Jonathan Blitzer

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer |“Everyone Who

Throughout the fall and winter, Alexis Romero de Hernández struggled to accept a grim new routine. She lived in a small town in central Venezuela called Capacho, with her husband and the younger of her two sons. Her eldest, a thirty-one-year-old makeup artist named Andry José Hernández Romero, was being held in an immigration jail in San Diego. He called her every few days, usually late in the afternoon, to reassure her that he was safe. The calls would last about a minute.

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Jonathan Blitzer

Lawmakers in Austin had considered Perry “House trained,” Sarah Davis, a former Republican representative from Houston, told me. “His office would call and say he’s not going to sign this bill. With Abbott, you’d get a call after it was vetoed.” Staffers in the governor’s office sometimes referred to Abbott’s review of legislation as his “ruling period.” “What I found interesting is the similarity between being a judge and being a governor,” Abbott later told the Austin American-Statesman.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer |“Everyone Who

The Wall Ranch, in Eagle Pass, Texas, occupies a thousand acres of scrubland along the Mexican border. Several times a day, freight trains coming from Mexico stop on the southern edge of the property, where a large X-ray machine scans the cars to check if people are hiding inside. One morning in early January, the ranch’s owner, Martín Wall, a forty-five-year-old cattleman and a seventh-generation Texan, showed me around.

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Jonathan Blitzer

NowEver since their explosive debut single “HEAVY METAL” dropped in 2021, music fans and journalists alike have scrambled to project some deeper meaning onto LA-raised rap duo Paris Texas. What does their name mean? Are they the new rap-rock revival? Is this the death of genre? Last week’s surprise …

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer |“Everyone Who

The military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has long occupied a blighted corner of the American legal system. Multiple Administrations have tried, and failed, to close the facility, which opened in 2002 and at one point held nearly eight hundred terrorism suspects, commonly called “the worst of the worst” because of their purported ties to the attacks of 9/11. Many of them spent at least a decade there without facing actual charges or having a trial.