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.
new video loaded: Trump’s War of Choice With Iran
By David E. Sanger, Gilad Thaler, Thomas Vollkommer and Laura Salaberry
March 1, 2026
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Some of the top rumored Democratic potential candidates for president in 2028 are showing a united front in opposing U.S. strikes on Iran, with several high-profile figures accusing President Donald Trump of launching an unnecessary and unconstitutional war.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump was “dragging the United States into a war the American people do not want.”
“Let me be clear: I am opposed to a regime-change war in Iran, and our troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice,” Harris said in a statement Saturday following the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes throughout Iran.
“This is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with American lives that also jeopardizes stability in the region and our standing in the world,” she continued. “What we are witnessing is not strength. It is recklessness dressed up as resolve.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are leading Democratic 2028 hopefuls who spoke out against U.S. strikes on Iran. (Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference; Reuters/Liesa Johannssen; Mario Tama/Getty Images)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered some of his sharpest criticism during a book tour stop Saturday night in San Francisco, accusing Trump of manufacturing a crisis.
“It stems from weakness masquerading as strength,” Newsom said. “He lied to you. So reckless is the only way to describe this.”
“He didn’t describe to the American people what the endgame is here,” Newsom added. “There wasn’t one. He manufactured it.”
Newsom is currently promoting his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” with recent and upcoming stops in South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada — three key early voting states in the Democratic presidential calendar.
Earlier in the day, Newsom said Iran’s “corrupt and repressive” regime must never obtain nuclear weapons and that the “leadership of Iran must go.”
“But that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people,” Newsom wrote on X.
California is home to more than half of the roughly 400,000 Iranian immigrants in the United States, including a large community in West Los Angeles often referred to as “Tehrangeles.”
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a leading progressive voice and “Squad” member, accused Trump of dragging Americans into a conflict they did not support.
“The American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions. This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“Just this week, Iran and the United States were negotiating key measures that could have staved off war. The President walked away from these discussions and chose war instead,” she continued.
“In moments of war, our Constitution is unambiguous: Congress authorizes war. The President does not,” she said, pledging to vote “YES on Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s War Powers Resolution.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker criticized the strikes and accused Trump of ignoring Congress. (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Vox Media)
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another Democrat often mentioned as a potential 2028 contender, also criticized the strikes and accused Trump of ignoring Congress.
“No justification, no authorization from Congress, and no clear objective,” Pritzker wrote on X.
“Donald Trump is once again sidestepping the Constitution and once again failing to explain why he’s taking us into another war,” he continued. “Americans asked for affordable housing and health care, not another potentially endless conflict.”
“God protect our troops,” Pritzker added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro focused his criticism on war powers, arguing Trump acted outside constitutional guardrails.
“In our democracy, the American people — through our elected representatives — decide when our nation goes to war,” Shapiro said, adding that Trump “acted unilaterally — without Congressional approval.”
JONATHAN TURLEY: TRUMP STRIKES IRAN — PRECEDENT AND HISTORY ARE ON HIS SIDE
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro focused his criticism on war powers, arguing Trump acted outside constitutional guardrails. (Rachel Wisniewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Make no mistake, the Iranian regime represses its own people… they must never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons,” he said. “But that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war.”
Shapiro added that “Congress must use all available power” to prevent further escalation.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also accused Trump of launching a “war of choice.”
“The President has launched our nation and our great military into a war of choice, risking American lives and resources, ignoring American law, and endangering our allies and partners,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “This nation learned the hard way that an unnecessary war, with no plan for what comes next, can lead to years of chaos and put America in still greater danger.”
Buttigieg has been hitting early voting states, stopping in New Hampshire and Nevada in recent weeks to campaign for Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who has been floated as a rising national figure within the party, said he lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war and opposed the strikes.
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“Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die,” Gallego wrote on X.
Fox News’ Daniel Scully and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
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Politics
Commentary: With midterm vote starting, here’s where things stand in national redistricting fight
Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.
Whether it’s stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn’t like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family’s fortune, Trump’s guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What’s in it for me?
Trump is no student of history. He’s famously allergic to books. But he knows enough to know that midterm elections like the one in November have, with few exceptions, been ugly for the party holding the presidency.
With control of the House — and Trump’s virtually unchecked authority — dangling by a gossamer thread, he reckoned correctly that Republicans were all but certain to lose power this fall unless something unusual happened.
So he effectively broke the rules.
Normally, the redrawing of the country’s congressional districts takes place once every 10 years, following the census and accounting for population changes over the previous decade. Instead, Trump prevailed upon the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to throw out the state’s political map and refashion congressional lines to wipe out Democrats and boost GOP chances of winning as many as five additional House seats.
The intention was to create a bit of breathing room, as Democrats need a gain of just three seats to seize control of the House.
In relatively short order, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with his own partisan gerrymander. He rallied voters to pass a tit-for-tat ballot measure, Proposition 50, which revised the state’s political map to wipe out Republicans and boost Democratic prospects of winning as many as five additional seats.
Then came the deluge.
In more than a dozen states, lawmakers looked at ways to tinker with their congressional maps to lift their candidates, stick it to the other party and gain House seats in November.
Some of those efforts continue, including in Virginia where, as in California, voters are being asked to amend the state Constitution to let majority Democrats redraw political lines ahead of the midterm. A special election is set for April 21.
But as the first ballots of 2026 are cast on Tuesday — in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas — the broad contours of the House map have become clearer, along with the result of all those partisan machinations. The likely upshot is a nationwide partisan shift of fewer than a handful of seats.
The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which has a sterling decades-long record of election forecasting, said the most probable outcome is a wash. “At the end of the day,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, “this doesn’t really benefit either party in a real way.”
Well.
That was a lot of wasted time and energy.
Let’s take a quick spin through the map and the math, knowing that, of course, there are no election guarantees.
In Texas, for instance, new House districts were drawn assuming Latinos would back Republican candidates by the same large percentage they supported Trump in 2024. But that’s become much less certain, given the backlash against his draconian immigration enforcement policies; numerous polls show a significant falloff in Latino support for the president, which could hurt GOP candidates up and down the ballot.
But suppose Texas Republicans gain five seats as hoped for and California Democrats pick up the five seats they’ve hand-crafted. The result would be no net change.
Elsewhere, under the best case for each party, a gain of four Democratic House seats in Virginia would be offset by a gain of four Republican House seats in Florida.
That leaves a smattering of partisan gains here and there. A combined pickup of four or so Republican seats in Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri could be mostly offset by Democratic gains of a seat apiece in New York, Maryland and Utah.
(The latter is not a result of legislative high jinks, but rather a judge throwing out the gerrymandered map passed by Utah Republicans, who ignored a voter-approved ballot measure intended to prevent such heavy-handed partisanship. A newly created district, contained entirely within Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, seems certain to go Democrats’ way in November.)
In short, it’s easy to characterize the political exertions of Trump, Abbott, Newsom and others as so much sound and fury producing, at bottom, little to nothing.
But that’s not necessarily so.
The campaign surrounding Proposition 50 delivered a huge political boost to Newsom, shoring up his standing with Democrats, significantly raising his profile across the country and, not least for his 2028 presidential hopes, helping the governor build a significant nationwide fundraising base.
In crimson-colored Indiana, Republicans refused to buckle under tremendous pressure from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other party leaders, rejecting an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map and give the GOP a hold on all nine House seats. That showed even Trump’s Svengali-like hold on his party has its limits.
But the biggest impact is also the most corrosive.
By redrawing political lines to predetermine the outcome of House races, politicians rendered many of their voters irrelevant and obsolete. Millions of Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California and partisans in other states have been effectively disenfranchised, their voices rendered mute. Their ballots spindled and nullified.
In short, the politicians — starting with Trump — extended a big middle finger to a large portion of the American electorate.
Is it any wonder, then, so many voters hold politicians and our political system in contempt?
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