Substacks
TGIF: You Win Some, You Newsom Nellie Bowles
Welcome back, my people. I’ve missed you. We’re making up for lost time here.
→ The winner of last night’s debate: Pitting Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis against California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, the winner was. . . Donald Trump. That was the main takeaway from the so-called Red State vs. Blue State Debate, hosted by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in Alpharetta, Georgia.
It was a reminder why so many Americans are over conventional politics—why Trump has dominated the GOP primary, why Democrats and independents have flocked to RFK Jr., why Trumpy non-Trump Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy have done so well.
Probably the highlight of the evening was Newsom sanctimoniously correcting DeSantis’s pronunciation of Vice President Kamala Harris’s first name. (Never mind that every Democrat in California knows Newsom hates Harris.)
It was all self-righteousness and talking points and canned lines. “People are leaving California in droves!” DeSantis said (more than once). “You’re on a book-banning binge!” Newsom shot back. (Which is not really fair, but so what?)
There was also some back and forth about gun safety, gas prices, inflation, crime, and people defecating on the streets of San Francisco and China. Whatever. Nobody onstage won. Neither is going to be president—at least, not anytime soon. Everything is exactly the way it was before it started. Carry on. (Editor’s note: This has been a guest item from Peter Savodnik.)
→ Different factions battle in Biden White House: President Biden’s official Twitter account posted a message this week that seemed to imply that Israel was committing terrorism: “Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace. To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can’t do that.” But then other members of his team frantically told the press there’s been no change in policy, no calls for cease-fire. It’s a minor moment but a telling one. Because Biden—shuffling around, joking about the nuclear football, and calling Trump a “congressman” this week—is not in charge. And in fact, whoever has the best-looking ice cream cone—I’m talking about a really good one, fresh, nice scoop shape—can set international policy for the day.
→ Economy growing well: America’s economy grew 5.2 percent last quarter, beating expectations. We love to see it. Sure, interest rates mean my home value has dipped (hell), but I’m looking at the big picture (also hell, but hopefully with better interest rates).
Substacks
THE ACCUSATIONS THAT COULD BRING BIBI DOWN Seymour Hersh
Menachem Mizrahi is a highly respected judge in Israel, a conservative jurist whose magistrate court is the most basic in the country’s court hierarchy, with jurisdiction over criminal matters and family disputes. He has now jailed five senior military and government officials in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation that could lead to the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s third term as prime minister. And he has ordered the case sealed.
Few outside the media are questioning Mizrahi’s caution, given the issues surrounding the case. They essentially involve actions taken by Netanyahu who is desperate to stay in office. He was allegedly the catalyst of blackmail, theft of highly secret documents, and falsification of transcripts of secret cabinet meetings, all of stemming from his casual public release of one of the Israeli military’s most sensitive documents on Hamas’s operational control of the October 7 hostages, who, if still alive, have been captive for thirteen months.
The issues have energized and enraged the sometimes—but not always—accommodating Israeli press, who realize that underneath the media hoopla is the fact that the cases, once unraveled, could tell the distraught and embittered families of the hostages that they were right all along: Netanyahu did not make a hostage release deal with Hamas when one was possible because to do so would have jeopardized his standing with Israel’s religious far right. Their openly stated goal is to gain control of Gaza and the West Bank, as mandated by a fanatical reading of the Bible. And to hell with the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank continuously under murderous Israeli military attack.
The judge’s actions have made headlines around the world. The emphasis was initially on a Netanyahu aide who leaked a distorted version—friendly to the prime minister—of what the Israeli intelligence community had learned about the plight of remaining hostages to the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper in the UK. An even more distorted version was provided to the Bild, a right-wing tabloid in Germany known for its support of Netanyahu’s government. The British article’s thrust was to support Netanyahu’s contention that the off-and-on talks with Hamas would never result in a ceasefire because Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was killed last month, was prepared to flee Gaza for Iran, via Egypt, and would take the hostages with him.
Substacks
The Missing Boy Who Captured America’s Heart Elias Wachtel
You beamed. You cried. You commented in the hundreds. Free Press readers responded overwhelmingly to Elias Wachtel’s piece, “On the Appalachian Trail, I Fell in Love with America.” It ran on July 19, exactly three years after 21-year-old Elias—who is part of our first generation of Free Press Fellows—completed the 2,193-mile hike from Georgia to the highest peak of Maine, Mount Katahdin.
“It’s true that no one can get you up the mountain but yourself,” he wrote. “But as I reached Katahdin’s summit, I thought about my family, and my friends on trail. . . and the generations of Americans who cut the trails we walk.”
One of those Americans is Donn Fendler. Eight decades before Elias summited Katahdin, Donn got lost in a storm on the very same mountain, at the age of 12. A monumental search effort immediately began. It was July 1939: Europe was on the brink of war, but all America could think about was this boy who, as the days ticked by, seemed unlikely to return to his family.
But return he did. Donn had walked a hundred miles, in cut-up sneakers and with little in his belly except berries. That same year, with the help of journalist Joseph Egan, he told the story of what happened in a book, Lost on a Mountain in Maine—which has been adapted into a film of the same name, out this month.
What’s most remarkable about Donn is his conviction that he’d survive. Although the odds were stacked against him, he was so sure he’d get home that he carried a heavy rock as a souvenir because, he recalled, “I knew Mommy would like it.”
Here, Elias tells the incredible story of Donn Fendler. —The Editors
In the summer of 1939, as clouds of war darkened over Europe, a boy named Donn Fendler was lost on a mountain in Maine. The 12-year-old had run ahead of his father and brothers to reach the peak of Mount Katahdin, the highest in the state, when a fierce storm blew in. In pelting rain and dense fog, Donn stumbled off the trail, unable to find his way back to his family. By the time they realized he was missing, his loved ones couldn’t shout his name loudly enough to be heard over the wind.
The race was on to find Donn before he succumbed to one of Katahdin’s many perils. A young friend of his family, who’d been hiking with them, hurried down the mountain and mobilized a small group of forest rangers who searched through the night. By the next morning, Maine State Police had joined in. Volunteers from local towns flocked to the mountain to help, and the Great Northern Paper Company sent men from its timber crews. Police brought bloodhounds to follow Donn’s trail, but their paws were cut up so badly by the rough terrain they had to be carried down the mountain. More dogs were flown in by New York State Police. Meanwhile, the governor of Maine ordered 65 National Guardsmen to Katahdin.
All the while, America held its breath. Donn’s story made headlines across the nation, and his mother, Ruth Fendler, began receiving telegrams—hundreds of them—from other moms across the country, telling her they were praying for her and her son. But as the days dragged by, hope began to flag. After a week, most searchers assumed they were looking for a body rather than a boy.
Then, miraculously, the nation’s prayers were answered. Nine days after Donn had last been seen, the owner of a small cabin on the Penobscot River—35 miles east of Katahdin—contacted the authorities to tell them about the boy who’d wandered onto his property. Donn was exhausted, bloodied, half-naked, and skeletally thin; he’d been subsisting on berries and stream water, and had lost 16 pounds. It’s thought that he walked at least 100 miles, using what he remembered from the Boy Scouts to follow a small stream and, eventually, a telephone wire back to civilization. Meanwhile, the search parties had never even left Katahdin, thinking it impossible that a boy his age could have made it down the mountain alive.
That boy became a national hero.
Substacks
November 11, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
-
Awakening Video1 year ago
This is What Happens When You Try to Report Dirty Cops
-
Substacks8 months ago
THE IRON-CLAD PIÑATA Seymour Hersh
-
Substacks1 year ago
The Russell Brand Rorschach Test Kathleen Stock
-
Substacks1 year ago
A real fact-check of Trump’s appearance on Meet the Press Judd Legum
-
Substacks1 year ago
Letter to the Children of Gaza – Read by Eunice Wong Chris Hedges