The New Yorker
The Real Story of Kamala Harris’s Record on Immigration
Republicans have attacked the Vice-President as the Biden Administration’s “border czar,” claiming that she was responsible for an unprecedented number of illegal crossings. But, Jonathan Blitzer writes, her remit was always to address the root causes farther south.
Above the Fold
Essential reading for today.
Kamala Harris Isn’t Going Back
Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm ran for the Presidency, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender.
Why Did Progressive Democrats Support Joe Biden?
As Kamala Harris defines her candidacy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others will have few options to change it.
Kamala Harris Should Tell Her Family’s Story
The tale of two immigrants who found opportunity in America is an inspiring one. On the rare occasions that Harris shares it, her sometimes blurry identity comes into focus.
What Makes Katie Ledecky Great
The preëminent swimmer is unique not only for winning races by body lengths—her emotional and psychological approach sets her apart.
Inside Out
The magical in-betweenness—and surprising epidemiological history—of the porch.
The Political Scene
Biden’s Exit, Harris’s Moment
The President’s painful Oval Office farewell address is a reminder of how quickly the 2024 campaign has already moved on.
Was Biden’s Decision to Withdraw “Heroic”?
Jon Meacham, the President’s friend and informal adviser, considers his legacy.
Who Should Kamala Harris Pick as Her Running Mate?
There are a number of potential candidates—Mark Kelly, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper—who could serve the Democratic ticket well.
J. D. Vance’s Radical Religion
How might the Republican V.P. nominee’s conversion to conservative Catholicism influence his political world view?
What We’re Reading This Week
An impassioned reassessment of Sylvia Plath’s life that challenges various narratives and criticisms about the poet; a memoir of restoring an overgrown garden in search of a paradise; a page-turning novel about a handsome debt-laden striver living among the privileged élite; and more.
The Critics
Jake Gyllenhaal, and His Eyebrows, on Trial in “Presumed Innocent”
Ruth Negga and Peter Sarsgaard also star in this adaptation of the 1987 Scott Turow novel.
“Twisters” Takes the Fun Out of Heavy Weather
The original “Twister” had no compunction about making tornadoes look awesome. Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel treats them as deadly serious.
James Casebere’s Visions from After the Flood
In Casebere’s pictures from the exhibition “Seeds of Time,” water has not just inundated individual structures but seems to have drowned the whole world.
Céline Dion Goes On
Viewers of the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” know just how hard-won the pop superstar’s rumored comeback at the Olympics would be.
The Summer of Girly Pop
This season’s hits have been exuberant and canny, treating femininity as a kind of inside joke.
Politics and “The Real” at the Festival d’Avignon
A series of international productions held power to account at a fraught moment.
An Artist Flowering in Her Nineties
Isabella Ducrot, a painter in Rome, didn’t really pick up a brush until her fifties. Four decades later, galleries and museums throughout Europe are celebrating her work.
Dept. of Summer Games
The Unexpectedly Hopeful Paris Olympics
The Games have never lived up to all their ideals. And yet this year’s iteration, for all its flaws, has already inspired some positive change.
Glory Days
What we watch when we watch the Olympics, a competition where contestants pursue not victory but glory.
The Olympics’ Never-Ending Struggle to Keep Track of Time
The history of timekeeping, a finicky science, at the Olympics, from stopwatches to ultra-precise lasers.
The Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics
In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.
Old Money
In 1746, a vessel called the Prince de Conty foundered off the coast of France. How did its most valuable cargo end up in the hands of a semi-retired Florida couple?
Goings On
Recommendations from our writers on what to read, eat, watch, listen to, and more.
A Sorbet-Colored Revival of “Once Upon a Mattress”
On Broadway, the oddball, quasi-medieval musical frolic. Plus: Missy Elliott’s first solo headlining tour, a Claire Denis masterwork, and other recommendations from our critics.
The Aching Melodrama of “July Rhapsody”
The Hong Kong drama, from 2002, about a high-school literature teacher navigating a midlife crisis, was long overdue for a release, Justin Chang writes. It’s newly restored and now playing at Film Forum.
“Fantasmas” Finds Truth in Fantasy
Vinson Cunningham reviews Julio Torres’s new HBO show, in which guest stars and surreal distractions provide witty symbolic keys to serious themes.
A Brooklyn Tasting Menu with Manhattan Ambition
Helen Rosner visits Clover Hill, a restaurant that offers the kind of technique-oriented cooking that usually emerges from the city’s billionaire canteens.
Should We Abolish Prisons?
Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives.
The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph
In Milwaukee, with a candidate who had just cheated death, the resentment rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign gave way to an atmosphere of festive certainty.
The New Yorker’s Emmy-Nominated Documentaries
These three films earned a total of five nominations for this year’s awards. Learn more about the making of the films, and watch, below.
Revisiting New York’s Historic Abortion Law in “Deciding Vote”
Jeremy Workman and Robert Lyons’s film reconstructs the passage of a 1970 law that made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions, and cost a lawmaker his career.
Two Perspectives on One Tragic Raid in Afghanistan
In “The Night Doctrine,” by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons and Almudena Toral, the experiences of U.S.-backed Afghan Special Forces soldiers, and of the civilians they targeted, come together in an intimate portrait of national trauma.
“Swift Justice” Looks Inside a Sharia Courtroom
The documentary, by Victor Blue and Ross McDonnell, offers an unrivalled glimpse into the heart of the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and into the truth that the West has failed to grasp about America’s longest war.
The Struggle to Identify All the Dead Bodies in Mexico
By some estimates, it could take forensic scientists a hundred and twenty years to identify remains of the disappeared.
Ideas
A Summer of Sci-Fi
A new book claims that a few big summer movies heralded an epochal shift in the motion-picture industry, but is that really how cultural history works?
When Yuppies Ruled
Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?
Power of the Pirates
We’ve long viewed them as liberty-loving rebels. But it’s time to take off the eye patch. Were they foes of the modern order?
Would You Clone Your Dog?
We love our pets for their individual characters—and yet cloning implies that we also believe their unique selves can be reproduced.
Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War?
Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.
Reckoning with the Dead at the Sphere
A run of lost Las Vegas weekends for Deadheads prompts a longtime fan to wrestle with what the band has left behind.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
In Case You Missed It
In the Dark
Season 3 of the New Yorker investigative podcast examines the killings of twenty-four civilians in Haditha, Iraq, and asks why no one was held accountable for the crime. Subscribers can listen early to Episodes 1 and 2.