A maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary.
A damning investigation of dark money by a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The scheme of Sen. Whitehouse’s title concerns “regulatory capture,” in which a business infiltrates a government agency to undo any efforts to make that business obey the law. “A classic response by regulated entities has been to try to ‘capture’ the agency meant to be overseeing them,” he writes, and the practice has now been extended to wholesale “agency capture.” In this scheme, the federal court system is an object of capture, which is why it should come as no surprise that wealthy businesses and individuals spent millions of dollars to ensure that Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees made it to the bench. The Founding Fathers, Whitehouse writes, “did not intend courts as an anti-majoritarian back door for billionaire anti-government donors frustrated that the public hates their ideology”—but that’s exactly where we are. The author traces the origins of this capture movement to Robert Bork’s unsuccessful Supreme Court bid during the Reagan administration, when conservatives devoted their energies to placing like-minded judges throughout the federal judiciary. One strong instrument of capture came with the Citizens United decision, which declared that corporations had individual rights; one strong instrument to curtail this capture, which Whitehouse has championed, would require disclosure of any campaign contribution of more than $10,000. “No surprise,” he writes, “Republican Senators have blocked it from becoming law.” Yet another instrument of capture is the appointment of individuals to legal positions even though the legal community at large has rated them to be unqualified, without—as in the case of Brett Kavanaugh—minimal due diligence. We don’t know all there is to know about the scheme, Whitehouse concludes in this closely reasoned argument, adding, “I expect history will dig out those sordid details.”
A maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62097-738-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
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