Trump's to accept nomination; Biden isolated by corners of his party

Plus, politics according to Hillbilly Elegy

View in Browser 07.18.24     Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up  here. Questions? Comments? what.matters@cnn.com   by Zachary B. Wolf : The latest RNC Thursday. Trump will accept nomination. Met with Secret Service director, who was pursued in Milwaukee by Republican senators. More.   Biden. Further under microscope, every move is viewed through age lens. Isolating in Delaware after Covid diagnosis. 'General malaise' is a symptom.   Pelosi. Told Biden polls show he can't win. Tough talk.   Endgame? Van Jones, Biden and the election. Watch:      Student loans. Appeals court puts Biden debt plan on hold. More.   Ukraine. Germany to halve aid, despite prospect of second Trump term. Details.   Tech billionaires. Pivoting toward Trump. Crypto play. Sponsor Content by LendingTree Tackle your next home project with your home's equity Home equity loans unlock ways to get cash for your financial needs. Compare offers for free today. : JD Vance's unique politics, according to 'Hillbilly Elegy' It's a story — young memoirist with an Ivy League law degree tells a compelling story, catapults into the Senate and joins the national political conversation — familiar to anyone who followed the career of Barack Obama.   But instead of Obama, the memoirist of the moment is JD Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, who has been tapped by former President Donald Trump as his vice presidential running mate and, at 39, the next generation of the MAGA movement.   Vance's book, like Obama's, is about a young man largely raised by his grandparents and overcoming themes of alienation. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" was also turned into a Ron Howard movie.   "Hillbilly Elegy" caused a sensation after Trump's election in 2016 as people tried to understand how Democrat Hillary Clinton had lost the Rust Belt states. The book, with touching stories about Vance's upbringing, his drug-addicted mother and his foul-mouthed, gun-toting grandmother, attempts to explain the disaffection of the White, working-class Americans who felt like American society was passing them by as they witnessed the decay of once-thriving towns.   Vance has clearly evolved since the book's publication. He opposed Trump when it was first published just before the 2016 election and is now on the same presidential ticket, a full-fledged Trump acolyte.   Trump's and Vance's stories are about as opposite as it is possible for the stories of two White men to be.   Trump built his business career with loans from his father. Vance dropped his biological father's name, Donald, to simply become JD.   Trump was born into wealth in a city where he lived most of his life. Vance counts his home as Kentucky, where his grandparents were from and where he visited as a child.   Trump avoided service in Vietnam. Vance enlisted in the Marines and deployed to Iraq.   Where Trump has an "I alone can fix it" view of the world, Vance takes a far more humble approach to his own abilities and credits others with helping him succeed despite despair in his home town.   Here are some quotes (in bold) from the book that struck me on a rereading:   I didn't write this book because I've accomplished extraordinary. I wrote this book because I've achieved something quite ordinary, which doesn't happen to most kids who grow up like me. You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.   Vance's grandparents didn't graduate from high school and they moved, he says, from Kentucky to Ohio when his grandmother was pregnant at the age of 14, in search of work and a better life. His grandfather made a life as a steelworker and, despite his mother's descent into addiction, his grandparents were among "a handful of loving people (who) rescued me."   He feels kinship with people whose families, like his, have roots in Appalachia and have not kept pace with social mobility in the US.   …I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scotch-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition… Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family.   There are multiple passages about how views in these communities about how a man should act are hurting men, who, he says, drop out of the labor force and refuse to relocated for opportunity.   Our men suffer from a peculiar crisis of masculinity in which some of the very traits that our society inculcates make it difficult to succeed in a changing world.   While Vance acknowledges that his Mamaw only survived in her later years with government help, there is a marked disdain for programs that help people who are not old. Vance says:   I have known many welfare queens; some were my neighbors and all were white.   Much of the book is built around Vance's relationship with his grandmother, Mamaw, "the toughest woman anyone knew," who died in 2005 and who he lovingly mentioned in his speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention. The book is filled with foul-mouthed quotes and gun-toting anecdotes about her and other members of his Kentucky forebears.   Some people may conclude that I come from a clan of lunatics. But the stories made me feel like hillbilly royalty, because these were classic good-versus-evil stories, and my people were on the right side.   At a time when immigration plays such an important role in national politics, it's interesting that migration within the US is a key component of Vance's book. His family and millions of others like them had to move to make their way in the world.   …many millions of people traveled along the 'hillbilly highway' — a metaphorical term that captured the opinion of Northerners who saw their cities and towns flooded with people like my grandparents … significant parts of an entire region picked up shop and moved north.   His grandparents were Democrats because of social class.   … to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich. Papaw was a Democrat because that party protected the working people.   He argues that the American Dream felt attainable to his grandparents' generation.   Despite their violent marriage, Mamaw and Papaw always maintained a measured optimism about their children's futures. They reasoned that if they could go from a one-room schoolhouse in Jackson to a two-story suburban home with the comforts of the middle class, then their children (and grandchildren) should have no problem attending college and acquiring a share of the American dream.   The book is specifically about White, working-class Americans. But at several points Vance compares the plight of White Americans in Appalachia and in the Rust Belt to that of Black Americans left behind in American cities.   … bad neighborhoods no longer plague only the urban ghettos; the bad neighborhoods have spread to the suburbs.   Vance takes a dim view of people who complain about lack of work in their towns. He says many of them are lazy.   … you can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.   Now a practicing Catholic, he is frustrated that more people in the Rust Belt do not attend church and he repeatedly argues that churches can provide support to people who are in need.   The juxtaposition is jarring: Religious institutions remain a positive force in people's lives, but in a part of the country slammed by the decline of manufacturing joblessness, addiction and broken homes, church attendance has fallen off.   In one key section describing a job during his teenage years at a grocery store in roughly the early 2000s, Vance expresses anger at people getting help from the government, but able to have phones, which were not as ubiquitous back then.   I also learned how people gamed the welfare system … they'd regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse had trinkets I could only dream about.   It was seeing people "live off the dole," that began to turn Vance against Democrats, although I have to say that reading this passage today I'm not sure how many people getting food assistance are buying T-bone steaks.   Every two weeks, I'd get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-Bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else. This was my mind-set when I was seventeen, and though I'm far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that that the policies of Mamaw's "party of the working man" — the Democrats — weren't all they were cracked up to be.   A general move away from Democrats in the Rust Belt could be explained through a racial lens, by the Democrats' embrace of the Civil Rights movement, or for social reasons, as evangelical Christians gravitated to the right. But Vance says an aggrieved perception of welfare programs is largely to blame. He also tells the story of his grandmother's frustration when a neighbor rents out his house as a Section 8 property. Conversely, Mamaw would also bristle that ballots to raise taxes for local schools would fail.   I'd curse our government for not helping enough, and then wonder if, in its attempts to help, it actually made the problem worse.   Eventually, Middletown, Ohio, began to founder much as the Kentucky of Mamaw's youth.   Mamaw had thought she escaped the poverty of the hills. But the poverty – emotional if not financial – had followed her.   Vance sees a general societal decline in these areas and it's about more than a lack of jobs.   Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.   Vance prizes hard work and thoughtful financial decisions. He joins the Marines specifically in order to afford college, so it should be no surprise that today he is a vehement critic of student loan forgiveness.   I thought about the GI Bill and how it would help me trade indebtedness for financial freedom. I knew that, most of all, I had no other choice. There was college, or nothing, or the Marines, and I didn't like either of the first two options.   There is also a passage where, as an Ohio State student, he describes making use of a payday loan. He argued that while these loans might have exorbitant interest rates and appear rapacious to consumer advocates, the loan was there when he needed it. So he opposed a bill then under consideration in Ohio to regulate payday loans.   Powerful people sometimes do things to help people like me without really understanding people like me.   As Vance headed off to Yale Law School, his future bright after years of work, he began to feel out of place in Middletown, where despair was growing.   The incredible optimism I felt about my own life contrasted starkly with the pessimism of so many of my neighbors. Years of decline in the blue-collar economy manifested themselves in the material prospects of Middletown's residents … there was something almost spiritual about the cynicism of the community at large, something that went deeper than a short-term recession.   There are the beginnings of a desire for a populist hero.   Nothing united us with the core fabric of American society. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream — a steady wage.   Vance does not see racism in the rejection by many White Rust Belt viewers of Obama, but rather anti-elitism.   Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren't. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we're lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn't be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it — not because we think she's wrong but because we know she's right.   He also sees a failing on the right to promote accountability and inspire people to succeed.   What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It's not your fault, it's the government's.   Vance feels out of place in Middletown, but also at Yale. He also becomes more health-conscious during the course of the book.   When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst. At no time was this more obvious than the first (and last) time I took a Yale friend to Cracker Barrel. In my youth, it was the height of fine dining — my grandma's and my favorite restaurant. With Yale friends, it was a greasy public health crisis.   At one point, Vance meets a politician from Indiana.   … my political hero … Mitch Daniels   One can imagine Daniels, a former Indiana governor and George W. Bush official who is opposed by the MAGA wing of the GOP, is no longer Vance's hero.   The short final chapter that suggests social policy needs to do more to understand the White working class, but it's not particularly detailed. Vance points out that his rise was built on government help, including student loans, the old age benefits his grandmother shared with him and the public schools of his youth and college years. He argues that the country should do more to integrate low-income people into the middle class. The closest he comes to a policy proposal is frustration at how the federal government applies Section 8 housing assistance. Later, he admits that answers are hard to come by.   I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.   : Pick of the Day Brought to you by CNN Underscored We tested 8 portable fans in 99-degree heat — here are the best No matter where you live you can probably agree that it's an abnormally hot summer and staying cool is essential. We tested rechargeable portable fans that are are cordless, handheld and small enough to slip into a bag or pocket, and our favorite is under $30 at Amazon. : What did you think of today's newsletter? Send your feedback to what.matters@cnn.com.   You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up for What Matters. To stop receiving this newsletter, unsubscribe or sign up to manage your CNN account    Get CNN web alerts  |  Sign up for a free CNN account   ® © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. 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The Evening: Biden appears to consider dropping out

Also, lawmakers call Secret Service's mistakes inexcusable.

View in browser|nytimes.com July 18, 2024 By Matthew Cullen Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Thursday. Biden's possible exit from the race Secret Service mistakes Plus, frightening "Twisters" President Biden returned to Delaware from a campaign stop in Las Vegas yesterday.  Eric Lee/The New York Times Biden begins to consider dropping out, people close say Several people close to President Biden said today that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race. His shift comes after top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, told Biden that they are pessimistic about his chances of beating Donald Trump. Here's the latest. Publicly, the president and his aides have repeatedly rejected calls to step aside. And one of the people close to Biden told my colleagues that he has not yet made up his mind. But another said that "reality is setting in" and that it would not be a surprise if he made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Other Democrats said expectations were rising that the president would soon relent. Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in Congress, each told Biden privately over the past week that their members were deeply concerned about him weighing down the party if he remains at the top of the ticket. Another key Democrat, Jamie Raskin, sent Biden a letter suggesting he reconsider his campaign. "In 2020, the reason the Democrats picked Biden was because they saw him as electable, they saw him as somebody who could beat Trump," Jess Bidgood, who writes our On Politics newsletter, said. "That electability argument has seemingly vanished." Biden spent today in isolation at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., after being diagnosed with Covid. His family has been supportive of him remaining in the race and one of his closest advisers, Mike Donilon, has told Biden that he still has a path to victory. However, Biden's senior staff are increasingly, if informally, discussing among themselves their sense that Biden's exit from the race is starting to feel inevitable, my colleague Katie Glueck reported. Those conversations were seen as taboo as recently as a few days ago. Behind the scenes: Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, has been marshaling her knowledge of the political map, polling data and fund-raising information to press her case with Biden that his re-election is in doubt. The scene of the rally where a would-be assassin fired on Donald Trump in Butler, Pa. Kristian Thacker for The New York Times Lawmakers called Secret Service's mistakes inexcusable Speaker Mike Johnson today called for President Biden to fire the Secret Service director, after disclosures about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Questions were raised about the agency's decision to allow Trump to take the stage at the rally after officers spotted a suspicious man. Here's the latest. Reporting by my colleagues found that the local police at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania had informed Secret Service agents about a man acting oddly. He would later turn out to be the shooter. Twenty minutes before violence erupted, police took a photo of the man and tried to follow him, but lost track. Then about two minutes before the shooting, the Secret Service snipers were alerted to a man crawling on a roof. Watch our visual reconstruction of the security lapse. Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump will close the G.O.P. convention in full control Donald Trump will formally accept the Republican nomination for president in a prime-time address tonight, after speeches by his son Eric, the U.F.C. leader Dana White and the wrestler Hulk Hogan. It's the latest turn in a political resurrection that leaves him in complete control of his party. The party's new platform was ruthlessly overhauled by Trump and his team, elevating issues he cares about like tax cuts and migrant deportations. And the former president's allies — including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk — have become central to the presidential race. For more: Several foreign leaders are taking steps to prepare for Trump's potential return to the Oval Office. A solar farm in China.  Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times The era of soaring Chinese emissions might be ending China, the world's biggest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases for most of the past two decades, appears to be on the verge of plateauing its emissions. The biggest factor: Renewable sources of electricity are replacing coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. More top news Israel: After a landmark Supreme Court decision, the military will begin sending initial conscription orders on Sunday to ultra-Orthodox men. Ukraine: After months of bloody fighting, the military lost a hard-won position on the Dnipro River near the southern city of Kherson. Bangladesh: Seventeen people have been killed during protests over a quota system used to fill coveted civil service jobs. South Korea: The Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples qualify for the national health insurance's dependent coverage. Activists hope that legalizing same-sex marriage will follow. Spain: Police use an algorithm to score how likely a domestic violence victim is to be abused again. When the calculations are wrong, the consequences can be fatal. Nature: The largest population of the endangered Siamese crocodiles this century hatched in Cambodia. Watch them emerge. Lives lived: Bob Newhart, a soft-spoken Everyman who stammered his way to comedy stardom in the 1960s, died at 94. TIME TO UNWIND From left, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and Glen Powell in "Twisters." Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures & Amblin Entertainment A lot has changed between 'Twister' and 'Twisters' Stand-alone blockbusters, like the 1996 hit "Twister," no longer really exist after being swallowed up years ago by superheroes and franchises. And natural disasters, like tornadoes, have become more devastating in our warming world. So "Twisters," which arrives in theaters this week, has a tougher hill to climb. But the movie mostly pulls it off. The film, which is billed as a sequel, is far more interested in the human toll of tornadoes than its predecessor. But it's also loaded with fun and sometimes funny set pieces featuring Glen Powell, Hollywood's man of the moment. Here's our review. Nicholas Sansone for The New York Times For a strong body, you need strong feet Feet are responsible for mobility and balance, and strong feet with dexterous toes are an important component of long-term health and fitness. "Toe weakness is the single biggest predictor of falls when we get older," one doctor said. A couple simple tests can assess yours. Many people learn about foot strengthening only after an injury, but it is better to be proactive. Simply walking around in good footwear can often be a solid enough workout; so can these quick exercises. Dr. Douglas Arbittier with items from his large collection of medical antiques.  Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Dinner table topics Art forgery: Earl Washington's love of carving led him to a profitable career selling forged antique woodblocks. Douglas Arbittier's love of collecting led to Washington's conviction. From Opinion: Anchovies are always a good idea. Summer look: Fashion's equivalent of the song of the summer is a skin-baring collaboration between J. Crew and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. One of England's best: At 5, she picked up chess as a pandemic hobby. Now she's a 9-year-old prodigy. WHAT TO DO TONIGHT Johnny Miller for The New York Times Cook: This buffalo mushroom recipe is ideal for grilling. Watch: Netflix's "The Decameron" finds dark humor in a medieval pandemic. Read: Our readers ranked "Demon Copperhead" as the best book of the century so far. Save: These are the best cities for renters. Stay cool: As temperatures rise, it becomes more important to look for signs of heat exhaustion. Hunt: What San Francisco apartment would you buy with a $850,000 budget? Play: Here are today's Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. Find all of our games here. ONE LAST THING China Miéville and Keanu Reeves collaborated on "The Book of Elsewhere." Guy Bolongaro for The New York Times Keanu Reeves wrote a really weird book What if the star of "The Matrix" wrote a part-historical fiction, part-sci-fi novel about an 80,000-year-old half-human warrior who can rip people's arms off but also struggles with loneliness? Next week, we will know. "The Book of Elsewhere," Keanu Reeves's debut book, was devised through a series of similar what ifs. He and a writer, the science fiction author China Miéville, came to a genre-defying mythological tale with a heavy dose of existentialism. Listen to Reeves read the prologue. Have an unorthodox evening. Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. — Matthew Daniel E. Slotnik contributed to today's newsletter, and Emree Weaver was our photo editor. We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com. Writer: Matthew Cullen Editorial Director: Adam Pasick Editors: Carole Landry, Whet Moser, Justin Porter, Jonathan Wolfe Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for The Evening from The New York Times. To stop receiving The Evening, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018