Ivanka Trump is done empowering women. For years the heiress styled herself as a sort of Susan B Anthony in stilettos, working tirelessly to advance women’s rights. That mission has apparently been accomplished, and Ivanka has now moved on to a new passion project: criminals.
Ivanka spent her final hours in the White House frantically working with her daddy to grant pardons and commutations to 143 people. Some of those people had been locked up for decades for nonviolent drug offenses; many others, however, were Trump cronies and white-collar crooks. According to a new report from Axios, Ivanka wasn’t just helping these people out of the goodness of her heart; it was a calculated strategy. Ivanka apparently plans to use the platform of criminal justice reform to rehabilitate her image and re-emerge into public life.
Tying her brand to criminal justice reform, which is a bipartisan issue, is a savvy move by Ivanka. It gives her a way of worming herself back into liberals’ good books without alienating conservatives. It also doesn’t hurt that criminal justice reform has become rather glamorous. Over the last few years big-name celebrities like Kevin Hart, Jay-Z and Meek Mill have spoken out on the issue. And Kim Kardashian, of course, has made criminal justice reform her life’s work. (Although she still finds time to hawk shapewear and promote dubious diet products.)
And then there’s the fact that, unlike most things she sets her sights on, crime is something Ivanka appears eminently qualified to speak out on. There is, after all, a convicted felon in the family: her father-in-law, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to tax evasion and intimidating a witness (he hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, videotaped it, then sent the video to his sister to try to stop him testifying). Kushner, of course, got a pardon from Trump.
Criminal justice reform may theoretically be a bipartisan issue, but it’s important to note that there are very different interpretations of what that reform looks like in practice. For the left it means things like addressing structural racism and reallocating funding from police departments to community support. For the right it often seems to mean cutting costs by reducing the number of people in physical jails while finding new ways to police people. Ways which, conveniently enough, make private corporations and tech companies a lot of money. In 2018, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, warned that many recent criminal justice reforms contain the seeds of a frightening system of “e-carceration”.
Replacing cash bail with expensive ankle monitoring devices is one example of this. “Many reformers rightly point out that an ankle bracelet is preferable to a prison cell,” Alexander wrote. “Yet I find it difficult to call this progress. As I see it, digital prisons are to mass incarceration what Jim Crow was to slavery.”
As for Ivanka’s approach to criminal justice reform? One imagines that, just like her approach to women’s empowerment, it will be vacuous and self-serving. Still, she may need to serve herself sooner rather than later: the Trump Organization is facing a number of legal issues. One imagines a get-out-of-jail-free card would be very useful.
Man who talks a lot of rubbish thinks women talk too much
Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee, reckons women talk too much and cause meetings to “drag on”. When asked why he thinks that he replied: “I don’t talk to women that much these days, so I don’t know.” Seems like he doesn’t know a lot of things: while women are often stereotyped as chatty plenty of research shows men are by far the more garrulous sex in meetings and public forums.
Rashida Tlaib, AOC and the power of vulnerability
Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered emotional speeches about the US Capitol attack this week. These speeches weren’t just powerful; in many ways they were historic. As Moira Donegan wrote: “Vulnerability and power do not often go together, and certainly not in female politicians.” However, by opening up about her trauma, “AOC demonstrated that she was unwilling to concede that female vulnerability is incompatible with the dignity of power. Refusing to separate those two was a demonstration of her feminist vision, a gesture at what an authentic kind of power might look like.”
‘Sew bros’: the wholesome rise of men who stitch
George Clooney is one of them: he recently revealed he’s been sewing clothes for his kids during lockdown.
Mike Pence is starting a podcast to share good news about conservatism
Couldn’t he just take up sewing instead?
New Zealand’s Māori foreign minister is the perfect diplomat
Nanaia Mahuta is impossible to miss: she’s the first woman to sit in the country’s parliament wearing a moko kauae, an ancient Māori tattoo form. But it’s not just her tattoo that sets her apart. Morgan Godfery argues that, under Mahuta’s ministership, New Zealand’s commitment to prioritizing trading arrangements over global human rights issues may be changing.
French 106-year-old pianist to release sixth album
Colette Maze began playing the piano at age four to find warmth absent in her strict upbringing: she’s been going strong ever since and has a new album out in April.
US toddler to release debut album recorded in the womb
At the other end of the age spectrum a Brooklyn toddler is about to release her debut album, the world’s first LP made from sounds inside the womb.
The week in rodent-archy
Naked mole rats, I’m sorry to say, are absolutely hideous. Turns out they’re also pretty xenophobic. Scientists have discovered that naked mole rats speak in accents unique to their colonies and ignore rodents from different colonies. The accent of each colony is determined by the queen but can change if she is overthrown. This may be the first time that cultural transmission of dialect has been seen in small rodents and the study is causing quite a stir in the naked mole rat community.
Ivanka wants to be the next Kim Kardashian
Ivanka Trump is done empowering women. For years the heiress styled herself as a sort of Susan B Anthony in stilettos, working tirelessly to advance women’s rights. That mission has apparently been accomplished, and Ivanka has now moved on to a new passion project: criminals.
Ivanka spent her final hours in the White House frantically working with her daddy to grant pardons and commutations to 143 people. Some of those people had been locked up for decades for nonviolent drug offenses; many others, however, were Trump cronies and white-collar crooks. According to a new report from Axios, Ivanka wasn’t just helping these people out of the goodness of her heart; it was a calculated strategy. Ivanka apparently plans to use the platform of criminal justice reform to rehabilitate her image and re-emerge into public life.
Tying her brand to criminal justice reform, which is a bipartisan issue, is a savvy move by Ivanka. It gives her a way of worming herself back into liberals’ good books without alienating conservatives. It also doesn’t hurt that criminal justice reform has become rather glamorous. Over the last few years big-name celebrities like Kevin Hart, Jay-Z and Meek Mill have spoken out on the issue. And Kim Kardashian, of course, has made criminal justice reform her life’s work. (Although she still finds time to hawk shapewear and promote dubious diet products.)
And then there’s the fact that, unlike most things she sets her sights on, crime is something Ivanka appears eminently qualified to speak out on. There is, after all, a convicted felon in the family: her father-in-law, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to tax evasion and intimidating a witness (he hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, videotaped it, then sent the video to his sister to try to stop him testifying). Kushner, of course, got a pardon from Trump.
Criminal justice reform may theoretically be a bipartisan issue, but it’s important to note that there are very different interpretations of what that reform looks like in practice. For the left it means things like addressing structural racism and reallocating funding from police departments to community support. For the right it often seems to mean cutting costs by reducing the number of people in physical jails while finding new ways to police people. Ways which, conveniently enough, make private corporations and tech companies a lot of money. In 2018, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, warned that many recent criminal justice reforms contain the seeds of a frightening system of “e-carceration”.
Replacing cash bail with expensive ankle monitoring devices is one example of this. “Many reformers rightly point out that an ankle bracelet is preferable to a prison cell,” Alexander wrote. “Yet I find it difficult to call this progress. As I see it, digital prisons are to mass incarceration what Jim Crow was to slavery.”
As for Ivanka’s approach to criminal justice reform? One imagines that, just like her approach to women’s empowerment, it will be vacuous and self-serving. Still, she may need to serve herself sooner rather than later: the Trump Organization is facing a number of legal issues. One imagines a get-out-of-jail-free card would be very useful.
Man who talks a lot of rubbish thinks women talk too much
Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee, reckons women talk too much and cause meetings to “drag on”. When asked why he thinks that he replied: “I don’t talk to women that much these days, so I don’t know.” Seems like he doesn’t know a lot of things: while women are often stereotyped as chatty plenty of research shows men are by far the more garrulous sex in meetings and public forums.
Rashida Tlaib, AOC and the power of vulnerability
Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered emotional speeches about the US Capitol attack this week. These speeches weren’t just powerful; in many ways they were historic. As Moira Donegan wrote: “Vulnerability and power do not often go together, and certainly not in female politicians.” However, by opening up about her trauma, “AOC demonstrated that she was unwilling to concede that female vulnerability is incompatible with the dignity of power. Refusing to separate those two was a demonstration of her feminist vision, a gesture at what an authentic kind of power might look like.”
‘Sew bros’: the wholesome rise of men who stitch
George Clooney is one of them: he recently revealed he’s been sewing clothes for his kids during lockdown.
Mike Pence is starting a podcast to share good news about conservatism
Couldn’t he just take up sewing instead?
New Zealand’s Māori foreign minister is the perfect diplomat
Nanaia Mahuta is impossible to miss: she’s the first woman to sit in the country’s parliament wearing a moko kauae, an ancient Māori tattoo form. But it’s not just her tattoo that sets her apart. Morgan Godfery argues that, under Mahuta’s ministership, New Zealand’s commitment to prioritizing trading arrangements over global human rights issues may be changing.
French 106-year-old pianist to release sixth album
Colette Maze began playing the piano at age four to find warmth absent in her strict upbringing: she’s been going strong ever since and has a new album out in April.
US toddler to release debut album recorded in the womb
At the other end of the age spectrum a Brooklyn toddler is about to release her debut album, the world’s first LP made from sounds inside the womb.
The week in rodent-archy
Naked mole rats, I’m sorry to say, are absolutely hideous. Turns out they’re also pretty xenophobic. Scientists have discovered that naked mole rats speak in accents unique to their colonies and ignore rodents from different colonies. The accent of each colony is determined by the queen but can change if she is overthrown. This may be the first time that cultural transmission of dialect has been seen in small rodents and the study is causing quite a stir in the naked mole rat community.