Despite hand-wringing among Democrats about Joe Biden’s age and his discouraging poll numbers, the President’s campaign for reëlection displays an “ostentatious level of serenity,” Evan Osnos says about the election. “This is a matter of great personal importance to Joe Biden. He feels almost, viscerally, this contempt for Trump and for what Trump did to the country,” Osnos tells David Remnick, after a rare private interview at the White House. “And let’s remember, he didn’t just try to steal this election—from Biden’s perspective—he tried to steal it from him.” Although Biden once referred to himself as a “bridge” President, he told Osnos that he had never considered stepping aside after one term. His gait has slowed, but Osnos found the President quick to jab at his questions and at “you guys” in the media, whom he blames for naysaying his campaign. But alongside complacent media coverage, threats to the President’s reëlection are many. The war in Gaza has alienated many voters from Biden, especially in Arab American communities, and it resonates even more widely. “When Houthi rebels started firing rockets at ships in the Red Sea,” Osnos points out, “it had an immediate effect on global shipping, to the point that it could have, and could yet still, push inflation back up. . . . I know this is the worst cliché in journalism, but this election has an element that is beyond anything we’ve ever really dealt with before.”
How Does Extreme Heat Affect the Body?
The Origins of “Braiding Sweetgrass”
Tessa Hadley on What Decades of Failure Taught Her About Writing
Talking to Conservatives about Climate Change
The Novelist Esmeralda Santiago on Learning to Write After a Stroke
Will the End of Affirmative Action Lead to the End of Legacy Admissions?
James McBride on His New Novel, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store”
Emily Nussbaum on the Culture Wars in Country Music
A Trip to the Boundary Waters
Regina Spektor on “Home, Before and After”
Colson Whitehead on “Crook Manifesto”
Adapting Robert Oppenheimer’s Story to Film, Plus Greta Gerwig on Becoming a Director
Donovan Ramsey on “When Crack Was King”
A Mysterious Third Party Enters the Presidential Race
How to Buy Forgiveness from Medical Debt
The Conspiracies of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Beyoncé Takes the Stage
Russia’s No-Good, Very Failed Coup, and Jill Lepore on Amending the Constitution
Jonathan Mitchell, a Prominent Anti-Abortion Lawyer, on Restraining the Power of the Supreme Court
A Year of Change for a North Dakota Abortion Clinic, and the Composer John Williams
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Should This Exist?
Without Fail
Hannibal Buress
Longform
Conversations