment. Malcolm Harris can be a very funny writer, but he isn’t kidding around when he called his latest book “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World.” I expected the tony suburb to be an avatar of all the things Harris wanted to cover, but it’s remarkable how much Palo Alto is actually a central player in American and world history. Colonial extractive industries? It’s in there. The primacy of railroads? Early avionics in the world wars? Privatization of virtually every public function? Computers? Check, check, check, and of course! Want a framework where the awesome, genocidal power of social media makes perfect sense? It’s Palo Alto.

Books that present clever unifying theories, especially when they qualify as doorstoppers, can end up being forced and fraudulent (see: Malcolm Gladwell) or, perhaps worse still, boring laundry lists of disparate facts and ideas that fail to come together. Harris, though, is an engaging writer, and the theme works so staggeringly well that “Palo Alto” holds attention and holds together. The results are frightening. Palo Alto isn’t just a town that touches our collective history; it’s one that has grabbed on to it, slaps it around, and won’t let go until it squeezes every last breath and penny out of us. — Ali Gharib

“The Living,” Tsurisaki Kiyotaka
Tsurisaki Kiyotaka is a photographer of human corpses: “They are the only subjects I want to photograph — this is my personal dogma.” This is a fact, well, beaten to death with prior titles like “The Dead,” “Death,” and “Danse Macabre to the Hardcore Works,” as well as via documentary films like “Orozco the Embalmer.” However, Kiyotaka notes his situation has at times required him to “engage in other photography to financially support my passion of corpse photography — in short, I have engaged in photojournalism, or at least a good imitation thereof.”

The outcome of life constructed as fiscal requisite for the support of death is here manifested in nearly 200 photos of protests in Ramallah, West Bank; festivals in India and Thailand; Ukraine in 2022; the aftermath of an earthquake in Japan — these and more, coalescing in a dizzying array of approaches to the living as existing to sustain the dead. As Paul Virilio once succinctly summarized, “When you invent electricity, you invent electrocution.” “The Living” extends this sensory sentiment by visually augmenting the miasma emanating from all manner of circuitry frying the world (crypto, artificial intelligence, or whatever is the current flavor of the month at your eschatological creamery). The synesthetic boundary-blurring that Kiyotaka manages to achieve here allows you to smell the searing with your eyes and cry with your fists. — Nikita Mazurov

“Sir Vidia’s Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents,” Paul Theroux
This is one of the best books I’ve read about friendship and particularly a friendship gone awry. It is hilarious, insightful, and timeless despite being written many years ago, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys good writing. — Murtaza Hussain

“Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data,” Micah Lee
Have you ever thought it might be fun to learn how to dig through troves of hacked law enforcement documents, or decipher leaked chat logs from Russian ransomware gangs, or analyze metadata from videos of the January 6 attack? And, once you find the juicy bits, publish your findings and change the world?

I just wrote a book that teaches journalists, researchers, and activists exactly how to do this! It will be released on January 9, but it ships right now if you order it directly from the publisher — and you can get 25 percent off using the discount code INTERCEPT25, valid until January 15.

No prior technical or programming experience is required. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection, and a desire to learn new skills. The book is incredibly hands-on, it uses real datasets as examples (you download them and analyze as you read), and it’s crammed full of anecdotes from the trenches of 21st-century investigative journalism. — Micah Lee

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot
I finished this book in about two days; I couldn’t put it down. This incredibly well-researched, engrossing, and often painful book is about more than Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cervical cancer cells were taken and used without her consent and led to huge strides in modern medicine, like the creation of vaccines for polio and HPV. It also tells the story of her children, her doctors, and her family’s fight to learn about just what happened to her cells after her death (they were never informed that her cells were being used and only found out decades later after speaking with a friend who worked at the National Cancer Institute).

Through interviews with Lacks’s husband, cousins, and friends, Rebecca Skloot paints a vivid picture of her life — and helps her family get closure after years of exploitation from researchers, scammers, and journalists. It’s a gut-wrenching read: The section where Skloot and Lacks’s daughter Deborah discover the truth about what happened to Deborah’s older sister Elsie, who was institutionalized when she was 10 and died five years later, will haunt me for a very long time. But there are also moments of beauty, like when Deborah and her brother Zakariyya see their mother’s cells for the first time. Equal parts scientific and narrative, this story is told with a lot of care and will sweep you in. — Skyler Aikerson

“Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” Michael Lewis
As one of the many spectators enthralled at the abrupt fall from grace of the crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, I was happy to learn that he would also be the subject of Michael Lewis’s next book. But it wasn’t until I read the New Yorker’s review that I knew this one would jump to the top of my pile. Since the book published a month before the eventual verdict in federal court, I wanted to know how Lewis’s “contrarian bet” would stand up to the coming headlines. 

I don’t agree with the take that Lewis “staked his reputation” on his assessment of SBF. He chose to publish shortly before history would determine whether he was “right” or “wrong” because, I like to think, he knew his work would help people see beyond whatever headline announced the news. In the end (no spoilers), the fact that Lewis came to a more nuanced answer to the question of SBF’s guilt than a federal jury did helps remind us all what a reporter’s job is: not to proclaim the guilt or innocence of their subject, but to tell as much of the story as possible and let readers decide where they stand. I, for one, came away with a much more layered understanding of the case than any of the many articles written about it had given me before. — Greg Emerson

“Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law,” Mary Roach
Migrating elephants and jaywalking moose and dumpster-diving bears, oh my! Mary Roach combines wildlife biology, human behavior, and consistent humor to answer the age-old question: “How does that pigeon know how to wait until the last second to fly away before it gets hit by my car?” If you love wildlife, sometimes like people, and are interested in how we can improve the path to coexistence, you won’t be disappointed with “Fuzz.” — Casey Quirke

“The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” Ryan Grim
I find myself imagining a reader in the year 2100, studying the history of the 21st century and how the world finally came together, begrudgingly and in half measures, to keep global temperatures down. Perhaps the reader is a student of the booming industry of bioengineering tasked with populating the former state of Ohio with robotic birds. And they wonder to themselves, “How did it all happen? Where were the people pushing for action in, like, 2019?” Their personal algorithmic device will immediately conjure Ryan Grim’s “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” which covers not only Congress but also the Sunrise Movement and the conception and evolution of the Green New Deal. Unless, that is, the climate movement fails. In that case, Grim’s book will explain how the human race doomed itself to visiting aliens in a year unfathomable to man. — Nausicaa Renner

Fiction

“This Thing Between Us,” Gus Moreno
If you love smart horror, but you’re tired of smart horror’s requisite ghosts as metaphors for trauma, then this debut novel about a married couple terrorized by their Amazon Echo is for you. About 20 pages in, it springs into one of the most ferocious gallops I’ve ever read, dragging the reader across horror genres, state lines, and borders between worlds. A relentless nightmare that never feels gratuitous, even as it wraps its tendrils around you. I read it in a day, but I still haven’t shaken it off. Moreno’s future is bright: You can tell from the long shadow it casts over the world he made. — Anthony Smith

“The Chronicles of Amber,” Roger Zelazny
In this 10-book series, Roger Zelazny artfully spins a mesmerizing tale spanning infinite worlds, where readers are transported to the realms of Amber and Chaos from which all other worlds originate as mere shadows. Through multifaceted characters and detailed narratives, Zelazny shapes a sprawling mythology exploring identity, power, manipulation, and destiny against captivating fantasy backdrops. It certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the most revered fantasy series of all time. Opting for the print version? Be forewarned about its tangible heft. — Kate Miller

“The Bee Sting,” Paul Murray
I’ve been waiting for new work from Irish novelist Paul Murray ever since stumbling across “Skippy Dies” in a free book pile in southern Turkey over a decade ago, and was not surprised that his new novel, “The Bee Sting,” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s an immersive portrait of a family that meanders through each member’s lived experience so closely that you feel like you know them intimately, and yet there are surprises throughout as Murray reveals the narratives we tell ourselves in order to survive. The novel opens with the family’s financial troubles, but they quickly become subsumed by psychological trauma, academic stress, repressed sexuality, blackmail, internet stalkers, substance abuse, and climate change. It’s also propulsive and very, very funny. — Celine Piser

“Indelicacy,” Amina Cain
In a slim 158 pages, Amina Cain deftly weaves together a story about vocation, pleasure, gendered labor, restlessness, creativity under capitalism, jealousy, and desire. Whip-smart and beautifully wrought, “Indelicacy” is an eminently readable novella, an instant classic that you’ll want to revisit again and again. — Schuyler Mitchell

“The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray,” Jorge Amado
This 1959 novella by imprisoned, exiled, censored, and beloved Brazilian author Jorge Amado is even funnier than its translated title teases. “When a man dies he is reintegrated into his most authentic respectability, even having committed the maddest acts when he was alive” is what the dead man’s blood relations have long been waiting for. Unlike Henry Kissinger, Joaquim Soares da Cunha did not commit war crimes — just the unspeakable middle-class transgression of embarrassing his family. His body now cold (and controllable), they’re eager to impose their will and revise the narrative of the retired civil servant who disowned them, at the age of 50, to become Quincas Water-Bray, “the king of the tramps of Bahia … boozer in chief of Salvador … tatterdemalion philosopher of the market dock … senator of honky-tonks … patriarch of the red-light district.” His friends, his found family, refuse to let his memory be buried by hypocritical propriety. The boatloads of spilled cachaça and a few piquant whiffs of magical realism gave me a contact high. Most strangely, lo and retold, this Bahian tale inspired an American movie called “Weekend at Bernie’s.” — Nara Shin

The post What We’re Reading appeared first on The Intercept.

Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill hosted a live conversation with independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Tuesday about the U.S. role in Israel’s scorched-earth campaign to annihilate Gaza, the future of Palestinian resistance, and the urgent need for journalism that tells the truth about this crisis.

Kouddous has reported from inside Gaza; his work has appeared on Al Jazeera, Democracy Now!, and more. He’s also a co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. His George Polk Award-winning documentary “The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh” helped expose the White House’s efforts to avoid a U.S. investigation after the prominent Palestinian American journalist was shot dead by Israeli forces.

The post Watch: A Conversation on the Horrors in Gaza With Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous appeared first on The Intercept.

More than half of the 30 hospitals in Gaza have closed completely, according to the Health Ministry. For others, the window of operation remains precariously short: The crisis has pushed many of the remaining health care centers to the brink of closure, rendering them incapable of providing vital medical services. Health care workers and hospital employees fear that, even as casualties rise daily, the health care system will soon be unable to accommodate new patients.

“We ran out of fuel and the electricity is cut off. The hospital is out of service.”

“For several days we have been talking about the lack of fuel and electricity inside the hospital,” Dr. Sobhi Skaik, the director of the Turkish Friendship Hospital in the Mughraqa area in the central Gaza Strip, said in an interview last week. “And now what we feared and repeatedly warned about has happened: We ran out of fuel and the electricity is cut off. The hospital is out of service.”

People injured by the fighting are not the only ones affected by curtailed health care service. Vulnerable people include patients with serious illnesses like cancer and especially pregnant women and infants, according to health care workers. Neonatal care relies on specialized equipment powered by electricity; the constant power interruptions in Gaza put infants and especially premature babies at risk.

“The power cuts in the nursery create many risks, because there are devices and medicines that need important care and a particular room temperature,” said Dr. Sherine Abed, a neonatologist at Al-Shifa Hospital, who is now serving at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah after relocating with her family to the southern part of the strip. “The premature babies need special care that requires operating the devices constantly.”

During an interview, Skaik paused, reeling in disbelief that all contact with patients in Gaza are being severed. “Since the start of the war, many patients could not reach the hospital, but we did not stop serving them,” he said. “Currently there is no follow-up with cancer patients.”

His hospital specializes in cancer treatments and is the only institution that, under normal circumstances, serves adult cancer patients in Gaza. “A cancer patient in Gaza dies three times,” Skaik said. “The first time because of cancer. The second time because of a lack of medicines. And the third time because of being targeted by Israeli warplanes during his treatment.”

Pregnant Women and Infants

Since the start of the war, miscarriages, premature births, and fetal deaths have increased threefold at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, according to Dr. Abed Abu Hasira, a doctor in the department. Over 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are living in constant fear of losing their babies as the war rages on.

“The current situation in light of the war is extremely bad for pregnant women,” said Dr. Walid Abu Hatab, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Thousands have been displaced, and the widespread damage makes reaching health care centers difficult, hindering regular appointments during pregnancy — especially risky for those in need of care for pregnancy-related or preexisting conditions.

“There are some pregnant women who cannot reach the hospital easily due to the intensity of the bombing,” Abu Hatab said. He recounted the story of a patient for whom the journey to the hospital would normally have taken five minutes; in her condition and with the area destroyed, it ended up taking hours, causing her health to deteriorate. Abu Hatab said he was able to treat the woman and her newborn upon their arrival, but with great difficulty.

In some cases, women must make not only crosstown journeys, but also travel long distances inside the Gaza Strip because they’ve been displaced from their homes. Many structures, especially in Gaza City in the north, are damaged, leaving untold numbers homeless. And, on October 13, Israel warned people in northern Gaza to move south or risk being targeted as militants — a declaration that Amnesty International said could amount to a war crime.

In the wake of the warnings, one of the women to flee the north was 25-year-old Nesma Hajjaj, who was seven months pregnant at the time. “I am from Gaza City,” she said in an interview. “And, because I am pregnant, I was very afraid that there would be a bombing near my house.” Unable to find transportation, Hajjaj and her family walked toward southern Gaza. “Along the way,” she said, “I felt severe pain, labor pain, so I went to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.”

“I hope that my baby recovers quickly before the hospitals completely run out of fuel.”

The stress of displacement and war contributed to the premature birth of her child. “My child has now been in the nursery for 10 days under monitoring, suffering from many health problems,” Hajjaj said.

Sherine Abed, the doctor working at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, explained that there were 22 infants currently in the neonatal ward — some of whose families have been unable to travel to the hospital. “Families have many difficulties in reaching and seeing their children due to the conditions of war and the continuous bombing,” she said.

In Hajjaj’s case, she decided to stay at the hospital to be near her child. “I am worried about him and afraid of losing him,” she continued. Hajjaj is keenly aware of the fuel shortages plaguing the remaining open hospitals in Gaza and fearful what the continuing war portends.

“I am shocked,” she went on. “I cannot express how I feel about this situation. Will the generators and devices stop working in the hospital? What will happen to these children and what is their fate? Does this mean that if they survive the bombing, they will not survive the siege and deprivation that Israel imposes on us? I hope that my baby recovers quickly before the hospitals completely run out of fuel.”

Cancer Patients

There are more than 10,000 cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, said Skaik, of the Turkish Friendship Hospital. Before the war, the hospital received 550 patients a day, provided chemotherapy treatments to 150 patients, and gave hypnosis treatments to around 130 patients a day.

The Turkish Friendship Hospital is one of 16 hospitals that have shut down amid the war, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Others include Beit Hanoun Hospital, Al-Wafa Hospital, and specialized institutions like the International Eye Hospital. 

Like others, the Turkish Friendship Hospital suffered an acute shortage of fuel to power its generators. “Fuel is necessary to operate water pumps and generate oxygen, the preparation of medicines, and the operation of medical devices, as well as the operation of the Internet,” Skaik said. “The hospital is completely computerized, and thus information is lost and it is difficult for us to determine the doses and medicines and follow-up on patients.”

“Today there are no medicines for treatment at all, as the hospital has exhausted all cancer and painkiller drugs.”

The hospital was damaged when Israeli airstrikes repeatedly targeted its surroundings. The third floor, where two rooms were dedicated to hypnosis therapy for cancer patients, was destroyed. Explosions also damaged parts of the second floor. The bombings prompted evacuations within the facility, with patients being moved into the basement. “A number of patients suffered minor injuries from flying glass and suffocation as a result of these airstrikes,” Skaik said.

The 17-year Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza because of Hamas’s rule over the enclave had already taken its toll on health care supplies. The war and the attendant tightening of the siege by Israel — which cut off fuel, electricity, water, and other basic necessities after Hamas’s October 7 attack — has emptied whatever stocks were available.

“Before the war, there was a great shortage of essential medicines for the treatment of cancer,” Skaik said. “Today there are no medicines for treatment at all, as the hospital has exhausted all cancer and painkiller drugs.”

As the hospital’s ability to deliver services waned, all the patients, medical, and technical staff were asked to leave. At the time, about 70 patients were left at the hospital and in need of follow-ups — including cancer patients receiving specialized care.

“When the hospital was emptied,” Skaik said of cancer patients, “the cases that were classified as serious were transferred to the hospital near the patient’s residence, and the rest of the patients were provided with some medicines and asked to go home or find shelter in one of the operating clinics or refugee centers.”

With the hospital closed and communications cut off, Skaik and his staff don’t know what happened to patients registered there: who is alive, injured, or dead.

Blockade and Little Aid

Located west of Gaza City, Al-Rantisi Hospital for Children is the only health care facility in the Gaza Strip set up to give care to pediatric cancer patients. Currently, said Dr. Mustafa Al-Kahlot, the director of the hospital, there are 70 children registered as patients, along with their displaced families. 

Urgent action is required to facilitate the patients’ treatment abroad, Al-Kahlot said: Swift intervention will significantly enhance these children’s chances of recovery. Yet the necessary treatments remain beyond reach in the Gaza Strip.

The need has been acknowledged by outside authorities: The patients had secured medical referrals to leave for hospitals in Egypt before the outbreak of the war, but Israeli authorities are refusing to allow them to be transported out of the strip for treatment.

In an interview, Al-Kahlot painted a bleak picture of pediatric patients grappling with a severe lack of treatment options. Their fear is exacerbated by repeated attacks on the hospital’s vicinity, most recently a November 6 attack that struck the third floor. The damage was extensive, several were wounded, and four people were killed.

Things have gotten so dire that most hospitals that remain open are running short on basic supplies like cotton suture thread, said Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, director of Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. Any small hospital, he said, would need these supplies for routine daily work.

“It is not enough for one day in a hospital. They just want to help us with burial and not medicine or what we need inside the operating rooms.”

It is exactly these types of shortages that have been at the center of what little international diplomacy has been undertaken on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has boasted about getting Israel to let several aid trucks into Gaza at a time.

Asked about the medical aid that entered the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing with Egypt, Al-Hams sighed. “It is not enough for one day in a hospital,” he said. Half the aid that reached the Al-Najjar Hospital was burial bags, he said, and much of the second half was water bottles and other materials that don’t meet the hospital’s basic needs.

“They just want to help us with burial and not medicine,” he said, “or what we need inside the operating rooms.”

In the northern parts of the Gaza Strip, the situation is even worse. The Indonesian Hospital, located in Beit Lahia, has been damaged severely by Israeli airstrikes. The hospital became an international football, with Israel saying Hamas built the facility to disguise military infrastructure and the Indonesian government firing back that it built the hospital for the Palestinian residents of Gaza. Either way, the damages and fuel shortages have severely reduced the hospital’s capabilities.

“Approximately 70 percent of the services of the Indonesian Hospital stopped due to the failure of generators as a result of running out of fuel,” said Dr. Atef Al-Kahlout, the director of the Indonesian Hospital. He worries that the fuel shortages will interrupt the use of dialysis machines, potentially leading to the deaths of many patients diagnosed with kidney failure.

The shortages led to what in the West would be unthinkable decisions: choosing between patients who, under normal circumstances, would all be able to survive. Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are forced to identify which cases have higher survival rates and give them the opportunity for surgery or space in intensive care wards.

Al-Kahlout doesn’t hide that he and his colleagues have to make these calculations, but he resents it: “We consider this decision one of the most difficult decisions imposed on us by wars.”

The post What It’s Like to Give Birth in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

“After the First Death,” Robert Cormier
I read Robert Cormier’s young adult novels when I was a young adult. At the time they — especially “The Chocolate War,” “I Am the Cheese,” and “After the First Death” — were among the most frightening and upsetting books I’d ever encountered. I’ve been rereading them recently, and they still are.

They’re all about authority figures who are eager to manipulate and betray adolescents for their own purposes. As such, they provide excruciating metaphorical lessons about larger-scale human politics, lessons you don’t want to learn but have to. For me, “After the First Death” is the most disturbing of them all, with its title taken from the last line of a poem by Dylan Thomas: “After the first death, there is no other.” OR IS THERE. — Jon Schwarz

“Blue Skies,” T. C. Boyle

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see
— Irving Berlin

I’ve been reading T. Coraghessan Boyle’s novels and stories since 1987’s “World’s End,” which intricately plotted Hudson River Valley families through the 1700s, 1940s, and 1968 just as I became a refugee to the area. Now Boyle’s 19th novel takes place in a near-future climate apocalypse in familiar California and Florida coastal paradises, where Western drought and Eastern storms and rising tides are already in progress. As we become inured to news of 115-degree days, bee colony collapse, glaciers melting, and raging wildfires, Boyle writes beyond his customary satire to a state of (yet another vocabulary word I’ve learned from him) mithridatism: the production of immunity against the action of a poison in gradually increased doses.

Will we notice when all the insects suddenly die off (but not the spiders), when we need to take a rowboat to get from the luxury beach house to our Tesla parked on higher ground, driving over the migrating bodies of catfish or facing down alligators swimming on the road, when our career goal of internet influencer is thwarted by the bad behavior of illegally imported pythons? The answer seems, yes, we can survive if there are still local bars serving mojitos, wine, beer, and sake. From baking with cricket flour to eating homegrown gourmet grasshoppers and lab-created chicken, while feeding rats and rabbits to pet snakes, from insect tattoo art to bug-born infections, it seems to be “doom atop doom.”

The antihero Bug Boy, grievously harmed by a tiny tick while searching for the disappearing monarch butterflies, explains: “Nature bites back. That’s what this is all about.” — Margot Williams

“Widespread Panic,” James Ellroy
I somehow missed this when it came out 2021 (was there something going on in the world that distracted me? Perhaps), despite being a longtime Ellroy fan. I’m catching up now in anticipation of its sequel, which comes out later this year. It’s typical Ellroy, and his 1950s Los Angeles is, as usual, a sewer in hell, and seemingly every single human who lives in it is crooked, racist, and violent. It’s not his best novel by a long shot, but as a member of the media, I thought it was important to read a book with this particular premise: Ellroy’s protagonist has struck a deal with Satan to confess his way out of purgatory by revealing every questionable and outright evil thing he did as a magazine employee. — Sam Biddle

“The Prague Cemetery,” Umberto Eco
What if everything you thought you knew about history was based on a lie? This is the premise of the 2010 novel by Umberto Eco. He sketches the events that led up to the publication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and eventually, the Holocaust, told through the foibles of an Italian document forger with a deep hatred for Jewish people who is exiled to Paris after one too many overzealous missions for his overlords in various national clandestine services. One minor complication: An unknown event has given our protagonist a case of split personality, and he tells his story through alternating accounts from a Captain Simonini and an Abbé Dalla Piccola, a cleric who may or may not be real. Simonini is one of the only fictional parts of the book. The historical characters and events Eco describes all happened, including plots to curb Giuseppe Garibaldi’s influence in northern Italy by blowing up a ship with a chest of sensitive documents and a psy-op national campaign to foment a war for influence between the Jesuits and Free Masons, complete with tales of satanic cults. At the heart of Eco’s novel is the nature of reality, the power of fake documents and narratives to shape real events, and how, throughout history, the thirst for money and influence has driven the creation of a hatable “other” and created the conditions for humanity’s most horrific episodes. — Akela Lacy

Nonfiction

“The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon’s Josephine,” Andrea Stuart
“Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture,” Sudhir Hazareesingh
I’m currently reading two books at once that I’ve found to be a perfect pairing in an unusual way, and I’m doing one on audio and the other in book form, which helps keep them distinct. One is “The Rose of Martinique,” a 2004 biography of Napoleon’s wife Josephine, whose full name is way too long for me to bother remembering. She was raised on a slave plantation in the Caribbean before coming to Paris for an arranged marriage with a philandering noble who became a leader in the French Revolution, before both he and she wind up on the wrong end of Robespierre. Without spoiling too much, her husband gets the guillotine, but Robespierre meets his own maker before Josephine — then known as Rose — gets her turn under the revolutionary blade. Her second act is as the first lady of France after her new husband, Napoleon, becomes First Consul and then emperor. All the while, her lifestyle is financed — and sometimes not financed, depending on the political winds — by the slave plantation back home. Through her husband, she also winds up owning one in Haiti.

That’s where the second book comes in: “Black Spartacus,” a new biography of Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution. Like Rose, Toussaint was also born on a slave plantation, though he was obviously born on the other side of it. After the revolution, Rose appealed to Toussaint to make sure her plantation was safe, and he made it a priority that it not be burned or harmed and continued sending revenue to her, even after emancipation. Toussaint wanted an alliance with Napoleon and argued that he and his actions made them proud French republican revolutionaries. Napoleon briefly considered accepting the alliance but instead sent troops to crush the revolt and reinstate slavery in Haiti. He failed — but did capture Toussaint. He later called the failed expedition one of the greatest mistakes of his life. – Ryan Grim

“Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History,” Karl Jacoby
In “Shadows at Dawn,” historian Karl Jacoby applies a kaleidoscopic lens to one of the darkest chapters of westward expansion. The subject is the April 1871 slaughter of nearly 150 Apaches —mostly women and children — by a combined force of Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, and Tohono O’odham members in a remote canyon northeast of Tucson. What makes Jacoby’s account of the Camp Grant Massacre unique is his telling and retelling of the story from the vantage points of all parties involved — vigilantes and victims alike. The result is an unsettling portrait of the way acts of mass violence are justified, remembered, and mourned across generations. – Andrea Jones

“Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance,” edited by Sophie Hamacher and Jessica Hankey
“My vision changed after becoming a mother,” artist and filmmaker Sophie Hamacher writes in the preface to this stunning new volume about how state and commercial surveillance blend and contrast with a watchful maternal gaze. “Whereas before motherhood I was learning to see, as a mother, I was learning to watch.” A visually rich compendium of exchanges between Hamacher and an array of activists, artists, social scientists, poets, and mothers, “Supervision” turns a critical eye on everything from ultrasounds to nanny cams, infant biometrics, and the invasive tracking of Black, brown, and poor mothers by public health, child welfare, and law enforcement agencies. It is the book I wish I’d had when I was becoming a mother and my current go-to gift for the new moms in my life.

“Supervision” ranges widely across the uneven territory of motherhood. It includes video stills Hamacher captured with a phone while strolling her infant daughter through Harlem and at least two breastfeeding diaries, one of which is represented in glorious multicolored pinwheels. There’s also a pocket history of the evolution of baby monitors from military technology and countless reflections on how brutal, patriarchal laws and state scrutiny have harmed mothers and children worldwide. While much here is political, I’m most powerfully drawn to the personal reflections of the book’s 50 contributors, including a Cairo mother’s text messages to her absent partner documenting the horrors of endlessly solo parenting a 2-year-old; a painting by Tala Madani titled “Shit Mom (Dream Riders),” of a woman made of excrement on her hands and knees, being ridden by a toddler; and haunting “hidden mother” photos of women draped in black cloths holding their babies, a Victorian genre of portraiture designed to hide women while foregrounding their offspring. I’m still working my way through this dense, dreamlike book and likely will be — in one way or another — until my kids are grown. — Vanessa Gezari

“The Awful Truth,” Diana Hamilton
Split into two long pieces that blend essay and poetry, Hamilton explores the self, fear, anxiety, and dread. Perfect for those hot, long end-of-summer days. – Annie Chabel

“Solito,” Javier Zamora
In his 2022 memoir, “Solito,” writer Javier Zamora recounts his solo journey as a 9-year-old boy from El Salvador to reunite with his parents in California. The description is simple enough, but it belies what’s truly special about this remarkable book.

Telling stories about migration and borders is not easy. For many would-be readers, it seems the subject matter is too grim and the political problems too intractable to contemplate at length. To hear “Solito” sketched in general terms could evince such a reaction, but to write Zamora’s story off as yet another unsettling account from the borderlands would be a mistake.

At its core, “Solito” is an adventure story, seen through the eyes of a child putting on a brave face in an unfamiliar world. Zamora writes in the voice of his 9-year-old self, allowing readers to access his journey with the same wonder that he did. As far as narrative devices go, it was a bold choice, and Zamora pulled it off exceptionally, with humor and heart.

I happened to listen the audio version of “Solito,” which Zamora narrates. This, too, can be a gamble for an author, but Zamora, a published poet, was perfectly suited to the task. Hearing him read his words — with his cadence, his passion, and his Salvadoran slang — enriched the experience many times over. By the final chapters, I was so invested in the world he rendered that I began rationing my listening, so as not to exit too soon. 

You don’t need to be a border studies expert to appreciate this book. You don’t even need to be particularly passionate about immigration. That is because Zamora transcends the realms in which his story is ostensibly situated and in doing so illuminates those spaces in exciting new ways.

To be sure, there are scary moments in “Solito.” Zamora doesn’t shy away from the life-and-death trauma of the border, but he matches that darkness with love, particularly for the strangers-turned-family-members who made his present life possible. The result is a joyful, moving masterpiece of narrative storytelling. — Ryan Devereaux

“Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” Naomi Klein
Like many, I find conspiracy theories fascinating, especially any that include thrilling depictions of a group of powerful, unaccountable — maybe even sinister — people controlling the fate of the world. Why are they so alluring? “Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right,” Intercept contributing editor Naomi Klein says in her new book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.” 

For this journey, Klein takes you down the rabbit holes she plunged into deeply during the disorienting days of the pandemic, when many of us, like her, were home alone with the internet filling so much of our social life and time — primed for wild unsubstantiated conjectures. She begins by exploring her own double — the author and political figure Naomi Wolf — who she has been persistently mistaken for over the years and whose political transformation reflects the magnetism of conspiracy theories. With prose so dead on, Klein untangles the mirror world of speculative narratives and anti-democratic forces dominating much of today’s politics in the U.S. and around the world. This must-read captures the ethos of this baffling period we find ourselves in where so many reject objective reality. – Laura Flynn

“Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation,” Linda Villarosa
It’s almost a national pastime to complain about how broken the American health care system is, but after reading this book, I am enraged. Enraged by how prevalent and pervasive racism is in all parts of our system and the real-life consequences that has for patients. Villarosa does an extraordinary job of weaving together human stories (you will never be able to forget the Relf sisters) with the historical record and scientific studies. The voluminous footnotes at the end of the book chronicle just how painstakingly she has researched every statement. But her exceptional talent is at getting people to share the most intimate details of their health experiences from birth all the way to death. And she does it all with reportorial grace and care. All of us interact with the health care system in some way or other; this book will change how you view those interactions going forward. — Sumi Aggarwal

“American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis,” Adam Hochschild
A land war in Europe turns into a grinding stalemate. White supremacist violence rampages unchecked. A global pandemic kills millions.

A century ago, that was the backdrop for some of the worst repression in U.S. history. In terrifying detail, Hochschild chronicles how entry into World War I offered the occasion for violent crackdowns on those deemed insufficiently loyal — not only radical dissidents and draft resisters, but also journalists, immigrants, and activists of all sorts.

The book also offers a timely reminder to those who yearn for a more elevated and erudite political discourse. Woodrow Wilson (still the only U.S. president with a Ph.D.) campaigned in the lofty poetry of progressive internationalism, but he governed in brutal prose — the ongoing consequences of which include the use of the 1917 Espionage Act to criminalize journalism. – Michael Sherrard

Podcasts

“Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket,” hosted by Jill Lepore
“Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket” for me stands out as the most illuminating story about one of the most powerful people in the world and the future he is trying to manifest. By revisiting the science fiction that shaped Musk’s life, historian and host Jill Lepore guides you through his motivations and worldview. It’s a view she calls Muskism, “a new kind of capitalism,” one more extreme and even extraterrestrial “where stock prices are driven by earnings and also by fantasies.” The sound-rich series is full of fun throwbacks like the BBC’s 1970s airing of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. Lepore digs into the significance of Adams’s book on Musk and what he gets wrong about the story and its “indictment on economic inequality.” What is the vision of the future that Silicon Valley technobillionaires like Musk want to create? A ride on the evening rocket will give you a view into the bleak playbook. – Laura Flynn

“Ear Hustle,” hosted by Earlonne Woods, Antwan Williams, and Nigel Poor
“Ear Hustle” isn’t the kind of podcast with a revolutionary format or grandiose goal. It’s really just two guys talking about their lives, maybe looping in a friend now and again. The novelty of the production lies in the setting: Woods and Williams, the main hosts, are incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. The stories they tell bring into clarity those pieces of life that get pushed out to the edge of conversations around criminal justice and prison reform. The topics range from cellie struggles to the frustration of leading a meaningful life from behind bars. Roommate problems and existential crises both being topics that everyone struggles with, the show also details the feeling of being left behind as major milestones pass you by and the sense of alienation from your “life before” fading into a memory. “Ear Hustle” excels at making those human connections built from storytelling that penetrate your own life and self-perception, forcing you to — dun dun dun — empathize with others! — Jeehan Mikdadi

“The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality,” hosted by Imara Jones
I learned about the “Anti-Trans Hate Machine” podcast from a panel discussion on the role of news in combating extremism at a recent journalism conference. I started listening to it and immediately binged both seasons. This investigative podcast, hosted by award-winning journalist Imara Jones, unravels the dark money, billionaires, and powerful Christian nationalist hate groups that are behind the wave of hundreds of anti-trans bills across the country. Did you know that the panic about transgender kids playing sports isn’t grassroots at all? It was focus-grouped to determine the most effective way to spread anti-trans hate. Did you know that the same people — authoritarian Christian nationalist billionaires — who lost their decadeslong homophobic fight against same-sex marriage are behind today’s anti-trans hate machine? This is an enlightening podcast that I highly recommend. — Micah Lee

“Classy,” hosted by Jonathan Menjivar
Swap meets pepper working-class neighborhoods all over LA. I grew up going to them. For my friends and I, it was where we’d find cheap T-shirts, socks, and occasionally DJs selling their house or techno mixes. So when I heard a recent talk given by the makers of “Classy with Jonathan Menjivar” describe visiting one for an episode, I thought, I need to listen to this. In the episode, host Menjivar and producer Kristen Torres visit the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet, a place they both frequented as kids. Torres wants to buy socks her mom used to buy for her, until she realizes she doesn’t like the blend, raising the essential question of the episode aptly titled “Am I a Classhole?” The series is full of deeply personal stories exploring the everyday ways  — both small and big — class shows up in our lives, and the discomfort, anxieties, and real-life challenges they produce. Menjivar guides you through his own experience growing up as a working-class Latino kid in LA, with TV role models like Huell Howser and his legendary show “California’s Gold” and aspirations straight from the pages of Country Living magazine. This podcast is full of fun and difficult snippets of life that skillfully and cleverly convey the class chasms so prevalent in our society. – Laura Flynn

Film and Music

“Welcome to Union Glacier,” directed by Temujin Doran (Studiocanoe)
This 53-minute Vimeo documentary is something I’ve kept in my back pocket ever since I first saw it years ago with my high school buddies. The brief arctic jaunt is an exercise of simplicity, a glimpse at the joyous regularity of the subjects working and living at a camp in one of the coldest places on Earth. With its uncontrived pleasant characters, enchanting visuals, simple yet immersive sound design (and complementary soundtrack), this short film is suited to fans of Wes Anderson, Anthony Bourdain, and David Attenborough alike. “Welcome to Union Glacier” offers us a ticket to an uncommon sojourn to West Antarctica, producing a warm, soft prospect of what the “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” may have encountered during his contemplation. The film welcomes us to consider the meaning of our capacity to accomplish the ordinary in, and in service of, an extraordinary world surrounding us and begging for our communal participation and presence. In some ways, “Welcome to Union Glacier” stands contrary to a genre which might envelope us in the exceptional, the accomplishments of the few. Indeed, the movie brings us in, not to imagine the impossibility of another’s abilities, but rather the routine actualization of them, and in turn, the possibility of our own. — Prem Thakker

“Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop,” directed by Hannah Beachler, Raeshem Nijhon, and dream hampton
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop. The music genre that was once deemed a passing phase has made a global cultural impact in such a short period of time. As the world celebrates hip-hop pioneers, much recognition has been given to the men including Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J, and Jay-Z. But Netflix’s documentary series “Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop” shines light on women who’ve influenced the culture on the mic and behind the scenes. In the series, you hear the journeys and growth as artists from hip-hop icons like Queen Latifah, Roxanne Shanté, and MC Lyte. The series also draws attention to the misogyny and abuse women faced, including that by music journalist Dee Barnes. Overall, the series doesn’t shy away from the dark side of the industry but offers hope for the new generation of women in hip-hop. — Alyxaundria Sanford

“The River Doesn’t Like Strangers,” Chelsea Carmichael
U.K.-based composer and saxophonist Chelsea Carmichael’s debut album, “The River Doesn’t Like Strangers,” has been in heavy rotation for me this summer. Released in 2021 on Shabaka Hutchings’s Native Rebel record label, the album is an engaging sonic journey. For me, no matter the activity — working, talking a long walk, or tending to the garden — there are moments that vibe perfectly with each. – Akil Harris

The post What We’re Reading and Streaming appeared first on The Intercept.

This year, we added three new questions with the hope of capturing our staff members’ class backgrounds as well as their experiences with debt and means-tested government assistance. With these additions, our survey consisted of 20 questions that were sent to 49 full-time U.S. employees and fellows. We saw a slight decrease in participation from last year; the survey was completed by 88 percent of those who received it. As in previous years, the survey was both voluntary and anonymous. 

According to the 2022 results, 60.5 percent of our staff identify as white and 35 percent identify as people of color, with the remainder declining to self-identify. These percentages are similar to last year’s survey results, in which 60 percent of our staff identified as white and 34 percent identified as people of color.

The Intercept’s long-term goal is to increase the percentage of people of color in the newsroom to 50 percent, and to raise the number of staff members who come from backgrounds underrepresented in journalism. 

The Intercept is continuing to implement our “double Rooney Rule,” which requires at least two candidates from currently underrepresented groups in journalism to be interviewed for all open positions. We have also sought to diversify our pool of freelance contributors via our freelancer database, which we began publicizing this past year. The database captures a diverse range of contributors and serves as a resource for Intercept editors looking to commission stories or solicit pitches.

The 2022 Annual Survey

The responses to our annual anonymous survey are being presented as percentages in three categories: managers, non-managers, and total staff. We are including all racial demographics in our final report, including ones lacking any representation among our staff. We rounded to the first decimal point, so some percentages do not add up to 100.

All questions offered the option “prefer not to say.” Some questions also allowed responders to fill in individual answers; these answers will not be made public in order to protect the anonymity of responders.

Gender

Of all staffers, 48.8% are female, 48.8% are male, and 7% are nonbinary. Women are a slight majority (51.9%) among non-managers, while men are the slight majority (53.3%) among managers. All nonbinary staffers are non-managers, and at the time the survey was completed, no one at The Intercept identified as transgender.

Age

Roughly one-third of Intercept employees (34.9%) are in the 30-to-39 age range. The next most common age bracket — from 40 to 49 years old — comprises 27.9% of our staff. Staffers between 20 and 29 years old increased from 18% to 20.9% this year. Slightly more than one-half of our managers (53.3%) are between 40 and 49. The largest percent of non-managers (37%) are between ages 30 and 39, and one-third of non-managers (33.3%) are between ages 20 and 29.

Race and Ethnicity

The chart below represents the racial and ethnic breakdown of all Intercept staffers. The majority of staff members (60.5%) identify as white and a combined 35% identify as either Black, East Asian, Latinx, Middle Eastern, South Asian, or two or more races. No one at The Intercept identifies as Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

The chart below features data on 11.6% of the staff who answered the race and ethnicity question with “two or more.” Those who did not choose that specific answer were asked to answer this question with “not applicable.”

Sexual Orientation

The number of Intercept staffers who identify as LGBPQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Queer, or Asexual) increased from 18 to 23.3% since last year.

Education

A majority of The Intercept staff attended public high schools (65.1%).

Over half of staff members obtained their bachelor’s degrees at private institutions (58.1%).

A majority (55.8%) of employees do not have an advanced degree, while 25.6% have a master’s degree from a private university.

Out of all Intercept staff, 16.3% were first-generation college students. A total of 18.5% of Intercept non-managers are first-generation college students; a total of 13.3% of managers fall in that category.

Immigration

A total of 23.3% of our staff are first-generation immigrants, and 27.9% have parents who are immigrants.

Family Class Background

The highest percentage (37.2%) of Intercept employees identified their family class background as upper-middle class, with nearly half (46.7%) of managers selecting upper-middle class. The second-highest demographic bracket was middle class (25.6%), followed by working class (20.9%).

Government Assistance and Debt

This year, The Intercept introduced the two following yes-or-no questions about socioeconomic background:

Have you or your immediate family ever received means-tested government assistance, such as free/reduced lunch, earned income tax credit, food stamps, or Medicaid?

Do you or a member of your household spend more than 20 percent of your income paying down debt including student debt and medical debt (but not including a mortgage)?

More than one-third of Intercept employees (34.9%) said either they or their immediate family had received some form of means-tested government assistance, and nearly half (46.7%) of managers said the same. Roughly one-fifth of the entire staff (20.9%) said a member of their household spends more than 20 percent of their income paying down debt.

Disability

Among all employees, 14% identify as having a disability.

Time at First Look Media, The Intercept’s Parent Company

A total of 34.9% of Intercept employees have worked at First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, for more than five years.

One-third of non-managers (33.3%) have been with The Intercept for more than five years, and another one-third (33.3%) have been with The Intercept for one to three years. All managers have been with the company longer than a year.

Years Working in Journalism

A little less than a third of Intercept employees (30.2%) have worked in journalism between five and 10 years, while 25.6% of our newsroom has between one and five years of experience in newsrooms.

Another 23.2% of our staff newsroom have worked in journalism between 10 and 20 years, and 16.2% of our employees have more than 21 years of experience. Just 2.3% of our staff have one year or less of journalism experience.

The post The Intercept’s 2022 Annual Staff Demographic Survey appeared first on The Intercept.

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“Nights of Plague,” Orhan Pamuk
Like many other people during the pandemic, I searched for books that could help me understand the impact of a mass disease outbreak on society. Above any book of epidemiology or history, however, I found that this novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk about an outbreak of plague on a fictional Mediterranean island to be the most enlightening about how disease can sap the human spirit and break open divisions within a society. His writing is darkly humorous and full of pathos — highly recommended for anyone looking for a novel to immerse themselves in this summer. – Murtaza Hussain

“Cuatro Manos,” Paco Ignacio Taibo II
The novel “Cuatro Manos” was published in 1997 and features major historical characters and events from 20th century Latin America. Taibo, a renowned author and activist in Mexico, guides us through a story of two journalists in the 1980s. They begin to investigate unpublished and undiscovered works by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, written during his exile in Mexico City. The book jumps between the past and the present. And the two journalists’ travels through Latin America overlap with drug traffickers, a Spanish anarchist, a Bulgarian communist, and a shady CIA agent. It’s a light, fun novel, but it may require the reader to stop at every few pages and independently research historical events Taibo narrates, like the CIA’s alleged involvement in the killing of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton. – José Olivares

“Harrow,” Joy Williams
On the banks of a fetid lake called Big Girl, a cadre of aging rebels plots acts of ecoterrorism. They don’t consider themselves terrorists, though, reserving that appellation for bankers and war-mongers, “exterminators and excavators … those locusts of clattering, clacking hunger.” You can hardly blame them. In this vision of a near-future beset by ecological collapse, oranges and horses are long gone, but Disney World has “rebooted and is going strong.” A girl named Khirsten, or Lamb, who may or may not have been resurrected as an infant, stumbles upon the group after her mother disappears and her boarding school abruptly shuts down.

This is the rough plot of “Harrow” by Joy Williams, but the plot is not really the point. Williams is a worldbuilder, crafting mood and meaning out of layered fragments. Her writing is often called “experimental,” but if anything, oblique prose is the truest way to capture life under the yoke of apocalypse, the dizzying absurdity of deciding to forsake Earth for profit. Sometimes, lucid revelations peek through — “I think the world is dying because we were dead to its astonishments pretty much. It’ll be around but it will become less and less until it’s finally compatible with our feelings for it” — though for the most part, the world of “Harrow” is a labyrinth of decay. But don’t be mistaken: The book is very funny. Apocalypse is a slow creep, and while the Earth might not end with a bang, at least in “Harrow,” it ends with one final, reverberating laugh. – Schuyler Mitchell

“Red Team Blues,” Cory Doctorow
I just started “Red Team Blues,” and I can’t put it down. I’ve always loved Cory Doctorow’s novels, and this one is no exception. The protagonist, a 67-year-old retired forensic accountant who lives alone in his RV called the Unsalted Hash, spent his career tracking down assets of the ultra-rich by unwinding their shady networks of shell companies. He took one final job from an old friend and found himself both incredibly rich and in a world of trouble, trying to escape with his life. This book is a cryptocurrency techno-thriller (full of characters who are skeptical of crypto bros and insist that “crypto means cryptography”), and it’s full of money laundering, tax havens, lawyers for the 1 percent, organized crime and murders, hacking and open source intelligence, and so much more. This is the first book in a new series that I definitely plan on reading as they come out. – Micah Lee

“In Memory of Memory,” Maria Stepanova
Appropriate to its contents, the title so easy to remember, yet always escapes memory. – Fei Liu

“Long Way Down,” Jason Reynolds
I don’t often reach for poetry, but I had 15 minutes before I boarded a flight and had neglected to pack a book. The cover was riddled with awards and, most importantly, it was right next to the checkout. “Long Way Down” captures an emotional journey of grief built around a young man’s descent in an elevator after his brother is shot and killed. The book is an intense, quick read (I finished before we landed), written in captivating staccato narrative verse. The anxiety was palpable and fierce, and the structure truly enhances the reading experience. I found myself reflecting on Reynolds’s motivation for structural decisions, just as much as his word choice. Overall, “Long Way Down” is a powerful study in the traumatic and lasting impact of violence on individuals and communities. – Kate Miller

“The Melancholy of Resistance,” László Krasznahorkai
I’ve been — very slowly! — reading “The Melancholy of Resistance” by László Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian writer best known in the U.S. for Béla Tarr’s grueling film adaptation of his novel “Sátántangó.” Written during the collapse of Eastern Bloc communism, “Melancholy” tells the surreal tale of a rubbish-strewn town visited by a mysterious circus exhibiting only the body of a giant whale, which slowly incites the townspeople to madness. As the town’s petty tyrants scheme to use the chaos to their advantage, Krasznahorkai’s novel becomes a striking parable about the appeal of fascism in uncertain times, while his darkly funny stream-of-consciousness prose captures the devilish internal logic of anxiety. “His followers know all things are false pride, but they don’t know why.” Sound familiar? – Thomas Crowley

“The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga,” Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I found myself laughing, loudly, overcome with appreciation and awe during the first few pages of my friend Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s first novel, “The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga.” Mohamedou opens the book by swearing “on the belly button of my only sister” that the story we are about to hear is a thousand percent true and that we must have already heard it before. What begins to unfold is a mystical tale so rich in detail, tradition, Mauritanian culture, and moral guidance that you feel Mohamedou himself is speaking all this to you, and only you, while slurping his hot tea and conjuring the tale with his hands. It’s impossible to put the pages down once you start across the desert with Ahmed, battling djinns, dreams, snakes, and the changing ways of the world as he races to find his missing camel named Zarga. While Mohamedou is best known for captivating the world with best-selling memoir “Guantánamo Diary” and as the subject of the film “The Mauritanian,” both about his time wrongly imprisoned and tortured at GTMO, it is this stunning novel, rich with wordplay, wit, and unwavering conviction, that lets us know his true heart. – Elise Swain

“The Lathe of Heaven,” Ursula K. Le Guin
Have you ever woken up from a dream so intense that it affected you in real life? George Orr’s dreams change lived reality, so he wants to stop sleeping, and the only person who can cure him is his misguided psychiatrist whose ambitions to make their dystopia, and his own position in it, “better” means that Orr can’t be treated just yet. Le Guin’s topical themes of techno-utopianism, alternate realities, collective false memories, living nightmares, consent, and more make me forget that it was published in 1971. The novel also has aliens, untranslatable words, a Beatles song, plague history, and Hollywood-thriller plot scaffolding (a cinematic climax and almost forced coupling of the passive protagonist who falls in love with the lawyer helping him). Two video artists made a film adaptation in 1980 on a shoestring budget — with Le Guin’s active involvement — that was produced by NYC public television and aired on PBS. I haven’t watched it yet (it’s available on YouTube), but in my dream soundtrack for “The Lathe of Heaven,” I hear the late Pauline Anna Strom’s prelude-to-a-portal “Marking Time” over the opening credits. – Nara Shin

Nonfiction

“The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War,” Jeff Sharlet
I’ve been reading Jeff Sharlet’s reporting on the varieties of Christian authoritarianism for more than 20 years. In books such as “The Family” and “C Street,” Sharlet exposed the political ambitions and hidden influence of shadowy and well-financed Christian extremists. Looking back, after the Trump presidency, his writings now seem prophetic. In “The Undertow,” Sharlet sets out to understand the movement that coalesced, under Donald Trump, into full-blown messianic fascism. How do we stop this slow-motion slide toward political violence, the strange lure of civil war?

“The Last Honest Man,” James Risen’s political biography of Sen. Frank Church, should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dangers of the national security state. Risen’s book might also illuminate the underlying causes of the national pathology described in “The Undertow.” – Roger Hodge

“Black Women Writers at Work,” Claudia Tate
In this powerhouse of a collection, Claudia Tate interviews iconic Black women writers, from Gwendolyn Brooks to Ntozake Shange, about their process, inspirations, critiques, and audience. I was personally thrilled to read about the differences between the structures of their writing processes, as well as their thoughts on craft — it’s a trove of knowledge for any writer, poet, or playwright. Black women writers are often lumped together as a monolith; this book breaks apart that belief throughout every single interview. – Skyler Aikerson

“A World Without Soil,” Jo Handelsman
No time to write! Only to read and garden! – Fei Liu

“Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City,” Lucy Sante
Best known for “Lowlife,” her masterpiece history of low-class New York City’s metaphorical underground, Lucy Sante of late turned her sights on the underwater. Specifically, in “Nineteen Reservoirs,” she tells the stories of upstate New York valleys and ravines, hamlets and farms, all drowned one by one to expand the water supply of the growing metropolis downstate. Sante writes with the verve we expect from her, transmitting an astounding amount of rapid-fire details and facts with delectable prose that keeps it humming and makes it easy reading. – Ali Gharib

“Mussolini’s Grandchildren,” David Broder
When it became clear last year that my country was about to elect its most rightwing government since Benito Mussolini gave fascism its name, I found it hard to explain to non-Italians how we had gotten there, so I pointed them to David Broder’s words instead. After speaking with Broder for a story about how new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had inspired a surge of far-right threats and attacks against journalists and critics, I picked up his book, “Mussolini’s Grandchildren,” a lucid if terrifying history drawing the direct and rather explicit line between Mussolini’s regime and Meloni’s political triumph. It’s a history even many Italians watched unfold almost without noticing, deluded by the notion that fascism is for the history books alone, or maybe just wishing to look the other way. It’s also by no means an Italian story alone. – Alice Speri

“Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties,” Tom O’Neill
I am reading “Chaos” alongside “Women in Love” by D. H. Lawrence. I recommend listening to The Fucktrots while reading. – Daniel Boguslaw

“Strange Tapes” zine
DIY zines oft offer a kaleidoscopic peek down the subcultural spiral. No matter how fringe a particular hobby may look, the deeper you dive into a given genre, the more singular the subject matter becomes. Strange Tapes is a zine devoted to the celebratory archaeology of unearthing VHS ephemera: analog jetsam that’s washed up on the shores of thrift stores and swap meets, or in the dregs of dusty attics and musty basements. The tapes covered range from promotional and instructional videos, to recorded home movies and Z-grade filmmaking efforts. Interspersed with reviews of the tapes are interviews with independent filmmakers, collectors, and other personalities. “Strange Tapes” is a zine for those who marvel at the sheer range of humanity’s knowledge base, and the accompanying desire to share those singular skill sets with the world at large, whether those proficiencies are in the realm of ocular yoga or canine choreography.  – Nikita Mazurov

“Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice,” Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
A love letter to the sick and disabled queer and trans community of color in Canada and beyond. This collection of essays discusses everything from chronic suicidal ideation, accessible queer spaces, invisible femme labor, tips for sick and disabled artists who are traveling, and much, much more. Listening to this audiobook (narrated by the author) was such a beautiful, impactful experience; Piepzna-Samarasinha writes with sizzling rage and deep love for their communities in a way that will set you on fire. – Skyler Aikerson

“Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora,” Reem Assil
For the past several years, I’ve been learning to recreate the Syrian dishes I ate growing up, begging my mom to commit to writing (or at least a voice note) the recipes she knows via muscle memory and FaceTiming her when something just doesn’t look right. More recently, I’ve sought to expand my repertoire of dishes from Syria and the broader Levant by digging into cookbooks written by chefs from the region. “Arabiyya” by Reem Assil is the most recent addition to my collection, which also includes “The Palestinian Table” by Reem Kassis and “Feast: Food of the Islamic World” by Anissa Helou.

Assil, who was born in the United States to a Syrian father and Palestinian mother, weaves personal stories about her food experiences as a diaspora Arab with recipes that run the gamut from pickled vegetables to a slow-cooked lamb shoulder. I’ve so far attempted her shawarma mexiciyya (Mexican shawarma) — a fusion dish that she describes in English as al pastor-style red-spiced chicken — and her kafta bil bandoura, or meatballs in Arab-spiced tomato sauce. The shawarma recipe features my all-time favorite spice, Aleppo pepper, which I threw into the meatballs as well. (I don’t quite yet have my mom’s nafas yet, but I’m slowly but surely trying to wean myself off the dictates of a written recipe.) This summer, I’m looking forward to trying my hand at making saj, a flatbread named for the dome-shaped griddle it is prepared on, and musakhan, a Palestinian dish that involves sumac-spiced chicken. – Maryam Saleh

“How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” Maria Ressa
Maria Ressa’s new book, “How to Stand up to a Dictator,” is both a memoir by a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a stirring call to action against the toxic power of social media companies and the autocrats that they enable around the world. – James Risen

Films

“Joyland,” Saim Sadiq
I’ve thought about “Joyland” at least once a day since it opened in New York earlier this month. I’ve already seen it twice — that’s how obsessed I am with this gorgeous, emotional tour de force of a film. Haider is an unemployed, acquiescent young man who lives in a joint household in Lahore with his free-spirited wife, his conventionally masculine older brother and his family, and his elderly patriarch father. Haider finds a job as a backup dancer for a fierce trans burlesque performer, who he has an instant crush on. What happens from there sends a ripple effect through his family, as they each strain against the stifling scripts of gender and sexuality that they impose on themselves and each other.

“Joyland” is a deeply human story about untangling desires from obligations to embody the most honest version of ourselves for a chance to experience connection as we are. It’s a movie you feel just as much as you watch. – Rashmee Kumar

“Return to Seoul,” Davy Chou
This movie is so unusual, a mixture of a transnational adoption documentary and a film noir, created by the French director Davy Chou. “Return to Seoul” follows the journey of a Korean adoptee played by the elusive Park Ji-min, who wasn’t an actor at all until taking the lead role in this film. Park’s character decides on a whim to return to the country where she was born, and the result is a film that goes sideways at every issue and scenario it lands on. Yes, it’s the saga of an adoptee who seeks out her birth parents, but that’s just some of what happens. It unfolds with visual and existential twists you don’t expect, keeping you in suspense until the last note. It also provides an imaginative variation on the discourse about the emotional dislocation that foreign adoption can involve. If you want to know more about that after the credits roll, I highly recommend the landmark “Adopted Territory,” written by anthropologist (and friend) Eleana J. Kim. – Peter Maass

The post What We’re Reading and Watching appeared first on The Intercept.

Schmitt received an August 1 endorsement from the mayor of Poughkeepsie, who said, “Assemblyman Colin Schmitt is a veteran and leader in the Hudson Valley who will continue to fight for public safety and a more prosperous economy.” Schmitt then tweeted that endorsement out and included the quote prominently in a mailer sent out this past week. Schmitt was also included in Crain’s New York’s 2021 Notable Veteran Executives.

But the way their experience informs their candidacies could not be more different — and only one of them qualifies as a veteran under the standards of the National Guard and the New York State Division of Veterans’ Services, which state a person must serve at least “180 days of continuous active duty” on federal orders outside of training.

Orders obtained by The Intercept, which detail the time Schmitt was federally activated for non-training missions, show that he was activated from the National Guard once from late March 2020 until July 2020, helping deliver pandemic-related supplies stateside.

Schmitt’s team, in a statement, acknowledged that he is well below the 180-day threshold and has not been deployed overseas. But his campaign spokesperson pointed to the U.S. House Code, which defines a veteran as “a person who served in the active military, naval, air, or space service, and who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable.” (Schmitt has not been discharged.)

Ryan is a West Point graduate who served two tours in Iraq and earned two Bronze Stars and the Combat Action Badge. He won a seat in a special election in August that was considered a bellwether for competitive districts in the midterms.

Schmitt is a sergeant in New York’s Army National Guard who was activated for 116 days of operational support in the early days of the pandemic. He’s been outspoken about what he calls President Joe Biden’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan and presents himself as a protector against the lawlessness of the Democratic Party.

“We have a public safety crisis in the state of New York with the failed no-bail law and disrespect for law enforcement,” Schmitt said at a debate two weeks ago. “We need to turn that around, and we need a congressman who will support our cops.”

Ryan would be the first West Point graduate to represent the district, but Schmitt has been able to compete with him by touting his own service. Veterans organizations are taking sides in the race, but some local veterans find the endorsement of the latter candidate questionable, given their notably different resumes.

“It’s easy for service to be described in very broad terms,” said Malia Du Mont, a 20-year vet from Kingston who was deployed to Afghanistan. “Not many members of the public have the expertise or the understanding to distinguish between a resume like Pat Ryan’s and a resume like Colin Schmitt’s. I think it’s part of the civilian-military divide in this country, which I’m concerned about.”

The definition of a veteran differs by agency. The aforementioned U.S. Code defines a veteran as “a person who served in the active military, naval, air, or space service, and who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable.” But under the standards of the National Guard and the New York State Division of Veterans’ Services, a person must serve at least “180 days of continuous active duty” on federal orders outside of training.

“It is a gray area,” said Army lawyer Tony Box. “People have different interpretations and the regulations are not always consistent.”

After enlisting in April 2015, Schmitt was ordered to basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He trained there until August 26, 2015. In January 2017, Schmitt reported to “initial active duty for Advanced Individual Training” at Fort Lee, Virginia, which he completed that April, according to the orders.

Schmitt was then a reservist in the state Army National Guard’s 1569th Transportation Company until March 28, 2020, when he was activated to help with the state’s response to the pandemic. He spent about three months helping deliver personal protective equipment and other supplies.

“I think the specific rule about 180 days of federal service is pretty arbitrary,” said Sean McKee, a retired army infantry officer who was deployed to Afghanistan from April 2018 to January 2019. “That being said, there is a difference, and anyone will tell you. I don’t mean this as a slight against people in the National Guard. But there is a difference between being active duty for even three years, and then being in the National Guard for seven and only being activated for however long he’s been active.”

“Traditionally in veterans’ circles, especially when we speak to each other, that type of ‘being activated stateside for 100 and something days’ is not what I and many of my colleagues would consider a veteran,” Box, the Army lawyer, said.

Seth Lynn, executive director of Veterans Campaign, a nonpartisan organization that helps veterans run for office, said he uses a “big tent” approach.

“Our organization will tell people to have somebody else talk about your fantastic resume and your heroic service to the nation,” he said. “Once you say it to somebody, there’s sort of diminishing returns to talking about it more and more.”

Ryan is one of 91 veterans serving in the 117th Congress. New Politics, a bipartisan organization that works to elect military veterans and other national service leaders, has endorsed Ryan in his 2018 Democratic primary, his special election in August, and in this race. He has received $15,000 from the “cross-partisan” With Honor political action committee, and $2,500 from Taking the Hill.

He has also been endorsed by the Democratic-leaning veterans PAC Vote Vets, the same organization that has endorsed veteran politicians like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in his presidential bid and Sen. Mark Kelly in his race in Arizona.

This campaign cycle, Schmitt has received donations from two donor groups that support veterans, according to Federal Election Commission campaign finance data: $10,000 from Seal PAC, whose mission is “to end Democratic control in Congress by electing conservative veterans to lead our nations,” and $5,000 from Ranger PAC, which aims to elect “highly accomplished conservative military veterans.”

He has also been endorsed by Frontline Patriots, an influential conservative PAC that “seeks to promote and elect principled, conservative veteran leadership to Congress.” This year, many of Frontline Patriots’ endorsements have gone to candidates who were deployed overseas in countries with conflict like Iraq and Afghanistan. Several of them have seen combat.

A recent ad paid for by Frontline Patriots posits that the decline of veteran Congress members is a reason why “Washington is dysfunctional” before playing a montage of 30 veterans seeking congressional office. Ryan is not among them, but Schmitt is.

A voiceover reads: “The Republican Party needs a new generation of veteran leaders who put service over self.”

The post GOP Candidate Playing Up Veteran Status Finds Loophole for His Claim appeared first on The Intercept.

Hodge will oversee The Intercept’s newsroom operations in both New York and Washington.

“Betsy Reed has made The Intercept into one of the world’s premier investigative newsrooms, and it has been my great privilege to work alongside her for the last seven years,” said Hodge. “There’s no replacing her, but the upside is that we still have a kick-ass team of journalists.”

Since joining The Intercept in 2015 as national editor, Hodge has overseen numerous major investigations. He was promoted to deputy editor in 2017 and has since led the organization’s criminal justice, environmental, climate, and toxics reporting. More recently, he has spearheaded The Intercept’s technology and Covid origins coverage. Hodge’s work has been critical to The Intercept’s most ambitious and impactful reporting series, including The Drone Papers, The Teflon Toxin, Bad Chemistry, Code of Silence, and The Iran Cables.

Formerly, Hodge was editor-in-chief of the Oxford American and Harper’s Magazine. His writings have appeared in many publications, including Texas Monthly, the London Review of Books, the New Republic, Popular Science, and Harper’s Magazine. Hodge is also the author of two books, “Texas Blood” and “The Mendacity of Hope.”

Nausicaa Renner has been The Intercept’s Washington editor since March 2021. She was previously senior politics editor at The Intercept, the digital editor at Columbia Journalism Review and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and a senior editor at n+1.

Betsy Reed joined The Intercept as editor-in-chief in January 2015. She and her team shaped The Intercept into a leading investigative journalism organization responsible for breaking some of the most consequential stories in all of its areas of coverage, while launching a membership program that has since grown into one of the largest in U.S. independent media.

Under Reed’s leadership, The Intercept grew into an award-winning news organization dedicated to holding the powerful accountable through adversarial journalism and in-depth investigations on politics, war, surveillance, corruption, the environment, technology, criminal justice, the media, and more. Among the accolades The Intercept has received over the last few years are the George Polk Award, multiple National Magazine Awards and nominations, a Hillman Prize, the Innocence Network Journalism Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. The Intercept was a Pulitzer Prize finalist last year for the podcast “Somebody,” and the animated short “A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” received an Emmy nomination.

“Saying goodbye to my Intercept colleagues is hard, but knowing that I am leaving the newsroom in such good hands, so full of talent and potential, makes it a little easier,” Reed said. “The Intercept plays a very special role in our media ecosystem, and I’m sure it will reach new heights under Roger and Nausicaa’s leadership.”

The post Roger Hodge Named Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept appeared first on The Intercept.

How did we get here? Where does the reproductive rights movement go next? What can be done right now to minimize the impact of this decision on the most vulnerable people? The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard talks with professor Rachel Rebouché, interim dean of Temple Law School and author of a new report titled “The New Abortion Battleground,” which looks at the legal issues that will arise across state borders and between the state and federal government; Dani McClain, a Puffin fellow at Type Media Center and the author of “We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood”; and Hayley McMahon, an abortion access researcher and doctoral student at Emory University.

This conversation was streamed live on June 24, 2022.

The post Livestream: The New Fight for Reproductive Freedom appeared first on The Intercept.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its threats against the United States and NATO have made nuclear war a top-of-mind issue for Americans once again. Nearly 70 percent of Americans now worry about a nuclear attack, a level of concern unparalleled since the Cold War.

Back then, the ever-present risk of nuclear annihilation was popular culture fare. On a Sunday night in 1983, more than 100 million people in the United States tuned in to ABC’s made-for-TV film “The Day After.” The film dramatized the fictional account of a Kansas town caught in the terror of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The film is said to have led then-President Ronald Reagan to support his first arms control agreement with the USSR, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (which President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2019).

Please join us for a live virtual conversation with Jeff Daniels, who made a documentary on the making of “The Day After” and its impact; Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation and a board member of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; and nuclear weapons expert Sharon K. Weiner to explore the history and the legacy of the film and its lessons for today. Nausicaa Renner, senior politics editor at The Intercept, will moderate.

This event is co-sponsored by The Intercept, the Quincy Institute, and The Nation.

The post The Threat of Nuclear War: Four Decades After “The Day After” appeared first on The Intercept.

This year’s survey, which consisted of 17 questions sent to all 56 full-time U.S. employees and fellows, was conducted in March 2021. The survey was both voluntary and anonymous; this year, it was completed by 90 percent of those who received it.

The Intercept’s long-term goal is to increase the percentage of people of color in the newsroom to 50 percent, and we also want to increase the number of staff members who come from socioeconomic backgrounds underrepresented in journalism. According to the 2021 results, 60 percent of our staff identify as white and 34 percent identify as people of color, with the remainder declining to self-identify.

One step we have taken toward increasing the diversity of our staff is diversifying the pool of applicants we interview for staff positions. After achieving gender balance in 2020, The Intercept changed the implementation of our “double Rooney Rule” — which requires at least two candidates from currently underrepresented groups in journalism to be interviewed for all open positions — to focus on people of color, people with disabilities, and others currently underrepresented in our newsroom.

Moreover, The Intercept took steps to retool our fellowship program to better resonate with and attract diverse candidates. In the call for applications, we strongly encourage early-career journalists of color and those of underrepresented backgrounds in investigative journalism to apply for our fellowships. We acknowledge the critical lack of diversity at investigative news outlets and the need to support aspiring journalists who may face structural and economic barriers by providing opportunities to develop their skills and advance their careers. The Intercept has since begun including similar language in postings for staff positions as well.

THE 2021 ANNUAL SURVEY

The responses to our annual anonymous survey are being presented as percentages in three categories: managers, non-managers, and total staff. This is a switch from last year’s approach, when we published survey answers organized between union and non-union members. We have made some small changes to the questions and the presentation of the data. For example, we are including all racial demographics in our final report, including ones lacking any representation among our staff. We rounded to the first decimal point, so some percentages do not add up to 100.

All questions offered the option “prefer not to say.” Some questions also allowed responders to fill in individual answers; these answers will not be made public in order to protect the anonymity of responders.

Gender

Of all staffers, 48% are female, 48% are male, and 4% are nonbinary. Women are a slight majority (53.1%) among non-managers, while men are the slight majority (52.9%) among managers.

At the time the survey was completed, no one at The Intercept identified as transgender, and 8% of the newsroom chose to not answer that question.

Age

A plurality of Intercept employees (38%) are in the 30-to-39 age range. Twenty-eight percent of our staff find themselves in the next age bracket — 40 to 49 years old — and 18% of our staff are between 20 and 29 years old. Most managers (47.1%) are between 40 and 49, while most non-managers (46.9%) are between ages 30 and 39.

Race and Ethnicity

The chart below represents the racial and ethnic breakdown of all Intercept staffers.

No one at The Intercept identifies as Native American or as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

The chart below features data on 10% of the staff who answered the race and ethnicity question with “two or more.” Those who did not choose that specific answer were asked to answer this question with “not applicable.”

Sexual Orientation

A total of 18% of The Intercept staff identities as LGBPQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Queer, or Asexual).

Education

A majority of The Intercept staff attended public high schools (66%), and about half obtained their bachelor’s degrees at private institutions (56%). A total of 17.7% of Intercept managers are first-generation college students; a total of 9.4% of non-managers fall in that category. A majority (52%) of employees do not have an advanced degree, while 32% have a master’s degree from a private university.

Immigration

A total of 18% of our staff are first-generation immigrants, and 24% have parents who are immigrants.

Disability

Among all employees, 8% identify as having a disability.

Time at First Look Media, The Intercept’s Parent Company

A total of 36% Intercept employees have worked at First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, between three and five years, and 30% of our staff have been with the company for more than five years.

Another 18% of our entire staff have been with the company between one and three years. A total of 21.9% of non-managers have been with The Intercept for less than a year, and all managers have been with the company longer than a year. (The total percentage of employees who have been with The Intercept for less than one year is 14%.)

Years Working in Journalism

A little less than a third of Intercept employees (30%) have worked in journalism between one and five years, while 22% of our newsroom has between five and 10 years of experience in newsrooms.

Another 30% of our staff have worked in journalism between 10 and 20 years, and 14% of our employees have more than 21 years of experience. Just 2% of our staff have one year or less of journalism experience.

The post The Intercept’s 2021 Annual Staff Demographic Survey appeared first on The Intercept.