Politics
Review: Yes, we give you permission to hate-read ‘American Canto’
“You cannot outrun your life on fire,” writes political journalist — and recent tabloid darling — Olivia Nuzzi in the opening pages of her much-anticipated memoir, “American Canto.”
The release of “American Canto” will no doubt stoke that fire — not extinguish it — if the latter was Nuzzi’s wish when her reputation went up in flames about a year ago. As the result of revelations of an alleged affair with her interview subject, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who has denied it) during his run for president, Nuzzi was notoriously fired from her job as Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. Her fiancé — political reporter Ryan Lizza — broke off their engagement. A frenzied media storm has since ensued, in which Nuzzi is either victim or perpetrator, depending on your point of view. With “the debris of her life” littering the planet, Nuzzi fled the East Coast for a secluded bungalow in the Southern California hills, where she vowed to no longer “see myself, the character of myself imagined by others, viral allegory of hubris, female avatar of Icarus, stripped and left for dead in a pool of wax.” She recounts pledging “a vow of silence,” and “to fall silent in myself, too.” Further, she writes that “I do not wish to be understood, which no one seems to understand.”
Author Olivia Nuzzi.
(Emilio Madrid / Photo from Simon & Schuster)
In writing “American Canto,” while Nuzzi has broken her vow of silence — smashing it into smithereens and setting off a wave of public retribution by Lizza — she has succeeded brilliantly in her wish not to be understood. Nuzzi emerges less as someone who, in the words of her publisher, “walked through hell and she took notes,” but as a woman whose version of the events that laid her low remain stubbornly unprocessed — as blurry and borderless as the book itself.
Nuzzi has been a keen political observer, praised, for example, by legendary longtime editor Tina Brown for her “unabashed bravura” and “vivid, irreverent coverage” — which is no doubt among the talents that led Vanity Fair to risk hiring her, post-scandal, as their West Coast editor earlier this year. And those skills helped establish Nuzzi as an emerging media star in the first place, with ready access to the biggest names in politics. But in the pages of “American Canto,” those storytelling skills falter, as the author loses the narrative thread — avoiding confrontation even as she plunges into it. Where exactly is she going with all of this?, one can’t help but wonder. “It is inconceivable,” Nuzzi writes of the paparazzi who stalk her, “that someone would choose to allow a crisis to go to waste, would not want to make of their attention more attention, would not want to reap some kind of short-term profit from the mess of their life.” But isn’t “American Canto” an attempt to enter the belly of that beast?
Nuzzi’s aim in offering this account remains cloudy, but readers looking for a mea culpa won’t find it here. The author’s few attempts at regret or self-reflection don’t land, nor do her efforts to contrive a kind of contemporary, Didion-inspired journalistic style that mixes meticulous observation with first-person intimacy. Court transcripts, transcripts of conversations Nuzzi’s had with other reporters and snapshots of a D.C. politico’s high life collide with one another in disjointed chapters that eschew timelines and zigzag among subjects. There are lengthy digressions involving, say, the puzzling practices of an American flag warehouse, or the time the FBI apparently investigated the author of the children’s book “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” Nuzzi intends these as part of a larger mosaic, and while they are occasionally intriguing, they exist as fragments, precluding any possibility of narrative momentum.
Yes, Nuzzi does provide some sharply insightful perspectives on Trump she gained through her “method reporting style” and talent for “talking to people who are abhorrent,” though she largely withholds judgement of the man she likens to a king who has been run out of his castle, after Biden’s election. Trump now “must resurrect himself,” she writes, “project the self that he wishes the world to see, and he must see it so clear that through his insistent clarity he conjures the vision for others until is it not a vision at all but the truth of his existence and the truth of yours.” She’s a witness to his powers of destruction. “His lawlessness inspired lawlessness. His rejection of norms called norms into question,” she notes. But when her alleged lover, Kennedy, comes to her for advice on whether he should align with Trump, all she can muster is to approach “his dilemma Socratically.” In those moments, Nuzzi writes, she asked Kennedy, “How do you feel when you visualize standing onstage and endorsing the Democrat?” He responds, “Nauseous.” Then she asks, “How do you feel when you visualize standing onstage and endorsing the Republican?” “Nauseous,” he responds. It’s important to Nuzzi that she maintain neutrality, apparently blind to her own bias. While Kennedy had acute misgivings about either choice, Nuzzi reports that the Trump option “seemed the surest way of maximizing his influence.” However, she adds that Kennedy was “clear-eyed about the president himself.” He always thought of Trump “as a novel: hundreds of lies that amounted to one big truth.” What that truth is, we’re left to guess.
In Lizza’s widely-circulated revenge series of Substacks meant to counter any negativity Nuzzi aims at him in “American Canto” — and in fairness, his presence barely registers, except that he may have set off the entire hullabaloo — he suggests his ex’s most egregious transgression was journalistic. Yes, Nuzzi cheated on him with a famous married man, but she was also aiding and abetting that man politically through her writing. Lizza also alleges that Nuzzi may have helped quash negative coverage of Kennedy, and that her coverage of Biden was potentially tainted by her desire to protect the man she was in love with. While she skirts this fundamental issue in the book, Nuzzi does affirm her inexplicably passionate feelings for Kennedy. She writes that she “loved that he was insatiable in all ways,” and when he threw himself down onto the bed of their hotel room, “his pink shirt unbuttoned, revealing my favorite parts of his chest.” She shares in her pages that Kennedy “told me he loved me,” after which she realizes that “the sound of him made me smile, that the sight of him made me smile, that just the thought of him made me smile.” Even in his “darkness,” she saw “softness.” He tells Nuzzi that what he felt for her was as powerful as “waves knocking me down.” What drew them together? Nuzzi writes that “we were both of us, vain, and our shared reverence for physical beauty, was in part, what bonded us.” That bond wouldn’t hold: when their alleged relationship threatened Kennedy’s position, he denied it had ever transpired.
Nuzzi describes the grief she feels over this betrayal, but from a distance, shrouded in verbosity. What she’d experienced, she writes, “was a kind of death … one that called for a period of griefless mourning. It was the death of an idea. An idea of self. Not of self itself. Not of myself. But of an iteration of myself.” I get it, but … ?
“American Canto” contains no footnotes or sourcing, and its main players are referred to not by name, but using designations such as “the Politician” (for Kennedy), “the Personality” or “the South African tech billionaire” — presumably for Elon Musk. Nuzzi claims to have a near-photographic memory for recalling conversations, which she relies on here to recount some of the book’s central events. There’s a maddening quality to these editorial choices that make it difficult to view Nuzzi as a character worthy of sympathy — which after all, may not be what she was trying for.
And yet that’s what we crave. We want to be able to root for this woman, whose misguided love led her to egregious personal and professional compromises she hasn’t reckoned with here. In real life, Nuzzi may have risked it all, but as an author, she hasn’t been as fearless, using words as armor, not conduit. It’s an understandably protective posture, but not one that has produced a memoir of consequence.
Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.
Politics
Trump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC
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President Donald Trump mocked the Islamic Revolutionary Guard on Sunday morning for staking claim to a Strait of Hormuz “blockade” the U.S. military had already put in place.
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.
“In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’”
Trump declared Saturday’s IRGC fire was “a total violation” of the ceasefire.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” his post began.
“Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations.”
Trump remains hopeful about diplomacy, but is not ruling out a return to force, where he once warned about ending “civilation” in Iran as they know it.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump’s stern warning continued.
“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.
Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.
And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.
By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.
Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.
Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.
The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.
“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.
People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”
“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.
So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.
“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”
Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.
The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.
Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.
“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”
The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.
“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”
Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”
Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.
Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”
A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.
“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.
“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
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