Hello everybody!
I am very pleased to announce that after a long and exhaustive search, we have found our next newsletter author, Jess Bidgood.
Jess is new to this newsletter, but not to The New York Times. Many of us worked with her back in the 2010s, when she covered the country as a reporter for the Times’ Boston-based National Desk.
Of course, the political world has changed dramatically since then. And Jess is exactly the right person to guide us through this uncharted territory. She has a strong sense of character, a boundless curiosity about the country and a wonderful sense of humor. (Just ask her about off-piste excursions with Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.)
She will take over on Monday with her debut newsletter. After that, you’ll find them in your inbox three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I spoke to Jess about her previous work, her current sense of politics, and how she envisions the future of this newsletter.
LL: We are very happy that you are here. Tell everyone a little about yourself.
JB: Lisa, thank you! I’m an English-born political reporter who moved around this country as a child and developed something of an obsession with it. Today I live in Washington, DC with my husband and my dog, whose name is Rhubarb
I’ve been a reporter for more than a decade. I began my public radio career in Boston on the 4 a.m. shift at WBUR, where one of my jobs was to bring in the newspapers when they arrived at 5 a.m. In seven years at the Times National Desk, I wrote about everything inherently catastrophic for narwhals. But I really wanted to cover politics, so I moved to Washington five years ago to do just that for the Boston Globe.
And now I’m back to take over the helm of this newsletter in this extremely cold and not at all dramatic political moment.
LL: So, in this super-relaxed moment, What do you enjoy most about covering politics?
JB: Politics gives us insight into this country – what shapes it, who shapes it, how people feel. When you report on politics, you report on people. They cover the voters. They report on political personalities, people full of ego and ambition, fighting for power. They report on the change that people want and what kind of country we will be. I love that.
And what an adventure! I took this particular overnight flight from Iowa to New Hampshire right after the Iowa caucuses when a candidate stands on the tarmac in the dark and insists that her big moment is yet to come. (Often that’s not the case.) I held a fake voter list that the secretary of state of a swing state received from Trump supporters in 2020 and decided to ignore it. I’ve listened to LGBTQ teens tell their school board who they are, and I’ve watched as a community fed up with high taxes dismantled its local government altogether. These are important political stories, big and small, and I can’t wait to bring them to On Politics.
LL: You will be the third full-time author of this newsletter. I started with that. And then Blake Hounshell, whose voice we all miss on our pages. And now it will be you. What can people expect in the Jess Bidgood era?
JB: This election will be strange, messy, and deeply consequential, and each day this newsletter is published, I will bring readers an idea, story, or interview that shines a light on this country’s political quagmire.
And it will be fun. Really. I promise.
I will look at the policy comprehensively. We will travel far outside of Washington. We talk to people who have nothing to do with campaigns or politics. We find out how topics are really lived. We’ll bring in the fun stuff, like food, culture, style and sport – OK, I need some help with that last one – and I’ll invite my colleagues from across the paper to join us.
We’ll also deal with the hard stuff. We will ask difficult questions of the people who want power in this country. And I’ll bring you news about the races, the ideas and debates shaping the election. You won’t agree with everyone whose voice you hear, but you might understand them a little better.
I want the newsletter to preserve your clear, conversational analysis and honor Blake’s legacy of deep and thoughtful reporting. I will be a steady, guiding hand and send you messages of a choice that really matters.
LL: So what would be your dream newsletter?
JB: My dream dream? That would be an interview with Taylor Swift, whose rainy show I attended in Foxborough last year.
Taylor, I know you’re reading this: if you have anything to say about this election, email me. And that goes for the rest of you too.
Four presidents in New York
The epicenter of the presidential campaign shifted to New York yesterday as the incumbent president and three of his predecessors descended on the area to duke it out in events that illustrated the kind of political battles that could define the general election.
In Manhattan, President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton met for a celebrity-filled fundraiser for Biden’s re-election campaign. On Long Island, former President Donald Trump attended a memorial service for a New York police officer who was killed during a traffic stop on Monday.
Taken together, the events represented an unusual contrast in a general election campaign that has so far been largely characterized by courtroom appearances and small, invitation-only events. They also hinted at the upcoming election campaign, which will pit the full force of the Democratic Party establishment against the passion of the MAGA movement.
There were also signs that Biden and Trump are trying to defuse some of the most damaging lines of attack against them.
Biden, Obama and Clinton appeared before 5,000 donors at an event at Radio City Music Hall that campaign officials said raised $25 million. According to advisers, the staggering number represented a record for a single political event.
But the presidents were repeatedly interrupted by protesters chanting “blood on your hands” – a reference to the war in Gaza that disrupted an event intended to be a show of unity and strength among Democrats.
Earlier that day, Trump attended the memorial service for police officer Jonathan Diller at a funeral home on Long Island.
Trump – who is charged with 88 crimes, including some in a Manhattan case that goes to trial in less than three weeks – stood in front of more than a dozen police officers and proclaimed that the country needed to get “back to law” and order. “
Source link
2024-03-29 22:00:03
www.nytimes.com