Martin Gelin

My first piece from Paris for @washingtonpost : In two decades, Paris has cut car traffic in half, doubled the number of metro stations and tripled affordable housing units. The reinvention of Paris is described vividly in Simon Kuper’s “Impossible City.” washingtonpost.com/books/2024/06/…

This is my last post on this platform. In January, my first book in English will be published internationally. It's the story of how racism poisoned American democracy. It's based on two decades of research . bookshop.org/p/books/the-wh…

THIS IS HUGE. Paris City Hall has announced that starting on Monday, Paris will limit (not ban) car traffic in the city centre, as cities like Ghent have done. They’re creating a limited traffic zone (ZTL) about 2 sq miles in size, to clean the air & create more space for people.

.@WIRED reports that FB is enabling militias to organize. It is even autogenerating Groups for them. After 8 years of this, Congress and the legal system have failed to do anything to rein in this company.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, on his interview with John Kelly: “I think this was probably the most shocking for him — the idea that Donald Trump would regularly tell him how much he admired Hitler.”

Trump’s ex-chief of staff says he is a fascist and would govern as a dictator on.ft.com/40emzGU

Elon Musk is openly trying to buy this election for Trump. He is skating close to the legal line when he offers rewards to voters, but Citizens United opened the floodgates for billionaires to have outsized power in elections. Voters can resist oligarchy. popular.info/p/why-elon-mus…

Having Medicare cover in-home care for the elderly is the single most substantive (and, I think, materially beneficial) policy proposal either candidate has offered in this race, and as far as I can tell, it's gotten almost no attention from the press, or on social media.

"Paris, la seule ville au monde où coule un fleuve encadré par deux rangées de livres." Blaise Cendrars

Det är inte ovanligt att också judar idag anklagas för antisemitism – av partier och personer som gömmer sitt historiska judehat bakom sitt nyväckta muslimhat och sitt ideologiska stöd för Israels etno-nationalistiska ockupations- och kolonisationspolitik.

This isn’t getting nearly enough attention. Phoenix may have just experienced the most extraordinary heatwave in American history. The city endured 21 consecutive days of record-breaking high temperatures, shattering the previous record of 14 days set in Burlington, Iowa, during the Dust Bowl Era in 1936. Today marked the first day since September 24th that Phoenix didn’t hit a new record high. Truly mind-blowing.

Elon Musk is funding antisemitic ads targeting Muslim and Arab American voters in Michigan, aiming to suppress Democratic turnout by highlighting Harris’s pro-Israel positions and her husband's Jewish identity. huffpost.com/entry/elon-mus…

Carl Bernstein: In this election, there is either going to be “a reaffirmation of regular political order in this country,” or “there's going to be a real triumph of fascism, in which good, well-meaning Republicans have allowed themselves to get carried down this path...”

Never thought I'd see the day that Karl Rove backed a Democrat for the White House. He'll lose friends over this.

Paris is getting a whole new Metro network. It’s huge. And built fast. “The venerable Paris Métro is about to get its most significant upgrade in decades with the arrival of the Grand Paris Express, a new 200km system with 4 new lines & 68 new stations.” cnn.com/travel/paris-n…

It’s incredibly worrying when @RUSI_org is publishing this. We need to listen rusi.org/explore-our-re…

The real reason Texas can't control its border: it needs the migrants too badly. For 8 months, I've investigated undocumented construction workers, the bosses hiring them, and the politicians who look the other way: texasmonthly.com/news-politics/…

In today's @nytopinion, I argue that there is a bipartisan consensus on China but that Trump is outside it. If he returns, he will again undermine it by putting self-interest first. That could cost the US the decisive decade in the competition. Thread and link below:

Norway is the richest country with the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world. It constantly kowtows for China to sell a bit more salmon there, and it is being more stingy than other Scandinavian countries with its aid to Ukraine. Why? dagbladet.no/nyheter/store-…

this is so moving - and so urgently important. But its tragic tone recognises that the battle for truth and reality is likely lost. And with it, America.

The electoral effect of this is hard to measure. But the constant normalizing and sanitizing of Trump combined with the disproportionate critique of Harris in order to provide “balance” and the semblance of “neutrality” is evidently bad.