In today’s newsletter, “Traitors” is over—what’s next up? And then, the workers who maintain America’s forests are getting fired. Plus:
• Mahmoud Khalil’s rights and the power of ICE
• Will Trump’s tariffs trigger a recession?
• Rachel Syme reviews the new Lady Gaga album
Kristen Doute, Michelle Lally and Brittany Cartwright in Bravo’s “The Valley”.Photograph by Casey Durkin / Bravo/ Getty
Naomi Fry
Fry has written about popular culture for the magazine since 2018.
If you’re still feeling pangs of pain after Tom Sandoval was eliminated from the latest season of “The Traitors,” which wrapped up last week, the first thing I’d suggest is to immediately go and stream all eleven seasons of “Vanderpump Rules,” also on Peacock. That’s where the legend of Sandy was famously established behind the mirrored bar of Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR restaurant and lounge. But who am I kidding? There’s hardly a person in my acquaintance who hasn’t already watched and rewatched this crown jewel of the Bravoverse. And so, I’d go a step further, and remind “V.P.R.”-heads that if they haven’t watched the first season of the “Vanderpump” spinoff “The Valley,” they absolutely must do so. “The Valley” doesn’t star Sandoval, but it does feature some major alumni of the “Vanderpump” universe: the nervy and mercurial Kristen Doute and the pathologically mendacious Jax Taylor, not to mention Taylor’s beleaguered wife, Brittany Cartwright. After being cast off by the main franchise a few seasons ago, these reality titans reëmerge stronger than ever.
The premise is simple: Doute and the Cartwright-Taylors have left West Hollywood and SUR behind for the Valley, in the hopes of living a more domestic life alongside a bunch of their friends in their thirties and forties—most of whom are married with kids. While the setup might seem, on its face, much duller than the drunken high-octane shenanigans we’ve loved to love on “Vanderpump,” worry not. It turns out married life in the suburbs is no joke, and the “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”-style drama that transpires on the mean streets of Valley Village is more than enough to satisfy any hardened reality-TV viewer. But hurry and begin watching now, so you’ll be ready for the second season of “The Valley,” which is premièring on Bravo on April 15th (and not a moment too soon).
Editor’s Pick
The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service
The Trump Administration has cut two thousand workers. What will happen to American woodlands?
Photograph by Ted Richardson / The Washington Post / Getty
The workers of the U.S. Forest Service are the caretakers of our nation’s woodlands. They prune them, study them, and work to keep them healthy and resilient. When the forests are threatened—by fire, by hurricane—these workers pitch in to protect them. And, after such disasters, they are on the front lines of the recovery.
In mid-February, rangers in North Carolina were busy directing funding to fix the bridges, roads, and trails that most urgently needed repair after Hurricane Helene when the Trump Administration, in its bid to shrink the federal bureaucracy, ordered the firing of at least two thousand Forest Service workers nationwide. Losing federal money and key employees will make it harder to battle ever-worsening wildfires and to respond to storms across the country, Peter Slevin writes in a new piece.
Slevin imbeds with Jenifer Bunty, a recently fired Forest Service specialist, to learn about her work, talk about the cuts, and figure out what’s coming next. “It’s really hard to let go of that mission, that drive that is bigger than myself,” Bunty says. When she told her daughters, ages five and seven, that she’d been fired, they didn’t understand the word. So she explained that it meant she couldn’t do her job. “They’re, like, ‘Wait, you don’t get to help the forest and the animals anymore?’ And they started to cry.”
Read the story »
For more on Trump’s downsizing: Read E. Tammy Kim on the threats to Social Security, Brad Wieners on the fired Yosemite locksmith who fought back, and Bill McKibben on the gutting of the E.P.A.
The Briefing Room
Demonstrators gather in New York’s Foley Square on Monday to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.Photograph by Marco Postigo Storel
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P.S. A “blood moon” total eclipse will be visible over North America tonight. Listen to Annie Dillard describe the terror of such eclipses. 🌕
Caroline Mimbs Nyce contributed to today’s edition.
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