The Atlantic

A Sadistic Immigration Stunt

Even border-security hawks should be horrified.
Source: Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty

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Ron DeSantis’s hideous political stunt is a reminder that the GOP’s policies are no longer about achieving results, but gratifying the basest impulses of MAGA voters.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.


Intention Matters

I am from Massachusetts, yet I have never been to Martha’s Vineyard. I now live in coastal Rhode Island, less than a hundred miles from the Vineyard, so Ron DeSantis’s idiotic and cruel attempt to dump human beings on the island during the off-season is something of a local story for me—but one that carries an important national lesson.

The Florida governor’s cartoonish assumption, apparently, was that liberal Bay Staters are just as racist, in politics, “weird can sometimes be worse than wrong.” In any case, the show was a fizzle: The locals provided the migrants with food and shelter, and sent students from an AP Spanish class at the local high school as translators.

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