On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a landmark 7-2 ruling affecting millions of aging and disabled people: Providers of federally funded health services like Medicaid or Medicare, the court ruled—such as public and private nursing homes—can be sued by individuals for failures and lapses in care.

Following the death of 85-year-old Gorgi “Jorgo” Talevski in October 2021, his surviving family members sued the state-run Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana, alleging that Talevski’s nursing home gave him psychotropic drugs as restraints and attempted to involuntarily discharge him to a facility for people with dementia. Talevski’s family claimed that his treatment violated restrictions on chemical restraints and patient discharge set by the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, 1987 legislation that “establishes the minimum standards of care” for Medicaid-backed nursing homes, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Oral arguments were heard in November. 

This week, the court found in favor of the Talevski estate, upholding a decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting. A lower court had found that private citizens had no standing to sue. Given the conservative makeup of the court, a ruling in Talevski’s favor wasn’t certain: instead of guaranteeing key protections, the justices could have gutted the civil rights of disabled and aging people.

But the legislation “unambiguously” grants individual rights, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in the majority opinion, including the “right to be free from unnecessary chemical restraints”—those “imposed for purposes of discipline or convenience” and not medically required—and “to be discharged or transferred only when certain preconditions are met.” Patients and their families, Health and Hospital Corp had argued, weren’t entitled to enforce those rights.

“We have no doubt,” Jackson wrote, “that HHC wishes [Section] 1983 said something else.”

As the ramifications of Donald Trump’s historic federal indictment over his mishandling of classified documents rapidly unfold—and stunning details continue to emerge—I feel compelled to pause and turn your attention to page 12 of the 37-count criminal indictment against the former president to note: This is repulsive.

Here you will set your eyes on a hideous Mar-a-Lago bathroom that, according to federal investigators, was used to store boxes of classified information, one of several locations where sensitive information was uncovered throughout Trump’s property after the FBI descended onto his Palm Beach residence last summer. (The other rooms: his bedroom, a ballroom, an office.)

A Mar-a-Lago bathroom outfitted with two chandeliers, over 30 boxes of documents, and a box of Kleenex deserves specific recognition, for it singularly captures the stunning idiocy of our former president.

Let the image’s unique Trumpian mix of gaudiness, stupidity, and corruption haunt each Republican defending Trump against charges he reportedly admits to committing on tape. May it guide federal prosecutors into wearing hazmat suits to protect themselves from filth. Let the garishness overwhelm you with reminders that American voters actually elected Donald J. Trump—a corrupt businessman with a history of sexual assault allegations, who partied with Jeffrey Epstein, and is the patriarch of a tasteless, exceedingly annoying family—to the White House, and that it might happen all over again.

Check out the American dream. It’s next to the shitter.

The federal indictment of Donald Trump and his valet Waltine Nauta on 38 counts of retaining and withholding national security information, conspiring to obstruct justice, and lying to the FBI that was unsealed today is historic…and wild. It shows Trump at his Trumpiest, scheming to cheat, evading responsibility and accountability, lying, and apparently breaking the law. Of course, just allegedly. Since nothing has been proven, and he’s presumed innocent until there is a verdict. But overall, the indictment depicts Trump as a conniver who acts like a mob boss—perhaps a sloppy mob boss. He orders an underling to move boxes containing classified records so his lawyer won’t find the secret documents when he reviews Trump’s stash. He parks his booty in a shower stall in a bathroom. When an initial review uncovers several dozen classified documents, Trump signals to his lawyer—with a “plucking motion”—that this attorney should remove some of these documents from the folder they are in and make them disappear. 

It’s all a bit comical but certainly damn serious. You have to wonder what Roy Cohn, the sleazy lawyer for Mafia bosses and other crooks who was something of a mentor for Trump, would say, were he still alive. Surely, there must have been a smarter way to steal and conceal government secrets. Would Cohn be disappointed with Trump’s carelessness in pulling off this caper?

The case against Trump looks strong. But it’s special counsel Jack Smith’s job to present a good first impression with the indictment. No doubt, there will be much shouting and many complications ahead in this case. Yet what has been revealed today is pure Trump. Here are some highlights—or lowlights—that caught my eye as I read the document.

Yeah, this is just fine, right? pic.twitter.com/hVtgKOJmlc

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) June 9, 2023

The National Gallery of Canada has announced Jean-François Belisle as its next director and CEO.

Belisle will succeed interim director and CEO Angela Cassie, who has served since June 2022, and his five-year term will start on July 17.

“I believe that art can change society, and look forward to collaborating with the Gallery’s staff, as well as artists from across the country, to ensure our institution continues to be a fantastic force for good,” Belisle stated in a press release, emphasizing collaborative national projects, and working on increasing the presence of Canadian artists on the international art scene. “I also intend to engage with donors; and undertake consultations with the Gallery’s partners and other important stakeholders, including various national arts institutions and associations.”

Belisle is currently the executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ), a regional art institution located about 30 miles northeast of Montreal in the suburb of Joliette. Prior to the MAJ, Belisle was the co-founder and executive director of the private contemporary art foundation Arsenal, and the executive director of Association des galeries d’art contemporain (AGAC), a nonprofit organization for commercial Canadian art galleries.

Gallery Board of Trustee chair Françoise Lyon called Belisle a “proven leader with an ability to advance the National Gallery of Canada’s five-year roadmap, Transform Together“. The museum’s strategic plan was released in May 2021, under previous director and chief executive officer Sasha Suda.

A catastrophic dam collapse in southern Ukraine has reportedly flooded the house museum of late artist Polina Rayko, whose image of a dove has been adopted as a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion.

The Kakhova dam on the Dnieper River collapsed Tuesday, flooding dozens of regions in Ukraine and leaving thousands homeless and tens of thousands without clean drinking water, per the Associated Press. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of deliberately destroying the dam, a move Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later described as an act of “ecoterrorism”. The Russian military has denied any wrongdoing.

Rayko’s museum, located in the artist’s hometown of Oleshky, was a priceless repository of her life’s work. A self-taught artist, she channeled her harrowing biography into lyrical visions of fauna and flora, most of which painted directly onto the walls, ceilings, and doors of her home. “As of now (7/6/23 6:00 p.m.), I know that the house with the frescoes is under water,” Simon Khramtsov, the head of a foundation that manages Rayko’s legacy, in a Facebook post, as quoted by the Art Newspaper.

Rayko, who was born in 1928, began teaching herself to paint at the age of 69, after a traumatic experience in the Second World War and the death of her daughter in a car accident. Following her death in 2004, her work drew international acclaim similarly to that of another Ukrainian folk artist, Maria Prymachenko, whose museum near Kyiv was shelled by Russian missiles in the first month of the war.

Artists, historians, and museum professionals have since shared their regret for the loss of Rayko’s home on social media.

A field of ancient stones in Carnac, a town in northern France, has been swept away to make room for a hardware store chain, France 24 reported Thursday.

“The site has been destroyed,” Carnac-based archaeologist Christian Obeltz told Agence France Presse of the local pre-historic treasure. The 39 stones were around two to four feet in height and thought to be around 7,000 years old. 

While these particular stones were close to a protected site where 3,000 similar stones known as menhirs exist, the land they were on was not protected. Last August, hardware chain Mr. Bricolage successfully applied for a building permit on the land to open a new store. 

The mayor of Carnac, Olivier Lepick, told AFP that those stones in particular were “of low archaeological value” and that the site had been inspected prior to the start of construction, as required by law. 

The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which oversees cultural sites like the menhir fields in Carnac followed suit, releasing a statement earlier this week that said given “the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established.”

The Supreme Court’s surprise ruling upholding the use of the Voting Rights Act in cases challenging political maps is likely to affect the 2024 elections and beyond—though how big the impact will be depends on how quickly courts across the country move in multiple cases challenging racial gerrymandering schemes.

Thursday’s opinion in Allen v. Milligan came out of Alabama, where civil rights groups alleged that the Voting Rights Act required the state two draw two districts where Black voters are likely to elect their preferred candidate instead of just one. And it is there where the case will have its most obvious effect. “Black voters in Alabama are entitled to an additional opportunity district in the upcoming election,” says Yurij Rudensky, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

In Louisiana and Georgia, similar cases brought by civil rights groups and voters targeting maps enacted by Republican legislatures were awaiting Milligan‘s outcome. Now that the Alabama case has been decided in favor of the maps’ challengers, it is likely that both Louisiana and even Georgia could see new maps in 2024. If they do, each state could end up with an additional congressional seat with a large African-American population that would favor Democrats.

In 2013, the Supreme Court put an end to the Voting Right’s Act’s preclearance process—a system where states with a history of discrimination had to get approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before changing election procedure, including issuing new political maps. When, ahead of the 2022 midterms, new census data was released and redistricting took place, it was the first time lines were redrawn nationwide without such oversight. That led to a large number of maps that likely discriminated against voters of color. In Alabama, the district court that first heard the Milligan case found that the Republican-controlled legislature had likely diluted Black votes in violation of Section 2 of the VRA and ordered a new map put in place for 2022. But in February 2022, the Supreme Court blocked that decision, allowing that year’s election to be conducted under the discriminatory map. It was too close to voting to put a new one in place, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained.

Similarly, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop a Louisiana-based court that found the state’s 2022 map likely violated the VRA from putting a new map in place for 2022 until the high court decided the Alabama case. The delay effectively preserved two GOP seats and cost Black voters a chance to elect their preferred candidates. In Georgia, a district court found that state lawmakers’ proposals for their own districts, as well as the congressional lines they drew, may have violated the law, but, taking a cue from the Supreme Court, ruled it was too close to the 2022 elections to make new maps. Redistricting schemes now being challenged for violating the VRA and the Constitution in Texas and Florida likewise were in effect in 2022.

As Donald Trump prepares to fight his second indictment in two months—the latest stemming from Department of Justice allegations that he mishandled classified documents after leaving office—he seems to be facing a major, self-inflicted problem. Multiple news outlets are now reporting that they have obtained the transcript of an audio recording that appears to capture Trump bragging about retaining secret documents.

“Secret. This is secret information,” Trump says in the conversation, according to the transcript CNN received. “Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me.”

Perhaps more critically, the transcript also reportedly shows that Trump admitted to not declassifying the documents he is heard bragging about in the recording. This would significantly undermine Trump’s previous assertion that as president, he could declassify anything he wanted by merely “thinking about it“—and that the documents he retained were, therefore, no longer classified. Trump’s own lawyers notably declined to support that shaky defense after the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, which, of course, uncovered among many items, dozens of empty folders marked “classified.”

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump reportedly says in the bombshell transcript.

The New York Times reports that the remark prompted a woman in the room to reply, “Now we have a problem.”

Like many households over the past year, Jose and his family were being squeezed by rising costs. “Everything is going up,” he said. “The food. The cost of day care.” To free up space in their budget, they turned to a company promoted by their apartment complex: Flex. A booming tech startup based in New York City, Flex says it helps consumers “improve cash flow” by splitting their monthly rent into two manageable installments instead of a single, larger payment.

The process was supposed to be simple. Flex offers to pay its customers’ rent—in full—directly to the landlord. For their part, customers pay their rent to Flex in two installments, one due at the beginning of the month and one later in the month. In essence, Flex promises to front a big chunk of the rent, allowing families to spread out one of their largest expenses.

To Jose, this sounded like a good deal. “It was pretty much beyond convenient to split our rent,” he said. “That’s the reason why we used Flex—to make sure we can cover day care and have food in our house.”

But by August, what had started as a lifeline turned into a source of significant financial stress, after Flex issued confusing instructions. At the time, Jose said, his wife was set to receive a direct deposit on the fifth day of the month. The rent was due to their landlord company two days earlier, on the third of the month. But Jose said he was under the impression that Flex would pay the rent so long as funds were available in the family’s account by the fifth.

Jose’s belief was reinforced by a text message from Flex that said, “Please make sure you have funds available for your first payment of $585.25 by the 5th* in order for Flex to help you cover this month’s rent payment.” That message was accompanied by a perplexing caveat: “*disclaimer: if Flex has sent you a specific email stating a different deadline for payment, that email takes precedence.”

Julian Maclaren-Ross’s 1947 novel, Of Love and Hunger, is a defiantly unedifying English comedy about a vacuum-cleaner salesman trying to keep his chin up in the gloom of prewar Brighton. Its not-quite-forgotten (if never-exactly-acclaimed) author has been on my radar ever since I learned that he was the model for the bohemian novelist character X. Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. That monumental roman-fleuve of English life happened to be a significant inspiration for a project of my own—a novel about the seventies London I grew up in, an excerpt of which appears in the new Summer issue of the Review—so when I found myself trying to think of a book that one of my middle-aged characters might have read in her youth, the Maclaren-Ross novel sprang to mind, and I finally read it. As it turned out, I don’t think my character, a tortured soul who tends to find everything “ghastly,” would have enjoyed it. She would have found the seedy boarding houses and tearooms and pubs that comprise its setting “ghastly”; she‘d have found the petty swindling and debt-dodging antics of the protagonist and his fellow salesmen “ghastly,” and she’d have found his unapologetic romance with the wife of an absent colleague “too ghastly for words.” But I couldn’t get enough of it. There’s nothing obviously brilliant about the writing or plotting, both of which tend toward the studiedly humdrum. (“Two more cars passed, then a bus.”) But somehow its little throwaway visions of fleeting bliss snatched from abiding squalor got under my skin. I haven’t enjoyed a novel so much in ages. 

—James Lasdun, author of “Helen”

Recently, I’ve been listening to old demo tapes by the Cure on repeat. I like hearing the rough and sometimes fragile beginnings of their songs. A demo feels more like it’s breathing—it’s not fixed. It has been through fewer hands and there’s something enthralling about that. The song is still thinking. The demo for “Six Different Ways” sounds underwater but the essence is there—maybe even more than in the finished song. There is a thinness, a wobbliness, and a directness to the recording—a distinctly temporary quality—not perfection—not in tune always. More the act of making a root.