The Real Reason Behind Trump’s War on D.E.I.

In today’s edition, how a Vermont town is using storytelling to build community and move beyond the familiar narratives of a fractured America. But, first, Susan B. Glasser’s latest column from Washington. Plus:

Donald Trump’s Cabinet of Revenge

Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., bobbed and weaved around senators’ questions, but their own words came back to bite them.

It did not seem like a coincidence that three of the most radical of Trump’s Cabinet picks appeared in front of the Senate this week. “That this Trump trifecta faced simultaneous confirmation hearings appeared to be a masterstroke in outrage management by the Senate’s Republican scheduling gods,” Susan B. Glasser notes. “Who could possibly keep track of the overwhelming number of controversies, concerning revelations, and just plain weirdness to come out of the hearings?” Perhaps the wild news cycle provided enough public distraction to cover for senators who are eager to please the President by supporting his selections, no matter their own private misgivings. But, as Glasser watched the hearings unfold, it became clear that there would be no concealing how extreme these nominees are. Is a poor performance in front of the Senate enough to sink any of their chances? Read the column »

The Briefing Room

What you need to know about today’s headlines.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty

• Making sense of executive-order chaos: Even before this week’s funding-freeze confusion, federal agencies and groups that work closely with the government were already struggling to implement the flurry of executive orders and demands coming from the Administration, some of which seemed to threaten the groups’ core missions. E. Tammy Kim reports on a sense of bewilderment and dread at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces anti-discrimination laws for millions of private- and public-sector workers.

• An ideological review of public schools: In an order released on Wednesday, the President called for the elimination of “Federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology,” and for the promotion of “patriotic education.” Read Benjamin Wallace-Wells on the man who invented the conflict over critical race theory and Jessica Winter on the conservative activists using attacks on diversity to wage a wider battle on public education.

More Top Stories

---

Daily Cartoon

“Thanks, Doctor, for those insights—now let’s hear from the groundhog.”

Cartoon by Sarah Kempa

More Fun & Games

---

P.S. Marianne Faithfull, the singer, actress, and enduring icon of British sixties culture, died this week at the age of seventy-eight. In 2002, Hilton Als met up with Faithfull, who reinvented herself multiple times across the years, when she was in New York. “When I’m on tour I have to go out there and be Marianne Faithfull,” she told Als, of her nearly mythic persona. “When I’m alone, home somewhere, wherever that ends up being, I write. Then I’m just me.”