2020-03-01 The Atlantic

MARCH 2020 THEATLANTIC.COM The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake by David Brooks





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OF NO PARTY OR CLIQUE VOL. 325–NO. 2 MARCH 2020 CONTENTS Features Cover Story 28 The 2020 Disinformation War Deepfakes, anonymous text messages, Potemkin local news sites, and opposition research on reporters—a field guide to this year’s election and what it could do to the country By McKay Coppins 40 The Abortion Doctor and His Accuser When a reproductive-rights activist accused one of the most respected physicians in the movement of sexually assaulting her, everyone quickly took sides. The divide exposed differences among women that are typically expressed only in private. By Maggie Bullock 54 The Nuclear Family was a Mistake By David Brooks The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastro- phe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together. ALAMY The sheltered family of the 1950s has given way to the stressed family of every decade since. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY WERONIKA GĘSICKA 3

MARCH 2020 Dispatches Culture & Critics Back Front 9 70 86 6 OPENING ARGUMENT OMNIVORE FICTION The Commons In Praise of the The New Rules of Go, Team Discussion & Debate Herd Mentality Music Snobbery A short story by How the human instinct to Hulu’s High Fidelity Samantha Hunt 4 conform could help us meet the reboot captures the rise challenge of the climate crisis of fervent eclecticism. 96 By Robert H. Frank By Spencer Kornhaber Ode to Cold Showers 14 72 By James Parker COVER: CSA IMAGES / GETTY SKETCH The Mulatta Unmasks On the Cover Herself to Her Husband The Witching Hour A poem by Shara McCallum ILLUSTRATION BY Juliet Diaz is at the forefront of MENDELSUND/MUNDAY a growing witchcraft movement. 74 By Bianca Bosker BOOKS 18 The Supreme Court’s PREDICTIONS Enduring Bias Siding with the powerful Can You Still Trust against the vulnerable has Nate Silver? become the rule. The leader of the data revolution By Michael O’Donnell believes the rest of the media is in danger of getting 2020 wrong. 78 By David A. Graham BOOKS 22 The Art of Second Chances MATERIAL WORLD On Emily St. John Mandel’s disaster-steeped fiction Why Restoration By Ruth Franklin Hardware Sends Catalogs the Size of a Toddler 82 The surprising persistence of the mail-order business BOOKS By Amanda Mull Abraham Lincoln’s 26 Radical Moderation What the president understood VIEWFINDER that the zealous Republican reformers in Congress didn’t Made in the U.S.A. By Andrew Ferguson Objects created by American prisoners MARCH 2020



B e h i n d t h e C o v e r : On this month’s cover, we dream. Today, of course, that family structure and its THE illustrated the ideas behind David Brooks’s feature attendant ideals are long gone for most Americans, and story by quite literally exploding a nuclear family. they’re not coming back; a new approach is needed. The vintage image, which conjures Bazooka Joe comics and mid-century cereal boxes, conveys a mythic — Peter Mendelsund, Creative Director familial happiness and nostalgia for the American Oliver Munday, Senior Art Director The Caitlin Flanagan is discussed. While many on the Things reflected in the pro-life side of the argument are We Can’t feeling hopeful as the judiciary Face December issue on becomes more conservative, I what we don’t talk feel a growing sense of unease. about when we talk The issues Ms. Flanagan so deftly points out will not be legislated about abortion. away. Even if Roe v. Wade is over- turned, the fight will rage on. Letters Friar Paul Schloemer I I read Caitlin Flanagan’s essay last I am a Franciscan priest in the Silver Spring, Md. night; then I read it again. I have Roman Catholic Church who never seen my inner tumult laid has a professional as well as per- Caitlin Flanagan out in such eloquent prose before. sonal interest in the debate over replies: abortion. In working with pro- The badge-wearers, sign- life groups, hearing confessions I’ve never been more thrusters, and yell-louders on (and sometimes just hurt and surprised—or moved—by both sides of this fight lost me anger) from women (and a few the response to an essay I’ve long ago, though I tip my hat men) who have had or facilitated written. I received emails to their sense of urgency. I find abortions, and trying to simply from people on all sides of myself in a quieter, sadder place discuss the issue with friends the abortion debate, each of that doesn’t marry with slogans. who are pro-choice, I have long them interested in having a The costliness, the never-to-be anguished over how to break discussion in which the full for both woman and child, is through both sides and bring the range of human emotions heartbreaking. Whom shall we subject from a place of debate to and experiences regarding the value? The answer is easy and a place of understanding. subject could be considered. impossible. Perhaps we should Many anti-abortion read- take a moment and mourn the Ms. Flanagan’s article has ers were grateful to see their tragedy of the thing. helped me tremendously down strongest argument advanced that road by articulating the pain respectfully. And many Jamie R. Oaks that is so raw everywhere abortion pro-abortion-rights readers Chicago, Ill. recognized themselves in the voice of a writer who has faced the whole truth about abor- tion, and made a firmly held decision that the procedure should remain legal. I want to note that I received letters from readers who experienced—and were surprised by—some sense of sadness and even grief after abortions. That doesn’t mean that they made the wrong decision. Only that we on the side of legal abortion could do 6 MARCH 2020

COMMONS DISCUSSION & DEBATE a much better job of acknowl- ON THE RANCH When I got snowed in edging the full and complicated last November, I had truth about the procedure, I have been reading some time to read, and which is that for many women, The Atlantic since my learned about the con- abortion is the better of two college days, in the late test. My wife, Patsy, took bad choices. 1950s and ’60s, when some pictures after the it was The Atlantic snow melted, but we had Too Much Monthly. About 10 years no idea what the heck Democracy Is Bad ago, I found myself Instagram or a hashtag for Democracy reading too much at the was. Grandchildren came ranch and not doing to the rescue. The major American parties enough work, so I quit have ceded unprecedented a bunch of subscrip- — Anthony Sanchez, power to primary voters, tions and narrowed my winner of the 2019 Reading Jonathan Rauch and Ray reading list. But I still La Raja wrote in December. kept buying The Atlantic. My Atlantic Contest It’s a radical experiment— Carrizozo, N.M. and it’s failing. COURTESY OF ANTHONY SANCHEZ Q •& •A ballot in federal elections. Democrats can be held Thomas Jefferson said, “An edu- accountable by the electorate for taking unpopular cated citizenry is a vital requisite In the December issue, “How to Stop a Civil War,” Adam positions on immigration. By disenfranchising rival for our survival as a free people.” Serwer wrote that the gravest danger to American democracy constituencies, the Republican Party eliminates the So it is disheartening to see the is the false promise of civility. Graeme Wood wrote about ability of the electorate to hold the GOP similarly authors of this article support Daniel Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement. responsible for its actions. — Adam Serwer disengagement of the electorate. Q Mr. Serwer reprises several partisan tropes. Q Would an independent Texas issue currency? If so, If representative democracy is to be successful, then the people Disenfranchising minority voters and attacking trying to pay for imported goods with that currency must be actively involved in liberal immigration policy certainly are Republican could increase costs for Texans, because sellers would choosing, and holding account- tactics to forestall demographic irrelevance. Aren’t likely demand a premium for a new and untested able, their representatives. The support for Dreamer citizenship, open borders, and government’s issuance. — Diana Powe, Beaverton, Ore. answer to our political woes is minimal deportation likewise Democratic tactics investment in the education of the to accelerate demographic dominance? — Derek A Daniel Miller hopes that Texas will issue its own citizenry. It is not to tell citizens Ridgley, Nederland, Colo. to become passive players in the currency, but he says it need not do so immediately government—their government. A Whether or not the immigrants in question upon independence. His “Texit” movement envisions an amicable divorce, and the new country Owen Keenan become reliable Democratic voters is within the developing monetary policy gradually, if necessary. Langhorne, Pa. Republican Party’s ability to help decide; “open An independent Texas could at first enter into a borders” as they existed for white people for most currency union with the remaining 49 states, then To respond to Atlantic articles or of United States history are not on the table, issue its own currency later, once it established the submit author questions to The Commons, and deferring the deportation of undocumented institutions necessary to manage and back its money please email [email protected]. immigrants does not make them eligible to cast a supply. As Miller never fails to point out, much Include your full name, city, and state. smaller economies than Texas (Australia, say) issue their own currency and do just fine. — Graeme Wood editorial offices & correspondence The Atlantic considers unsolicited manuscripts, fiction or nonfiction, and mail for the Letters column. Manuscripts will not be returned. For instructions on sending manuscripts via email, see theatlantic.com/faq. By submitting a letter, you agree to let us use it, as well as your full name, city, and state, in our magazine and/or on our website. We may edit for clarity. customer service & reprints Please direct all subscription queries and orders to: 800-234-2411. International callers: 515-237-3670. For expedited customer service, please call between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday. You may also write to: Atlantic Customer Care, P.O. Box 37564, Boone, IA 50037-0564. Reprint requests should be made to Sisk at 410-754-8219 or [email protected]. A discount rate is available for students and educators. Please visit theatlantic.com/subscribe/academic. advertising offices The Atlantic, 60 Madison Avenue, Suite 800, New York, NY 10010, 646-539-6700. 7



D I S PAT C H E S OPENING ARGUMENT IN PRAISE OF THE HERD M E N TA L I T Y How the human instinct to conform could help us meet the challenge of the climate crisis BY ROBERT H. FR ANK 9

Dispatches Previous warnings of impend- and widely read New Yorker could be had for as little as Social scientists have dem- ing peril have done little to essay on the climate crisis, 25 cents in some locations— onstrated the influence of peer alter either individual behav- “but I don’t see human nature about $2.17 in today’s dol- behavior in a host of other ior or public policy. fundamentally changing any- lars. In many areas today, taxes areas. One study, for exam- time soon.” have pushed that price close ple, found that when military More than half of the car- families were posted to a new bon dioxide added to the Having written periodi- EACH NEW location where the obesity rate atmosphere since the dawn of cally about climate issues for SOLAR was 1 percent higher than aver- the industrial age was put there more than a decade, I have age, adults in the families were by humans after 1988, the year followed the scientific litera- INSTALLATION 5 percent more likely to become the climatologist James Han- ture on the subject closely, and IN A obese during the course of their sen testified before Congress I understand the fatalist view assignment there. Behavioral that a dangerous warming that the window for an effec- NEIGHBOR- contagion—as the phenom- trend was already well under tive response is rapidly closing. HOOD enon is known—can exac- way. Worldwide, emissions But in the process, I’ve also erbate bullying, cheating on continue to increase, as floods, arrived at a more hopeful per- CAN LEAD taxes, and problem drinking, droughts, famines, and wild- spective, one rooted in another TO SEVERAL among other harmful behav- fires become more frequent side of human nature. Prop- ADDITIONAL iors. But people also become and more intense. This century erly stoked and channeled, our more likely to exercise and eat has already been responsible instincts could help support a ONES. prudently when those behav- for 19 of the 20 hottest years different trajectory. iors become more widespread on record. According to the to $10. In New York City, a among peers. federal government’s 2019 Arc- Radical change can pack of cigarettes cannot be tic Report Card, rapidly melt- happen swiftly. I’m happy to sold legally for less than $13. Given the power of conta- ing permafrost now threatens report that none of my four By the 1990s, many cities and gion, it is astonishing that the to create feedback loops that adult sons is a smoker. But if states were banning smoking question of how policy mak- would release much of the they’d grown up when I did, in restaurants, bars, and pub- ers might harness this power 1.5 trillion metric tons of car- I suspect that at least two of lic buildings; some jurisdic- has received so little serious bon it holds—roughly twice them would have taken up the tions went so far as to prohibit attention. Even when smok- the amount already circulat- habit. When my own stint as the practice in outdoor public ing restrictions were enacted, ing in the atmosphere. a smoker began—at age 14, spaces as well. for instance, it was primarily in 1959—many of my friends to protect nonsmokers from Even now, there is much had already been smoking These measures worked, secondhand smoke. But the we could do to parry the cli- for several years. My parents but not necessarily in the way damage done by secondhand mate threat. We could enact didn’t want me to smoke, you might think. Taxes and smoke pales in comparison with stiff carbon taxes and man- but because they were smok- bans made smoking more dif- the harm caused by becoming a date an accelerated phase- ers themselves, their objec- ficult and helped some people smoker—not just to the smoker out of fossil fuels. We could tions rang hollow. At the time, quit, yes. But far more impor- himself, but also to his peers, undertake massive investments more than half of American tant, these moves kick-started who in turn become more likely in renewable-energy sources, men and almost 30 percent of a virtuous cycle. One of the to smoke. launch large-scale refores- American women smoked. In strongest predictors of whether tation, and alter the mix of some circles, it was just some- someone will become a smoker The behaviors that foods we eat. We could rush thing that most people did. is the smoking rate among his spawned the climate crisis are to develop scalable methods of peers. With fewer people start- perhaps even more contagious carbon capture and sequestra- Today, fewer than 15 per- ing to smoke, Americans had than smoking, a fact that has tion. Yet on all of these fronts, cent of Americans smoke. fewer smoking peers, which gone largely unnoticed by econ- we are taking only minimal Given the difficulty of quit- reduced smoking rates still omists and climatologists, who action. The politics around ting, few people imagined that further. After carefully con- understand global warming as climate change remain intrac- such a precipitous reduction trolling for other factors, one a consequence of greenhouse table, and human nature itself in smoking rates could occur study estimated that if the gases being costly to eliminate seems ill-suited to the chal- so quickly. The decline was percentage of smokers among and dischargeable without lenge: Putting off solving the rooted in collective measures a teen’s close friends fell by penalty. This assessment leads problem—or hoping it will American society took to dis- 50 percent, the probability of naturally to pessimism, since somehow just go away—is courage the habit. States and her becoming (or remaining) the costs of carbon removal easier than confronting it. the federal government raised a smoker would fall by about remain high and political “Call me a pessimist,” Jona- taxes on tobacco products. 25 percent. opposition to robust taxation than Franzen wrote in a grim In the ’50s, a pack of Camels 10 MARCH 2020

OPENING ARGUMENT remains formidable. It also researchers have found evidence that our neighbors’ behavior photos of neighborhoods and overlooks contagion’s potential that solar panels visible from affects our own.) The conta- identifies houses with solar pan- power to help address this crisis. the street exert a significantly gion effect in solar adoption els by placing red dots on their greater peer effect than those can be seen in Google’s Project roofs. Those houses tend to be We’ve been building bigger that aren’t—further suggesting Sunroof, which displays aerial near others with red dots. houses, driving heavier vehicles, commuting longer distances, staging more destination wed- dings, and engaging in a host of other energy-intensive activ- ities only partly because their true costs to the planet are not fully priced in. The far more important reason we’ve done these things is our tendency to behave as our peers do. The housing market pro- vides a vivid illustration of this. Since the early 1970s, the lion’s share of national income growth has accrued to the wealthy, who used some of their gains to build ever larger houses. The near-wealthy, who travel in the same social cir- cles, also built bigger, and so on down the income ladder. Although median incomes grew little during the past half century, the median new house grew from about 1,500 square feet in 1973 to almost 2,400 square feet today. Without invoking the power of behav- ioral contagion, it’s difficult to explain this change. But here is the cause for hope: Where contagion cre- ates a problem, it can also help solve it. Just as in the case of smoking, where peer effects exacerbated and then reduced the prevalence of the practice, so too could contagion help us meet the climate challenge. Solar-panel adoption, for example, is particularly con- tagious. After controlling for a variety of other potentially important causal factors, one study found contagion’s power in this domain to be substan- tial: Each new installation in a neighborhood can, over time, lead to several additional ones. (In a follow-up study, PHOTO RENDERINGS BY PATRICK WHITE 11

Dispatches OPENING ARGUMENT There’s very good reason to climate-friendly diet, or buy- were generous subsidies for the smart thermostats, has incor- believe that peer effects could ing an electric vehicle is likely to renewable-energy industry. porated the approach into its be similarly beneficial in other spur others to take similar steps. Those subsidies helped com- product: It rewards customers areas crucial to our climate It might also reinforce our iden- panies lower costs for consum- who choose energy-efficient future. Research shows that tity as climate advocates; in ers, which increased adoption settings with green leaf icons our eating habits are shaped by many aspects of life, small first rates, igniting a contagion pro- (gold stars, essentially) in their the habits of those around us. steps can lead to larger ones. As cess: Further adoption led to monthly usage summaries, and This effect could be harnessed Will Durant distilled Aristot- compares the number of leaves to encourage people to eat le’s wisdom about the power of CUSTOMER- earned with those of other Nest healthier diets, but it could just habit: “We are what we repeat- COMPARISON users in the area. as easily nudge people toward edly do.” more environmentally sustain- REPORTS, Downplaying the sever- able ones. Even when everyone ONE COMPANY ity of the climate crisis would acknowledges that a behavior be a grave mistake. As the Consumers are also highly causes harm, as in the smok- BOASTS, consensus among climatol- sensitive to contagion when ing example, it can be hard to HAVE HELPED ogists affirms, the threat it choosing which car to buy. This reach consensus on whether— SAVE ENOUGH poses is catastrophic. Individ- has led Americans to choose and how—to respond. The dif- ual choices won’t be enough ever bulkier SUVs. But with ficulty may stem in part from ENERGY to stave off the worst-case the right incentives, consumers the laudable belief that people TO POWER scenarios—significant pub- could be encouraged to make should decide for themselves lic action is required, in the a different choice. Many states which behaviors to mimic SAN United States and across the already give tax breaks to buy- and which to avoid. But pub- FR A NCISCO’S globe. But as Gregg Easter- ers of electric vehicles, but that’s lic acknowledgment of climate HOMES FOR brook warned in these pages hardly the only way to promote change, and the risks it poses, MORE THAN more than a decade ago, it can change. The U.S. Department has become more widespread also be dangerous to portray the of Energy has found that when among Americans. Perhaps we 10 YEARS. threat as insurmountable. Pre- a workplace installs charging will be able to engineer more vious efforts to curtail smog, stations, its employees are 20 benign social environments with greater cost reductions, which acid rain, and the use of ozone- times as likely to choose an simple, targeted taxes and subsi- has led to still more new cus- depleting chlorofluorocarbons electric car. Practicality is surely dies, calibrated to amplify con- tomers. As the climate advocate all seemed futile, Easter- the main reason, but the daily tagion effects, rather than with Ramez Naam writes, “Build- brook noted, until we actually reminder that co-workers have complex, intrusive regulation. ing new solar, wind, and stor- attacked those problems—at gone electric could also touch age is about to be cheaper than which point initiatives proved off a contagion effect. Taxation is always contro- operating existing coal and gas far more successful (and less versial. But unlike prohibitions power plants.” Once that hap- painful) than all but the most I have long shared the concern and prescriptive regulation, it pens, adoption could soar. optimistic reformers could of climate advocates who warn shows respect for individual have hoped. that “conscious consumption”— freedom by affording flexibil- Even leaving aside taxes voluntary individual restraint ity to those who would find it and subsidies, there are ways As Samuel Johnson said, “To in energy usage, such as buy- hardest to curtail harmful activ- to leverage the contagion effect. do nothing is in every man’s ing a Tesla or avoiding plastic ities. We didn’t outlaw smok- Utilities, for example, have power.” But we also have the water bottles—is no substitute ing; we just tried to set its price found that customers reduce power to act, and our actions for changes in public policy. closer to its full cost to soci- their electricity usage signifi- have the power to shape those One recent study even sug- ety. We could take the same cantly when told how their of people around us. We still gested that encouraging indi- approach in the climate con- consumption compares with have time to make a difference, vidual energy restraint could text: To diminish the American that of neighbors. Opower, a so why choose despair? diminish support for policies appetite for gas-guzzling vehi- home-energy-management like carbon taxes—perhaps by cles, for instance, we should tax company owned by Oracle, has Robert H. Frank is an econom- instilling the belief that per- cars by fuel economy. helped deliver these customer- ics professor at Cornell sonal changes reduce the need comparison reports to millions University. He is the author for political action. We could also encourage of households served by utili- of Under the Influence: climate-friendly behavior by ties around the globe; it boasts Putting Peer Pressure But conscious consump- reducing its cost. Embedded in that the program has helped to Work, from which this tion may promote progress in the 2009 stimulus bill, designed save enough energy to power article is adapted. other ways I had not previ- to revive the American econ- San Francisco’s homes for ously appreciated. Installing omy after the Great Recession, more than 10 years. Google solar panels, adopting a more Nest, the manufacturer of 12 MARCH 2020

VINTAGE ANCHOR

Dispatches Juliet Diaz said she was hav- Now 38 years old, Diaz hangover cures that “adjust the anthropologist Rodney Need- ing trouble not listening to remembers that when she was vibration of alcohol so that it ham’s 1978 book, Primordial my thoughts. “Sorry, I kind growing up, her family’s spell- doesn’t add extra density and Characters, scholars’ work- of read into your head a little work felt taboo. But over the energetic ‘weight’ to your ing definition of a witch was, bit,” she told me when, for past few years, witchcraft, long aura.” A 2014 Pew Research at that time, “someone who the third time that August viewed with suspicion and Center report suggested that causes harm to others by mys- afternoon, she answered even hostility, has transmuted the United States’ adult popu- tical means.” To Diaz, a witch one of my (admittedly not into a mainstream phenom- lation of pagans and Wiccans is “an embodiment of her truth unpredictable) questions enon. The coven is the new was about 730,000—on par in all its power”; among other about her witchcraft seconds squad: There are sea witches, with the number of Unitarians. magic practitioners, witch before I’d had a chance to ask might embody a religious it. She was drinking a home- SKETCH affiliation, political act, well- made “grounding” tea in her ness regimen, “hot new lewk,” apartment in a converted Vic- THE or some combination of the torian home in Jersey City, WITCHING above. “I’m doing magic when New Jersey, under a dream I march in the streets for causes catcher and within sight of HOUR I believe in,” Pam Grossman, a what appeared to be a human witch and an author, wrote in a skull. We were surrounded by In recent years, witchcraft New York Times op-ed. nearly 400 houseplants, the has gone mainstream—and earthy smell of incense, and, Casting spells and assem- according to Diaz, several of Juliet Diaz is at the bling altars have become quite my ancestral spirit guides, forefront of the movement. lucrative. You can attend a who had followed me in. “You fall-equinox ritual organized actually have a nun,” Diaz BY BIANCA BOSKER by Airbnb, sign up for sub- informed me. “I don’t know scription witch boxes offering where she comes from, and city witches, cottage witches, But Wicca represents just one the equivalent of Blue Apron I’m not going to ask her.” kitchen witches, and influencer among many approaches to for magic-making, and buy witches, who share recipes for witchery, and not all witches aura cleanses on Etsy. Insta- Diaz describes herself as a moon water or dreamy pho- consider themselves pagan or gram’s reigning witch influ- seer capable of reading auras tos of altars bathed in candle- Wiccan. These days, Diaz told encer, Bri Luna, has more and connecting with “the other light. There are witches living me, “everyone calls themselves than 450,000 followers and side”; a plant whisperer who in Winnipeg and Indiana, San witches.” has collaborated with Coach, can communicate with her suc- Francisco and Dubai; hosting Refinery29, and Smashbox, for culents; and one in a long line moon rituals in Manhattan’s What exactly they mean which she recently introduced of healers in her family, which public parks and selling $11.99 by that can vary from witch a line of cosmetics “inspired traces its roots to Cuba and the to witch. According to the by the transformative quality indigenous Taíno people, who of crystals.” settled in parts of the Carib- bean. She is also a professional Many professional witches, witch: Diaz sells anointing oils including Diaz, can also be and “intention infused” body hired to do magic on your products in her online store, behalf. Diaz’s most popular instructs more than 8,900 offering is her Ancestral Can- witches enrolled in her online dle Service, a $45 ritual for school, and leads witchy work- manifesting intentions that shops that promise to leave I’d come to her apartment to attendees “feeling magical af!” try. (“Last month we had 4 In 2018, Diaz, the author of pregnancies, 33 job promo- the best-selling book Witch- tions, 12 business startups, ery: Embrace the Witch Within, 12 wedding proposals! and 4 earned more than half a million court wins,” claimed a pro- dollars from her magic work motional email.) Diaz—who and was named Best Witch— grew up on food stamps, was yes, there are rankings—by homeless for parts of college, Spirit Guides Magazine. and, as an adult, sometimes skipped lunch to save up for 14 MARCH 2020

rent—said she has “manifested to cause misfortune and injury century, as transcendental- unconventional sources of an entirely new life” from her to others by non-physical and ism and the women’s-suffrage power—and which can be candle work. Features of that uncanny (‘magical’) means,” movement took hold, witches especially appealing for peo- new life include her book deal, writes the historian Ron- enjoyed the beginnings of a ple who feel disenfranchised its best-seller status, her store, ald Hutton, who has stud- rebranding—from wicked or who have grown weary and a stronger relationship ied attitudes toward witches devil-worshippers to intuitive of trying to enact change by with her husband. She per- in more than 300 commu- wisewomen. Woodstock and working within the system. forms up to 100 candle ser- nities, in places such as sub- second-wave feminism were a (Modern witchcraft has drawn vices each month, and said she Saharan Africa and Greenland. boon for witches, whose pop- more women than men, as usually sells out within a day. The belief in witchcraft is so ularity spiked again following well as many people of color and queer or transgender indi- G o o d lu c k t r ac i n g the widespread and so enduring the Anita Hill hearings in the viduals; a “witch” can be any history of witches. While the that one historian speculates ’90s, and again after Donald gender.) “The more frustrated idea of witches is exception- it’s innate to being human. Trump’s election and alongside people get, they do often turn ally old—Horace’s Satires, the #MeToo movement. to witchcraft, because they’re already embracing the nega- In the U.S., mainstream like, ‘Well, the usual channels tive stereotype circa 35 b.c., interest in witches has occa- The latest witch renais- are just not working, so let’s describes witches with wigs sionally waned but mostly sance coincides with a grow- see what else is out there,’” and false teeth howling over waxed, usually in tandem ing fascination with astrology, Grossman told me. “When- dead animals—the day-to-day with the rise of feminism and crystals, and tarot, which, ever there are events that business of being a witch has the plummeting of trust in like magic, practitioners con- really shake the foundations of continuously evolved, which establishment ideas. In the 19th sider ways to tap into unseen, society”—the American Civil complicates attempts to recon- War, turmoil in prerevolution- struct a tidy family tree. The ary Russia, the rise of Weimar history of witchcraft has also Germany, England’s postwar long suffered from unreliable reconstruction—“people abso- narrators. The Salem witch tri- lutely turn towards the occult.” als loom outsize in the Ameri- Trump must contend not only can imagination, yet no official with the #Resistance but with court records exist, and the the #MagicResistance, which accounts of the trials that did shares guides to hexing corpo- survive are, per the historian rations, spells to protect repro- Stacy Schiff, “maddeningly ductive rights, and opportuni- inconsistent.” ties to join the 4,900 members of the #BindTrump Facebook More recent historians group in casting spells to curb haven’t fared much better: the president’s power. The Wicca faith grew out of the writings of Gerald Gard- Throughout histor y, ner, a former customs officer attempts to control women whose 1954 book, Witchcraft have masqueraded as crack- Today, recounted his experi- downs on witchcraft, and ence in a coven whose tenets for some people, simply self- were allegedly passed down identifying as a witch—a sym- from the Middle Ages. But bol of strong female power, scholars later concluded that especially in the face of the they were at least in part Gard- violent, misogynistic backlash ner’s invention. that can greet it—is a form of activism. “Witchcraft is femi- And then, no culture can nism, it’s inherently political,” claim a monopoly on witches. Gabriela Herstik, a witch and “There is little doubt that in an author, told Sabat maga- every inhabited continent zine. “It’s always been about of the world, the majority the outsider, about the woman of recorded human societies who doesn’t do what the have believed in, and feared, church or patriarchy wants.” an ability by some individuals DRAWING BY ARINZE STANLEY 15

Dispatches SKETCH Diaz’s own history of appropriation that’s come suspended in milky liquid cats, Diaz replied, “I would witchcraft long predates the with it, such as white witches (“for protection”), and frank- personally call inspectors and 2016 election. She said that borrowing from indigenous or incense oil (for “opening up a or health department.” As she had her first vision at age African-diasporic traditions. portal for the candle and send- Diaz sees it, magic is insepa- 5, was taught by her mother Palo Santo, a wood that is tra- ing a message into the roots of rable from the mundane. “I’m to make potions to cure her ditionally burned by shamans the wax”). She lit a stick of Palo trying to bring awareness to nightmares in elementary and is now a staple of yoga stu- Santo wood and wafted its [the idea] that what we think school, and quietly used her dios everywhere, can be pur- smoke over each item, carefully is normal is actually magical,” gifts as a seer while working chased from Urban Outfitters, encircling a tall candle that she she said. “Being on a planet in crime-scene forensics after Bloomingdale’s, Madewell, said she would “fix” with my that’s revolving around, float- college. Ten years ago, follow- Anthropologie, the Whitney ing in the universe, is magical. ing what she says was guid- Museum of American Art, “WHENEVER But we’re so used to these fan- ance from her ancestors’ spir- Crate and Barrel’s CB2, and, THERE ARE tasies that we see on TV—you its, she quit her job, divorced once it’s back in stock there, flick a wand and something her first husband, and threw Goop. (In her own store, Diaz EVENTS just apparently happens. [Peo- herself full-time into working aims to source from indig- THAT REALLY ple] start thinking that’s what as a witch. enous people and sell only magic is, and they forget that products she develops herself.) SHAKE THE they, themselves, are the magi- Diaz, a self-described FOUNDATIONS cal beings.” “plant witch,” draws exten- Despite all this, calling sively on Taíno traditions and oneself a witch can still be OF SOCIETY, Diaz finished fixing my herbs, jars of which occupy risky. Grossman told me she’s PEOPLE candle and, after promising to almost an entire room of her received letters from numer- light it soon, sent me off with apartment. But the fact that ous people who fear that if ABSOLUTELY instructions to complete her there are no set criteria for they openly embraced magic, TURN TOWARDS 13-page candle-magic work- being a witch is, for many, pre- they “would be either fired book. I followed its directions to cisely the appeal. Witchcraft from their jobs, or have their THE OCCULT.” burn sage, express gratitude, and beckons with the promise of kids taken away, or be kicked meditate for at least five minutes a spirituality that is self-deter- out of their families.” The intention, then burn later in daily. Not much seemed to be mined, antipatriarchal, and stakes are even higher in other the sacred area she maintains happening. I tried to help the flexible enough to incorpo- parts of the world, where, per in her basement. magic along by emailing, again, rate varied cultural traditions. a 2009 United Nations report, about the invoice and, again, being labeled a witch remains Diaz told me my inten- about the loan. Which is not to say any- “tantamount to receiving a tion should be specific, one thing goes. Although Diaz death sentence.” Amid a rise I hadn’t already made in the Two weeks after my visit, has emerged as a leading voice in witchcraft-related abuse— past 30 days, and couldn’t be Diaz emailed me out of the for an inclusive, no-wrong- including the case of an to make someone fall in love blue: “Your candle by the way answers form of witchery, 8-year-old who was tortured with me. I settled on a classic is done, it burned really well!” she and others prickle at the to death in 2000—London intention: money. Specifically, I was surprised to hear from creeping tendency to claim established a police team ded- I was hoping to get paid for an her, and by her timing. Twenty the witch label without actu- icated to reducing violence outstanding invoice and get a minutes before, I’d found ally practicing magic. “A lot targeting accused witches; friend to return money I’d lent two undeposited checks mis- of girls, young girls, they post by contrast, officials in Saudi her a year before. filed among the papers on my pictures of their house with Arabia established an anti- desk, each worth more than their room with upside-down witchery unit that trains police “No. 1, don’t loan money the money I was still owed. It crosses, Goth clothes, with to “scientifically battle witch- out,” Diaz told me as she was a coincidence, I’m (almost) their potions. They don’t even craft,” which is punishable dripped frankincense oil onto sure. But I felt, in that moment, practice witchcraft, and they’re by beheading. the candle. “Two, always get like a disorganized,but magical, like, ‘Oh, I’m a witch,’” Diaz paid up front for work that you being. told me. “It takes away from O n a b r o c a d e d ottoman do.” She is a plant witch, but the sacredness of the word.” beside her couch, Diaz set out also a practical witch. When Bianca Bosker is a contribut- Diaz also says she’s troubled a tray containing the ingredi- a woman messaged the com- ing writer at The Atlantic by what she sees as the com- ents necessary for her candle munity board of Diaz’s online and the author of Cork Dork modification of witchcraft— ritual, which included a vial school asking for a banishment and Original Copies. though, of course, she’s ben- of straw-thin mouse bones spell to expel a vet tech she efited from its commercial (“for speed”), a snake carcass thought was rough with the appeal—and the cultural 16 MARCH 2020



PREDICTIONS CAN YOU STILL I TRUST NATE SILVER? In November, I visited The leader of the data revolution believes FiveThirtyEight’s offices in he got 2016 right—and the rest of the New York on picture day. For journalists who style themselves media is in danger of getting 2020 wrong. as nerds, the formal photo shoot was a mild form of torture. Nate BY DAV ID A. GR A H A M Silver, the site’s founder, donned a blazer, forced a smile for his 18 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL SAVAGE headshot, then snuck away to get back to work on the site’s 2020 primary forecast. Though FiveThirtyEight now has a staff of about 35, covering sports, pop culture, and more, the site’s essential element is still the elaborate models Silver himself builds to predict elections.

Dispatches Silver, a former manage- Times’ The Upshot (15 per- Trump era. In 2016, national writing, has yet to happen— ment consultant and profes- cent) or the Princeton Elec- polls found Clinton leading by perhaps in part because Biden’s sional poker player, got into the tion Consortium’s Sam Wang three points on average. In fact, core supporters, like Trump’s, political-forecasting business in (7  percent). Ryan Grim of she won the national popular are members of demograph- 2007, after growing frustrated HuffPost accused Silver of vote by about two percentage ics underrepresented in the by coverage of the Demo- inflating Trump’s chances. Cit- points—making those polls press (for Trump, non-college- cratic primary on cable news. ing HuffPost’s prediction that more accurate than they had educated voters and rural vot- He could scarcely believe how Hillary Clinton had a 98 per- been in 2012. State polls fared ers; for Biden, non-college- bad the analysis was—based cent chance of winning, Grim worse—some overestimated educated voters and black on little more than hunches wrote that if you have faith in Clinton’s support, while oth- voters). Despite Biden’s durable and hoary wisdom, and either the numbers, “you can relax. ers underestimated it—but lead, the press has been quick to ignoring opinion polls or mis- She’s got this.” they weren’t bad by historical crown a series of front-runners using them to create false nar- standards. (Silver arrived at in waiting, from Kamala Har- ratives of momentum. She did not, in fact, have Trump’s 29 percent chance of ris to Elizabeth Warren to Pete it. After Trump’s victory, poll- winning—roughly the same Buttigieg—all while largely Exasperated by the guess- sters and prognosticators chance the campaign gave ignoring Biden’s most persis- work of pundits, Silver cham- became targets of derision. tent rival for the top spot in the pioned the more objective sci- Critics alleged that rapid par- “IN SOME WAYS, polls: Bernie Sanders. ence of polling. He aggregated tisan realignment, unpre- POLLING IS polls, grading and weighting dictable voter turnout, and To locate story lines where them to predict the outcome the demise of the landline had THE ONLY WAY they don’t exist, commentators of the election—an egalitarian rendered poll-based predictions IN WHICH seize on outlier polls, like the project that sought to replace obsolete. Though he had been THE TRUMP one from Monmouth Univer- the opinionating of insiders savaged days earlier for over- sity in August that suggested a with quantitative analysis of estimatingTrump’s chances, Sil- PRESIDENCY closer race than any previous voter sentiment. Silver’s wonky ver, as the leader of the data rev- HAS BEEN survey had. (That single snap- assurance seemed of a piece olution, now absorbed criticism NORMAL,” shot was covered so breathlessly with the professorial cool of for its failure to foresee Trump’s SILVER SAYS. that the director of the univer- Barack Obama, whose victory victory. “The entire 2016 cam- sity’s polling institute took the he predicted in 2008, and again paign season was … character- itself—by accounting in his rare step of publicly noting how in 2012, when FiveThirtyEight ized by a series of spectacular model for possible variation much it deviated from the oth- correctly forecast the results in Silver blunders,” read a typical in state polls.) Polling in the ers.) Or pundits rely instead on every state. critique, in Current Affairs. It 2018 midterm elections proved what Silver described to me as ran under the headline “Why highly accurate, correctly antici- “stylized facts”: A strong debate Then came 2016. Like You Should Never, Ever Listen pating the wave of Democratic performance or fundraising most journalists, Silver ini- to Nate Silver.” victories that handed the party quarter will kick off a round tially underestimated Donald control of the House of Rep- of coverage of a candidate’s Trump, dismissing his chances A s t h e 2 0 2 0 r ac e begins resentatives. “In some ways, supposed surge, even if polls of winning the Republican in earnest, the question of polling is the only way in which don’t detect much movement. nomination. It was a rare whether to listen to Nate Silver the Trump presidency has been It’s not that these factors don’t embarrassment, one that Sil- returns to the fore, which is why normal,” Silver said. matter—they do—but Silver’s ver attributed to losing sight I was visiting FiveThirtyEight. work suggests that they don’t of a fundamental principle: Silver believes he got 2016 As he sees it, the problems matter nearly as much as most Trust the polls. Trump had right—it’s everyone else who stem not from the polls but journalists imagine. By Silver’s consistently led in surveys of got it wrong, and in ways that from how the press interprets estimation, the average debate GOP voters, but Silver had could lead the media to get them. During the long run-up performance moves polls about succumbed to the conven- 2020 wrong as well. “I think to the 2020 primary season, he as much as an average week tional wisdom that the inter- the 2016 campaign exposed saw pundits fall into familiar on the trail—and, as Senator loper couldn’t possibly prevail. whatever your bad habits were traps. The same sort of com- Harris can attest, even a well- as a newsroom,” Silver told me. mentators who expectedTrump received moment can take a By the eve of the general “But no one actually seems to to collapse four years ago have candidate only so far. election, Silver had come to have learned very many lessons consistently predicted a Joe believe that Trump had a path in 2016.” Biden implosion that, as of this What does this mean for to victory. FiveThirtyEight pre- coverage of the general election? dicted that he had a 29 per- Silver insists that polling Regardless of who emerges as cent chance of winning— is still up to the task of mea- the Democratic nominee, 2020 significantly higher than the suring voter sentiment in the will have a different complexion predictions of The New York MARCH 2020 19

Dispatches PREDICTIONS from 2016: Trump is now an moments may reveal aspects than percentages, because they the kind of bloviator he made incumbent, not a curiosity, and of a candidate’s character, but can imagine a series of coin his name mocking,” The New his opponent won’t be Hillary Silver believes the media con- flips or rolls of the dice. Republic announced. Clinton. But a tight race with sistently exaggerate their effect a polarized electorate offers on voter behavior. Delivering forecasts in But it’s Silver’s devotion to plenty of chances to repeat the clearest way possible is quantitative analysis as much common mistakes. On other fronts, Silver sees undoubtedly to the good; stud- as his politics that has put him the press as overlearning the les- ies have demonstrated that the at odds with our post-truth In Silver’s view, the media sons of 2016. Journalists have public doesn’t grasp probabil- moment. Trump’s disregard were overconfident in a Clin- obsessed over Russian interfer- ity well. But it’s hard to believe for facts is singular, but the ton victory because of long- ence in elections, and while for- that FiveThirtyEight would have left, too, has grown more sus- held assumptions about the eign meddling is undoubtedly picious of technocrats and their mechanics of American politics. troubling, Silver sees no strong SILVER’S pronouncements. Many liberals Take the “ground game”—the evidence that hacking or dis- DEVOTION TO today see Obama as a president business of identifying voters information swung the 2016 QUANTITATIVE whose achievements were hob- and getting them to the polls. result. “There’s a bias toward bled by bloodless calculations Some pundits initially argued believing in explanations that ANALYSIS of what seemed possible. They that if the election was close, involve secrecy or things hap- HAS PUT HIM now seek candidates who make Clinton’s superior campaign pening that are hidden,” Silver grand ideological gestures, even organization would put her said. The most important fac- AT ODDS if the math is fuzzy. Silver, to at over the top; then, after she lost, tors, he believes, are right there WITH OUR least some extent, is an emblem many flogged her for failing to in the numbers. POST-TRUTH of an era when it felt as if any get out the vote in key states. MOMENT. problem could be solved with Yet decades of political science S i lv e r i s n o w the elder enough elite brainpower. suggest that such tactics have a statesman of a growing class of been spared opprobrium had it relatively minor effect on elec- data-based journalists, includ- predicted Trump had a 3-in-10 After Trump’s victory, the tion results. Based on his analy- ing his frenemy Nate Cohn chance of winning. And con- major media organizations sis of late movement in the race, of The Upshot, with whom vincing readers to trust the flagellated themselves for Silver argues that factors mostly he likes to spar. Despite the model again is more than just spending too little time with beyond Clinton’s control mat- beating forecasters took after a math problem. the voters who elected him. To tered far more than the success 2016, quantitative analysis is make amends, they sent report- or failure of her canvassers in better integrated into contem- Silver’s celebrity was never ers to Trump country, seek- the Upper Midwest. These fac- porary political coverage than entirely a function of his accu- ing to understand the sources tors included Trump’s ability it was before. FiveThirtyEight’s racy. It helped that his predic- and strength of the president’s to command the news cycle— own primary-election model tions were congenial to Obama, support by lingering in Ohio Silver has found that earned is wildly complex, evidence of and to liberals more gener- diners and Pennsylvania fac- media is far more valuable than Silver’s continued faith in the ally. (Silver’s name became a tories. The introspection was the kind you can buy—and power of data. For all his suc- staple of Obama-era Demo- overdue, and it tracked with James Comey’s belated reopen- cess, however, Silver frets that cratic fundraising emails, his Silver’s long-standing belief ing of the FBI investigation into his work is not well understood. predictions—sunny and dire that journalists spend too much Clinton’s use of a private email alike—invoked to persuade time talking to one another. But server, which had a measurable During my visit, the donors to pony up.) His own this reporting is by definition impact on polling. FiveThirtyEight staff was in the political views, however, have anecdotal and, to borrow Silver’s middle of a debate about how always tended toward the lib- term, stylized—an implicit rejec- In part because of Trump’s to present election forecasts ertarian and moderate, and as tion of more analytic approaches already prodigious fundraising, so the general public can eas- Democrats have moved to to understanding the electorate. the old temptation to overstate ily comprehend them. Four the left, Silver’s heresies have the importance of the campaign years ago, the site gave readers drawn new scrutiny. In Octo- For Silver, no number of dis- war chest—and the electioneer- a percentage chance that each ber, he chastised “Libs” for patches from the heartland can ing efforts it can buy—will candidate would win. For the not giving Trump credit for deliver the insights that hard once again be present in 2020. 2018 midterms, it switched to the death of the Islamic State’s data can. “The impulse maybe As will the press’s quadrennial odds: Democrats had a 7-in-8 leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. isn’t bad,” he told me. “But, weakness for the supposedly chance of taking the House; “Nate Silver has been morph- you know, polls are also a way game-changing gaffe, another Republicans had a 4-in-5 ing before our eyes into exactly of talking to voters.” Silver bête noire. Obama’s “lip- chance of holding the Senate. stick on a pig” flap, Clinton’s Silver’s hunch is that readers David A. Graham is a staff “deplorables” remark—such find odds easier to understand writer at The Atlantic. 20 MARCH 2020

PROMOTION

MATERIAL WORLD WHY RESTORATION HARDWARE SENDS CATALOGS THE SIZE OF A TODDLER The surprising persistence of the mail-order business BY AMANDA MULL W hen you enter getaways, or nurseries for rich project abundance and turn Association, which advocates the RH (for- babies, depending on the tome. the heads of wealthy custom- for things like favorable post- merly Restora- Bathed in golden light from ers; apparently, it’s worked. In age rates and tax rules. “Isn’t tion Hardware) enormous $12,000 chande- 2001, the company was teeter- that what Mark Twain said?” liers, the gods of direct-mail ing on the edge of bankruptcy. In the late 2000s, a change in megastore in marketing beckon enticingly While there have been bumps federal regulation raised mail- from their “carbonized split along the way, RH’s sales since ing prices for catalogs, and New York City’s bamboo” altars. then have increased dramati- as online shopping acceler- cally, and in December its stock ated in the years afterward, a Meatpacking District, you The biggest of RH’s 2019 price hit an all-time high. lot of companies abandoned catalogs was 730 glossy pages— catalogs in favor of email and might think it’s a place to from a few feet away, you All the pageantry for cata- social-media strategies target- might think it’s the September logs might seem puzzling, given ing younger consumers. Those buy furniture. Technically it issue of Vogue. The company that print media and retail retailers included companies would not reveal how much it stores are struggling to compete known for their direct-mail is, with tens of thousands of spends on the lavish compen- with the infotainment hub of products, such as JCPenney, diums, but in 2012, an indus- the smartphone. But although whose catalog had figured square feet filled with dining- try expert estimated that they the number of catalogs mailed prominently in its branding would require a multimillion- in America has fallen since its since 1963 but was discontin- room sets and king-size beds dollar budget, with each indi- high of 19 billion in 2007, an ued in 2010. vidual book costing as much as estimated 11.5 billion were and couches, upholstered in $3 to print and ship—a figure still sent in 2018. As retailers Five years later, though, that doesn’t include the tab for become ever more desperate the JCPenney catalog was shades of gray and beige and photography or page design. to find ways to sell their stuff back, in defeated recognition RH’s catalogs, and its price without tithing to the tech that the physical world still beiger, and accessorized with points, were similar to Pot- behemoths, America might matters. “You can’t make me tery Barn’s and Crate & Bar- be entering a golden age of open your email, you can’t plush rugs and metal-armed rel’s until the late aughts, when the catalog. make me open your website, the source books and opu- you can’t make me go to your lamps. Or maybe you’ll mis- lently appointed stores began “ T h e r u m o r s o f my retail store, but you can send a to be introduced. Both are demise are greatly exagger- large-format mail piece I have take it for a hotel lobby, with part of what longtime Chair- ated,” says Hamilton Davi- to pick up,” Davison says. “It’s man and CEO Gary Friedman son, the executive director of invasive, but it’s welcome.” its high ceilings, ample seating, has described as a strategy to the American Catalog Mailers Davison has a vested interest and smiling concierge. But on either side of the store’s broad central path, you’ll see its true spiritual, if not practical, purpose: as a temple to the high-end furni- ture chain’s infamous “source books.” On twin circular tables large enough for an extended family’s Thanksgiving dinner (yours for $7,995 each), eight different editions sit in neat stacks and offer inspiration tailored to ski chalets, beach 22 MARCH 2020

Dispatches in the future of the format, of play. “The internet is great if you’re done. It’s so analog, it marketing-effectiveness arm. course, but his claims are borne you know what you’re looking almost feels wholesome. “On the internet, I just have out by research suggesting that for,” he adds, “but it’s a lousy to hope that Matt discovers my even though catalogs typically browsing vehicle.” Instead of Around the same time that website. When I send Matt a arrive unbidden, consumers being followed around online JCPenney was returning to catalog, I’m reaching out to find them less presumptuous for days by ads for a product mailboxes, catalogs began gain- him one-to-one.” and irritating than marketing you already ordered (or con- ing favor among newer compa- emails. “The internet is too sidered and ruled out), you nies. “You can think about a Another benefit: Catalog- much like work,” Davison says, can peruse catalogs at your lei- catalog as a push versus a pull,” mailers can “prospect” by while catalogs feel more like sure and disengage fully when says Matt Krepsik, the global sending their books to whom- head of analytics for Nielsen’s ever they choose, but most PHOTOGRAPH BY TAMARA SHOPSIN AND JASON FULFORD 23

Dispatches MATERIAL WORLD email-marketing services Not only does the com- store is a family business whose catalog and the rights to use require retailers to gain con- pany curate its products for employees, from photogra- the material for their own sent from recipients. That’s an older demographic, but phers to warehouse workers, all fundraising. “It’s hard to tell partly because sending mar- the structure of its business, live nearby. The brothers often that story over [social media] keting emails without permis- which still allows people to turn up in the catalog, mod- sometimes,” says Annie Agle, sion is illegal in some countries order by phone or send in a eling plaid shirts, and every- Cotopaxi’s director of brand and partly because it’s against form with a check, could have one picks up shifts answering and impact. “It can feel cal- the rules of some internet- easily become a thing of the phones during the busy holiday lous; there’s not a lot of time, and email-service providers— past. A substantial number of season. This is a company that and you’re fighting for atten- businesses risk having every- Americans, however, still lack constantly reminds you that tion.” Catalogs, in their own thing they send algorithmically reliable high-speed internet or it’s still possible to buy some way, are antiviral—they’re not disregarded as spam. credit services, and many older of what you need from people easily shared, and they offer who aren’t trying to eliminate depth and explanation. If the Although the average cata- “WE SPENT THE competitors or extract every catalogs in your mailbox have log costs about a dollar per copy LAST 30 YEARS last bit of value from employ- started to look more like mag- to produce and ship, compared ees or colonize the moon. That azines, that’s why. with pennies per email, Krep- AGONIZING kind of context is lost entirely sik says that they’re particu- OVER WHETHER when a nightgown appears in Still, consumers wor- larly effective at prompting Google’s shopping tab, along- ried about waste and climate large purchases (up to twice THERE WAS side less expensive alternatives change might bristle at receiv- as expensive as those made by A CLIFF, AND from Walmart. ing paper mail when they noncatalog shoppers) and lur- WHETHER THE could be reached digitally. ing back customers after first AUDIENCE WE A h o s t o f internet-first Agle says she understands purchases. Higher receipts and WERE SERVING start-ups, such as the makeup that concern, but notes that consumer loyalty are exactly brand Glossier and the mens- upwards of 90 percent of an what a plucky upstart needs to WOULD wear company Bonobos, have apparel company’s carbon become a standard-bearer—or EVA POR ATE.” boarded the catalog band- footprint happens before a for a long-standing business to wagon in the past decade. garment is sewn, because the fight back against Amazon. people just don’t trust the inter- These companies had thrived manufacture and transporta- net, a suspicion that’s arguably on direct-to-consumer web- tion of textiles is extremely T h e s t o r y o f the Ver- justified. “We spent the last 30 sites and social-media adver- expensive and wasteful. So mont Country Store is the years agonizing over whether tising but needed new strate- that, she says, is where most opposite of the now-familiar there was a cliff, and whether gies to make a more complete of Cotopaxi’s efforts at waste cautionary tales of businesses the audience we were serving case for their business. reduction have gone. too slow to cater to the desires would evaporate and not be of youth. “We were still print- replaced,” Cabot Orton says. That’s especially true for Even if paper sent through ing a black-and-white catalog But new customers keep aging a very modern subgenre of the mail is an imperfect in 2000,” says Eliot Orton, into the store’s market. You company that seeks to attract medium, it still might be the one of three brothers who don’t have to be very old, after socially conscious young peo- best way for independent busi- now own the business started all, to grow tired of trying to ple with a mix of activism, nesses to avoid getting sucked by their grandfather in 1946. keep up with technology— philanthropy, and sales. The into the Amazon-Google- “We slowly migrated to color, just ask any 30-something brand Cotopaxi, which uses Facebook vortex—and for even doing a watercolor treat- American still trying to decide recycled materials to make internet-weary consumers to ment to the sketches we were whether to download TikTok. things like backpacks and avoid seeing the whole world doing at the time.” The store’s No one has to be taught how to jackets, is among them. The through the filters of the Big catalog, sent seasonally, with flip through a catalog. outdoor-gear purveyor shoots Three’s algorithms. “Some- special editions for the holi- its catalogs in adventure-travel thing we talk about a lot is days, is now full of color pho- Even if the majority of a spots in conjunction with data-privacy issues,” Agle says. tography, but no one would company’s orders are made local nonprofits, including, “Obviously electronic adver- mistake it for a concession to online, as the Vermont Coun- most recently, Escuela Nueva, tising is more sustainable, American marketers’ obsession try Store’s now are, catalogs which provides education to but it’s not necessarily better with youth. Its comfy night- provide an important oppor- indigenous people and refu- for society.” gowns, flannel bed linens, and tunity for businesses whose gees in South America. The old-school candies and baked appeal goes beyond super-fast organizations receive modest Amanda Mull is a staff writer goods are straight out of a Nor- service at super-low prices. The grants from Cotopaxi, as well at The Atlantic. man Rockwell fantasia. as coverage in the company’s 24 MARCH 2020

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VIEWFINDER 1. 4. 2. 5. 3. 26 MARCH 2020 OBJECTS COURTESY OF MMUSEUMM; COLLECTED BY STEFAN RUIZ, ROBERTA RUIZ, AND GORDON STEVENSON

Dispatches Made in the U.S.A. Human lives, current events, and social issues all produce physical artifacts. Mmuseumm, an institution in New York dedicated to object journalism, col- lects material culture to tell stories about the modern world. The items shown here, made by inmates in the U.S. prison system, illustrate the severity of restric- tions imposed on prisoners as well as the human instinct to persevere through cre- ativity and invention. — Alex Kalman 6. 1. Toothbrush: rubber bands, and Prison officials fear a plastic utensil. that the hard handles of typical tooth- 5. Pens: The casings brushes will be con- on pens are removed verted into weapons, by prison officials so some prisoners so that inmates can’t are given a “safety melt them down to fingertip toothbrush,” make a weapon. This which lacks a handle. leaves just the inkwell, To make this con- which is difficult to traband toothbrush, hold. These pens were a commissary order wrapped with paper form was rolled up and string so they and covered in plastic would be easier to use. wrap, then tied to the brush head with 6. Tattoo gun: white thread. Made from a pen, a motor, guitar string, 2. Coffee kit: wire, and tape. Coffee and creamer containers with a 7. Dice: Made from spoon. bread. The white coloring comes from 3. Weight-lifting mold, and the black glove: Hand-knit dots were made with using denim and a felt-tip pen. Because 7. material from towels. dice are typically con- sidered contraband, 4. Electric water these were made small heater: Made so that they would be from a piece of easier to conceal from appliance cord, a pen prison guards. clip, a razor blade, 27

THE 2020 D I S I N FO R M ATI O N WA R DEEPFAKES, ANONYMOUS TEXT MESSAGES, POTEMKIN LOCAL-NEWS SITES, AND OPPOSITION RESEARCH ON REPORTERS—A FIELD GUIDE TO T H I S Y E A R ’ S E L E CT I O N A N D W H AT IT COULD DO TO THE COUNTRY B Y M C K AY C O P P I N S 28 MARCH 2020

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISHKO

One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebook’s algorithm prod- Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is ded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan that what happened today? pages with names like “In Trump We Trust.” I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards, one propaganda filled the screen: “That’s right, the whistle- of which required an application that seemed designed to screen blower’s own lawyer said, ‘The coup has started …’” out interlopers. Swipe. “Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding …” Swipe. “The only message these radical socialists and extremists The president’s reelection campaign was then in the midst will understand is a crushing …” Swipe. “Only one man of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans’ can stop this chaos …” Swipe, swipe, swipe. understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceed- ings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling forums teemed with conspiracy theories. An alternate information the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened sus- ecosystem was taking shape around the biggest news story in the picion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or country, and I wanted to see it from the inside. anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next drifted further out of reach. several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with What I was seeing was a strategy that has been damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratiz- ing power of social media for their own purposes— jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise. After the 2016 election, much was made of the threats posed to American democracy by foreign disinformation. Stories of Russian troll farms and Macedonian fake-news mills loomed in the national imagination. But while these shadowy outside forces preoccupied politicians and journalists, Trump and his domestic allies were beginning to adopt the same tactics of information warfare that have kept the world’s demagogues and strongmen in power. Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and mis- direction, but this year’s contest promises to be different. In con- versations with political strategists and other experts, a dystopian picture of the general election comes into view—one shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro- targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both par- ties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous. The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 bil- lion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable. 30 MARCH 2020

T H E D E AT H S TA R the establishment wrong and show the world what he was made The campaign is run from the 14th floor of a gleaming, modern of,” says a former colleague from the campaign. office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Perhaps most important, he seemed to have no reservations Glass-walled conference rooms look out on the Potomac River. about the kind of campaign Trump wanted to run. The race- Rows of sleek monitors line the main office space. Unlike the boot- baiting, the immigrant-bashing, the truth-bending—none of it strap operation that first got Trump elected—with its motley band seemed to bother Parscale. While some Republicans wrung their of B-teamers toiling in an unfinished space in Trump Tower—his hands over Trump’s inflammatory messages, Parscale came up 2020 enterprise is heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, with ideas to more effectively disseminate them. and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives. One Republican The campaign had little interest at first in cutting-edge ad strategist referred to it, admiringly, as “the Death Star.” technology, and for a while, Parscale’s most valued contribution Presiding over this effort is Brad Parscale, a 6-foot-8 Viking of was the merchandise page he built to sell MAGA hats. But that a man with a shaved head and a triangular beard. As the digital changed in the general election. Outgunned on the airwaves and director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Parscale didn’t become a lagging badly in fundraising, campaign officials turned to Google household name like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. But and Facebook, where ads were inexpensive and shock value was he played a crucial role in delivering Trump to the Oval Office— rewarded. As the campaign poured tens of millions into online and his efforts will shape this year’s election. advertising—amplifying themes such as Hillary Clinton’s crimi- In speeches and interviews, Parscale likes to tell his life story as nality and the threat of radical Islamic terrorism—Parscale’s team, a tidy rags-to-riches tale, embroidered with Trumpian embellish- which was christened Project Alamo, grew to 100. ments. He grew up a simple “farm boy from Kansas” (read: son Parscale was generally well liked by his colleagues, who recall of an affluent lawyer from suburban Topeka) who managed to him as competent and intensely focused. “He was a get-shit-done graduate from an “Ivy League” school (Trinity University, in San type of person,” says A. J. Delgado, who worked with him. Perhaps Antonio). After college, he went to work for a software company just as important, he had a talent for ingratiating himself with the in California, only to watch the business collapse in the economic Trump family. “He was probably better at managing up,” Kurt aftermath of 9/11 (not to mention allegations in a lawsuit that Luidhardt, a consultant for the campaign, told me. He made sure he and his parents, who owned the business, had illegally trans- to share credit for his work with the candidate’s son-in-law, Jared ferred company funds—claims that they disputed). Broke and Kushner, and he excelled at using Trump’s digital ignorance to flat- desperate, Parscale took his “last $500” (not counting the value ter him. “Parscale would come in and tell Trump he didn’t need to of three rental properties he owned) and used it to start a one- listen to the polls, because he’d crunched his data and they were man web-design business in Texas. going to win by six points,” one former campaign staffer told me. “I Parscale Media was, by most accounts, a scrappy endeavor at was like, ‘Come on, man, don’t bullshit a bullshitter.’” But Trump the outset. Hustling to drum up clients, Parscale cold-pitched seemed to buy it. (Parscale declined to be interviewed for this story.) shoppers in the tech aisle of a Borders bookstore. Over time, he built enough websites for plumbers and gun shops that bigger clients took notice—including the Trump Organization. In 2011, Parscale was invited to bid on designing a website for Trump Interna- tional Realty. An ardent fan of The Apprentice, he offered to do the job for $10,000, a fraction of the actual cost. “I just made up a price,” he later told The OPENING SPREAD: HANNA ALANDI / GETTY; Washington Post. “I recognized that I was a nobody THIS PAGE: JABIN BOTSFORD / THE WASHINGTON POST / GETTY in San Antonio, but working for the Trumps would be everything.” The contract was his, and a lucrative relationship was born. Over the next four years, he was hired to design websites for a range of Trump ventures—a winery, a skin-care line, and then a presidential campaign. By late 2015, Parscale—a man with no discernible politics, let alone campaign experience—was running the Republican front-runner’s digital operation from his personal laptop. Parscale slid comfortably into Trump’s orbit. Not only was he cheap and unpretentious—with no hint of the savvier-than-thou smugness that characterized other political operatives—but he seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder that matched the candidate’s. AS T R U M P ’ S 2 0 1 6 D I G I TA L D I R E C TO R , B R A D PA R S CA L E F LO O D E D “Brad was one of those people who wanted to prove T H E I N T E R N E T W I T H T H E CA M PA I G N ’ S M E S SAG E S . 31

James Barnes, a Facebook employee who was dispatched ends of autocracy. The Kremlin has long been an innovator in to work closely with the campaign, told me Parscale’s political this area. (A 2011 manual for Russian civil servants favorably inexperience made him open to experimenting with the plat- compared their methods of disinformation to “an invisible radia- form’s new tools. “Whereas some grizzled campaign strategist tion” that takes effect while “the population doesn’t even feel it who’d been around the block a few times might say, ‘Oh, that is being acted upon.”) But with the technological advances of will never work,’ Brad’s predisposition was to say, ‘Yeah, let’s try the past decade, and the global proliferation of smartphones, it.’” From June to November, Trump’s campaign ran 5.9 million governments around the world have found success deploying ads on Facebook, while Clinton’s ran just 66,000. A Facebook Kremlin-honed techniques against their own people. executive would later write in a leaked memo that Trump “got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve In the United States, we tend to view such tools of oppression ever seen from any advertiser.” as the faraway problems of more fragile democracies. But the people working to reelect Trump understand the power of these Though some strategists questioned how much these ads actu- tactics. They may use gentler terminology—muddy the waters; ally mattered, Parscale was hailed for Trump’s surprise victory. alternative facts—but they’re building a machine designed to Stories appeared in the press calling him a “genius” and the cam- exploit their own sprawling disinformation architecture. paign’s “secret weapon,” and in 2018 he was tapped to lead the entire reelection effort. The promotion was widely viewed as a Central to that effort is the campaign’s use of micro-targeting— sign that the president’s 2020 strategy would hinge on the digital the process of slicing up the electorate into distinct niches and tactics that Parscale had mastered. then appealing to them with precisely tailored digital messages. The advantages of this approach are obvious: An ad that calls for Through it all, the strategist has continued to show a prefer- defunding Planned Parenthood might get a mixed response from ence for narrative over truth. Last May, Parscale regaled a crowd of a large national audience, but serve it directly via Facebook to donors and activists in Miami with the story of his ascent. When 800 Roman Catholic women in Dubuque, Iowa, and its recep- a ProPublica reporter confronted him about the many misleading tion will be much more positive. If candidates once had to shout details in his account, he shrugged off the fact-check. “When I their campaign promises from a soapbox, micro-targeting allows give a speech, I tell it like a story,” he said. “My story is my story.” them to sidle up to millions of voters and whisper personalized messages in their ear. D I S I N F O R M AT I O N Parscale didn’t invent this practice—Barack Obama’s cam- ARCHITECTURE paign famously used it in 2012, and Clinton’s followed suit. But Trump’s effort in 2016 was unprecedented, in both its scale and In his book This Is Not Propaganda, Peter Pomerantsev, a researcher its brazenness. In the final days of the 2016 race, for example, at the London School of Economics, writes about a young Fili- Trump’s team tried to suppress turnout among black voters in pino political consultant he calls “P.” In college, P had studied Florida by slipping ads into their News Feeds that read, “Hillary the “Little Albert experiment,” in which scientists conditioned a Thinks African-Americans Are Super Predators.” An unnamed young child to fear furry animals by exposing him to loud noises campaign official boasted to Bloomberg Businessweek that it was every time he encountered a white lab rat. The experiment gave one of “three major voter suppression operations underway.” (The P an idea. He created a series of Facebook groups for Filipinos other two targeted young women and white liberals.) to discuss what was going on in their communities. Once the groups got big enough—about 100,000 members—he began The weaponization of micro-targeting was pioneered in large posting local crime stories, and instructed his employees to leave part by the data scientists at Cambridge Analytica. The firm began comments falsely tying the grisly headlines to drug cartels. The as part of a nonpartisan military contractor that used digital pages lit up with frightened chatter. Rumors swirled; conspiracy psyops to target terrorist groups and drug cartels. In Pakistan, it theories metastasized. To many, all crimes became drug crimes. worked to thwart jihadist recruitment efforts; in South America, it circulated disinformation to turn drug dealers against their bosses. Unbeknownst to their members, the Facebook groups were designed to boost Rodrigo Duterte, then a long-shot presidential The emphasis shifted once the conservative billionaire Rob- candidate running on a pledge to brutally crack down on drug crim- ert Mercer became a major investor and installed Steve Bannon inals. (Duterte once boasted that, as mayor of Davao City, he rode as his point man. Using a massive trove of data it had gathered through the streets on his motorcycle and personally executed drug from Facebook and other sources—without users’ consent— dealers.) P’s experiment was one plank in a larger “disinformation Cambridge Analytica worked to develop detailed “psychographic architecture”—which also included social-media influencers paid profiles” for every voter in the U.S., and began experimenting to mock opposing candidates, and mercenary trolls working out of with ways to stoke paranoia and bigotry by exploiting certain former call centers—that experts say aided Duterte’s rise to power. personality traits. In one exercise, the firm asked white men Since assuming office in 2016, Duterte has reportedly ramped up whether they would approve of their daughter marrying a Mex- these efforts while presiding over thousands of extrajudicial killings. ican immigrant; those who said yes were asked a follow-up ques- tion designed to provoke irritation at the constraints of political The campaign in the Philippines was emblematic of an emerg- correctness: “Did you feel like you had to say that?” ing propaganda playbook, one that uses new tools for the age-old Christopher Wylie, who was the director of research at Cam- bridge Analytica and later testified about the company to Con- gress, told me that “with the right kind of nudges,” people who 32 MARCH 2020

exhibited certain psychological characteristics could be pushed the music, even the colors of the “Donate” buttons. In the 10 into ever more extreme beliefs and conspiratorial thinking. weeks after the House of Representatives began its impeachment “Rather than using data to interfere with the process of radical- inquiry, the Trump campaign ran roughly 14,000 different ads ization, Steve Bannon was able to invert that,” Wylie said. “We containing the word impeachment. Sifting through all of them were essentially seeding an insurgency in the United States.” is virtually impossible. Cambridge Analytica was dissolved in 2018, shortly after Both parties will rely on micro-targeted ads this year, but the its CEO was caught on tape bragging about using bribery and president is likely to have a distinct advantage. The Republi- sexual “honey traps” on behalf of clients. can National Committee and (The firm denied that it actually used such the Trump campaign have tactics.) Since then, some political scien- SHADY POLITICAL reportedly compiled an aver- tists have questioned how much effect its age of 3,000 data points on “psychographic” targeting really had. But ACTORS ARE every voter in America. They Wylie—who spoke with me from Lon- DISCOVERING have spent years experimenting don, where he now works for H&M, as a HOW EASY IT IS with ways to tweak their mes- fashion-trend forecaster—said the firm’s TO WAGE AN sages based not just on gender work in 2016 was a modest test run com- and geography, but on whether pared with what could come. UNTRACEABLE the recipient owns a gun or WHISPER watches the Golf Channel. “What happens if North Korea or Iran picks up where Cambridge Analytica left CAMPAIGN BY While these ads can be used off?” he said, noting that plenty of for- TEXT MESSAGE. to try to win over undecided eign actors will be looking for ways to voters, they’re most often interfere in this year’s election. “There are deployed for fundraising and countless hostile states that have more for firing up the faithful— than enough capacity to quickly replicate and Trump’s advisers believe what we were able to do … and make it this election will be decided much more sophisticated.” These efforts by mobilization, not persua- may not come only from abroad: A group sion. To turn out the base, the of former Cambridge Analytica employ- campaign has signaled that it ees have formed a new firm that, accord- will return to familiar themes: ing to the Associated Press, is working the threat of “illegal aliens”— with the Trump campaign. (The firm has a term Parscale has reportedly denied this, and a campaign spokesperson encouragedTrump to use—and declined to comment.) the corruption of the “swamp.” After the Cambridge Analytica scan- Beyond Facebook, the cam- dal broke, Facebook was excoriated for paign is also investing in a text- its mishandling of user data and complic- ing platform that could allow ity in the viral spread of fake news. Mark it to send anonymous messages Zuckerberg promised to do better, and directly to millions of voters’ rolled out a flurry of reforms. But then, phones without their permis- last fall, he handed a major victory to lying politicians: Candi- sion. Until recently, people had to opt in before a campaign dates, he said, would be allowed to continue running false ads on could include them in a mass text. But with new “peer to peer” Facebook. (Commercial advertisers, by contrast, are subject to texting apps—including one developed by Gary Coby, a senior fact-checking.) In a speech at Georgetown University, the CEO Trump adviser—a single volunteer can send hundreds of mes- argued that his company shouldn’t be responsible for arbitrating sages an hour, skirting federal regulations by clicking “Send” political speech, and that because political ads already receive so one message at a time. Notably, these messages aren’t required much scrutiny, candidates who choose to lie will be held account- to disclose who’s behind them, thanks to a 2002 ruling by the able by journalists and watchdogs. Federal Election Commission that cited the limited number of To bolster his case, Zuckerberg pointed to the recently characters available in a text. launched—and publicly accessible—“library” where Facebook Most experts assume that these regulations will be overhauled archives every political ad it publishes. The project has a certain sometime after the 2020 election. For now, campaigns from democratic appeal: Why censor false or toxic content when a little both parties are hoovering up as many cellphone numbers as sunlight can have the same effect? But spend some time scrolling possible, and Parscale has said texting will be at the center of through the archive of Trump reelection ads, and you quickly see Trump’s reelection strategy. The medium’s ability to reach voters the limits of this transparency. is unparalleled: While robocalls get sent to voicemail and email The campaign doesn’t run just one ad at a time on a given blasts get trapped in spam folders, peer-to-peer texting companies theme. It runs hundreds of iterations—adjusting the language, say that at least 90 percent of their messages are opened. 33







The Trump campaign’s texts so far this cycle have focused on a story has been marked for attack, someone searches the dossier shouty fundraising pleas (“They have NOTHING! IMPEACH- for material on the journalists involved. If something useful turns MENT IS OVER! Now let’s CRUSH our End of Month Goal”). up—a problematic old joke; evidence of liberal political views— But the potential for misuse by outside groups is clear—and shady Boyle turns it into a Breitbart headline, which White House offi- political actors are already discovering how easy it is to wage an cials and campaign surrogates can then share on social media. untraceable whisper campaign by text. (The White House has denied any involvement in this effort.) In 2018, as early voting got under way in Tennessee’s Repub- Descriptions of the dossier vary. One source I spoke with said lican gubernatorial primary, voters began receiving text messages that a programmer in India had been paid to organize it into a attacking two of the candidates’ conservative credentials. The searchable database, making posts that contain offensive keywords texts—written in a conversational style, as if they’d been sent easier to find. Another told me the dossier had expanded to at from a friend—were unsigned, and people who tried calling the least 2,000 people, including not just journalists but high-profile numbers received a busy signal. The local press covered the smear academics, politicians, celebrities, and other potential Trump campaign. Law enforcement was notified. But the source of the foes. Some of this, of course, may be hyperbolic boasting—but texts was never discovered. the effort has yielded fruit. WA R O N T H E P R E S S In the past year, the operatives involved have gone after jour- nalists at CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. One afternoon last March, I was on the phone with a Republican They exposed one reporter for using the word fag in college, and operative close to the Trump family when he casually mentioned another for posting anti-Semitic and racist jokes a decade ago. that a reporter at Business Insider was about to have a very bad These may not have been career-ending revelations, but people day. The journalist, John Haltiwanger, had tweeted something close to the project said they’re planning to unleash much more that annoyed Donald Trump Jr., prompting the coterie of friends opposition research as the campaign intensifies. “This is innovative and allies surrounding the president’s son to drum up a hit piece. shit,” said Mike Cernovich, a right-wing activist with a history of The story they had coming, the operative suggested to me, would trolling. “They’re appropriating call-out culture.” demolish the reporter’s credibility. What’s notable about this effort is not that it aims to expose I wasn’t sure what to make of this gloating—people in Trump’s media bias. Conservatives have been complaining—with some circle have a tendency toward bluster. But a few hours later, the merit—about a liberal slant in the press for decades. But in the operative sent me a link to a Breitbart News article documenting Trump era, an important shift has taken place. Instead of trying to Haltiwanger’s “history of intense Trump hatred.” The story was reform the press, or critique its coverage, today’s most influential based on a series of Instagram posts—all of them from before conservatives want to destroy the mainstream media altogether. Haltiwanger started working at Business Insider—in which he made “Journalistic integrity is dead,” Boyle declared in a 2017 speech fun of the president and expressed solidarity with liberal protesters. at the Heritage Foundation. “There is no such thing anymore. So everything is about weaponization of information.” The next morning, Don Jr. tweeted the story to his 3 million followers, denouncing Haltiwanger as a “raging lib.” Other con- It’s a lesson drawn from demagogues around the world: When servatives piled on, and the reporter was bombarded with abusive the press as an institution is weakened, fact-based journalism messages and calls for him to be fired. His employer issued a state- becomes just one more drop in the daily deluge of content—no ment conceding that the Instagram posts were “not appropriate.” more or less credible than partisan propaganda. Relativism is the Haltiwanger kept his job, but the experience, he told me later, “was real goal of Trump’s assault on the press, and the more “enemies bizarre and unsettling.” of the people” his allies can take out along the way, the better. “A culture war is a war,” Steve Bannon told the Times last year. The Breitbart story was part of a coordinated effort by a coali- “There are casualties in war.” tion of Trump allies to air embarrassing information about report- ers who produce critical coverage of the president. (The New This attitude has permeated the president’s base. At rallies, York Times first reported on this project last summer; since then, people wear T-shirts that read rope. tree. journalist. some it’s been described to me in greater detail.) According to people assembly required. A CBS News/YouGov poll has found that with knowledge of the effort, pro-Trump operatives have scraped just 11 percent of strong Trump supporters trust the mainstream social-media accounts belonging to hundreds of political journal- media—while 91 percent turn to the president for “accurate infor- ists and compiled years’ worth of posts into a dossier. mation.” This dynamic makes it all but impossible for the press to hold the president accountable, something Trump himself seems Often when a particular news story is deemed especially to understand. “Remember,” he told a crowd in 2018, “what unfair—or politically damaging—to the president, Don Jr. will you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” flag it in a text thread that he uses for this purpose. (Among those who text regularly with the president’s eldest son, someone close to Bryan Lanza, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 him told me, are the conservative activist Charlie Kirk; two GOP and remains a White House surrogate, told me flatly that he sees strategists, Sergio Gor and Arthur Schwartz; Matthew Boyle, a no possibility of Americans establishing a common set of facts from Breitbart editor; and U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell.) Once which to conduct the big debates of this year’s election. Nor is that his goal. “It’s our job to sell our narrative louder than the media,” Lanza said. “They’re clearly advocating for a liberal-socialist posi- tion, and we’re never going to be in concert. So the war continues.” 35

Parscale has indicated that he plans to open up a new front Bevin began to fall behind in the vote total, an army of Twitter bots in this war: local news. Last year, he said the campaign intends began spreading the election-rigging claim. to train “swarms of surrogates” to undermine negative coverage The original post was removed by Twitter, but by then thousands from local TV stations and newspapers. Polls have long found of automated accounts were circulating screenshots of it with the that Americans across the political spectrum trust local news more hashtag #StoptheSteal. Popular right-wing internet personalities than national media. If the campaign has its way, that trust will jumped on the narrative, and soon the Bevin campaign was making be eroded by November. “We can actually noise about unspecified voting build up and fight with the local newspa- “irregularities.” When the race pers,” Parscale told donors, according to PARSCALE HAS was called for his opponent, a recording provided by The Palm Beach the governor refused to con- Post. “So we’re not just fighting on Fox SAID THE cede, and asked for a statewide News, CNN, and MSNBC with the same C A M PA I G N review of the vote. (No evi- 700,000 people watching every day.” INTENDS TO dence of ballot-shredding was Running parallel to this effort, some TR AIN “SWARMS found, and he finally admitted OF SUR ROG ATE S” defeat nine days later.) conservatives have been experimenting TO UNDERMINE with a scheme to exploit the credibility of The Election Night disinfor- local journalism. Over the past few years, mation blitz had all the mark- hundreds of websites with innocuous- COVERAGE ings of a foreign influence oper- sounding names like the Arizona Moni- FROM LOCAL ation. In 2016, Russian trolls tor and The Kalamazoo Times have begun T V STATIO N S A N D had worked in similar ways popping up. At first glance, they look like to contaminate U.S. political regular publications, complete with com- N E W S PA P E R S . discourse—posing as Black munity notices and coverage of schools. Lives Matter activists in an But look closer and you’ll find that there attempt to inflame racial divi- are often no mastheads, few if any bylines, sions, and fanning pro-Trump and no addresses for local offices. Many conspiracy theories. (They even of them are organs of Republican lobby- used Facebook to organize ral- ing groups; others belong to a mysterious lies, including one for Muslim company called Locality Labs, which is supporters of Clinton in Wash- run by a conservative activist in Illinois. ington, D.C., where they got Readers are given no indication that these someone to hold up a sign sites have political agendas—which is pre- attributing a fictional quote to cisely what makes them valuable. the candidate: “I think Sharia According to one longtime strategist, law will be a powerful new candidates looking to plant a negative story direction of freedom.”) about an opponent can pay to have their But when Twitter employees desired headlines posted on some of these later reviewed the activity sur- Potemkin news sites. By working through rounding Kentucky’s election, a third-party consulting firm—instead they concluded that the bots of paying the sites directly—candidates are able to obscure their were largely based in America—a sign that political operatives involvement in the scheme when they file expenditures to the Fed- here were learning to mimic Russian trolling tactics. eral Election Commission. Even if the stories don’t fool savvy read- Of course, dirty tricks aren’t new to American politics. From ers, the headlines are convincing enough to be flashed across the Lee Atwater and Roger Stone to the crooked machine Democrats screen in a campaign commercial or slipped into fundraising emails. of Chicago, the country has a long history of underhanded opera- tives smearing opponents and meddling in elections. And, in fact, Samuel Woolley, a scholar who studies digital propaganda, told me that the first documented deployment of politicized Twitter bots was in the U.S. In 2010, an Iowa-based conservative group D I G I TA L D I R T Y T R I C KS set up a small network of automated accounts with names like Shortly after polls closed in Kentucky’s gubernatorial election @BrianD82 to promote the idea that Martha Coakley, a Democrat last November, an anonymous Twitter user named @Overlord- running for Senate in Massachusetts, was anti-Catholic. kraken1 announced to his 19 followers that he had “just shredded Since then, the tactics of Twitter warfare have grown more a box of Republican mail in ballots” in Louisville. sophisticated, as regimes around the world experiment with new There was little reason to take this claim at face value, and plenty ways to deploy their cybermilitias. In Mexico, supporters of then- of reason to doubt it (beginning with the fact that he’d misspelled President Enrique Peña Nieto created “sock puppet” accounts Louisville). But the race was tight, and as incumbent Governor Matt to pose as protesters and sabotage the opposition movement. In 36 MARCH 2020

Azerbaijan, a pro-government youth group waged coordinated link Moore to fictional Baptist teetotalers trying to ban alcohol. harassment campaigns against journalists, flooding their Twitter (Mehlhorn has claimed that he was unaware of these efforts and feeds with graphic threats and insults. When these techniques prove does not support the use of misinformation.) successful, Woolley told me, Americans improve upon them. “It’s almost as if there’s a Columbian exchange between developing- When The New York Times uncovered the second plot, one of world authoritarian regimes and the West,” he said. the activists involved, Matt Osborne, contended that Democrats had no choice but to employ such unscrupulous techniques. “If Parscale has denied that the campaign uses bots, saying in a you don’t do it, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your 60 Minutes interview, “I don’t think [they] work.” He may be back,” Osborne said. “You have a moral imperative to do this—to right—it’s unlikely that these nebulous networks of trolls and bots do whatever it takes.” could swing a national election. But they do have their uses. They can simulate false consensus, derail sincere debate, and hound Others have argued that this is precisely the wrong moment for people out of the public square. Democrats to start abandoning ideals of honesty and fairness. “It’s just not in my values to go out there making shit up and tricking According to one study, bots accounted for roughly 20 percent of voters,” Flaherty told me. “I know there’s this whole fight-fire- all the tweets posted about the 2016 election during one five-week with-fire contingent, but generally when you ask them what they period that year. And Twitter is already infested with bots that seem mean, they’re like, ‘Lie!’” Some also note that the president has designed to boost Trump’s reelection prospects. Regardless of where already handed them plenty of ammunition. “I don’t think the they’re coming from, they have tremendous potential to divide, Democratic campaign is going to need to make stuff up about radicalize, and stoke hatred that lasts long after the votes are cast. Trump,” Judd Legum, the author of a progressive newsletter about digital politics, told me. “They can stick to things that are true.” Rob Flaherty, who served as the digital director for Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, told me that Twitter in 2020 One Democrat straddling these two camps is a young, tech- is a “hall of mirrors.” He said one mysterious account started a savvy strategist named Tara McGowan. Last fall, she and the former viral rumor that the gunman who killed seven people in Odessa, Obama adviser David Plouffe launched a political-action commit- Texas, last summer had a beto bumper sticker on his car. Another tee with a pledge to spend $75 million attacking Trump online. masqueraded as an O’Rourke supporter and hurled racist invec- At the time, the president’s campaign was running more ads on tive at a journalist. Some of these tactics echoed 2016, when Facebook and Google than the top four Democratic candidates Russian agitators posed as Bernie Sanders supporters and stirred combined. McGowan’s plans to return fire included such ads, but up anger toward Hillary Clinton. she also had more creative—and controversial—measures in mind. Flaherty said he didn’t know who was behind the efforts target- For example, she established a media organization with a staff ing O’Rourke, and the candidate dropped out before they could of writers to produce left-leaning “hometown news” stories that make a real difference. “But you can’t watch this landscape and can be micro-targeted to persuadable voters on Facebook without not get the feeling that someone’s fucking with something,” he any indication that they’re paid for by a political group. Though told me. Flaherty has since joined Joe Biden’s campaign, which she insists that the reporting is strictly factual, some see the enter- has had to contend with similar distortions: Last year, a website prise as a too-close-for-comfort co-opting of right-wing tactics. resembling an official Biden campaign page appeared on the inter- net. It emphasized elements of the candidate’s legislative record When I spoke with McGowan, she was open about her likely to hurt him in the Democratic primary—opposition to willingness to push boundaries that might make some Demo- same-sex marriage, support for the Iraq War—and featured video crats queasy. As far as she was concerned, the “super-predator” clips of his awkward encounters with women. The site quickly ads Trump ran to depress black turnout in 2016 were “fair game” became one of the most-visited Biden-related sites on the web. because they had some basis in fact. (Clinton did use the term It was designed by a Trump consultant. in 1996, to refer to gang members.) McGowan suggested that a similar approach could be taken with conservatives. She ruled FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE out attempts to misinform Republicans about when and where to vote—a tactic Mehlhorn reportedly considered, though he later As the president’s reelection machine ramps up, Democratic strat- said he was joking—but said she would pursue any strategy that egists have found themselves debating an urgent question: Can was “in the bounds of the law.” they defeat the Trump coalition without adopting its tactics? “We are in a radically disruptive moment right now,” On one side of this argument is Dmitri Mehlhorn, a con- McGowan told me. “We have a president that lies every day, sultant notorious for his willingness to experiment with digital unabashedly … I think Trump is so desperate to win this election subterfuge. During Alabama’s special election in 2017, Mehl- that he will do anything. There will be no bar too low for him.” horn helped fund at least two “false flag” operations against the Republican Senate candidate, Roy Moore. For one scheme, faux This intraparty split was highlighted last year when state offi- Russian Twitter bots followed the candidate’s account to make cials urged the Democratic National Committee to formally it look like the Kremlin was backing Moore. For another, a fake disavow the use of bots, troll farms, and “deepfakes” (digitally social-media campaign, dubbed “Dry Alabama,” was designed to manipulated videos that can, with alarming precision, make a per- son appear to do or say anything). Supporters saw the proposed pledge as a way of contrasting their party’s values with those of the GOP. But after months of lobbying, the committee refused to adopt the pledge. 37

Meanwhile, experts worried about domestic disinformation staying power is one reason many Republicans—inside the organi- are looking to other countries for lessons. The most successful zation or out—hesitate to talk about him on the record. But among recent example may be Indonesia, which cracked down on the allies of the president, there appears to be a growing skepticism. problem after a wave of viral lies and conspiracy theories pushed by hard-line Islamists led to the defeat of a popular Christian Former colleagues began noticing a change in Parscale after Chinese candidate for governor in 2016. To prevent a similar dis- his promotion. Suddenly, the quiet guy with his face buried in ruption in last year’s presidential election, a coalition of journalists a laptop was wearing designer suits, tossing out MAGA hats at from more than two dozen top Indonesian news outlets worked campaign rallies, and traveling to Europe to speak at a political- together to identify and debunk hoaxes before they gained trac- marketing conference. In the past few years, Parscale has bought tion online. But while that may sound like a promising model, a BMW, a Range Rover, a condo, and a $2.4 million waterfront it was paired with aggressive efforts by the state to monitor and house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “He knows he has the confi- arrest purveyors of fake news—an approach that would run afoul dence of the family,” one former colleague told me, “which gives of the First Amendment if attempted in the U.S. him more swagger.” When the U.K.’s Daily Mail ran a story spotlighting Parscale’s spending spree, he attempted deflection Richard Stengel, who served as the undersecretary of state for through flattery. “The president is an excellent businessman,” he public diplomacy under President Obama, spent almost three years told the tabloid, “and being associated with him for years has trying to counter digital propaganda from the Islamic State and been extremely beneficial to my family.” Russia. By the time he left office, he told me, he was convinced that disinformation would continue to thrive until big tech com- But according to a former White House official with knowl- panies were forced to take responsibility for it. Stengel has proposed edge of the incident, Trump was irritated by the coverage, and amending the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which shields the impression it created that his campaign manager was getting online platforms from liability for messages posted by third parties. rich off him. For a moment, Parscale’s standing appeared to be in Companies such as Facebook and Twitter, he believes, should be peril, but then Trump’s attention was diverted by the G7 summit required by law to police their platforms for disinformation and in France, and he never returned to the issue. (A spokesperson abusive trolling. “It’s not going to solve the whole problem,” he for the campaign disputed this account.) told me, “but it’s going to help with volume.” Some Republicans worry that for all Parscale’s digital exper- There is one other case study to consider. During the Ukrainian tise, he doesn’t have the vision to guide Trump to reelection. The revolution in 2014, pro-democracy activists found that they could president is historically unpopular, and even in red states, he has defang much of the false information about their movement by struggled to mobilize his base for special elections. If Trump’s repeatedly exposing its Russian origins. But this kind of transpar- message is growing stale with voters, is Parscale the man to help ency comes with a cost, Stengel observed. Over time, alertness to overhaul it? “People start to ask the question—you’re building the prevalence of propaganda can curdle into paranoia. Russian this apparatus, and that’s great, but what’s the overarching nar- operatives have been known to encourage such anxiety by spreading rative?” said a former campaign staffer. rumors that exaggerate their own influence. Eventually, the fear of covert propaganda inflicts as much damage as the propaganda itself. But whether Trump finds a new narrative or not, he has some- thing this time around that he didn’t have in 2016—the powers Once you internalize the possibility that you’re being manipu- of the presidency. While every commander in chief looks for lated by some hidden hand, nothing can be trusted. Every dissent- ways to leverage his incumbency for reelection, Trump has shown ing voice on Twitter becomes a Russian bot, every uncomfortable that he’s willing to go much further than most. In the run-up to headline a false flag, every political development part of an ever- the 2018 midterm elections, he seized on reports of a migrant deepening conspiracy. By the time the information ecosystem caravan traveling to the U.S. from Central America to claim that collapses under the weight of all this cynicism, you’re too vigilant the southern border was facing a national-security crisis. Trump to notice that the disinformationists have won. warned of a coming “invasion” and claimed, without evidence, that the caravan had been infiltrated by gang members. P OW E R S O F I N C U M B E N CY Parscale aided this effort by creating a 30-second commercial If there’s one thing that can be said for Brad Parscale, it’s that he that interspersed footage of Hispanic migrants with clips of a con- runs a tight ship. Unauthorized leaks from inside the campaign victed cop-killer. The ad ended with an urgent call to action: stop are rare; press stories on palace intrigue are virtually nonexistent. the caravan. vote republican. In a final maneuver before the When the staff first moved into its new offices last year, journalists election, Trump dispatched U.S. troops to the border. The presi- were periodically invited to tour the facility—but Parscale put dent insisted that the operation was necessary to keep America an end to the practice: He didn’t want them glimpsing a scrap of safe—but within weeks the troops were quietly called back, the paper or a whiteboard scribble that they weren’t supposed to see. “crisis” having apparently ended once votes were cast. Skeptics were left to wonder: If Trump is willing to militarize the border Notably, while the Trump White House has endured a seem- to pick up a few extra seats in the midterms, what will he and his ingly endless procession of shake-ups, the Trump reelection cam- supporters do when his reelection is on the line? paign has seen very little turnover since Parscale took charge. His It doesn’t require an overactive imagination to envision a worst- case scenario: On Election Day, anonymous text messages direct voters to the wrong polling locations, or maybe even circulate rumors of security threats. Deepfakes of the Democratic nominee 38 MARCH 2020

using racial slurs crop up faster than social-media platforms can blasted out a context-free clip of the governor’s abortion com- remove them. As news outlets scramble to correct the inaccura- ments to back up Trump’s smear. cies, hordes of Twitter bots respond by smearing and threatening After the rally, I loitered near one of the exits, chatting with reporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has spent the final days people as they filed out of the arena. Among liberals, there is a of the race pumping out Facebook ads at such a high rate that no comforting caricature of Trump supporters as gullible personality one can keep track of what they’re injecting into the bloodstream. cultists who have been hypnotized into believing whatever their After the first round of exit polls is released, a mysteriously leader says. The appeal of this theory is the implication that the sourced video surfaces purporting to show undocumented immi- spell can be broken, that truth can still triumph over lies, that grants at the ballot box. Trump begins retweeting rumors of voter someday everything could go back to normal—if only these vot- fraud and suggests that Immigration and ers were exposed to the facts. Customs Enforcement officers should be But the people I spoke with in dispatched to polling stations. are illegals E V E NTUA LLY, Tupelo seemed to treat matters stealing the election? reads the Fox of fact as beside the point. News chyron. are russians behind false THE FEAR One woman told me that, videos? demands MSNBC. OF COVERT given the president’s accom- The votes haven’t even been counted P R O PAG A N DA plishments, she didn’t care if yet, and much of the country is ready to INFLICTS AS he “fabricates a little bit.” A throw out the result. man responded to my ques- MUCH DAMAGE tions about Trump’s dishonest AS THE attacks on the press with a P R O PAG A N DA shrug and a suggestion that I T S E L F. the media “ought to try telling the truth once in a while.” Tony NOTHING IS TRUE There is perhaps no better place to witness Willnow, a 34-year-old main- what the culture of disinformation has tenance worker who had an already wrought in America than a Trump American flag wrapped around campaign rally. One night in November, I his head, observed that Trump navigated through a parking-lot maze of had won because he said things folding tables covered in MAGA merch no other politician would say. and entered the BancorpSouth Arena in When I asked him if it mat- Tupelo, Mississippi. The election was still tered whether those things were a year away, but thousands of sign-waving true, he thought for a moment supporters had crowded into the venue to before answering. “He tells you cheer on the president in person. what you want to hear,” Will- Once Trump took the stage, he let loose now said. “And I don’t know if a familiar flurry of lies, half-lies, hyperbole, it’s true or not—but it sounds and nonsense. He spun his revisionist his- good, so fuck it.” tory of the Ukraine scandal—the one The political theorist Han- in which Joe Biden is the villain—and nah Arendt once wrote that claimed, falsely, that the Georgia Demo- the most successful totalitar- crat Stacey Abrams wanted to “give illegal ian leaders of the 20th century aliens the right to vote.” At one point, during a riff on abortion, instilled in their followers “a mixture of gullibility and cyni- Trump casually asserted that “the governor of Virginia executed a cism.” When they were lied to, they chose to believe it. When baby”—prompting a woman in the crowd to scream, “Murderer!” a lie was debunked, they claimed they’d known all along—and This incendiary fabrication didn’t seem to register with my would then “admire the leaders for their superior tactical clever- companions in the press pen, who were busy writing stories and ness.” Over time, Arendt wrote, the onslaught of propaganda shooting B-roll. I opened Twitter, expecting to see a torrent of conditioned people to “believe everything and nothing, think fact-checks laying out the truth of the case—that the governor had that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” been answering a hypothetical question about late-term abortion; Leaving the rally, I thought about Arendt, and the swaths of that a national firestorm had ensued; that there were certainly the country that are already gripped by the ethos she described. different ways to interpret his comments but that not even the Should it prevail in 2020, the election’s legacy will be clear—not most ardent anti-abortion activist thought the governor of Vir- a choice between parties or candidates or policy platforms, but ginia had personally “executed a baby.” a referendum on reality itself. But Twitter was uncharacteristically quiet (apparently the president had said this before), and the most widely shared tweet I found on the subject was from his own campaign, which had McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. 39

The Abortion Doctor and His Accuser By Maggie Bullock 40 MARCH 2020

When a reproductive- 41 rights activist accused one of the most respected physicians in the movement of sexually assaulting her, everyone quickly took sides. The divide exposed differences among women that are typically expressed only in private. PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANA SCRUGGS



On a 92-degree morning in September, three clinic escorts gathered in the meager shade of a tree outside the Ala- bama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives. They arrive here at 8:30 a.m. on the dot, regular as clock- punchers, on the three days a week the Huntsville clinic is open to perform abortions. The women and girls arrive dressed for comfort in sweatpants and shower slides, carry- ing pillows from home or holding the hand of a partner or friend. The escorts, meanwhile, wear brightly colored vests and wield giant umbrellas to block the incoming patients from the sight, if not the sound, of the other group that comes here like clockwork: the protesters. Sometimes there are as many as a dozen. This day there were four: Last fall, while trying to defend Parker—not in this park- one woman, three men, all white. Four doesn’t sound like that many ing lot, but in the no-less-divisive wilds of Facebook message until you’re downwind of them maniacally hollering: Mommy, don’t boards—Josie got dragged into a dispute that has shaken the kill me! You’re lynching your black baby! They rip their arms and legs reproductive-rights movement, from its uppermost reaches to off! They suffer! They torture them! its grassroots volunteers. One of Josie’s fellow escorts was called “trash” after she spoke up for Parker; others were told they didn’t But escorts are made of stern stuff. Josie, with her short snow- deserve to be escorts. The people hurling the insults were not pro- white ponytail and T-shirt spangled with buttons (fearless flaw- lifers but fellow abortion-rights foot soldiers: How dare Josie— less feminist, abortion is normal), doesn’t get paid to defend, how dare anyone—not believe Candice? as she puts it, “these patients, these doctors, this staff.” Nevertheless, that’s her job. Among those Josie has sworn to protect is Willie On March 25, 2019, the activist Candice Russell posted a Parker, an ob-gyn who has worked here for the past several years and 3,300-word essay on the website Medium titled “To All the Women who, until recently, was a hero of the reproductive-rights movement. Whose Names I Don’t Know, About the Pain We Share, the Secrets 43

We Keep, and the Silence That Shouldn’t Have Been Asked For.” In prose that was by turns confusing and moving, Russell wrote that after a year and a half of casual texting and a handful of face- One anti-abortion group reveled to-face meetups, she and Parker had met for dinner in Dallas in October 2016. She got drunk, while he, she discovered partway in the allegations against Parker: through the evening, stuck to tonic water and lime. Then they went back to his hotel room, where she continued to drink, and “Thousands of women have they had sex. Russell did not write that she’d told Parker she didn’t want to been sexually assaulted or raped sleep with him, but she strongly implied that, having downed “four by abortionists.” martinis and an entire bottle of wine,” she was inebriated beyond any practical ability to consent. And, in a sweeping accusation that extended far beyond what had happened between the two of them in that hotel room, she called him a “predator.” She’d gradu- ally learned, she wrote, that the way he’d treated her was part of a pattern. Rumors about his behavior swirled in “whispers [that] had become so loud they were more like shouts”—and unnamed movement leaders were refusing to expose him. Russell did not report Parker to the police, and unlike, say, the women have been sexually assaulted or raped by abortionists. cases of Matt Lauer at NBC or even Al Franken in the Senate, a Some of the abortionists that we documented are still working!” workplace investigation was never on the table: The activist and More recently, Gloria Gray, the owner of a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the doctor operated in the same sphere, but they weren’t colleagues. clinic where Parker worked last fall, told me that one of her regu- Instead, the case of Russell versus Parker has been battled out largely lar protesters had begun making the baseless charge that she was on message boards and in closed-door conversations within the employing a “sexual molester” who’d “fondled patients.” insular, impassioned realm of abortion rights, among people, mostly women, for whom the cause of bodily autonomy was a calling long W i l l i e P a r k e r a n d C a n d i c e R u s s e l l met in 2015, before the dawn of the #MeToo movement. Yet its tentacles stretch at the Hartford, Connecticut, airport, after attending the annual much further, bringing into the open generational and, to an extent, Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference. The bald-headed, racial divisions in our rapidly shifting views on sexual assault—the then-52-year-old Parker, who wears round, black-framed glasses kinds of questions and doubts that are typically expressed only in and a silver hoop in one ear, had been a featured speaker. The Latina private. How does alcohol figure into culpability? What constitutes Russell was, at age 32, a “scholarship kid,” as she jokingly puts it—a appropriate sexual behavior when one person has more power than freelance writer and fledgling activist allowed to attend for free. As the other? And perhaps most crucial, how absolute is the duty to she recalls, she sat down at the gate, plunked down her bag, and believe women—the rallying cry of #MeToo? accidentally bumped Parker. As the two chatted, other conference That the saga of Candice Russell and Willie Parker is set in the attendees kept interrupting to take selfies with him. abortion-rights world heightens the stakes, and not just for the It would be hard to overstate Parker’s prominence within the two of them. Sooner rather than later, one of the recent spate of reproductive-rights movement at the time. He was its most visible state laws prohibiting abortion after six weeks’ gestation may have male figurehead—indeed, its only one. A black, devoutly Chris- its intended consequence: provoking a ruling by the right-leaning tian ob-gyn born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Parker Supreme Court that could further erode, if not eliminate, the spent the first half of his career refusing to perform abortions. rights enshrined in Roe v. Wade. Within the reproductive-justice Then, in 2003, at the age of 41, he had what he has described as movement, talk of a post-Roe America is not an if but a when— a “come-to-Jesus moment.” He radically reversed course, becom- planning is well under way for how to help women in red states ing not just an abortion provider but, you might say, the abor- get abortions when the procedure is no longer federally protected. tion provider: a traveling doctor who—eschewing the bullet- Indeed, with only one abortion clinic per state in six states, you proof vest favored by some in his high-risk profession—zigzags could argue that many Americans are already living in a post-Roe across the Deep South tending to patients, most of whom are reality. All of which makes Russell’s allegation against Parker a poor women of color, at clinics in Alabama and Mississippi. potential chink in the armor of the movement itself—one that That was only part of it. Parker posted himself up at the could, as an activist put it, “reify the narrative that ‘abortionists movement’s front line with the same zeal with which he had abuse women’ simply by providing abortions.” once handed out religious pamphlets as a born-again teenage This isn’t just a theory. Three days after Russell’s essay was pub- preacher. At one event after another, he cast abortion as a moral lished, Life Dynamics, a Texas group known for sending “spies for imperative that ensures a woman’s human right to lead the life life” into abortion clinics to try to dig up information that might she wants to live. This message refashioned the most contro- be used to close them down, reveled in the allegations against versial medical procedure of our time as the Christian thing Parker, claiming on Twitter that it had proof that “thousands of to do—and gave the abortion-rights community a language 4 4 MARCH 2020

it sorely needed. The abortion storytellers’ organization Shout then. She seemed deeply fatigued, with dark circles under her Your Abortion sold T-shirts bearing Parker’s face. The novel- eyes, and she was noticeably heavier: Russell had had gastric- ist Jodi Picoult modeled a character on him. In 2017, Parker bypass surgery in 2009, shedding almost 180 pounds to become, would publish his own book, a memoir called Life’s Work: A at 5 foot 2, a petit size 4. But since the night with Parker, she Moral Argument for Choice. said, she’d gained some 80 pounds, which she attributed mostly to alcohol. Still, a certain dorm-room girlishness remained, with her One reason Parker was so beloved is that he never acted supe- chipped black nail polish and black floral dress; flashes of wit and rior. Exalted as he became, he never lost his easy affability or his charisma made it easy to imagine the funny, “boisterous” woman appetite for conversation; even in the procedure room, he’s known Parker says he was initially charmed by. for keeping up a steady stream of comforting small talk. That day in Hartford, he offered to save Russell a seat on the plane—he After that flight together, Russell said, Parker became a “very was in boarding group A; she was in C—which was not unusual. close and personal friend,” thanks to a bond based on shared It was Parker being Parker. But to Russell it was a big deal. On childhood trauma. As he wrote in his memoir, Parker and his the plane, she shared a story she’d written for HuffPost; he com- five siblings grew up on food stamps. Their mother was twice pared it to the work of James Baldwin. (She had to Google the hospitalized after psychotic breaks and eventually was diagnosed name in the airplane bathroom.) Parker told her he was work- with manic depression. ing on his memoir—maybe he could send her some chapters to read? When we met in a Tuscaloosa hotel’s conference room in Russell’s own mother was a stripper and sometime sex worker, September, about six months after she posted her essay, Russell and was addicted to meth and heroin, she says. By the time Russell relived the thrill of the request: Here was “the Gloria Steinem of was a preteen, she had been abandoned to live with her stepfather the movement, and he wants to be writing partners?” she recalled and two half-siblings. But during a brief reappearance, her mother thinking. “This is awesome.” sold her 12-year-old daughter for sex—one of multiple incidences of sexual abuse in her childhood, Russell says. Russell’s own come-to-Jesus moment—though she’d never describe it as such—had occurred a couple of years earlier, after Russell herself struggles with mental illness, she told me, and she finished a bartending shift at a place she calls “Ye Olde Irish in the months leading up to her October 2016 get-together with Hooters.” When she got into her car and turned on the radio, the Parker, she’d been diagnosed with severe PTSD due to childhood news was all about the Texas legislation later known as H.B. 2, trauma. She’d been looking forward to confiding in Parker about which proposed banning abortion after 20 weeks, among other this at dinner that night, in fact. On the handful of occasions restrictions. This was 2013. State Senator Wendy Davis was soon when they’d met in person, the two had had hours-long conversa- to become famous for filibustering the bill in her hot-pink Mizu- tions, she said, in which she told him “things I hadn’t even told nos. Sitting in her car listening, Russell thought, “They’re talking my [ex-]husband.” about abortion like it’s this horrible thing. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” L i s t e n i n g to P a rk e r describe his relationship with Russell is like listening to a record played backwards: A completely differ- She drove straight to Austin, 200 miles south, changed into a ent sound comes out. At 5 foot 11, Parker is barrel-chested and dress that was in her trunk, and marched into the capitol rotunda, physically imposing, a presence that is offset by his signature where she waited in line for hours to testify about her abortion collection of professorial bow ties and ascots. But the day we before the state Senate. Russell had gotten pregnant after dating met, at a Manhattan sidewalk café, the city was sweltering, and her then-boyfriend for only a month and a half and, at 21, had had he wore a crisp button-down, no tie. As he talked, in long blocks an abortion without regret—she views the procedure as the key of uninterrupted speech, he frequently removed his glasses to to her future, and her personal freedom. Making her story more mop his brow. powerful, Russell is what anti-abortion activists call an “abortion survivor.” When her mother was 14 and about to have what would What Parker said he knew about Russell, you could learn at have been her third abortion, she decided at the last minute to keep a cocktail party: She was from Seattle, had been married, had a her baby, Candice. Russell’s narrative flipped the pro-life assump- stepson she was still in contact with. Their conversations, he said, tion that no one who’d almost been aborted would ever terminate covered music, the Seattle Seahawks, their activism, Russell’s vari- her own pregnancy. ous jobs—over time, she was appointed to the board of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas and hired as an executive assistant by the National Eventually, telling this story—and that of her second abor- Network of Abortion Funds. She “absolutely” never opened up tion, which she had at age 30—became a sort of job for Russell. to him about her childhood trauma or mental-health problems, As a member of the advocacy group We Testify (an arm of the he said. If she had talked about her mother, he likely would have National Network of Abortion Funds), she shared her account shared about his own, he added, “but we didn’t have that kind of with reporters at The New York Times, The Guardian, and CNN. fluency.” Their interactions were “too inconsistent for me to become a close confidant to her,” and he said he never asked her to read But in 2015, when she met Parker, Russell was still looking his book-in-progress. for a way into the movement, volunteering at local Texas organi- zations without gaining much traction, she told me. Curled up Parker got married for the first time in August 2018, seven in an armchair, Russell looked dramatically different from the months before Russell posted her story, to a 54-year-old flight bright-eyed, sprightly woman in Facebook photos taken back attendant with whom he now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. 45

But until then he’d been an object in motion, always on the road Until the Medium post, Russell hadn’t given him an inkling that she for his advocacy or abortion work, finding connection where he thought their night together was anything other than consensual, could—people he’d grab a bite with when he happened to land in he said, and the two continued to text periodically. At some point, their town. In his mind, the only thing that differentiated Russell Russell must have “decided to feel some other kind of way about” from those friends is the fact that on one occasion they’d had sex. sex she’d agreed to and so reframed it as an “exploitative, predatory thing”—the kind of thing “nobody would question.” Both Parker’s and Russell’s recollections of the night of Octo- ber 8, 2016, are fragmented—hers, she says, because of alcohol; With at least part of this analysis, Russell would concur: She his, he says, because of the erasure of time. They agree on this: did change her mind. For a long time, she described the encounter They had dinner at a Cajun restaurant in Dallas, where he’d come to herself and others as “problematic.” But the more she thought for a conference, before heading to a rooftop bar called Happiest about it, the more that idea began to break apart and reassemble Hour. Around midnight, they returned to his hotel and had sex. into a different shape. If another woman had told Russell that she’d gotten “brownout” drunk and had sex, she says, “would I be calling Parker’s version of the story hinges on a moment—maybe at it ‘problematic’? No, I would call it rape.” the bar, he’s not certain—when Russell looked at him and said something along the lines of “There’s this undeniable chemistry T h e d ay a f t e r Russell’s March 25 letter, Parker took to between us. It’s mutual. What are we going to do about it?” This Medium to post a point-by-point rebuttal of her allegations, but surprised him, he said. He’d found Russell attractive, but they that did not keep him from being swiftly disappeared from the hadn’t seemed destined for anything more than friendship. Still, movement. On the 26th, he stepped down, under duress, from to him, this was the moment not just of consent but of initiation: his position as chair of the board of Physicians for Reproductive She made the first move. Health. He says he was disinvited from four upcoming academic talks and lost his seat on the boards of the Religious Coalition for In Tuscaloosa, when I repeated this part of Parker’s story to Rus- Reproductive Choice and the Abortion Access Front (formerly sell, she practically doubled over in pain. “That’s not how I talk,” Lady Parts Justice League), an organization led by the comedian she said, spitting out the words. And even if she had come on to and activist Lizz Winstead, who until then had been one of his him—which she doesn’t remember doing—she said she was drunk closest allies. The National Network of Abortion Funds declared enough that any indication of consent was irrelevant. “I don’t care solidarity with accusers, and said it already had been in the process if I said ‘Let’s go fuck in the bathroom.’” of dropping Parker’s name from one of its two national funds. NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue, perhaps the In some ways, Russell’s and Parker’s conflicting views of the most powerful abortion-rights leader in the country after Cecile night all boil down to this. Russell said Parker could not have Richards resigned in 2018 from the top post at Planned Parent- missed that she was plastered: She drank a few martinis at dinner, hood, tweeted: “We #believesurvivors and we believe Candice at least one more at the bar, and a whole bottle of wine in his hotel Russell. Sexual assault does occur in movement spaces, and we room, and she describes herself as “clumsy” when she drinks. “I should have no tolerance for it.” sway a lot, fall a lot. I slur. If I’m brownout drunk—so drunk, I’m not remembering—I’m sloppy at that point.” The fierce constituency that rose up around Russell demanded no proof. None was necessary. She was one of their own, clearly But Parker, a lifetime teetotaler, said that he didn’t count Russell’s the David to Parker’s Goliath, the older, richer, more powerful drinks, never saw a bottle of wine in his room, and didn’t witness male—the movement “rock star” 20 years her senior. To these Russell act as she describes. Removing his glasses to rub his eyes, ardent, instant supporters, the thinking was: Why would anyone he recalled her condition using a physician’s parlance: “There were do what she did—reveal a humiliating experience, including her no slurs, no incoherent thoughts, no motor-function impairment.” own hard drinking, and risk being ostracized by the abortion-rights community for tarring its MVP—unless it was true? What could Below and opposite page: Protesters outside the Supreme Court on the eve of she possibly have to gain by lying about such a thing? the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt oral arguments, in March 2016. The case challenged a Texas law that regulated abortion-providing facilities. “That is literally an option of last resort,” says Amanda Reyes, the founder and executive director of Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive-justice organization that helps pay for abor- DAWN PORTER tions in that state. After reading Russell’s Medium post, Reyes wrote to Russell—whom she’d never met—to say I believe you. In recent years, Reyes told me, groups such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL have leaned hard on hashtags like #trustwomen, meaning that we should trust women to make their own decisions about whether to terminate a pregnancy. “If I do not extend that [same trust] to survivors,” Reyes said, “then who am I?” As it happens, Reyes’s belief led to one of the more unlikely plot twists in this story. In June, Reyes offered Russell a job as the deputy director of Yellowhammer, which practically overnight had 46 MARCH 2020