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 MARCH 2019
ISSUE 1325

WO M E N
SHAPING
the FUTURE
Nancy Pelosi and the
New Voices of the House
Plus
Brandi Carlile, Stevie Nicks, Stacey Abrams Jahana Hayes ,

and the Women of NASA’s Mission to Mars Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez ,
Pelosi and
Ilhan Omar
 PART 3 The Germs, Bad Brains, PART 4 Despite itself, punk breaks
PART 1 The proto-punks of the big, highlighting the talents of Nirvana,
PART 2 The Ramones visit London Black Flag, DOA and others dump gas on
Detroit scene, including the Stooges and Bad Religion and Green Day while women
in 1976 to discover a vibrant UK punk smoldering rage and alienation in
MC5, put the 60s to bed in 1968 and roar onto the scene in defining bands
scene who reciprocate with a second America’s suburbs, igniting a blazing
reinvigorate the New York art music such as Bikini Kill and L7, establishing
British invasion of America, culminating form of punk so extreme they call it
scene of the early 70s, inspiring the punk as an enduring force, its spirit
in the Sex Pistols' disastrous US tour and hardcore which, in turn, inspires a DIY 
New York Dolls and the Ramones, giving living on in the broader culture as we
flameout in 1978.  culture and network that spans cities and
outsiders a milieu to express themselves know it today.
bands across the continent and comes to
and start a revolution.
define the genre.
 Heavier. Metal.
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The Mix
19 Billie Eilish’s
Teenage Truths
How an unfiltered 17-year-
old singer became pop’s
new conscience.
BY JONAH WEINER

21 Neil Young Opens

His Vault
After 30 years, Young’s
entire catalog is now
available to fans via an
interactive website.
BY ANDY GREENE

26 The True Story

of Mötley Crüe
How the metal band’s
riotous memoir turned into
a wild Netflix original.
BY KORY GROW

ROB SHEFFIELD
27 The Year of Cher
There’s no other career
quite like hers in the
history of pop music,
and it’s hitting a new peak.

28 Jenny Lewis
Starts Over
After saying goodbye to
her mom, she found a new
clarity in art and life.
BY JONAH WEINER

Random
Notes
30 On the Road
and Behind
the Scenes
Gary Clark Jr. meets
Sen. Kamala Harris, Little
Steven hits the picket line,

28
and Cardi’s money moves.

National Jenny Lewis

Affairs “I’ve always brought that jam
vibe with me wherever I go. I feel
compelled to play music, to play
33 Trump’s Swamp with people, or I’ll go crazy.”
Creatures
A special report from
the capital finds it awash
in foreign money and
swampier than ever. Reviews TV
88 Aidy Bryant Faces
Movies
91 Wild Hearts Can’t
On the Cover
BY ANDY KROLL
Reps. Jahana Hayes and
the Weight of the Be Broken
Music World in ‘Shrill’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
In The Mustang, a convict Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep.
83 A Country Star’s Surrounded by people and a bucking bronco Ilhan Omar, photographed in
Departments Pop Move obsessed with her size, stage a battle to stay Washington, D.C., on January
Letter From the Editor 12 Maren Morris makes a bid the SNL breakout learns to untamed. Also: Julianne 11th, 2019, by Zoey Grossman.
Correspondence 14 for Top 40 glory with her dismiss them with a smile Moore is perfect as a Makeup by Todd Harris and Carrie Lamarca.
Playlist 25 second album. on her new Hulu show. divorcee in Gloria Bell.
The Last Word 98 BY ROB SHEFFIELD BY ALAN SEPINWALL BY PETER TRAVERS

8 | Rolling Stone | March 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY Ira Chernova

 CL E R MON T
K . Y. U. S .

WE’VE BUILT A NAME ON

BOURBON AND A LEGACY ON RYE.

EVERY BIT EARNED

KNOB CREEK® KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY AND STRAIGHT RYE WHISKEY
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 Jason Fine Gus Wenner Jay Penske
EDITOR PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER CHAIRMAN AND CEO

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Editor’s Letter
“My guidance counselor told me not to be an engineer, because
it’s a male-dominated field and I’d struggle. [Now] I go to work to
operate a robot on Mars.” —FA R A H A L I BAY, NASA systems engineer

Taking Control,
Leading the Way Tessa Stuart and Jann Wenner with House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi at her office in January

ON JANUARY 11TH, just days after successfully regain-
ing her position as speaker of the House, Nancy Pelo-
si posed for the cover of ROLLING STONE with three GOT A HOT
resilient members of the congressional freshman NEWS TIP?
class: Jahana Hayes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and WE WANT
TO HEAR IT.
Ilhan Omar. Despite chatter that incoming liberals
Email us,
would clash with the old guard, they all voted for her
confidentially,
in the end and became strong supporters. “There at Tips@
RollingStone
was no sense that these were women who didn’t get
.com
along,” says Catriona Ni Aolain, ROLLING STONE’s di-
rector of creative content, who produced the shoot
with photographer Zoey Grossman. “I felt no tension or weird energy. The
whole thing was very convivial.”
Now that Pelosi wields the speaker’s gavel, the House can launch serious
investigations into the Trump administration and hold hearings on climate
change and gun control, making the speaker the most powerful woman in the
INSIDE THE STORY
Speaker of the
House Opens Up
A trip to Capitol Hill to interview the
most powerful woman in D.C.
Staff writer Tessa Stuart went to Washington,
D.C., with ROLLING STONE founder Jann S. Wen-
ner to sit down with Nancy Pelosi. “She actual-
ly got pretty loose,” says Stuart. “I think a big
part of that was Jann’s presence: They’re kin-
dred spirits from San Francisco.” Leading up
to the meeting, Stuart and Wenner prepped
collaboratively, inquiring about everything
from her music taste to policy. “Nancy is my
San Francisco homey,” says Wenner. “She was
so warm and welcoming to the RS team.”

history of the country. She’s also the perfect cover subject for ROLLING STONE’s
Women Shaping the Future issue, which features interviews with leaders and
visionaries across politics, music, TV, film, science, tech and more. Within
these pages, Stevie Nicks reflects on becoming the first woman inducted twice
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (22 men have received the honor), and
folk-rock star Brandi Carlile, who booked her own all-women Girls Just Wanna
Weekend festival in Mexico, talks about motherhood and “radical forgiveness.”
There’s also an interview with new Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen,
in which she breaks down her determination to overcome systemic obstacles
to health care. And Stacey Abrams tells us what’s next after her game-chang-

FROM TOP: JULIO OBSCURA/OFFICE OF THE SPEAKER; JEFFERSON SIEGEL/”THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX
ing gubernatorial campaign in Georgia. “I learned I can do this, we can do this,” Tekashi
Abrams says. “We need to be thinking about what else do we want? What else in court,
October
can we have?”
Despite the political and cultural upheaval in our country right now, the mes-
UPDATE
sage we took away from these interviews is one of hope and promise. As Tessa
Stuart says about interviewing Pelosi, “There was something deeply reassur-
ing about sitting in the speaker’s office, the House of Representatives’ center of
Tekashi69 Pleads Guilty,
power, across from Nancy Pelosi. You got the sense — for the first time in years Admits to Gang Ties
— that there was someone in control, and things were going to be OK.” In our account of the and shooting at rivals.
life and alleged crimes “I suspected [the
of Tekashi69 [RS 1324], lawyer] didn’t want
the rapper’s lawyer told Tekashi to be associ-
writer Stephen Witt ated with the snitch
that Tekashi wouldn’t tag in prison, but what
cooperate with authori- choice did he have?”
ties. But on January says Witt. The plea
23rd, Tekashi pleaded deal is likely Tekashi’s
A L I S ON W E I N F L A S H guilty to nine felony final gamble: He’s
M A N AG I N G E D I T O R charges, admitting to expected to be sen-
being a member of tenced next year, and
the Nine Trey Gangsta right now he faces 47
Bloods and to robbing years to life.

12 | Rolling Stone | March 2019

Correspondence + L OV E L E T T E R S & A DV IC E

“I never
would’ve
thought I’d
say . . . that Dorsey’s Dilemma
Jordan Peele When the RS convo turns to money, Jack

would be on is all “it’s extremely emotional” [“The

Rolling Stone Interview: Twitter CEO Jack

his way to Dorsey,” RS 1324]. But when the issue is

Nazis, it’s a detached and passionless

becoming “users aren’t reporting them.”

—Bix, via the internet
the black
Hitchcock. Loved the Washington Square
comparison. Twitter is all of our own

What a time town square. . . . It’s actually quite com-

fortable in here.

to be alive.” —Jim Berman, via the internet

—CJ Baldwin, via the internet

The Genius of Jordan Peele

For our February cover story, Jordan Peele took
senior writer Brian Hiatt to Universal Studios Hol-
lywood, where the pair rode the Harry Potter ride,
shared butterbeers, and talked about Peele’s rise
from sketch-comedy star to one of Hollywood’s
most important directors. The story [“The All-Amer-
ican Nightmares of Jordan Peele,” RS 1324] was the
first significant piece of press Peele did for Us, the
highly anticipated, extremely terrifying follow-up to
his Oscar-winning 2016 debut, Get Out. Peele also
talked about his upbringing, race and the Twilight
Zone reboot he’s executive-producing. Readers
Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook and Medicine Show, 1937-2018
In early 1973, the voice of Ray
Sawyer was blaring out of radios Sawyer
all over the country, immortal- in 1973
izing both his band, Dr. Hook
and the Medicine Show, and this
magazine. “The thrill we’ve never
known/Is the thrill that’ll gitcha
when you get your picture/On the
cover of the Rollin’ Stone,” sang
Sawyer, who died on December
31st after a short illness. Dr. Hook
had 10 Top 40 hits in their 13-year
career, but “The Cover of ‘Rolling
Stone’ ” — written by children’s
responded: “Jordan Peele emerging as one of our @tylergildin:
most important mass-entertainment artists is one As a new
of my favorite developments of the last couple of father who
years,” tweeted Adam Lehrer. Others, like Scott also works in
Moeller, joined in on the praise, tweeting that Peele the creative
has “brought suspense and horror [and] storytell- space, this
ing to the next level.” Another reader, Erica Russell, perspective
tweeted that her favorite thing was “learning about from Jordan
his goth phase and affinity for butterbeer.” One
tweet, by Bibine, summarized many readers’ feel-
Peele really
resonated
ings: “Man, what a great surprise he turned out to with me.
be. Not only is he funny, but he’s scary as hell.” Great read!
TRIBUTE
author Shel Silverstein, a friend
of the band — was arguably their
biggest, an ode to the star-mak-
ing power of the young maga-
zine. After the song hit Number
Six, the prophecy came true and
the band actually appeared on
the cover. “I was very flattered
when the song came out,” says
ROLLING STONE founder Jann S.
Wenner. “They made us a cultural
legend. The ROLLING STONE cover
was now a Station of the Cross
on the way to stardom.”
Tekashi69 and His
Fall From Fame
Tekashi fascinates me because it’s like
watching a train wreck [“Tekashi69: The
Rise and Fall of a Hip-Hop Supervillain,”
RS 1324]. Part of me wants that lil’ punk
to make it and part of me wants him to
fail. I think it’s [because] of his associa-
tion with Shotti and Trey9Bloods. What
a shame. His life wasted.
—Kim, via the internet
As a fan, I’m saddened to learn of his
recent incarceration. I followed his story
as it unfolded. Hopefully, he learns that BOTTOM: GIJSBERT HANEKROOT/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
his behavior has serious consequences
and that his associations will forever
impact his future.
—Anonymous, via the internet
CONTACT US
Letters to ROLLING STONE, 1290 Avenue of
the Americas, New York, NY 10104-0298.
Letters become the property of ROLLING
STONE and may be edited for publication.
Email: letters@rollingstone.com
Subscriber Services: Call 800-283-1549.

14 | Rolling Stone | March 2019

 insurance and you could save.

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Opening Act
 The Gospel
of Florence
“A G O O D S H OWis all based on wheth-
er the crowd is willing to come with
you in your madness,” says Florence
Welch. At Florence and the Machine’s
show at Barclays Center in Brooklyn,
that madness included Welch twirling
across the stage, knocking over her
mic and bolting across the arena floor
as security fended off worshipping
fans. Welch, who will return to the
States in May for another leg of the
tour, sees a connection between her
wild crowds lately and the vulnerabil-
ity of her band’s new album, High as
Hope. “They leave it all on the floor,”
she says. “They come with such open
hearts, and it’s been a beautiful thing
to witness.” DANIELA TIJERINA
LILLIE EIGER

Welch at Barclays Center,

October 2018

March
March 2019
2018 | Rolling Stone | 17
The Mix

musician Finneas O’Connell,

Eilish at a radio
BILLIE EILISH show in Inglewood,
where they have collaborated
California, in on all of her music. From

T
WO DAYS AGO, Billie
Eilish celebrated
her 17th birthday at
a roller rink here in L.A.,
and yesterday she got right
back to work, which meant
hunkering down at “a
random-ass hotel” to shoot
a video for her new single,
“Bury a Friend.” “It smelled
like pee and horses,” she says
of the hotel, “but we fucking
nailed it, dude.” Wearing
recently blue hair that she’s
now dyeing gray, Eilish sits in
the backyard of the bungalow
she’s called home since birth.
She wrote the new song, she
says, “from the perspective
of the monster under your
bed. Anything could be the
monster — it could be some-
one you love so much that it’s
taking over your life. I think
love and terror and hatred
are all the same thing.”
This is the sort of obser-
vation that Eilish rattles off
casually in the course of
conversation: Her sweet,
sleepy singing voice and taste
for setting catchy melodies
over acoustic and electronic
beats belies a brain full of
dark visions. To that end, she
has made a string of creepy
videos, notching hundreds
of millions of views, in which
black tears pour from her
eyes and spiders crawl into
her mouth. For “Bury a
Friend,” she says, “I had this
idea where I’m naked. Like
an abduction, and people
December. She
kicks off a bigger
U.S. tour in April.
putting syringes up my arms
and in my neck. That’s one
of people’s biggest fears —
needles — and that’s what I’ve
been doing: homing in on
people’s fears.” It was a long
shoot, physically demanding
to the point of injury. “There
were a lot of people’s hands,
gripping and choking me and
pulling my hair,” she says.
“And I loved it. I enjoy being
fucked with and hurt and
tossed around, almost. It feels
good for some reason.”
Eilish’s dad brings us
water; the family dog, a pit
mix named Pepper, takes a
dump in the grass a few feet
away. She points and laughs
— “Bro, that sucks for dogs”
— then gives her masochism
a shrugging diagnosis. “It’s
some weird shit,” she says.
Eilish is as offhandedly
funny as she is reflexively
dark. Her devotion to “weird
shit” manifests not as some
goth-y affectation but as
an eminently reasonable
reaction to a moment when,
as she puts it, “shit is messed
up.” With several hit singles
to her name, Eilish is now
finishing her debut album,
When We All Fall Asleep,
Where Do We Go? She says it’s
a reaction to our dystopian
present: “There’s a line about
hills burning in California.
FAST FACTS
FAMILY BAND Eilish and her
brother, Finneas, posted to
SoundCloud the moody electron-
ic song “Ocean Eyes” in 2016. It
got her a major-label deal.
BIG MOVES After opening for
Florence and the Machine in
the fall, Eilish has a major slot at
Coachella in April. She also has a
song on the Roma soundtrack.
The skies are all gray and
orange. There’s school shoot-
ings all the time. It’s like,
‘Things are so fucked, I’m just
gonna make art about it.’ ”
Eilish shows me the bed-
room of her older brother,
there she turns into her own
bedroom, crammed with
clothes that designers have
sent her in the hopes she’ll
wear them on Instagram for
her 11.6 million followers. She
hops onto her bed and pulls
aside a curtain, revealing a
swarm of lyrics and thoughts
she’s written on the wall:
“I’m a void”; “I’m gonna
drink acid”; “Eat shit.” “My
room is all clothes and shoes,
but you lift this up and it’s a
shithole,” she says. “People
who send me stuff don’t
realize I grew up poor, and I
don’t have a house that can
fit things for rich people.”
Her parents are both actors,
appearing on crime dramas
and doing voice-overs. “It
wasn’t, like, ‘My movie-star
parents,’ ” says Eilish. “I wish
they were famous and that’s
why I became famous. But
that’s not how it is.”
According to Eilish, her
album will continue in the
vein of her music so far.
“Half the songs are fictional,
half are things I was going
through, and no one will ever
know which is which.” That
blurriness, she adds, has no
bearing on how her songs
resonate. “Kids use my songs
as a hug. Songs about being
suicidal or against-yourself —
some adults think that’s bad,
but I think seeing that some-
one else feels as horrible as
you is a comfort. It’s a good
feeling.” JONAH WEINER

FROM LEFT: PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES; JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC; JOHN LYNN KIRK/REDFERNS
SPRING TOURS

GETTING THE BAND

BACK TOGETHER
“There are two words in our business
that sell tickets,” says a prominent
concert promoter. “ ‘Reunion’ and
‘final.’ ” Ever since the Who got back
Hootie and the Blowfish Bikini Kill Mott the Hoople
together in 1989 after a seven-year
breakup and made around $30 DATES May 30th-September 13th DATES April 25th-June 5th DATES April 1st-10th
million, the reunion tour has been a Darius Rucker and crew’s tour is shaping After 20 years, feminist punks Bikini Kill “I’m doing this because I want fun,” Ian
lucrative live staple. This spring is no up to be one of the hottest tickets of the return for 11 instantly sold-out gigs. They Hunter says of his first U.S. tour with
exception, with Nineties college-rock year: “They’re playing to 20,000 every- also finally hit streaming services. Says British-glam avengers Mott the Hoople
hitmakers Hootie and the Blowfish, where,” says an industry source. “Every- singer Kathleen Hanna, “In this political since 1974. This “is it,” he adds. “I don’t
riot-grrrls Bikini Kill and glam legends one wants to remember when they had climate, it’s important for young girls to want to take it down the tubes. I want to
Mott the Hoople all hitting the road. hair on their head.” DAVID BROWNE have access to our music.” SUZY EXPOSITO stay on a certain level.” DAVID FRICKE

20 | Rolling Stone | March 2019


INCOMING
Neil Young Opens His Vault
It’s taken nearly 30
years, but Young’s
entire catalog is now
available to fans via
an interactive website
By ANDY GREENE
I
N NOVEMBER 1991, Neil
Young told ROLLING
STONE about his am-
bitious plans to dig into his
personal archives and release
“18 to 20 albums’ worth” of
unreleased music in some
form or another. “I’m not so
much concerned with how
or when it comes out,” Young
FROM TOP: HENRY DILTZ; RUNE HELLESTAD/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
said. “I only have so much
time to do these things.”
It took nearly 30 years, but
Young’s vision became a re-
ality last year, when the Neil
Young Archives went online.
No artist on Young’s level has
ever attempted such a trea-
sure trove: The site includes
a fully interactive timeline of
his career, with every song
he has ever released, plus
unseen photos, manuscripts
and videos. Young also prom-
ises rare bootlegs to come,
including shows he played in
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1973,
and Japan and London in
1976. “I’ve kept everything,”
he says. “It’s just kind of a
nerdy thing that I do.”
Young is most proud of the
Xstream streaming platform,
which allows visitors to hear
his music with a high-quality
bit rate that’s significantly
better than what you can find
on Spotify and Apple Music.
“The people at the music ser-
vices have a responsibility to
the arts,” says Young. “It’s like
having a Picasso show and
finding out they’re all Xerox-
es. That’s what Spotify is.”
Full access to the Neil
Young Archives costs $1.99 a
month or $19.99 a year, with
additional benefits like early
access to tickets to Young’s
ongoing run of tiny shows
in vintage theaters across
America. He hasn’t launched
a full-scale tour in four years,
choosing instead to play
when inspiration strikes.
Tickets often sell out during
the Neil Young Archives pre-
sale, meaning the room is full
of hardcore Young devotees.
He treats them to intimate
sets packed with rarities such
as “The Last Trip to Tulsa,”
“Broken Arrow,” “Thrasher”
Onstage
with Crazy
Horse, 2014
“I’ve kept
everything,”
says Young.
and “Razor Love.” “It’s a
gesture toward them for sup-
porting me for, in some cases,
50 years,” he says.
Most of these shows are
solo acoustic, but last year
he did five under-the-radar
gigs in California with Crazy
Horse, and in February he
did two more in Winnipeg,
Manitoba. Longtime guitarist
Frank “Poncho” Sampedro
has missed the shows for
unexplained reasons, but in
his place is Nils Lofgren, who
has played with Young since
After the Gold Rush in 1970
and was briefly a member
of Crazy Horse the following
year. “He’s all over my early
albums,” says Young. “It just
gives me a whole wealth of
material to draw from when I
have the original players.”
Young hasn’t put out an
album of new material since
2017’s The Visitor, and as of
now he has no firm plans to
make another. “I’m writing
songs, and I’ve written some
really interesting songs, I
think, for me,” he says. “But I
don’t know where I’m going.
I’m just going.”
PICKS
MUSIC
DOCS
David Crosby:
Remember
My Name
2019
Producer Cameron
Crowe gets the singer
to open up about his
days with the Byrds
and CSNY — and
how he almost lost
everything to sub-
stance abuse. Crosby
contemplates how he
wasted years of talent
as he tries to make up
for the lost time with
a restless final act.
Leaving
Neverland
MARCH
In HBO’s two-part
doc, former ‘NSync
choreographer Wade
Robson and former
child actor James
Safechuck recount
how Michael Jackson
befriended them
as kids — and then,
they allege, betrayed
their trust by sexually
abusing them. It’s
the most thorough
unpacking of their
stories to date, and a
reminder that these
horrific accusations
are as much a part of
the pop star’s legacy
as his famous hits.
Miles Davis:
Birth of the Cool
TBD
The jazz legend
wasn’t kidding when
he told someone that
he’d “changed music
five or six times.” Film-
maker Stanley Nelson
manages to cover
all of it in two hours,
from meeting Charlie
Parker when Davis
was 18 to Kind of Blue
to the fusion years —
a wild story conveyed
with rare footage and
spoken-word excerpts
from Davis’ autobio-
graphy. Consider this
your Miles 101 primer.
21
 The Complete Issue.
Every Word. Every Photo.

Now Available on Mobile

 The Mix
9
2
1. Luis Fonsi
feat. Stefflon Don
“Calypso”
Two years after his smash
success with “Despacito,”
Puerto Rican star Luis
Fonsi is finally back with
a new studio album. The
immediate winner? This
dancehall party co-star-
ring Hackney rap royalty
Stefflon Don. It’s hot
enough to make March
feel like July.
VALENTI; KATE KILLET; MJ PHOTOS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; KRISTIN CALLAHAN/ACE PICTURES/
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JOBY SESSIONS/FUTURE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ALEXANDRA
2. Karen O
“Bullet With
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; TODD WILLIAMSON/JANUARY IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Butterfly Wings”
On a cover for Amazon’s
new series Hanna, the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer
gives Smashing Pumpkins’
angsty 1995 hit a fantastic
electro-goth makeover.
She really makes you feel
that rage-cage duality.
3. Neil Young
“Olden Days” (live)
It’s worth seeking out a
bootleg to hear this sor-
rowful ballad from Young’s
recent solo shows: “I think
we’re living way too fast/
I’m searching out for my
old friends/Some say I’m
living in the past.”
PLAYLIST
OUR FAVORITE SONGS
4. J. Cole
“Middle Child”
Cole sneers at his critics
(“Money in your palm
don’t make you real”) and
asserts his own unruffled
cool (“I studied the
greats, I’m the great-
est right now”) over a
T-Minus instrumental that
blends Aquemini-style
horns with trap drums.
Three and a half minutes
of beats, rhymes and life.
5. Partner
“Long & McQuade”
This Canadian duo won
us over with the smart-
ass stoner humor and
insta-classic alt-rock riffs
of their 2017 debut, In
Search of Lost Time. The
jokes are even funnier,
and the riffs tastier, on
this slack-core tribute to
a Canadian music-store
chain. It’s from their new
EP, Saturday the 14th.
AND VIDEOS RIGHT
NOW
8
6. Weezer
“No Scrubs”
Should this remake of
TLC’s 1999 hit work? Ab-
solutely not! Yet we can’t
stop playing it. Weezer’s
reverence for the song
shines through — this isn’t
some cringey joke cover,
it’s a heartfelt tribute to a
timeless moment in pop.
7. Control Top
“Chain Reaction”
Another blast of Philly
punk-pop attitude from
Get Better Records, the
tiny indie label that
helped bring you Sheer
Mag and Empath. Look for
it live when Control Top
open for Laura Jane Grace
on tour this spring.
8. Robert Ellis
“Father”
This bittersweet tune
about an absent dad is
the highlight from Ellis’
new Texas Piano Man: “I
wanted a father, but I’ll
settle for a friend.”
5
1
9. Rodrigo y
Gabriela
“Echoes”
For 19 glorious minutes,
the Mexican acoustic-
rock duo reinterpret
the centerpiece of Pink
Floyd’s Meddle, using
only their two guitars to
convey all the millennia-
spanning rise-and-fall
drama of Floyd’s 1971 epic.
Now that’s trippy!
10. DaBaby
feat. BlocBoy JB
“Mini Van”
An extraordinarily catchy,
moderately ignorant slice
For of life from North Carolina
reviews, rapper DaBaby (not to be
premieres confused with Atlanta’s
and more, Lil Baby) and “Look Alive”
go to star BlocBoy JB. Don’t
Rolling miss the video, in which
Stone.com/ they try to sell a used
music minivan to some fool.
MY
LIST
MY FAVORITE
DRUM SONGS
OF ALL TIME
By Fred
Armisen
The comedian and punk-
rock drummer, currently
starring in Season Three
of IFC’s Documentary
Now!, tells us about five
killer beats.
BOW WOW WOW
”Golly Golly Go Buddy”
This was the first time I
ever heard timbales used
as a main part, rolling
all the way through. It’s
relentless drumming on
a danceable, celebratory,
catchy pop song.
SLEATER-KINNEY
”Get Up”
Janet Weiss plays this
disco beat that builds. It’s
kind of an emotional beat,
which is a hard thing to
do, to express yourself
with just drums.
DEVO
”Swelling Itchy Brain”
If you wrote the tom-tom
pattern out, it looks like a
sentence that gets busier
and busier. It sounds like
an army of robots.
MIDNIGHT OIL
”Power and
the Passion”
My favorite drum solo. It’s
crazy — someone breaks
a bottle in it, and there’s
this mixture of drums
and electronic pads.
NOMEANSNO
”It’s Catching Up”
They’re a Canadian punk
band. The drums are re-
ally heavy. It just knocks
you out. So good.
Rolling Stone | 25
The Mix

MOVIES HOT SOUND

Sex, Drugs & Mötley Crüe LATIN POP

PICKS UP
The glam-metal band’s
riotous 2001 memoir A NEW R&B
turns into a Netflix
original that doesn’t GROOVE
pull any punches Rosalía, Pitbull and
By KÖRY GRÖW others help the
genres get closer

I
T’S A SUNNY spring day in
New Orleans, and three
men who look like the
Sunset Strip coughed them up
in 1985 are on a smoke break
outside the Saenger Theatre.
They are there to portray
Mötley Crüe in Netflix’s wild
THE DIRT
Release: March 22nd
new biopic, The Dirt. Inside,
fake roadies are setting up
Marshall stacks onstage.
The resemblance to the
band’s Theatre of Pain tour is
uncanny, but there are signs
that this is a different Crüe.
Douglas Booth, who plays
bassist Nikki Sixx, mentions
that he found a cockroach
in his hotel room last night
and guided it to safety using
a cup. “He should have called
me in with my hairspray and
a lighter,” the real Sixx says
later with a laugh. “Next thing
you know, though, there’d
be marches outside the pre-
miere from PETA for killing
cockroaches.”
When Booth and the other
actors are in front of the
camera, they don’t hesitate to
go all the way in channeling
one of rock’s most shame-
lessly hedonistic bands. With
its raunchy, over-the-top
tone — the film starts with
a graphic scene of Tommy
Lee, played by Colson Baker
(a.k.a. rapper Machine Gun
Kelly), performing oral sex
on a groupie — The Dirt is the
anti-Bohemian Rhapsody.
Lee says he loved The Dirt,
which is based on the band’s
bestselling 2001 memoir of
the same name, when he saw
it. “It was fucking awesome,
’cause it was so fucking real,”
says the drummer. “That’s
not me now, but that shit was
me then every damn day.”
The band, which co-pro-
duced the film and wrote new
songs for the soundtrack,
was committed to showing
the uglier side of its story.
We see the 1984 incident
in which singer Vince Neil
killed a man while driving
under the influence, Sixx’s
near-death heroin overdose,
Lee punching his fiancee and
more unsavory episodes.
“The Mötley Crüe way was to
be completely transparent,”
Sixx says. “Just putting it out
there is part of our charm, if
there is such a thing.”
Baker, who’s idolized
Lee since he was 13, was
initially nervous about how
Last year, Puerto Rican
singer Alex Rose (below)
released an EP titled
Sexflix, featuring melo-
dies lifted from R&B hits
like Mario’s “Let Me Love
You” over trap drums
and new Spanish lyrics.
His amalgam hit home
(the single “Darte” has
more than 30 million
views on YouTube), and
Booth, Baker
other stars have been
and Daniel
Webber, who pulling similar moves.
plays Vince “The influence of R&B
Neil (from left) on Latin music gets
stronger every day,”
says Sony Latin A&R rep
Crüe’s womanizing might be Jorge Fonseca. Angelo
received in the #MeToo era, Torres, who runs A&R
so he showed the script to a for Marc Anthony’s label,
female Birdbox co-star. “The says the rise of Latin
trap “opened a space
first scene is so ‘fuck you’ to
for kids who listen to
the whole climate right now, other music. If you grew
so I asked her if she would up listening to Trey
flip out at the first page,” the Songz, that’s way more
actor says. “She thought it acceptable.” ELIAS LEIGHT
was cool that everything was
consensual and that there
was a fun aspect for both
parties — at least what’s in
the movie.”
Sixx, typically, puts it dif-
ferently. “Let’s face it, bands
are pretty fucking boring in
2019,” he says. “So maybe this
could be a little inspiration
for somebody.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JAKE GILES NETTER; NOAM GALAI/GETTY

TREND WATCH
IMAGES; CHARLES KRUPA/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK;
CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Take Me Out to the Rock Festival

About three years ago, concert promoter Tim Sweet-
wood realized that the hundreds of thousands of
baseball fans who come to Arizona every March to
watch spring-training games have few entertainment
options off the field. So he created the Innings Festival,
where Nineties rock acts like Eddie Vedder and Liz
Phair share the bill with major-league greats like Roger
Vedder and Clemens and Jake Peavy, who sign autographs, lead
Clemens batting-practice sessions and give attendees advice on
their game. Innings is one of a handful of new festivals
that cater to rock fans in and beyond their thirties by
offering more than just a stage to see their favorite
bands. Another is See.Hear.Now, in Asbury Park, New
Jersey, which mixes music with surfing demonstrations.
“Personally, I won’t do a new, new festival without these
ancillary elements,” says Sweetwood. “People care so
much about the 360 experience these days. Not having
that is very retro.” ANDY GREENE

26 | Rolling Stone | March 2019

 We Got Her, Babe: PICKS

Cher Stands Alone ON TOUR

There’s no other career quite like hers in the history NOW
of pop music, and right now, it’s hitting a new peak
Ariana Grande

A
T THIS POINT, Cher is more than just a pop sing, yet she always sounds like herself, with that con- MARCH 18TH -
JULY 13TH
star; she’s the one-woman embodiment of sonants-only vocal style that batters every note into
the whole gaudy story of pop music. She’s her signature mega-nasal power honk. Grande is in the mid-
a myth so huge that the new Broadway mu- The Cher Show turned into a cause célèbre when dle of one of modern
sical The Cher Show takes three different Chers to en- Kanye West attended opening night and the guy play- pop’s greatest lev-
el-ups — in the past
compass her — Babe Cher, Lady Cher and Star Cher. ing Sonny Bono had to tweet at him to ask him to turn
year, she’s become a
She was just 16 when she got discovered by Sonny off his phone. The truly shocking twist? Kanye’s re- world-class avatar of
Bono, already a seasoned music-biz shark, and sponse: “The dynamics of Cher and Sonny’s relation- love, heartbreak and
soon became his hippie bride in a blur of miniskirts ship made Kim and I grab each other’s hand and sing spiritual liberation via
and fringed vests. Everybody thought she was washed ‘I got you babe.’ Please pardon my lack of etiquette.” the dance floor. With
up by the time she turned 20, but she refused to go. Inspiring Kanye into a spasm of non-douchitude is two new albums out,
“If I Could Turn Back Time” became her theme song ROB hardly the least of Cher’s accomplishments. she’s moving on to
the Sweetener tour,
because the battle of Cher versus Time turned out
to be a mismatch. It’s Time that has trouble turning
SHEFFIELD By now, she’s part of every pop story — every leg-
end has a Cher moment in it, from Britney (she got
whose full-scale arena
production is likely to
back Cher. SOUND AND her start belting “If I Could Turn Back Time” on the make it the pop show
VISION
In the past year, she’s enjoyed a high-profile twirl in local-fair circuit) to Nicki. (Remember when Cher and to beat in 2019.
the blockbuster Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, step- Miss Minaj had Twitter beef for a minute?) She gets
ping out of a helicopter to belt “Fernando” to Andy Garcia. She one of the funniest moments in the new Beastie Boys Book, when
topped that with a smash album of ABBA covers, Dancing Queen, Mike D’s wife, Tamra Davis, is directing a Cher video. On the first Elton John
MARCH 18TH -
saluting one of the only pop franchises that can match her for day of the shoot, the star walks up to the director, introduces JULY 13T
indestructible cool. She just got her lifetime-achievement coro- herself and announces, “I’m gonna be wearing leather. A lot of
nation at the Kennedy Center, complete with Cyndi Lauper and leather. Get used to it.” She was rock & roll enough to marry into Sir Elton’s Farewell
Adam Lambert serenading her with “I Got You Babe.” the Allman Brothers for nine whole days of wedded bliss. She Yellow Brick Road
Tour, which began in
There are no other careers remotely like hers. She spent the and Gregg Allman didn’t have much to say but hit it off enough
September, is making
Seventies cracking cornball jokes on The Sonny and Cher Show to make their duet album as Allman and Woman. In the musi- its final U.S. run this
while notching creepy Number One hits about sor- cal, they commemorate their passion with a duet month, including
did sex and bloodshed. (“Dark Lady”? That on “Just Like Jesse James” that brings down several sold-out New
song is . . . a lot.) But “Believe,” her most the house. York dates. Well, not
iconic hit, is the Nineties disco an- In a way, the moment that sums quite final — after a
jaunt to Europe in
them she sang when she was up her genius is her awesomely
May, June and July,
52. She’s been on her fare- ridiculous 1975 TV duet with he’ll be back in the
well tour so long, it’s old David Bowie. They start States this fall for
enough to vote. When she out bumping and grind- more Farewell shows.
showed up at the MTV ing to “Young Amer- Still, this is a choice
Video Music Awards icans,” then swerve opportunity to see
one of rock’s best-
in 2010, she took into a bizarro oldies
ever showmen pulling
pride in announc- medley, with Bowie out all the stops.
ing, “I’m the oldest down on his knees
chick with the big- crooning doo-wop
gest hair and the to her. It was a Priests
littlest costume.” mi ssion st ate- MARCH 8TH-MAY 1ST

Over the years, ment for both

These Washington,
she has hopped on of them, in their D.C., punks are known
almost every music quest to encap- for the cleansing fury
trend — Studio 54 sulate the whole of their live perfor-
disco in “Take Me pop past and warp mances. On their new
Home,” Sunset Strip it for the future. album, The Seduction
of Kansas, they tem-
hair metal in “I Found She’s really picked
per their rage with
Someone,” rage-queen up the torch from
KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES

new notes of disco

glitz punk in “Save Up All Bowie — and like him, and other pop joys.
Your Tears” — and made it she does it by constant- It’s an appealing twist
her own. She invented red ly changing. As she used on their sound, and it
carpets and infomercials and to sing, the beat goes on. should be fun to see it
in action when Priests
humping cannons on battleships For Cher, it always does
launch a tour of clubs
full of sailors. People said she couldn’t and always will. in the South and Mid-
west and on the East
Coast this spring.

27
The Mix

PROFILE

Jenny Lewis Starts Over

After saying goodbye
to her mother and a
12-year relationship, the
songwriter found a new
clarity in art and life
By JONAH WEINER

T
HERE ARE 19 white stick-
ers arranged across Jenny
Lewis’ fridge. Each one car-
ries a stamped date, the
logo of Providence Holy Cross Medi-
cal Center, the word VISITOR and, in
Lewis’ handwriting, a different beguil-
ing little phrase: I taught him how to
2-step; Rosey posey put your snake finger
on; You are a sunshine in a fruit. “Every
day that I visited my mom in the hos-
pital,” Lewis says, “I’d get one of these
and write down something she’d say
to me. She got more and more psyche-
delic as we kept upping the meds, and
she’d say the most amazing things.”
Lewis points at one — Glue me to the
ceiling so you never leave — and sighs.
“She had liver cancer. From untreated
hepatitis C. She was a lifelong heroin
addict and also mentally ill and . . . just
a really sad situation.”
It’s a drizzly evening in early Janu-
ary, and Lewis is at her home in Los
Angeles, drinking gamay wine and dis-
cussing things she’s never discussed
publicly before. Some listeners over
the years may have noticed scattered
allusions in her songs to her mother’s
troubles and the painful outlines of
their relationship. In 2002, on an early
album by her first band, Rilo Kiley,
she described a mother who was “in-
sane and high.” In 2006, on her debut
solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, she sang,
Lewis at her
“Where my ma is now, I don’t know/ L.A. home
She was living in her car, I was living in January
on the road/And I hear she’s putting
that stuff up her nose.” But Lewis has
always been careful to let these lyrics work. The earliest sticker on the fridge in a fruit.’ That was her way of saying Lewis’ last musical project, an ad hoc
HAIR BY DRITAN VUSHAJ AT FORWARD ARTISTS. MAKEUP

speak mostly for themselves. When is dated August 20th, 2017, and by the ‘I love you.’ ” collaboration from 2016 called Nice as
BY ANTON KHACHATURIAN FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS

people ask about them, she’s frequent-
ly emphasized that the line between
memoir and fiction in her songwriting
is a slippery one. “Sometimes I don’t
even remember what actually hap-
pened,” she says now, “and the song
takes on its own life.”
On Lewis’ new record, On the Line,
her mother appears again. This time
she is in a hospital bed “under a cold
white sheet,” and there’s no fiction at
end of October, at age 70, Linda Lewis
was dead.
“We were estranged for 20 years, so
this was the first time we’d hung out
in two decades,” the 43-year-old sing-
er-songwriter continues. “She was
very sick, but I think she held on so
we could have time to reconcile, and it
created an opportunity for forgiveness.
She didn’t have to say, ‘I’m so sorry’ —
she said it by saying, ‘You’re a sunshine
Lewis started out as a kid actor, ap-
pearing on Eighties-era sitcoms like
Life With Lucy, opposite Lucille Ball,
and in movies like Troop Beverly Hills
and The Wizard, opposite Fred Savage.
By her twenties she’d all but quit acting
and become a burgeoning indie-rock
icon instead, known for her clarion
voice, her killer ear for melody and
her knack for evocative storytelling in
a tweaked Americana style. Whereas
Fuck, was stripped down and upbeat,
On the Line contains the most lush and
melancholy music she’s ever made.
The album has a grand rock sound —
stately pianos, swelling strings, fuzzy
electric guitar. Lewis cut its 11 songs at
the venerable Capitol Studios in L.A.
over just a few days last year, but she
began writing them in this house in
2014, not long before her 12-year re-
lationship with the Scottish-American

28 | Rolling Stone | March 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY Ira Chernova

musician Johnathan Rice deteriorat-
ed. She finished writing them after her
bedside reconciliation with her mom.
Lewis gives the fridge a final look be-
fore turning out of the kitchen. “I won-
der how long I’ll leave these up here,”
she says.
A
DDICTION, SOBRIETY and self-
medic ation are running
themes throughout On the
Line. There are references to red
wine, weed, grenadine, heroin, bour-
bon, Paxil, Marlboros, cognac, Candy
Crush and, on the song “Party Clown,”
a hallucinogenic Fuji apple. “Some-
how I think the worst one of them
all is Candy Crush,” Lewis says with
a grin. “My mom started taking her-
oin when I was two or three, proba-
bly. So, growing up like that, there’s a
realization that nothing is for free,
and everything catches up with you
— if you try to numb out, eventual-
ly you’re gonna have to face whatev-
er it is you’re running away from.” She
pauses. “I don’t have any judgment
about it. Even with my mom: She did
whatever she had to do, and she wasn’t
able to kick it. Most people don’t make
it out of heroin addiction. I don’t real-
ly blame her for it.”
Wine in hand, wearing a satiny cow-
girl shirt and a bandanna tied around
her neck that’s nearly the same shade
of red as her hair, Lewis shows me
around the house. Situated near leafy
Laurel Canyon, it was built by a Disney
animator in the Forties, and his touch
is everywhere — delicate, hand-paint-
ed flowers on a wall here, trompe l’oe-
il flagstones on the floor there. In the
living room a projector is playing the
X-rated 1968 film The Girl on a Mo-
torcycle, which stars Marianne Faith-
full and is alternatively titled Naked
Under Leather. Lewis has been on a
leather kick recently, she says, show-
ing me a photo-heavy 1977 book called
Hard Corps: Studies in Leather and Sa-
domasochism that she recently scored
on eBay. “I keep my whips and chains
out in the pool house,” she says with
a cackle.
Off the living room is the wood-pan-
eled chamber where Lewis rehearses
and writes. There’s a drum kit, a Wur-
litzer organ and a little gas stove in the
corner. Outside, near the pool, there’s
a koi pond and a rose garden, all of it
put in by the animator. Down the hall,
there’s a roller-derby-themed pinball
machine from around 1990 that peri-
odically flashes the words WINNERS
DON’T DO DRUGS in LED lights. (Lewis
says her friend and collaborator Ryan
Adams gave it to her: “It just showed
up one day.”) Opposite the pinball is
an enormous old promotional cutout
for The Wizard, depicting Savage as an
adolescent wearing a Nintendo Power
Glove and an adolescent Lewis in ac-
id-washed denim overalls. “This was at
the movie theater in Van Nuys where
I grew up — my mom made me go in
and ask for it,” Lewis says. “My sister
had it in storage, then had it framed for
me and rented a truck to bring it over
here. I wasn’t OK with this for many
years, because early on in the histo-
ry of my band, people would yell vid-
eo-game references at me from the
crowd. Now I just can’t believe that this
is part of my weird story.”
She says she loved being on Holly-
wood sets as a kid, for complicated
reasons. “I guess I liked being in that
environment because it wasn’t home
— it was this pretend-family vibe. My
dad wasn’t around, so every time I got
a job I kind of fell in love with ‘my fa-
ther’ on set. I would just want that re-
lationship.” (Her real-life dad, a musi-
cian named Eddie Gordon, was absent
for most of her life, though he came
back into Lewis’ orbit shortly before
his own death, playing harmonica on
her second solo album, 2008’s Acid
Tongue.) Lewis’ off-set life in that era
was consistently chaotic: “I think my
mother was selling coke in the early
Eighties,” she says. “She may have
been Ricky Nelson’s dealer. And she
was using the money I was making
and parlaying it into her business. I’d
come home from school and there’d be
racks of fur coats, Krugerrands, boxes
of Vuarnet sunglasses. All these bulk
items in the house, drugs cooking on
the stove, people coming in and out.
Really interesting characters. I remem-
ber we had a Honda Civic, and one day
it disappeared. Years later, I learned
that someone had torched it as a warn-
ing to my mom. There was crazy shit
going on.”
Lewis says that her elder sister, Les-
lie, became something like a proxy
mother to her in their actual mother’s
stead, and when Jenny co-founded Rilo
Kiley with some L.A. buddies in the
late Nineties, “that was my first chosen
family.” Over the years she’d host jam
sessions at home, inviting over mem-
bers of like-minded acts such as Haim,
Dawes and Conor Oberst, here and
elsewhere in L.A. “I’ve always brought
that jam vibe with me wherever I go,”
Lewis says. “I feel compelled to play
music, to play with people, or I’ll go
crazy.”
In 2015, having split up with Rice
for reasons we don’t get into, Lewis
went to New York, crashing at the
empty apartment of her friend Annie
Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent. “I couldn’t
stay in this house,” Lewis says. “Johna-
than and I were basically married.
When you’re with someone that long,
you share consciousness with them. I
FOUR OF HER
BEST SONGS
Lewis’ sharpest lyrics
and most stunning
vocals, with Rilo Kiley
and on her own
A BETTER SON/
DAUGHTER
The Execution of
All Things 2002
A morning panic attack,
recounted as if through a
rotary phone, builds and
explodes into an affirma-
tional anthem with military
snares and a ripping guitar
solo. The confidence feels
unstable (“You’ll fake it
if you have to/And you’ll
show up for work with a
smile”), but ain’t it always?
A high point on Rilo Kiley’s
breakthrough album.
IT’S A HIT
More Adventurous 2004
Lewis begins her group’s
major-label debut taking
implicit aim at then-Presi-
dent Bush, who’d ordered
the invasion of Iraq the pre-
vious year (“Any chimp can
play human for a day. . . .
And run for office on Elec-
tion Day/Fancy himself a
real decision-maker”). Then
she side-eyes the act of
writing pop hits. Timeless
and totally badass.
RISE UP WITH FISTS!!
Rabbit Fur Coat 2006
Lewis’ solo debut opens
with this skeptical pep talk
to herself, framed by an in-
dictment of a creep having
a Vegas affair and a nod
to the moral hypocrisy of
preachers. Echoing her are
the Watson Twins, whose
soulful country-gospel
vocals make Lewis sound
like a next-gen Tammy
Wynette.
JUST ONE OF
THE GUYS
The Voyager 2014
Lewis stares down the pas-
sage of time on this med-
itation on maternal FOMO
and gender expectations
(“When I look at myself, all
I can see/I’m just another
lady without a baby”). She
goes out determined to do
things her way, as ever.
WILL HERMES
didn’t finish any of my stories — Johna-
than finished every story for me. So
part of the reason I went to New York
was to find my inner monologue. I
wanted to know what that voice was.”
The result, some three years later, is
On the Line. Lewis made it with a par-
ticularly impressive surrogate fami-
ly whose members included not only
Adams and Beck, with whom she’d
worked before, but also an older gen-
eration of studio pros: Rolling Stones
producer Don Was, Heartbreakers
keyboardist Benmont Tench, session
drummer Jim Keltner (sideman for
John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Steely
Dan) and — to her delight and surprise
— Ringo Starr. “He was cool — he just
showed up one day with a smooth-
ie and did double-drums with Jim on
two songs,” Lewis says, adding that
she’s not totally sure why the former
Beatle came aboard. “I think Don Was
showed him some of the songs, invited
him to come down, and he was into it.”
A decade-plus into her solo career,
Lewis found herself trying new things
in the studio. At Adams’ encourage-
ment, she agreed to record all her
vocal tracks live while playing her in-
struments, rather than tracking them
in later — a technique for not over-
thinking her singing, she says. Keep-
ing things spontaneous was a priority:
When Beck inserted a bit of placehold-
er Auto-Tune on a song called “Little
White Dove,” Lewis decided she loved
it and kept it in unchanged. (It remind-
ed her of the Detroit rapper DeJ Loaf,
whose single “Try Me” Lewis adores.)
When it came to mixing, she says she
took inspiration from Kanye West’s Ye
— clearing out the midrange, focusing
on the low end and the highs.
She sits on an oversize armchair in
her living room and looks around the
house. These days she splits time be-
tween L.A. and Nashville, where she
jams with a whole other group of
friends, including Karen Elson. Three
years since her breakup, Lewis says, “I
know how to take care of myself. It’s
been really lonely, and really hard at
times, and to go through the stuff with
my mom alone—” She starts to cry, un-
tying her neckerchief and using it to
blot her tears. “This is why I wear a
bandanna,” she jokes. “But that’s the
thing: I had to visit her, then come
home and be alone and process my
life with her.”
On the wall in front of her, Marianne
Faithfull is making love to Alain Delon,
but Lewis isn’t paying attention. “Life
is crazy, but it’s incredible,” she goes
on. “How amazing to see someone
pass over. It’s magical. It’s the most in-
timate. It’s like a poem, and you don’t
know the last line until you get there.
But you show up.”
March 2019 | Rolling Stone | 29
  HALSEY’S BALLER YEAR
Ahead of hosting SNL, Halsey watched the Warriors beat the
Lakers in L.A. She recently said she’s excited that her third
album will be out soon: “I’m jumping in circles every day.”

GAME ON
Nicole Kidman and

Cardi’s
Keith Urban got intimate
at the Australian Open.
Urban hits the country-
fest circuit this summer.

Money
Moves
Cardi B returned to
her roots as an adult
performer when she
rapped “Bickenhead”
at Vegas’ annual AVN
porn awards. “I’m
a little porn star
today,” said Cardi,
who was the
show’s first-ever
female artist.

JUSTICE LEAGUE
Jay-Z and Meek Mill united
to launch the Reform
Alliance, an organization
that aims to fix “illogical
laws” that affect people ALLEN BEREZOVSKY/GETTY IMAGES; JAMES D. MORGAN/GETTY
on parole and probation.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES;
IMAGES; RICHARD VOGEL/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK;

Meek said the group

(which also includes
Robert Kraft and
other sports-
team owners)
will “speak for
the people
who don’t
KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES

have a
voice.”
 LITTLE STEVEN’S ROCK & ROLL HIGH SCHOOL
Steven Van Zandt supported Los Angeles teachers on their successful strike
demanding more money and resources and smaller class sizes. “We must
get the arts back into public schools,” said Van Zandt, whose Rock and Roll
Forever Foundation promotes music education. “[In the U.S.], art is a luxury.
It’s an essential part of the quality of life.”

30 | Rolling Stone | March 2019

 RED, WHITE AND BLUES
Gary Clark Jr. met Sen. (and presidential
candidate) Kamala Harris on the Stephen
Colbert set, where Clark did his new anthem
“This Land.” Says Clark, “I’m down with her
book Superheroes Are Everywhere.”

RANDOM QUOTE

“Everyone
commenting
on Roger
Stone’s Nixon
tattoo has
me reluctant
to reveal
my Lyndon BROADWAY QUEENS Carole King came to New
Johnson tramp York to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her
Broadway show, Beautiful. While in town, she
stamp.” dropped by her friend Sara Bareilles’ hit show,
Waitress, a few blocks away. “I feel like she’s one
—Conan O’Brien of my musical granddaughters,” King has said of
Bareilles, who returns the praise: “I always
describe Carole King as my North Star.”

THE BEAT GOES ON Cher kicked off her first tour in five years in
Florida, featuring aerialists, video duets with Sonny Bono and an ABBA LONDON CALLING
medley. “I’m happy to be here,” she said at one point. “I have just one The 1975 played a
question: What is your granny doing tonight?” wild headlining show
at London’s O2
arena, where
frontman Matt Healy
took shots at their
critics and danced
hard on a moving
stage. The band
kicks off its U.S.
summer tour at
Coachella.
GASTON JOUANY; BRUCE GLIKAS/WIREIMAGE; JOSEPH OKPAKO/
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES;
WIREIMAGE; DENISE TRUSCELLO/WIREIMAGE

BRAD ROMANCE In Vegas, Lady Gaga invited Bradley Cooper

onstage to sing their hit “Shallow.” Cooper called the appearance
”terrifying. I just had to Zen out and pray that I wasn’t gonna ruin her
show.” Gaga’s residency, which alternates between all-out pop
spectacle and piano-and-jazz nights, runs through the end of the year.

March 2019 | Rolling Stone | 31

 Inside
Trump’s
Swamp
The new Washington, D.C.,
is awash in foreign money
and shady lobbyists — and
Elliott Broidy fit right in
By ANDY KROLL

ILLUSTRATION BY Victor Juhasz March 2019 | Rolling Stone | 33

A
T 3:45 P.M. on October 6th,
2017, an unassuming man in
his early sixties with a low,
raspy voice and a thin, wide
smile arrived at the White
House. He had been here be-
fore, in the George W. Bush years, when he was
one of the most sought-after fundraisers in the
Republican Party. But a scandal had derailed
his life, and afterward he had disappeared from
politics. In early 2016, the opportunity arose to
make his return. The man had helped Donald
J. Trump’s long-shot campaign raise millions
of dollars, and he could rightly say he played a
role in the most improbable presidential victory
in American history. Now, Elliott Broidy had
come to deliver an urgent message. After a brief
visit with Jared Kushner, he was summoned to
meet the president in the Oval Office.
Broidy told Trump about a recent trip he’d
taken to the United Arab Emirates, the small
but wealthy Persian Gulf nation, on behalf of a
defense-contracting company he owned. Broi-
dy raved about the crown prince of Abu Dhabi
and the UAE’s de facto leader, Sheikh Moham-
med bin Zayed Al Nahyan, known as MBZ,
whom he had met with while in the Emirates.
He said that MBZ and Mohammed bin Salman,
the young crown prince of Saudi Arabia, were
creating an all-Muslim counterterrorism force
made up of 5,000 Arab soldiers to fight against
the Taliban and ISIS. With the help of Gen. Stan-
ley McChrystal, the former U.S. commander in
Afghanistan, Broidy said, his company would
assist the UAE and Saudi Arabia to train and as-
sist those pan-Arab fighters.
Trump loved the idea. As far as he knew,
Broidy had business interests in the Middle
East and had briefed the president as a cour-
tesy. What Trump didn’t know — and Broidy
didn’t disclose, according to his detailed notes
about the meeting obtained by ROLLING STONE
— was that Broidy was also waging a secretive,
multimillion-dollar PR and influence campaign
in Washington, D.C., to persuade the Trump ad-
TIMELINE THE LONG VIEW: TRUMP’S MILITARY RECORD
1968 2015
DISHONORING AN
AMERICAN HERO
ART OF THE DODGE “He’s not a war
Trump’s bone spurs hero,” Trump says of
allow him to dodge Sen. John McCain,
the draft; he says who spent five
sleeping around years as a prisoner
and not contracting of war. “I like
STDs was his own people who weren’t
“personal Vietnam.” captured.”
34 | Rolling Stone | March 2019
ministration to punish Qatar, an enemy of the
UAE and Saudi Arabia — but an ally of the U.S.
Broidy’s operation came with code names
(Trump was “Chairman,” MBZ “Friend,” Qatar
the “snake”), convoluted money trails and a
shadowy liaison to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The liaison urged Broidy to make the most of
his time with Trump (his “priceless asset”) and
READERS’
reiterated MBZ’s wishes in an email sent to
Broidy a few days before the Oval Office meet-
ing. “Again, take advantage of it to tell him
that Friend would like to come asap to meet
POLL
you [Trump] SOONEST out of official site,” the
go-between wrote in a long email. The two Should we
crown princes “are counting on you to relate it increase
blunt and straight as it is! . . . Tomorrow is a Piv- taxes on
otal and could turn out to be a Historical and the super-
milestone meeting!” rich to 70
Broidy did as he was told, telling Trump that percent?
MBZ stood ready to travel to the U.S. for a meet-
84%
ing but would prefer a more private setting
than the Oval Office. Broidy recommended New
York or New Jersey. When Trump asked Broidy
Yes
for his thoughts about Qatar, Broidy slammed
the Qataris as financial supporters of terrorism
16%
and included them with North Korea and Iran
in a new “axis of evil.”
Trump smiled and nodded. He had reason No
to champion Broidy’s cause. Both the UAE
and Saudi Arabia had long been loyal cus- Go to Rolling
tomers of his. The Saudis “buy all sorts of Stone.com
my stuff,” Trump said in 2015, and a massive for next
Trump-branded golf course had recently issue’s poll.
opened in Dubai, in the UAE. The meeting
was nearing its end, but the president had one
last question for Broidy: What did he think of
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson? Tillerson, the
former ExxonMobil CEO, had shown support
for the Qataris. In private, Broidy had seethed
at Tillerson, calling him “a tower of Jello.”
Broidy told Trump that Tillerson was “perform-
ing poorly” and should be fired at a “politically
convenient time.”
Broidy then met with H.R. McMaster,
Trump’s national security adviser, to push for
J U LY 2 0 1 6 O C T.
CALLOUS MANNER
Speaking to a vet-
erans group, Trump
ATTACKING A GOLD-STAR FAMILY suggests that
After Khizr Khan, father of a fallen Muslim soldiers suffering
soldier, criticizes Trump at the Democratic from PTSD aren’t
National Convention, Trump attacks the “strong” and “can’t
grieving father and speculates that a Clin- handle” the things
ton staffer wrote the speech and suggested they did at war.
Khan’s wife “wasn’t allowed” to speak.
the private, informal meeting with Trump that
MBZ wanted. The sun was starting to set when
Broidy left the White House, confident he’d
delivered his message. The crown princes were
thrilled. Not long after, the liaison emailed him,
“You have become a HERO here and at KSA
[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], to say the least.”
D
EPENDING ON WHERE you stood,
Trump’s election posed either an
existential threat to the American
experiment or the business oppor-
tunity of a lifetime. The thousands of lawyers,
former congressional staffers and retired law-
makers who ply their trade as lobbyists had
spent two years preparing for a Clinton admin-
istration. “If you went around town and told
these lobbying firms you supported Trump, it
was like a hate crime,” says Tom Davis, a for-
mer lobbyist and onetime Virginia congress-
man. “Trump threw out the book. He brought
in a whole new crowd. The players changed,
and the rules changed.”
Overnight, Trump’s small circle of friends
and loyalists became extremely valuable. They
SHUTTERSTOCK; EVAN VUCCI/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; CPL DILLON BALDRIDGE/
could speak Trump’s language, explain him,
influence him. Or at least that’s what they told
the blue-chip corporations and foreign govern-
FROM LEFT: NEW YORK MILITARY ACADEMY; AP IMAGES; JUSTIN LANE/EPA/REX/
FACEBOOK; AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
ments scrambling to find someone to help them
navigate the new administration. “There’s, like,
five people who bet on the long shot and won,”
a seasoned GOP operative told me. “The day
after the election, those five people all think
they’re the biggest fucking swinging dicks in
the universe. I’m the guy who can make all your
dreams come true now.”
That’s where Elliott Broidy came in. Broidy
set out to cash in on his connections to the new
administration with breathtaking speed and au-
dacity. In the aftermath of Trump’s win, Broi-
dy, who landed a coveted spot as a vice-chair
for Trump’s inauguration committee, used his
ties to the president-elect to pitch his defense-
contracting company, Circinus LLC, to foreign
leaders. He invited two senior Angolan officials
JUNE 2017 J U LY O C T.
CHECK, PLEASE TRANSGENDER BAN NO SYMPATHY
Trump promises In a tweet, without Four soldiers are
to start an online consulting his top killed in Niger and
fundraiser for a military advisers, Trump makes no
grieving military Trump announces comment for 12 days,
father and to donate he’s banning but tells the widow
$25,000 but does transgender service of Sgt. La David
neither until pres- members, calling Johnson that her
sured by the media them burdensome husband “knew what
months later. and disruptive. he signed up for.”
 to Trump’s inauguration shout-outs to the supporters in attendance. But
festivities while attaching gaze out into the audience and you saw a mot-
a proposed contract with ley cast of right-wing conspiracy theorists, over-
Broidy’s firm. He helped seas real-estate developers and a few Russian
secure a brief audience oligarchs. By day, they hung out in the lobby
for the Romanians with of the Trump International Hotel a few blocks
Trump at a dinner where from the White House, transforming it into a
Broidy was seated next to real-life Mos Eisley cantina, the scene of non-
the president-elect. For a stop scheming and schmoozing by the strange
starting rate of $350,000 new denizens of Trumpworld.
a month, Broidy offered One person who was in attendance was a
to help a lawyer based Lebanese-American businessman named
in Moscow remove U.S. George Nader. Short and stout, with thinning
sanctions on two Russian gray hair, Nader, like Broidy, had once been a
companies. (The lawyer player in Washington, and now, years later, the
recalls Broidy’s propos- two men met for the first time, at the inaugura-
al but not the suggest- tion. The encounter would prove pivotal.
ed fees included in Broi- Nader had run a small but respected maga-
dy’s memo, and he says zine in the 1990s called Middle East Insight, and
the plan did not go for- people in the foreign-policy community knew
TOP: CLINT SPAULDING/WWD/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SOPA IMAGES/

ward.) And in another him as a consummate wheeler-dealer, a medi-

REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ERIC GAY/AP IMAGES/

instance, Broidy and his ator-for-hire who was always bringing different
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; FRANCOIS MORI/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK; IAN WITLEN/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ANDREW HARNIK/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

wife, a lawyer and former entertainment exec-
utive, hatched a plan to earn $75 million if they
could get the Justice Department to drop an in-
vestigation into the multibillion-dollar fraud in-
volving Malaysia’s prime minister and its state
investment fund.
The real prize for Broidy, however, was two
of the richest countries in the world: Saudi Ara-
bia and the UAE. Contracts with their defense
ministries for his security company could be
worth hundreds of millions, if not billions. For
years, Broidy had tried to win business with the
Emirati and Saudi royal families. But that was
before Trump came along. “President Trump
THE RIGHT cy and score foreign contracts for his compa- Middle Eastern delegations — the Israelis, the
PEOPLE ny. Before publication of this story, a lawyer Syrians, Yasser Arafat — to Washington for con-
Broidy (center)
with then-Sen.
for Broidy sent a letter to ROLLING STONE alleg- ferences and negotiations.
Jeff Sessions ing that “paid agents” of Qatar stole the emails Nader vanished from D.C. in the early 2000s;
and CEO Larry from Broidy as retribution for the “exercise of it later emerged that he’d been convicted in the
Mizel. After the his First Amendment rights to highlight Qatar’s Czech Republic for sexually abusing minors. He
election, men
support for global terrorist organizations.” The resurfaced in Iraq, working with Erik Prince,
like Broidy who
backed Trump lawyer contended that some of the documents the founder of the controversial defense con-
were valuable were doctored or forged by the alleged hackers. tractor Blackwater. Later, he served as a con-
in D.C. “There’s Taken together with ROLLING STONE’s report- sultant to two Emirati investment firms and as
five people out
ing, the documents give a rare inside view of an adviser to MBZ.
there who bet
on a long shot how the Trump-era swamp works — and Broi- For Nader and MBZ, the Trump presidency
and won,” says dy’s place in it. was an opportunity for the UAE to assert itself
one GOP as a greater player in the Middle East. It was

campaigned on a promise to drain the swamp,”
Paul Seamus Ryan, a vice president at Com-
mon Cause, tells ROLLING STONE. “Instead, he
brought a group of swamp creatures with him.”
This story is based on more than 40 inter-
views, hundreds of pages of legal records as
well as private emails and other documents
of Broidy’s, which reveal his efforts to shape
the Trump administration’s Middle East poli-
O
operative, and
NSTAGE, PRESIDENT TRUMP and
each thinks
“I’m the guy First Lady Melania Trump, joined
who could by members of the new First Family,
make all your swayed together to a rendition of
dreams true.” Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” It was January 20th,
2017, a night of parties celebrating the swearing
in of the 45th president. At first glance, Trump’s
inauguration resembled those that had come
before it — the black-tie balls, the speeches and
also a chance for the Emiratis and Saudis to
go on the attack against two of their fiercest ri-
vals, Iran and Qatar. A small monarchy located
on a peninsula roughly the size of Connecti-
cut, Qatar has the highest per-capita income in
the world, thanks to its vast natural-gas fields
shared with Iran. Qatar, some say, is more of
a company than a country. The ruling al-Thani
family plays an outsize and often provocative

FEB. 2018 AU G. O C T. N OV. N OV. N OV. D E C.

PROPAGANDA FAIL POLITICAL NOT IN THE BLOCK THE VOTE COMBAT PAY
Trump orders the WARFARE TRENCHES Frustrated by the After nearly two
Pentagon to plan Trump deploys In France, Trump Florida midterm years in office,
NOT-SO-ETERNAL
a grand military OUTSOURCING THE VA TO MAR-A LAGO 5,200 troops to the no-shows at a cere- recount, Trump Trump finally visits
FLAME
parade for himself The overhaul of the medical records for Mexican border to mony for the 100th tweets, “must go a combat zone, in
Trump skips a
down Pennsylvania 9 million vets is guided by three members defend the country anniversary of the with election night” Iraq, but lies to the
Veterans Day cer-
Avenue. The dream of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago — the head of Mar- from a nonexistent end of World War I. results, which troops, claiming
emony at Arlington
is shelved when vel Entertainment, a Palm Beach lawyer and “invasion” one week Reason: It was rain- would exclude he gave them a 10
Cemetery, later
costs reach $92 a doctor — none of whom are government before the midterm ing. Vive le coif! ballots from service percent pay raise (it
explaining he was
million. officials or have ever served in the military. election. members overseas. was less than three).
“extremely busy.”

March 2019 | Rolling Stone | 35

— critics say destabilizing — role in the Middle
East, funding pro-democracy conferences and
using their TV network, Al-Jazeera, to shape
public opinion in the region. Qatar’s critics ac-
cuse the al-Thanis of allowing terrorists to live
in their country and use their financial system.
For years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had
wanted nothing more than to cripple Qatar. In
an allegedly leaked email from 2017, the UAE’s
ambassador to the U.S. wrote that conquering
Qatar would “solve everyone’s problems. Lit-
erally,” and that Saudi King Abdullah had con-
sidered “doing something in Qatar” before he
died in 2015. (Representatives for the Saudi
and UAE embassies in Washington did not re-
spond to requests for comment.) Qatar enjoyed
a strong relationship with the U.S., hosting one
of the most important American air bases in the
world, at al-Udeid. But now, in the chaos of the
new administration, the Saudis
and Emiratis sought to turn the
U.S. against Qatar — and Broi-
dy would convince them that
he could make it happen. “The
Gulf nations view their wealth
as an extension of their power,”
says Rep. Adam Schiff, chair-
man of the House intelligence
committee. “When they’ve got
a president of questionable eth-
ics and one driven by money,
it’s an attractive target.”
Nader and MBZ understood
that there were ways to get
to Trump that wouldn’t have
worked with previous admin-
istrations. Trump liked to say
that his primary consultant was
himself; he trusted few people
beyond his own family. Former
campaign staffers, Mar-a-Lago members and
business partners filled the vacuum where ac-
ademics, diplomats and other experts would
usually be found. The challenge was finding the
right acolyte with enough juice to get your mes-
sage in front of the easily distractible Trump.
For Nader, that man was Elliott Broidy. What
they talked about the night of the inauguration
isn’t clear. (A lawyer for Nader disputed the re-
porting about Nader’s pedophilia conviction
and claimed that the emails between him and
Broidy were “altered or fabricated” but did not
give any examples.) But by the time the eve-
ning’s festivities were finished, the two men
had the makings of a plan.
S
OON AFTER THE inauguration, a mes-
sage appeared in Broidy’s inbox from
his new friend. “Hi,” Nader wrote.
“Here is my private email.” It was one
of the first of hundreds of messages Broidy and
Nader would exchange over the following year.
Broidy began his work for Nader by design-
ing an extensive PR and influence offensive.
The strategy, documents show, involved link-
ing Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, the po-
litical and social group with millions of follow-
ers often accused of fomenting terrorism. In a
memo to Nader dated March 15th, 2017, Broi-
36 | Rolling Stone | March 2019
dy wrote that the Brotherhood had “infiltrat-
ed the Democratic Party” and “almost elected
their champion, Keith Ellison, national chair-
man.” (Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Con-
gress and now Minnesota’s attorney general,
has never championed the group.) In another
memo, Broidy accused Qatar of funding and
hosting members of Hamas and the Taliban.
(The State Department’s 2017 terrorism report
highlighted Qatar’s participation with the U.S.
to combat terrorism financing while noting that
terrorist financiers within Qatar are still able to
exploit its informal financial system.)
Broidy sought to manufacture a groundswell
of activity to demonstrate to Democrats and
Republicans that Qatar was not an ally and that
the Trump administration should take punitive
action in the form of sanctions against Qatari
individuals or a foreign-terrorist designation
for the entire Muslim Brotherhood. If all went
as planned, there would be no public evidence
of Broidy and Nader’s efforts behind this co-
vert operation. These activities are common
in Washington: For decades, foreign govern-
ments have retained pricey law firms and politi-
cal consulting firms to represent their interests.
What made this one so striking was that Broidy
and Nader operated outside the usual world of
K Street firms and consulting shops.
Broidy had every reason to carry out his plan
in secret. The last time he climbed to the top of
American politics it ended in disgrace. Raised
in Los Angeles in a middle-class Jewish family,
he got a degree in accounting at the Universi-
ty of Southern California while running a laun-
dromat on the side. Later he kept the books
for the Bell family that had founded the Taco
Bell chain and started his own investment firm,
quickly becoming rich. Broidy had given mod-
estly to both Democrats and Republicans run-
ning for office, but after 9/11 he grew increas-
ingly hawkish and was an obsessive defender
of Israel. He became a leader in a small, tight-
knit group of Jewish Republicans in Southern
California who contributed substantial sums of
money to Republican and conservative causes.
“Mr. L.A.” was how one Republican fund-
raiser who attended events at Broidy’s house
described him. He and his wife, Robin, threw
high-dollar political fundraisers and charitable
events at Rosewood, their Georgian-style man-
sion in the hills of Bel-Air that held a near-myth-
ical place in Republican circles; George W. Bush
supposedly once said of the place, “This is
nicer than the White House.”
Then it all came crashing down. In Decem-
ber 2009, Andrew Cuomo, then the New York
attorney general, announced that Broidy had
pleaded guilty to bribing officials in the New
York state comptroller’s office in exchange for
a $250 million investment in a fund he had
started called Markstone Capital. Broidy ad-
mitted to paying for lavish trips and gifts for
state officials and their families and providing
$300,000 for a movie called Chooch, produced
by the brother of an employee in the comptrol-
ler’s office. “This is an old-fashioned payoff of
state officials,” Cuomo said at the time. (The fel-
ony charge was later reduced to a misdemean-
or in exchange for Broidy’s cooperation with
the AG’s office.) Overnight, Mr. L.A. became
a pariah. Candidates returned his donations.
He resigned from Markstone. He and his wife
moved out of their mansion and sold off a por-
tion of their wine collection.
For the next few years, Broidy toiled in ob-
scurity. He produced a low-budget movie and
hired a PR firm to churn out feel-good releases
(“Elliott Broidy Voices Support for Homeless
Youth as Los Angeles Area Cities Continue De-
bates Over the Issue”) about his efforts to com-
bat homelessness and support cancer research.
In the 2016 presidential race, Trump wasn’t
his first (or second or third) choice: He’d ini-
tially supported Lindsey Graham, whom he’d
known from the Bush years, switching to
Marco Rubio, then to Ted Cruz. At first, Broidy
didn’t think much of Trump: He allegedly told
TRUMP OF someone close to him Trump was an “idiot”
ARABIA who couldn’t even pronounce the names of
Trump’s first countries correctly. But when the RNC and
overseas visit
as president Trump campaign, whose lead fundraiser was
was to Saudi Broidy’s friend Steve Mnuchin, came calling
Arabia. “The in 2016, desperate to find anyone who could
Gulf nations raise money, Broidy threw himself into a cam-
view their
wealth as an
paign other Republicans couldn’t stomach. And
extension of it surely seemed like a lost cause to the peo-
their power,” ple Broidy was soliciting — until the night of
says Rep. November 8th, 2016.
Schiff, chair of
BANDAR ALGALOUD/SAUDI ROYAL COUNCIL/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
the House
B
intelligence Y THE END of March 2017, Broidy
committee. had finalized a detailed and bulleted
“When they’ve strategy with the goal of engineer-
got a
ing a major crackdown on Qatar in
president of
questionable Congress and the Trump administration. The
ethics and one plan, which he sent to Nader, called for enlist-
driven by ing (and bankrolling) think tanks specializing in
money, it’s an
foreign policy to educate the public on the dan-
attractive
target.” gers of Qatar and the Brotherhood. Broidy pro-
posed using newspapers, magazines, YouTube
and social media to spread the message. He
suggested working with dark-money nonprof-
it groups that can run more overt political ads
and have more leeway to push lawmakers for
congressional resolutions, hearings and other
official actions to gin up opposition against the
two targets. He also designed a star-studded
conference intended to move lawmakers, the
administration and American public opinion in
the direction of isolating and punishing Qatar.
Nader asked Broidy to send him an invoice
for an initial $2.5 million. Whether that was
a down payment or the full cost isn’t clear.
If Broidy succeeded and proved his worth to
Nader and the Emirati and Saudi princes, he
hoped the payoff would come in the form of lu-
crative contracts for his company.
Broidy relied on a few key figures in Wash-
ington to help carry out his plan. One was Rep.
Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee. Broidy had
helped Royce’s wife get a job at the State De-
partment. A onetime Saudi critic, Royce figured
prominently into Broidy’s work. Broidy told
Nader that he “caused” Royce to enter into the
Congressional Record a fawning FoxNews.com
op-ed by a Saudi general that hailed Trump for
ushering in a new era in U.S.-Saudi relations.
Royce also headlined a May 2017 conference
on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood that,
at least on paper, was organized by two think
tanks, the Foundation for the Defense of De-
mocracy and the Hudson Institute. But emails
and other planning documents show that
Broidy had a hand in the planning. With dozens
of journalists in the audience at the Fairmont
Hotel in Washington, Royce announced an up-
coming piece of legislation that would accuse
Qatar of funding Hamas and open up the possi-
bility of sanctions. “This is the first such bill to
do so!” Broidy told Nader in an email. (Royce
did not respond to requests for comment.)
Broidy’s conference came amid a crescendo
of op-eds, news stories and other critical state-
ments about Qatar in the spring and summer
of 2017. As one former foreign lobbyist told me,
small actions that create the perception of clos-
er ties or tensions between a foreign nation and
the U.S. are nearly as valuable as actual poli-
cy. That can take the form of a public event,
a critical editorial or a letter from one mem-
ber of Congress to his or her colleagues. The
lobbyist tells the story of a 2015 hearing about
U.S.-Hungary relations hosted by Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the then-chair of a sub-
committee focusing on Eastern Europe. Few
people attended the hearing, and it received al-
most zero coverage in the U.S., but it created a
“deluge of coverage” in Hungary and was used
by the country’s autocratic prime minister, Vik-
tor Orban, to show that he had champions in
the U.S. “The smallest or inconsequential ac-
tion by a member of Congress, such as a ‘Dear
Colleague’ letter, can be put out in the foreign
press and used by governments to justify their
policies and politics,” the lobbyist says.
One glaring difference between what the lob-
byist did for Hungary and Broidy’s efforts was
that the lobbyist disclosed his work. Under the
law, Americans who try to influence Ameri-
can policy or public opinion on behalf of a for-
eign government must register under what’s
known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act,
a law enacted in 1938 to combat the spread of
Nazi propaganda. Until very recently, FARA
was treated like “a stop sign in the desert,” as
one foreign lobbyist told me. Broidy, howev-
er, never registered as a lobbyist or reported
his activities under FARA; Chris Clark, a law-
yer for Broidy, has noted that Nader is a U.S.
citizen and said there is “no evidence” that ei-
ther Nader or a foreign entity directed Broi-
dy’s actions. “Elliott Broidy has never agreed
to work for, been retained or compensated by,
nor taken direction from any foreign govern-
ment directly or indirectly for any interaction
with the United States government, ever,” Clark
tells ROLLING STONE. “Any implication to the
contrary is a lie.”
Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer who specializes
in FARA, tells ROLLING STONE that FARA is an
intentionally broad law that encompasses not
just lobbying but any work that someone in-
tends to or believes will influence the Amer-
ican public about the politics or policies of a
OUR MAN IN foreign government. “The facts and exchange
WASHINGTON of emails and documents would give me sig-
George Nader
nificant pause if I were advising a client about
(above) and
Broidy worked proceeding under similar circumstances,” Ro-
behind the senstein says, “and the Department of Justice
scenes to would be justified in taking a close look at this.”
align the U.S. (Clark, Broidy’s lawyer, says Rosenstein’s com-
with Saudi
and UAE ment is “ill-informed” and based on “extreme-
interests. ly limited knowledge.”)
When Nader, Broidy’s behind-the-scenes efforts were hav-
who was ing an impact. Trump had chosen to take his
convicted of
sexual abuse
first foreign trip to Riyadh, where he participat-
in the Czech ed in a strange glowing-orb ceremony with the
Republic, Saudi king and vowed to work with the Saudis
wanted a and the UAE to support a new counterterrorism
photo with
center in the Middle East. He slammed the Iran
Trump, Broidy
offered to nuclear treaty negotiated by Obama, mulled
write to the a foreign-terrorist designation for the Muslim
White House Brotherhood and was increasingly critical of
to help Nader
Qatar, echoing Broidy’s own talking points.
get past
security. “During my recent trip to the Middle East I
stated that there can no longer be funding of
Radical Ideology,” Trump tweeted in June 2017.
“Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”
A day earlier, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain
and Egypt had cut diplomatic ties and imposed
a blockade on Qatar, closing their borders to
the Qataris, a serious blow for a country sur-
rounded by water on three sides that exported
natural gas and imported most everything else
— and a major escalation in the conflict.
Meanwhile, Trump’s criticism of Qatar heat-
ed up and he appeared to be firmly on the side
of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In late June, after
just five months in office, he kicked off his 2020
re-election effort with a $35,000-a-head fund-
raiser at his D.C. hotel, reportedly hauling in
$10 million. From the stage, Trump singled out
a handful of people in the crowd, including
Broidy, who was back on the RNC’s finance
team. “Everybody knows Elliott,” Trump said.
“Thanks, Elliott.” Later, he took a direct shot at
Qatar. “We always say Qa-tar. It’s Qa-tar, they
prefer. I prefer that they don’t fund terrorists.”
B
ROIDY’S WORK HAD initially caught
the Qataris flat-footed. But they soon
responded by launching a lobbying
counteroffensive in Washington, hir-
ing former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft,
several former Trump staffers and a slew of oth-
ers at a rate of several hundred thousand dol-
lars a month. One of those lobbyists was Nick
Muzin, who had worked on Trump’s campaign
and had extensive ties to the Orthodox Jewish
community. Just as Broidy had tapped Chris-
tian and Jewish groups, including the American
Israel Political Action Committee and the Inter-
national Fellowship of Christians and Jews to
criticize Qatar, Muzin went to work convincing
Jewish and evangelical leaders that Qatar was a
friend and ally. He and his business partner, a
kosher-restaurant owner named Joey Allaham,
arranged for people close to Trump, including
law professor Alan Dershowitz and former Ar-
kansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, to visit Qatar, and
steered large sums of Qatari money to groups
like the Zionist Organization of America. (After
Qatar was revealed as the source, ZOA said it
would return the money.) What made this so
unusual was that this wasn’t a fight between lib-
erals and conservatives; instead, two conserva-
tive Jews were battling it out on opposite sides
of a Middle East proxy war.
According to sources, the fleet of lobbyists
working for Qatar met weekly at its D.C. embas-
sy, a five-story building that blends in with the
surrounding consulting companies. One name
often came up at those meetings: Elliott Broidy.
The Qataris had allegedly drawn up an enemies
list, and Broidy was on it. Qatar is “going after
you,” Muzin later told an associate of Broidy’s.
For his part, Broidy’s plan was right on track.
He used his success to sell Nader and the crown
princes on the need to hire Circinus. Contained
in Broidy’s leaked emails is a memo he wrote
for Nader — and seemingly intended for Saudi
crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump’s
trip to Riyadh, Broidy wrote, was a “smash-
ing success” and a “major turning point” in
U.S.-Saudi relations. He then listed the ways
Circinus could assist the Saudi government.
“My Goals, Circinus’ goals and the goals of KSA
are completely aligned,” he wrote. According to
materials Broidy sent to Nader, he had brought
on General McChrystal as the chairman of Cir-
cinus’ “special-operations division.” Other doc-
uments listed former Defense [Cont. on 96]
March 2019 | Rolling Stone | 37
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 WO M E N S H A P I NG

THE FUTURE

NANCY
PELOSI
I 
The Rolling Stone T WAS A BONE-COLD JANUARY DAY in the nation’s capital. The
federal government — finally back in business after the longest
shutdown in American history — opened three hours late due
Interview with to a dusting of snow and a “flash freeze” in the forecast. Not
that it mattered to anyone who worked inside the speaker’s of-
the Speaker of fice. Nancy Pelosi was there at her usual time, and her aides
were expected to be there too. There was work to do: commit-

the House of tees to finish assigning, a postponed State of the Union to or-
ganize, and less than three weeks to hammer out a deal with

Representatives the White House on border security before funding was set to
run out again. ¶ Pelosi is at the height of her power, having re-
captured the House, dispatched an attempted coup of her leadership, and
faced down the president in a very public, extremely high-stakes fight. Her
approval rating has risen eight points since November, and now sits high-
er than it has been in more than a decade. ¶ Nancy Pelosi has waited a long
B y T E S S A S T UA R T time for this. Born 78 years ago, she was the youngest of Baltimore Mayor
& JA N N S . W E N N E R Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.’s seven children, and the only girl. While her elder
brother was groomed to follow in their father’s footsteps, Pelosi got mar-
ried, moved to San Francisco, and raised five children before she serious-
ly considered a run for office. When she arrived in Congress, after winning
ZOEY GROSSMAN a special election in 1987, women made up just five percent of the House of

4
0 ROLLING STONE » MARCH 2019
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
Representatives. Pelosi served for two decades
before she was elected the first female speak-
er of the House, in 2007, the highest-ranking
woman in the U.S. government, and second in
line to the presidency.
She welcomed ROLLING STONE staff writ-
er Tessa Stuart and the magazine’s founder,
Jann S. Wenner, into the speaker’s office, where
there are frescoes on the ceiling, oil paintings
of the San Francisco Bay and California coast-
line, and an expansive view of the Washing-
ton Monument. She wore a long, thin gold pin,
with a tiny eagle perched on top. It was a mace:
the ancient Roman symbol of power. Techni-
cally, it’s a bludgeon — the person who wields
the bludgeon holds the power. After retreating
from a 35-day standoff with her over funding
for his border wall, President Trump seemed
well aware who wielded the bludgeon in their
relationship, at least for the moment. Wenner
had come to the interview with a gift: a box of
fancy chocolates. (Pelosi is well-known for her
love of chocolate.)
Nancy Pelosi: Oh, my goodness. Maison du
Chocolat. This is the real thing. Thank you so
much. Should we start?
ROLLING STONE: Yeah, let’s start, because
you’re busy.
No, I meant start with the chocolate.
Of course. Life has changed. R OLLING
STONE interviews used to start with pot. . . .  almost and practically nothing. I’m paraphras-
Now it’s chocolate.
Isn’t that true.
So what do you think your chief purpose is
now, in this era of divided government?
The wisdom of our founders was that we
would have co-equal branches of government.
I think in a large sense, my responsibility now
— and it seems to be having an impact — is to
impress upon the other branches of govern-
ment, the executive and the judiciary, the role
of the legislative branch. That means to not
only pass laws — the Constitution gives us the
power of the purse, it gives us the responsi-
bility for oversight, and we will exercise that
power. And if we don’t, we would be delin-
quent in our duties. As speaker of the House, I
see my responsibility to honor the Constitution
— separation of powers as a co-equal branch of
government.
Would you say respect for the concept of
co-equal branches of government has been
in decline in the past decade or two?
Mostly since this president. President Obama
recognized the role of Congress. Right now,
we see some Republicans — [Senate Majority
Leader] Mitch McConnell for one — complicit in
this president usurping the power of the Con-
gress by saying, “If he doesn’t sign it, we won’t
pass it.” Well, that’s not the way the balance
works. We put forth legislation for the good of
4
2 ROLLING STONE
the people, and we send it to the president. If
he doesn’t sign, you try to override it.
What is your relationship with McConnell
like these days?
I’ve worked with him over the years as a mem-
ber of the Appropriations Committee, back
when I was still on committees. I have a re-
spectful relationship with him. I have been dis-
appointed that he was willing to have the gov-
ernment shut down because he wouldn’t face
down the president on the president’s bad pol-
icy. That’s discouraging for the leader in the
United States Senate. Does he take an oath to
the president? No. He takes an oath to protect
the Constitution.
Do you think there’s anything the pres-
ident would do that would cause McCon-
nell to break with him? Another government
shutdown, or if he declares a national emer-
gency, or a damning report from [Special
Counsel Robert] Mueller?
I’m starting a new club. It’s called the Too Hot
to Handle Club. The reason the government is
open now is because we did make a shutdown
too hot to handle. Finally Mitch was feeling the
heat, which he conveyed to the president, and
here we are with open government, able now to
negotiate on how to protect our borders.
Public opinion is everything. Lincoln said:
Public sentiment is everything. With it, you
can accomplish almost everything; without it,
ing, but nothing is more powerful than the sto-
ries of the people affected. You can roll out sta-
tistics and timetables, but the consequences
— the emotional connection to the rest of the
public — is what really weighed in.
Would they back him if he tried to declare
a phony national emergency at the border?
The national emergency has its critics on the
Republican side. If [Trump] does it, then the
next president — whom, we predict, will be a
Democrat — can also do it, and they don’t want
to establish a precedent that a president can
do this, because that really totally usurps the
power of the government.
A damning report from Mueller — would
that lead us toward impeachment?
You want to remember that President Nixon
was not impeached. The Republicans went to
him when they saw [the evidence]. The House
proceeded with the hearings, but they never
impeached because of information that came
out that made it clear that they shouldn’t put
the country through this process. It’s a very dis-
ruptive process to put the country through, and
it’s an opportunity cost in terms of time and re-
sources. You don’t want to go down that path
unless it is unavoidable.
We have no idea — nor should we — what
Mueller may have, if it involves the president
or his campaign. I don’t know how bad it would
have to be for them to do something, but the
Republicans in Congress have ignored a great
deal. You have a Cabinet that is a partially “act-
ing Cabinet” because people have left in dis-
grace or dismay. You have a White House which
is a fact-free zone. They have no interest in evi-
dence, data, science or truth when it comes to
making decisions.
You would think that there would be some
check, but remember this about the Republi-
cans in Congress: There is nothing that Pres-
ident Trump advocates for as president that
our Republican colleagues in the House hav-
en’t been [doing] there longer and worse. Name
any subject. Name a woman’s right to choose.
Name climate. Name LGBTQ discrimination is-
sues. Name gun safety. Name immigration pol-
icy. Name fairness in our economy. He’s terri-
ble. They’ve been there longer, and more so,
he’s their guy.
Don’t you think he’s worse on immigra-
tion?
Look, Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walk-
er Bush were great on immigration. The presi-
dent I quoted most in the campaign was Rea-
gan. Reagan said, “We must recognize that the
vital force for America’s pre-eminence in the
world is every generation of new immigrants
who comes to our shores, and when Ameri-
ca fails to recognize that,
we will fail to be pre-em-
I was an inent in the world.” Rea-
organizer, not a gan, Bush, Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush, Barack
fundraiser. I had Obama — all excellent on
to raise money immigration. George W.
to keep the Bush couldn’t convince
his party because they
doors open so were just never going to
we could march be there. This president
in the streets. comes in, and he’s worse.
On this, I have to say,
they’re bad on the policy,
he’s terrible on the policy, and the people and
the way he describes them, he’s so disrespect-
ful and discriminatory.
As the Republican Party has gotten more
racist and undemocratic, how does that
change how you think about working to find
compromise? You’ve said America is experi-
encing a “schism of the soul.”
That’s Toynbee. I also quote St. Augustine —
I’m a very devout Catholic — St. Augustine, 17
centuries ago, said, “Any government that is
not formed to promote justice is just a bunch
of thieves.” Seventeen hundred years ago. The
Republicans are anti-science. They are anti-gov-
ernance. They don’t have to do anything! They
don’t have to do anything about climate, which
is the challenge of this generation. They don’t
have to do anything about meeting the needs
of people because they don’t even care to hear
» MARCH 2019

what the needs of the people are. The list goes
on. I promised we would have an open Con-
gress, that we would try to start out with the is-
sues where we can find common ground. We
have a responsibility to find common ground
— if we can’t, to stand our ground. We talked
about infrastructure from Day One.
What’s your dynamic with Trump like, per-
sonally and politically?
How can I say this? I’m respectful of the office
that he holds. I see every challenge as an op-
portunity, and I pray for him and I pray for the
United States of America.
You said the wall is “like a manhood thing
with him.” Were you purposely trying to get
under his skin?
I was saying it in a private meeting, and of
course it went right out of the room. Boom. It
was out the door before I even walked out my-
self.
What do you think makes him tick?
Does he tick? Why are we assuming? “Tick” has
a certain predictability to it.
How do you negotiate with someone like
PAUL SAKUMA/AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
that — when there’s no agreed-upon stan-
dards of truth or fact or morality or prece-
dents or ethics? He completely can pull any-
thing on you. How do you deal with that?
I’ll take you to my first meeting with the presi-
dent, as president. It’s the first meeting with the
House and Senate Democratic and Republican
leadership — like eight people and then him.
This is historic. I’ve been there as leader, and
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
I’ve been there as speaker. Article One meet-
ing Article Two of the Constitution. We would
have normally been in a Cabinet Room, but he
wanted to do this in the East Wing for some rea-
son, so we could have snacks or something. It
was weird. But anyway, so we’re in this meet-
ing, and I’m thinking, “How will he begin this
historic meeting? Will he quote the Bible? Will
he quote the Constitution or any of our found-
ers? Will he tell a personal story of his family,
and what this means?”
[Hunches over, scowls, glances sideways] “You
know I won the popular vote?”
What?! That was shocking. And then he said
— I’m getting to your point, you’ll see why —
“Because 3 to 5 million people voted illegally.”
There’s a protocol to these meetings: The pres-
ident speaks, he makes his spiel or whatever,
and then the speaker speaks, and then the ma-
jority leader, and then the minority leader in
the House, and the Senate. I’m looking around,
and I’m thinking, “Chuck Schumer has never
been to this meeting before. Paul Ryan’s never
been to this meeting before. Donald Trump has
never been to this meeting before.”
You’re the only one?
And Mitch McConnell — who rarely speaks —
so I thought, “They don’t know the protocol.”
“Mr. President, that is not true,” I say. “That is
not true. What you are saying has no evidence,
no data, no truth, no fact to it.” He doesn’t re-
alize he’s supposed to be making some kind
of an opening statement about America and
“These are our priorities” and “Let’s see how
we can work together,” but he didn’t go there.
And I didn’t go there. If he’s not going to re-
spect his office, why should I? So when I say,
“That’s not true.” He says — a good comeback,
I have to give him credit — “I’m not even count-
ing California.”
I said, “The reason I’m saying what I’m say-
ing to you is the following: If we are going to
work together, you have to stipulate to a fact —
whether it’s a dollar number that is your bud-
get, or a time frame — you have to stipulate.
You can’t negotiate unless you have a start-
ing point, and you have to agree on what that
is to a fact. And if you’re not going to do that,
it’s impossible to come to any agreement. Isn’t
that right, my colleagues?” Because they know.
They would never go into a negotiation unless
you say, “What’s our bottom line?” So I said, “I
thought that this conversation might take us to
what our needs are for infrastructure, because
you’ve always talked about that. . . .” He said,
“Infrastructure. Infrastructure! Yeah, infra-
structure, I have a plan right here.” [Picks up the
lining of the chocolate box, and waves it around]
It wasn’t the lining of a candy box, but it could
have been a napkin or something. “I have the
plan right here. It’s a trillion-dollar plan, and
we can pass it right away. Right, Mitch?”
Mitch says, “Not unless it’s paid for.” That
Pelosi on was the end of that.
election It puts you in an interesting position be-
night in cause you’re having to anticipate things that
1987 were unthinkable in the past. For example,
you’ve mentioned that there was a plan in
case he declared the 2018 midterm results
illegal. What was the plan?
Well, I’m not going to divulge it, because we
may still use it. But we were ready. We’ve been
ready for a number of things. We’ve been ready
for over one year if he were to fire Mueller, and
we’ve been ready if he would fire [Deputy At-
torney General Rod] Rosenstein. We had rallies
on the ground. We had scores of bipartisan or
nonpartisan leaders around the country to say,
“That’s a constitutional crisis.” We are always
ready for what he might do, and I think our
readiness kept him at bay.
Do you have a plan for 2020, if he declares
the election illegitimate?
You just have to win big. When the women
marched, that made such a big difference. He
gets inaugurated — one of the most disgraceful
inaugural addresses ever, with no competition
whatsoever for that title — then the next day the
women marched. The women marched! Oh, my
God. It made such a difference. It wasn’t polit-
ical. We didn’t organize it. It was spontaneous.
It was organic, and women spoke and they saw
the value of their presence. And we saw, right
after that, the Muslim bans at the airports. [The
administration] couldn’t achieve what they set
4
3
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
out to do because of the relentless, persistent,
dissatisfied outside mobilization.
The Women’s March was a galvanizing mo-
ment — many women decided to run after-
ward. When you first were elected, in 1987,
there were 23 women in the House. Now
there are more than a hundred. How has
Congress changed in that time?
Imagine: [Out of ] 435 people, 23 women? You
must be kidding. We made a decision, on our
side, that we’d reach out and encourage women
to run. Before the November election, three
months ago, [Democrats] had 65. [Since I was
elected in 1987], we had increased our number
by more than five times, from 12 to 65. [Republi-
cans] had gone from, like, 11 to 20. Now they’re
down to 15 because they lost some in [2018]. We
have 87, I think it is. A third of our caucus are
women. Women marched, women ran, women
voted, women won, women are here, and it is
fabulous.
What kind of difference is that making? Is
it changing the way laws are made?
Well, over the years it has made a tremendous
difference. Today we celebrated the 10th anni-
versary of the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and celebrat-
ing it, we introduced the equal-pay-for-equal-
work bill, which we hope to have signed into
law. But I don’t want to confine women to just
[women’s] issues, as important as they are.
Women here are leaders on national security,
they’re leaders on economic security. Women
have made their mark across the board. Cer-
tainly the impact on a woman’s right to choose
and the rest of that. No denying that women
have made a tremendous difference, but not to
confine women to what you might think of as
typical women’s issues. Every issue is a wom-
an’s issue.
Has it changed the way, for example, that
caucus meetings run?
You know, the reason I always won my votes
is because we build by consensus. And so peo-
ple would say to me after meetings when I was
speaker first time around, “Do you realize how
different that meeting would have been if a man
were running it?” Which was interesting. Be-
cause it is just different. You listen, you know?
You really don’t go in with the thought, “This is
what I’m gonna do. I’ll listen to what you have
to say, [but] there’s one vote that counts in this
room.”
You first came to Congress in the Eighties
— did you ever have an experience with sex-
ual harassment or overreaching?
When I came here, it was such a non-thing. I
mean, I came as a mother of five children. I had
five older brothers. I wasn’t impressed by any-
thing any of these people had to say. I mean, I
was an Italian-American Catholic — liberal in
terms of politics, but very conservative in terms
of family and how people interacted with one
4
4 ROLLING STONE
another. That’s the aura I must have given off
when I came here.
In November, there was a sit-in in your of-
fice, demanding action on climate change,
and some of your new caucus members par-
ticipated. What was your gut reaction?
You have to understand: I came into the po-
litical arena as an organizer. You know, peo-
ple say, “Oh, she was a fundraiser.” Well, no,
I wasn’t a fundraiser. I had to raise money to
keep the doors open so that we could march
in the streets. But I was not a fundraiser, I was
an organizer. I was a mom, with five children,
who just really could not tolerate the idea that
one in five children in America lived in pover-
ty. That was my kitchen-to-Congress motiva-
tion, and still is. Every day I’m like, “Don a suit
of armor, put on your brass knuckles, eat nails
for breakfast, and go out there and stop them
from taking children out of the arms of their
parents, food out of the mouths of babies.” I
mean, it’s just the way it is. So, in my day — go
back 30 years or more — I was pushing strollers
and carrying signs myself. I say to these people
who come in, “I was carrying single-payer signs
before you were born.”
I understand that to be an advocate you are
persistent, dissatisfied and relentless. I was
chair of [the Democratic Party for] Northern
California for a long time. We were like, “We
worked so hard to elect these people, and then
they go back and they compromise. We are the
purists.” I’ve been there. I understand it. You
have that responsibility as an advocate — I have
a different responsibility as a leader, but enjoy.
You know, enjoy. That’s a new generation. Peo-
ple kept asking me, “Are you sick of that?” I’m
like, “I’d probably be doing that myself.”
The group that staged that sit-in are advo-
cates for the Green New Deal. There seems
to be a lot of energy around the idea, but not
a lot of specifics. You’ve resurrected the Se-
lect Committee on the Climate Crisis. What
do you want this committee empowered to
do? What does it have as a goal?
When I was elected speaker — Bush is presi-
dent, mind you — my flagship issue was the cli-
mate. It’s a public-health issue: clean air, clean
water. It’s a national-security issue, to protect
us from all of the things that engender violence,
[such as] competition for food. The generals
have come to tell us it is a national-security
issue. It’s an economic issue, and it is a moral
issue to pass this planet on to future genera-
tions in the best possible way. As a Catholic, I
believe that this is God’s creation, and we have
a moral responsibility to be good stewards of it.
President Bush was a denier. I mean, I loved
him dearly, but he was a denier. We had Re-
publicans on our committee who were deniers.
Now, they’re a little more like, “It’s happening,
but I’m not sure what the human role is.” When
we lost [the Democratic majority of the House],
one of the first things [Republicans] did was to
restore Styrofoam to the cafeteria, no more re-
cycling, everything went in the same trash. You
know, they’re really pathetic. Because they are
just handmaidens of the fossil-fuel industry, pe-
riod — when they’re not handmaidens of the
gun industry. So they have those two wonder-
ful things going for them.
With George W. Bush, we passed the biggest
energy bill in the history of our country, taking
tens of millions of cars off the road, changed
emission standards, and many of the actions
that President Obama was able to take by exec-
utive order sprang from authorities in that bill.
So we made a big difference. Now here we are,
and technology is way down the road. There
are so many more opportunities to protect.
I think coal is a disaster. It’s an oxymoron:
“clean coal.” It doesn’t exist. It’s impossible.
However, I fight for [miners], for their health
benefits and their pension benefits. Anytime
they come to Capitol Hill, 30 or 40 of them
gravitate to our office as their kind of head-
quarters, because while the president is adver-
tising coal, we can’t get them to pass bills for
black-lung disease. I mean, we do, but it’s an
effort to do it.
In any event, to reduce our dependence on
fossil fuels, we have to put
a price on coal, on carbon.
Republicans It might be a carbon tax.
are just We’ll see, but that’s the
reason you have hearings
handmaidens and see what’s possible,
of the fossil- what the market will be,
fuel industry — what the private sector is
willing to invest in, what
when they’re not is working in some other
handmaidens of countries, and what we
the gun industry. can do working together.
You have to make deci-
sions that you’re going to
reach certain goals, and some of our goals we
think are achievable. That’s why public opinion
is so important. Young people know better than
people who serve here in Congress that this is
important to do.
How do you deal with entrenched inter-
ests — the energy companies, the coal com-
panies, the oil companies?
Yeah, they have a lot of power here, there’s no
question, but again, we have to take it to the
public, and I think it should be an important
part of the presidential campaign. That’s sort of
the main attraction in politics — during a pres-
idential year, we’ll be the lounge act, that’s the
main event. Everything that we’re talking about
has to be elevated to the presidential level.
Now, in terms of the Green New Deal [as
conceived], that goes beyond what our charge
is. Our charge is about saving the planet. They
» MARCH 2019

have in there things like single-payer and . . .  ing [process]. I have to have people who have a
what is it? Guaranteed income?
Pelosi Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill:
Guaranteed income, and then a jobs guarantee.
Pelosi: And then they have, I don’t know if
it’s single-payer or Medicare for All. . . . It’s kind
of, like, a broader agenda. All good values,
but nonetheless, not what we hope to achieve
with this focused, determined, decision-mak-
ing: You’re either for the planet or you are not.
There is no “plan B” for the planet. We have to
preserve it, and it is in great jeopardy.
Are you going to require that appointees
on the Select Committee not accept contri-
butions from energy companies?
No. But I don’t think any of them have. This
is about [finding] people who care very much
about the issue and know very much about
the issue. I haven’t checked their filings, but
I think our chairwoman — who’s fabulous —
Kathy Castor from Florida, her local utility, I
don’t know, 10 years ago, gave her a contribu-
tion. And [environmental activists] said, “She
received money from the industry!” And it was
COURTESY OF SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI
like, “What?” She’s absolutely spectacular on
this subject, killer.
Would you ask that, going forward, ap-
pointees won’t accept donations from ener-
gy companies?
What I want to know is: What is your vision
about saving this planet? Secondly, what do
you know about the subject? This is not a learn-
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
commitment and a knowledge about the deci-
sions that we have to make. Tell me your vision,
tell me your knowledge. We have to make some
very tough decisions. Let’s work together for
a plan to get this done in the soonest-possible
way. The most important part of it all: vision,
knowledge, judgment and strategic thinking
about how to get it done. And how does it con-
nect with the American people, so we can get it
to pass the Senate and the White House?
We’re thinking big on this. We’re not hold-
ing [it against] somebody if she got a utility
contribution within her lifetime. That’s just
not — I mean, my daughter is really on every-
body’s case about taking contributions, so I
know the program. But I just want the best pos-
sible people.
There’s a lot of debate on the question of
single-payer, Medicare for All — we’ve heard
that expression just recently. What do you
think should be done? Where do you want
this to go?
This is a very interesting debate, and in any de-
bate, as I start off this conversation, you must
define your terms. Let’s stipulate to some facts
here: When we passed the Affordable Care Act,
for us, it was a pillar of health and economic se-
curity for America’s working families — 125 mil-
lion families got better benefits, more reason-
ably priced, with no annual or lifetime caps,
and with no prohibition if you had pre-existing
conditions. We were on a good path, and when
[Republicans] took over [Congress], they let
certain things expire. People say, “Well, it’s not
doing this or that.” Well, it did until it expired.
Restore the reinsurance. Elect more Democrat-
ic governors so that Medicaid can be expand-
ed and millions more people can have access
in an affordable way. I myself wanted to have
the public option. We couldn’t get that through
the Senate, but we enabled states to do a pub-
lic option if they want. This made as drastic a
difference as day and night. Now, of course, ev-
eryone isn’t covered because in certain states
they didn’t expand Medicaid, so now [people
are proposing] Medicare for All.
When they say Medicare for All, people
have to understand this: Medicare for All is
not as good a benefit as the Affordable Care
Act. It doesn’t have catastrophic [coverage]
— you have to go buy it. It doesn’t have den-
tal. It’s not as good as the plans that you can
buy under the Affordable Care Act. So I say to
them, come in with your ideas, but understand
that we’re either gonna have to improve Medi-
care — for all, including seniors — or else peo-
ple are not gonna get what they think they’re
gonna get. And by the way, how’s it gonna be
paid for?
Now, single-payer is a different thing. Peo-
ple use the terms interchangeably. Sometimes
it could be the same thing, but it’s not always.
Pelosi Single-payer is just about who pays. It’s not
seated on about what the benefits are. That is, adminis-
the lap of tratively, the simplest thing to do, but to con-
her father,
vert to it? Thirty trillion dollars. Now, how do
Baltimore
Mayor
you pay for that?
Thomas So I said, “Look, just put them all on the
D’Alesandro table, and let’s have the discussion, and let
Jr. people see what it is. But know what it is that
you’re talking about.” All I want is the goal of
every American having access to health care.
You don’t get there by dismantling the Afford-
able Care Act. As Californians have said to me,
“We get billions and billions of dollars out of
the Affordable Care Act coming into California.
Now they want to get rid of that.” How are they
gonna go to single-payer in California without
the money from the Affordable Care Act? Any-
way, this is not a bumper-sticker war — this is a
complicated issue.
What was it like to work with Obama?
People will never fully understand that every
single day his administration did great things
for our country. The only way they could prob-
ably see it is to see the undoing of it now.
Obama was not a bragger. You know, he did
great things, never talked about it that much.
We were all in the trenches, fighting these peo-
ple who did not necessarily share our values.
Every day they spew forth horrible things into
the air our children breathe and the water they
drink, food safety, undoing of [Cont. on 94]
4
5
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
ILHAN
OMAR
She’s everything Trump is trying to ban. Now she’s in Congress. By Tessa Stuart
A
S A TEEN in Minneso-
ta, Ilhan Omar didn’t
wear a hijab often. “I,
regretfully, was one of
the folks who would
only wear it the days
I didn’t have the time
or energy to fix my
hair,” says Omar, who
arrived in the U.S. in
1995 as a refugee of the Somali civil war. Her at-
titude evolved after September 11th: “I knew we
had a responsibility to help shape a narrative
about our faith that is positive.” This year, she
became the first woman sworn in to Congress
in a head scarf, after negotiating the end to a
181-year-old edict that representatives must “re-
main uncovered” while on the House floor. Lift-
ing the ban caused an outcry from some con-
servatives, but, as an unapologetic progressive,
Omar is getting used to that. For now, though,
she’s trying to stay focused on the agenda she
came to Washington to advance, and on advo-
cating for people like herself — refugees, immi-
grants, Muslims, women, Minnesotans. “The
last two years of dealing with this administra-
tion has been the biggest adjustment of my
life,” she says. “I just want to hide. But I can’t
because I represent people who feel as much
pain — if not more — because they don’t have
the voice that I have.”
You came to the U.S. when you were 12.
What were your first impressions?
We had a layover in New York. I remember see-
ing homeless people and panhandlers on the
streets. There was trash everywhere, and graf-
fiti. I remember turning to my dad and saying,
4
6 ROLLING STONE
“This doesn’t look like the America you prom- By principle, I’m anti-war because I survived a
ised.” He said, “Girl, you ask too many ques- war. I’m also anti-intervention. I don’t think it
tions. We’re gonna get to our America.” ever makes sense for any country to intervene
What was it like being a Muslim woman in in a war zone with the fallacy of saving lives
America after 9/11? You had just become a when we know they are going to cause more
citizen. deaths. I also don’t believe in forced regime
You were afraid as an American and you were change. Change needs to come from within.
mourning, [but] you were seen now as a sus- There have been reports of Saudi-backed
pect. I remember there was an enormous fear news outlets attacking you and Rashida
that the community felt. It didn’t matter if you Tlaib, the first Muslim
were a new citizen or if you’d been here all your women in Congress.
life, there was a feeling like your existence here By principle, I’m Our presence terrifies
could be temporary.
I imagine that fear was realized with the
anti-war because them. These are totali-
tarian regimes that have
Muslim ban in 2017. What was it like? I survived a war. retained their power and
I had just gotten sworn in [to the Minnesota I don’t believe in influence in the West by
Legislature] two weeks before. There was lots
of chaos, people being stopped at the airports.
forced regime setting themselves up
as the gatekeepers and
I had a flight scheduled a week after to speak at change. Change the ushers of peace for
a human-rights conference in Turkey. I didn’t needs to come the Muslim communi-
know whether I could go. My father said, “I
looked at the lineup at this human-rights con-
from within. ty. They are threatened,
really, by Muslims who
ference — they’re risking everything. You are have now come to Con-
not gonna sit home.” I ended up going. gress who have the roots and understanding of
How do you anticipate progressive items, the problems and can speak to solutions that
like Medicare for All, will actually get done? do not involve them.
Medicare for All is an issue that’s supported by What do you think about impeachment?
the majority of Americans, and so that’s where I believe that impeachment is inevitable. It also
we begin, right? It’s not a progressive idea, it’s is a terrifying notion. Pence is an ideologue,
not a Democratic Caucus idea, it is an idea that and the ideology he holds is more terrifying to
solves one of the greatest problems we have. So me and my constituents. And we have not had
now it’s just figuring out what pieces of the leg- a full impeachment that removes the president
islation we put forth. from office. Nations struggle any time [they]
You’re on the House Foreign Affairs Com- overthrow a dictator, and Trump really has the
mittee. How has your experience as a ref- markings of a dictator.
ugee colored your view of, for instance,
Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria? ZOEY GROSSMAN
» MARCH 2019
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
JAHANA
H AY E S
From teen mom to Teacher of the Year to the House of Representatives. By Alex Morris
‘I 
NEVER EXPECTED TO WIN,” says Ja-
hana Hayes, the first African-Amer-
ican woman to represent Connecti-
cut in Congress. “I thought it would
be a damn good try, and people
would get encouraged, and then
the next time someone else would
do it.” In fact, when the mother of
four and 2016 National Teacher of
the Year — who grew up impov-
erished in public housing, was a single, teen
mom, and worked three jobs while putting her-
self through school — was approached by Con-
necticut Sen. Chris Murphy about running for
office in the state’s majority-white 5th District,
Hayes, 45, initially responded, “Absolutely not.
I don’t know how to raise the money. I don’t
even know what running would look like.”
Every politician credits their life experi-
ence with why they’re in politics, but that’s
especially true in your case. What was a par-
ticularly difficult time for you?
In sixth grade, I remember coming home and
the sheriff was putting our furniture out. And
from the time I was in sixth grade through high
school, my mom never had an apartment again.
Your mom struggled with addiction?
Right. The funny thing is, my mom was a real-
ly good mom until she was not, so I understand
the thief that is addiction.
When you found out that you were preg-
nant at 16, who did you tell first?
I told one of my best friends. It wasn’t that big a
deal when I was 16. Where I live, everyone had
babies. A lot of my friends had kids. It wasn’t
until I left my neighborhood that I realized it’s
a big deal.
4
8 ROLLING STONE
You weren’t able to continue with school,
were you?
No, I could not attend school pregnant. We had
a program called the Teenage Career Program.
It was in the basement of City Hall. And that to
me was so devaluing, because I was always a
really good student. I carried that with me into
my work as a teacher, because I recognize that
being smart is not enough. If you’re worried
about where you’re going to sleep or where
you’re going to eat or taking care of a baby, it
doesn’t matter how smart you are.
We have this national narrative of pulling
oneself up by the bootstraps.
You cannot pull yourself up by the bootstraps
if you do not have any boots. That creates this
idea that “all you have to do is work harder,” al-
most like it’s your fault. And that’s not always
true. I wish I were the rule, but I recognize that
I’m the exception.
You’re a former teacher — what has Betsy
DeVos done that’s concerned you?
Some of the nonstarters for me were the con-
versations about arming teachers, some of the
provisions about campus sexual assaults, the
conversation about the Americans With Dis-
abilities Act and students with special needs.
Every time I would hear a policy decision come
up, I would say, “I know what you think you’re
doing, but that’s not what it looks like by the
time it gets to me. For the one kid that you
think you’re protecting, 1,000 kids will be dis-
proportionately impacted.” We have to make
sure that we’re talking about both urban and
suburban communities — not just mass shoot-
ings but the kid who is in their home and a bul-
let comes through their window.
Did a bullet come through your window?
Absolutely. As a kid, there was a shooting in
the common area of our building and someone
got killed. The next morning, I remember my
grandmother pouring water and sweeping the
blood out so that we could play there.
Would you vote to impeach Trump?
Today, I would not, because we have a process.
We can be as angry as we want, but we operate
in facts. I tell people, “Be careful. Don’t let a
genie out of the bottle. He
will not always be pres-
We can be ident. But don’t change
angry, but do policy for people, because
the people will leave, and
not let this the policy will stay.”
psycho [Trump] But what about all the
steal your joy. anger out there?
Adults deal with anger dif-
We are at the ferently — that’s the most
intersection valuable lesson I learned
of history. from working with teen-
agers. I would never allow
my students to treat each
other the way that I’ve seen some of our elect-
ed officials behave. I would never allow kids to
say some of the things that are being said on so-
cial media. They would be disciplined.
So Trump should be suspended?
Do not let this psycho steal your joy. We are at
an intersection in history, and 20 years from
now, it’s going to be the millennials and the stu-
dents and the women and the single moms and
the outliers who came in and restored faith in
government. It’s happening.
ZOEY GROSSMAN
» MARCH 2019
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E

ALEXANDRIA
OCASIO-CORTEZ
The Democratic socialist star came to D.C. to ‘swing for the fences’ and fix the country. By Alex Morris

 I
F DEMOCRATS HAD wanted to troll
the GOP, they could hardly have
cooked up a better legislator than
Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez. She, of
course, is the Northeast- educated,
Bernie-supporting, wall-protesting,
community-organizing daughter of
a working-class Puerto Rican immi-
grant. Born in the Bronx, she was — until right
around the time that she took the primary in
New York’s 14th District from a 10-term in-
cumbent — waiting tables and bartending at a
taco joint called Flats Fix. Her striking features
are almost impossibly symmetrical, her out-
look millennial, and her answers pointed and
well-constructed. Today, she wears a hot-pink
pantsuit, which wouldn’t bear mentioning —
this being 2019 and all — if it weren’t for the
obvious fact that a hot-pink pantsuit intends to
announce itself.
It’s barely lunchtime in Washington, D.C.,
and Ocasio-Cortez has already attended a rally
to end the government shutdown and taken
to Twitter to, among other things, call out the
Daily Caller for its cozy relationship with white
supremacists, call out Tucker Carlson for his
cozy relationship with the Daily Caller, remind
everyone to “#LegalizeIt” and “demand justice
for communities ravaged by the War on Drugs,”
and take media outlets to task for reporting on
fake nudes of her with headlines that obscure
whether they were fake (@DailyCaller, “This is
not an apology”). When our conversation is in-
terrupted by her need to hustle to the House
floor for a vote, we continue it the next day
in a gilded room in the Capitol, not far from
Nancy Pelosi’s office — though far enough for
Ocasio-Cortez to get momentarily lost and set
on by tourists, who all wanted selfies with Con-
gress’ social media star. True to form, she gave
the people what they wanted.
When was the last time you experienced
sexism?
[Mimes looking at watch] Um, 10 a.m.
Oh, no, really?
I mean, that [fake nude photo] tweet, you
know? It’s so funny. I’m like, “Man, I do do a
lot of Instagram stories, but I don’t remem-
ber doing that.” But it speaks so much to the
work that we still have to do when it comes
to women’s rights. When the president says
that he has sexually assaulted women, they
just shrug their shoulders, but when there’s
a rumor that a woman may have had the au-
dacity to take a photo of herself, they’re up in
arms. I’d like to say ‘Don’t respond to it,’ but we
cannot pretend that these far-right outlets are
not driving some of the most subversive and
destructive narratives, and we cannot pretend
like those narratives have not gained steam.
They have hijacked the presidency.
And the political conversation.
Exactly. And so I may not want to respond to
it. We may not like the fact that these things
that were not worth our time 10 years ago
are worth our time now, given the subversive
power they’ve built. But I think that they are
worth a response.
In your ability to galvanize your supporters
through social media, you have been com-
pared to Donald Trump.
Well, I think that there’s this rush to make that
comparison, but any time media fundamental-
ly changes, the first movers to recognize that
change — and to learn it and to adapt to it —
tend to have that first-move advantage. So this
is less about personality, less about Trump, and
more about who has had the first-mover advan-
tage. But there are similarities. People who suc-
ceed in social media follow similar tenets. In
order to resonate with people, you have to tell
them what you mean, you have to be willing to
make mistakes, you have to be willing to be vul-
nerable and learn as you go.
You originally wanted to be an OB-GYN.
Why did you make the switch?
I had spent time living in West Africa while I
was an undergrad, helping midwives deliver
babies in the Sahara, and I contracted malaria
while I was there. In the developing world,
malaria is an economic disease. It’s a disease
that impacts so many people as to be actually
impacting national GDP, so I started think-
ing about these health issues as more macro-
economic public-policy issues.
But I was personally impacted when my
father passed away in the heat of the financial
crisis, and I graduated college and was wait-
ressing. The thing that people don’t under-
stand about restaurants is that they’re one of
the most political environments. You’re shoul-
der-to-shoulder with im-
migrants. You’re at one of
We’ve tolerated the nexuses of income in-
equality. Your hourly wage
the intolerable. is even less than the mini-
That’s how mum wage. You’re work-
you get climate ing for tips. You’re getting
sexually harassed. You see
deniers being how our food is processed
treated as and handled. You see
seriously as how the prices of things
change. It was a very gal-
scientists. vanizing political experi-
ence for me.
When you quit your
waitressing job, what did you tell your boss?
Were you like, “I’m quitting because I’m
gonna be in Congress”?
Yeah, I was keeping mum about my campaign
for a long time but . . .
You were doing double duty.
Oh, yeah, probably a whole year, at least. Some
of the people that I worked with knew because
they were my friends, and one day the gener-
al manager of the restaurant overheard some-
body talking about me running, and he came
over and said, “Is it true?” I kinda nodded. And
he just gave me this big hug and was like, “Let
me know what you need.”
ZOEY GROSSMAN

5
0 ROLLING STONE » MARCH 2019
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
You’ve taken the mantle from Pelosi when
it comes to absorbing the heat for the Dem-
ocratic Party. Does it get to you?
I was cracking up because I was actually talking
to a Republican House member on the floor,
and he’s like, “Are you a communist?” And
then he was like, “It’s OK if you are.” And I just
started laughing because that is exactly how
Fox News wants to go.
But do you court the controversy? Are you
trying to engage in a dialogue where you are
going toe-to-toe with Trump?
I do think that we’ve been taking it too much.
I think we’ve been tolerating the intolerable.
And I remember, you know, just being a con-
stituent, like, “Where’s the fight back on some
of these issues?” What the president is trying
to do is undermine truth itself. Just because
I’m pushing back on reporters calling women
unlikable doesn’t mean that I think their out-
let itself is “fake.” There’s a huge difference
between checking a narrative and checking an
actual institution. That’s how you get climate
deniers being treated just as seriously as ven-
erable scientists.
So when it comes to welcoming [controver-
sy], I think it’s fine. Frankly, part of change is
conflict. And I told this to other members too:
If they want to direct their firepower to me,
then whatever. I’m in a very blue district. Bet-
ter me than someone else. For the most part, it
doesn’t bother me. The last 24 hours have got-
ten to me because their hysteria is now getting
manifested in sexism and bigotry. That’s where
I will fight back.
Would you vote to impeach Trump?
Yeah. No question. No question. I don’t even
know why it’s controversial. I mean, OK, it’s
not that I don’t know why it’s controversial.
I understand that some people come from
very tough districts where their constituents
are torn. But for me and my community in the
Bronx and Queens, it’s easy.
Everyone wants it.
Yeah, everyone wants it.
You have only been here about a week or
so, but have you had any conversations with
Republicans about why they stick by him?
Well, in the Republican Party, there’s a hostage
situation going on. There are a lot of Republi-
cans that know what the right thing to do is —
not just on impeachment but on a wide range
of issues — and they refuse to speak up.
Because it would be political suicide.
Because to them, yeah, they can’t do it. To me,
it’s an unacceptable position, because we’re
not in the realm of politics anymore. These are
not questions of politics. These are questions of
society. These are questions of equal treatment.
These are questions of civil rights.
Wouldn’t you rather have Republicans
in office who know what the right thing is
5
2 ROLLING STONE
behind closed doors versus those people
speaking up and losing their seats to peo-
ple who are truly in agreement with Trump?
The problem is that if they vote the same way,
what does it matter? I don’t care what’s in your
heart if how you are voting is the same as some-
one who is actually racist. At the end of the day,
they think that their intentions are gonna save
them, but the actual decisions you make mat-
ter. I am tired of people saying, “I’m gonna vote
the same way as bigots, but I don’t share the
ideology of bigots.” Well, you share the action
and the agenda of bigots. We need to hold that
accountable.
How much of what you’re talking about
is trying to move the Overton window [the
range of ideas accepted in public discourse]
so that Democrats can compete with the way
Republicans have moved it?
A huge part of my agenda is to move the Over-
ton window, because it’s a strategic position.
I’m a first-term freshman in an institution that
works by seniority. Procedurally, it is kind of
like high school. You’re the new kid on the
block. So, as a freshman, you have to look at
the tools available to you, and in my first term,
if we have the opportunity to frame the debate,
then that is one of the ways to have the most
power. If I’m here for four days, then the most
powerful thing I can do is to create a national
debate on marginal tax rates on the rich.
How much have you hung out with Bernie
Sanders since you’ve been here? Have you
gone out to get a beer?
Well, we haven’t gotten a beer since I’ve gotten
here, but [during my campaign] I was able to
pick his brain and ask him for advice.
What was his advice?
One of the functional pieces of advice was just
that you spend a lot of time in your committee,
so it’s really important to pick a subject that
you’re passionate about.
And you just got named to the Financial
Services Committee.
Yeah, it’s not official yet, but it’s looking pretty
good. That was in my top three picks. It’s a
pretty powerful committee in terms of what it
can regulate. I’m excited about it.
What would you like to see accomplished
in 2019?
What we have to do is redefine what the climate
movement is about, and we have to redefine it
in the scope of environmental justice. For so
long, people have thought of climate-change
legislation as saving polar bears, but they don’t
think of the pipes in Flint. They don’t think of
the air in the Bronx. They don’t think of coal
miners getting cancer in West Virginia. When
we talk about defining the scope, we have to
talk about climate as a social-justice issue, as
an economic-justice issue and as an environ-
mental issue. We really want to lay some stakes
in the ground that say, “If your legislation is
not dealing with jobs, if it’s not dealing with
infrastructure, if it’s not dealing with bringing
justice to frontline communities, then it’s not
a Green New Deal.” And we have a majority in
the House, so why not swing for the fences?
I hope that works.
I know, me too. Call your representative.
You are my representative! [Laughs]
Yeah, that’s right!
Don’t worry, I’ll be calling. You initially said
that you wanted to see more options when
it came to House leadership. When and how
did that change?
Well, no real options came up. And then I
started to see a resistance to then-leader,
now-Speaker [Pelosi] coming from the more
conservative flank of her party, trying to take
this narrative of “Oh, yeah, we need change,”
but trying to take this change into a more
kind of corporate-sponsored direction. Nancy
Pelosi was the most progressive candidate in
that field. That, first and foremost, is what I’m
going to support.
Do you see common ground?
Absolutely. One thing that is notable about the
speaker is that she does believe that the Dem-
ocratic Party should be a
progressive party. She is
Paul Ryan was in the difficult position
of having to juggle all of
a con man, and these different wings with-
he was called in the party, but her per-
a wunderkind sonal politics are very pro-
gressive. I have not found
for policies that an issue where we are
gutted working really opposed.
families. But . . .  Have you had some
one-on-one interactions
I’m the charlatan. with her?
Yeah, I have sat down with
her several times and em-
phasized how important climate is to the agen-
da. She was one of the first Democrats to really
push this issue years ago.
Do you worry that she’s been in poli-
tics so long that she will be too quick to
compromise?
I do think that as a party we compromise too
much. I don’t think it’s necessarily all on her,
because she can only push as much as she can
coalition-build. That’s why I see a special re-
sponsibility in my role in kind of shifting the
conversation, so that all the members feel a lit-
tle bit more pressure, because we’re amplify-
ing what voters already feel. I was running in a
district that was deep blue, and the represen-
tation that we were getting was not as progres-
sive as the actual electorate. When [congress-
people] start feeling more of that conversation
coming from their districts, they’ll have more
liberty to move, which will then give the speak-
» MARCH 2019

er more liberty to compromise less and push
harder. Especially when it comes to the envi-
ronment, but also on a wide range of issues.
What would you be willing to compromise
on?
I don’t want to compromise where we’re going,
but I’m willing to compromise on how we get
there. I believe in single-payer health care, so
that every American is covered with physical,
mental and dental health care that is free of
cost. That’s my vision. If I lobby the caucus
enough so that our most conservative mem-
bers fight for a public option, that’s a huge win.
Do you worry about splintering the party,
this idea that you’re not just trolling Repub-
licans, you’re also trolling Democrats? You’re
doing all kinds of trolling! [Laughs]
Well, I don’t worry about splintering the party,
but as I’ve said in the past, we can’t just be a
party of the most basic rights. It shouldn’t be
a political statement to say we should all be
treated equally. The fact that that is partisan
upsets me. I believe that both parties need to
be on the same page when it comes to racial
justice, queer rights, marriage equality, all of
it. These should not be partisan issues, they
should be universal rights. And so we need to
champion those things, but we need to go a lot
further. Especially when it comes to expanding
our rights to economic dignity.
MARK PETERSON/REDUX
Many Americans are really worried about
the economic state of this country, where
people working full-time jobs cannot sup-
port their families. It’s astounding to me that
this is not seen as a national crisis.
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
Well, we have never gotten out of desperate
situations in this country with a scarcity mind-
set. We have never austerity’d our way to pros-
perity, ever. It’s never happened. The only way
we got out of the Great Depression is through
a massive injection of public investment, and
also a massive expansion in public ambition
and the idea of what is possible in America.
We’re not gonna get out of this through incre-
mentalism. We need moonshots.
What do you think you know that the old
guard doesn’t?
One of the things that I bring to the table is a
visceral understanding that people under 40
have been shaped by an entirely different set
of events. We’ve literally grown up in differ-
ent Americas. They were shaped by a Cold War
America, a post-World War II America; and
we are an Iraq War America, a 9/11 America,
a hyper-capitalism-has-never-worked-for-us,
Great Recession America. People are used to
talking about millennials as if we’re teenagers.
We’re in our thirties now. We’re raising kids
and getting married and having families, and
we have mortgages and student-loan debt. It’s
important that [Congress is] in touch. People
tend to interpret this as me railing against older
people and being ageist. But that’s not what this
is about. It’s a problem of representation. We
don’t have enough intergenerational represen-
tation. We largely have one generation. That’s
not to say that one generation should be out of
power, it’s that others should be here as well.
Do you still have student-loan debt?
Of course I do, yeah! I’m 29 years old.
What’s the last thing that made you really
angry? And how do people harness that
anger so that we can make it productive?
Especially women. Because we’re not allowed
to be angry.
Exactly. Or ugly or fat or opinionated.
Yep. You’re just allowed to be pretty and quiet.
And then as a woman of color, too, it’s even
more of a stereotype. Where even if you’re not
being angry, they’ll attribute anger to you.
Right.
The last time I was pissed was the president’s
bullshit border address, watching this guy just
be racist from the Oval Office. I saw it as a de-
filement. In terms of how we channel it, we just
take that anger and that energy and use it to
say, “This is why we need the moonshot.”
Do you worry that in pushing the Demo-
cratic Party more left, you’re only going to
polarize the country more?
I think it’s wrong to say that what I’m propos-
ing is polarizing the country. What we are see-
ing now is a ruling class of corporations and a
very small elite that have captured government.
The Koch brothers own every Republican in
the Senate. They own ’em. They don’t cast a
vote unless their sugar daddies tell ’em what
to do. But 70 percent of Americans believe in
Ocasio- Medicare for all. Ninety percent of Americans
Cortez believe we need to get money out of politics.
sees her Eighty-something [percent] believe that climate
role as change is a real, systemic and urgent problem.
“shifting Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that
the con-
immigrants are a positive force in the United
versation.”
States of America. I believe that I’m fighting for
the American consensus.
You told Anderson Cooper you want peo-
ple to underestimate you because that’s how
you won your primary. When is it safe to let
that go and unabashedly take charge?
People like to make these disparaging state-
ments, like, “Oh, she’s good at Twitter. Is she
gonna be an actual legislator?” I think it’s fine
at the outset to be underestimated in that
capacity. Where I do tell people to come cor-
rect is when they try to paint me as unintelli-
gent, as unsubstantive. That’s when you see me
fire back. When you call Elizabeth Warren or
Kamala Harris “unlikable,” that’s an unsubstan-
tial, unsubstantive, fluff, bullshit, misogynistic
word to use. Unlikable? What is that? It’s not a
policy critique. Paul Ryan was a con man for 10
years, and he was called a wunderkind for poli-
cies that were designed to just gut working fam-
ilies dry. But I’m the charlatan. So . . .
You’re 29, and you’re in Congress. Where
do you go from here?
I have no idea. I mean, I go where people tell
me to go, and I mean, like, the People.
Not just any people.
Not just anyone. As long as I’m effective, I’ll be
here.
5
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T H E F U T U R E

Brandi
Carlile
A folk-rock rebel taps into the power
of empathy. By Marissa R. Moss

B
RANDI CARLILE is cruising down a steep road on
her four-wheeler, her teal jacket flapping in the
wind as she makes a sharp turn to her home in
Maple Valley, Washington, a rural mountain town
about 45 minutes outside of Seattle. It’s not an
easy house to find — even the GPS gets confused around here.
“Those things make up roads sometimes,” Carlile says. “Some-
times, it says this one doesn’t even exist.”
It’s a misty midmorning in a scene out of Twin Peaks, with fog
shrouding the evergreen trees around the log cabin she bought
at 21, and now shares with her wife, Catherine Shepherd, and
their two children. Carlile pulls into the driveway, hops down
and lands light on the gravel. This is her “happy place,” she says.
Inside, Shepherd is observing Evangeline, their fair-haired
four-year-old, as she sits at the counter of their open kitchen
making a necklace. Elijah, nine months, is on the floor play-
ing with Laura Rogers from the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, duo
the Secret Sisters, whose album Carlile is in the middle of pro-
ducing at her home studio. Up above them, a homemade sign
hangs from the rafters to commemorate Carlile’s recent Gram-
my nominations, including Album of the Year for her sixth LP,
By the Way, I Forgive You: “Six nominations! Are you kidding me
with this? Congrats!”
“Do you want to go outside, get a fire going?” asks Carlile. In
jeans, a slouchy beige sweater and a pair of fur-lined Gucci loaf-
ers, she leads us to a wood deck that overlooks
the home’s vast property. Pearl Jam guitarist
Mike McCready owns the land to one side, and Carlile at her
Carlile’s bandmate and brother-in-law Phil Han- Washington
seroth lives to the other. Some of their neigh- state home
bors raise and slaughter a steer once a year; in January
it’s not uncommon to spot a bear nearby. Just
down the road is the pasture where, for many years, Carlile kept
her horse Sovereign — named after her first guitar, a Harmony
Sovereign that her mother found behind a casino.
When Sovereign died in September, Carlile, 37, was devas-
tated. “It was almost as profound as having a child,” she says,
sipping a mimosa by the fire. She was 17 when she bought Sov-
ereign for $75, taking him home on a leash. “It changed all my
choices,” she adds. “I didn’t get to fuck off; I didn’t get to not
have a job. I had to make all these adult decisions, and devel-
op this work ethic.”
That work ethic helped give Carlile the best year of her career
in 2018. Produced by Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings, By the
Way, I Forgive You is all about “radical forgiveness,” grounded in
a kind of storytelling that feels particularly apt for our current

ANNIE MARIE MUSSELMAN

5
4 ROLLING STONE » MARCH 2019
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
political moment. Carlile sings about drug addiction on
“Sugartooth,” rallies for the misfits on “The Joke” and
navigates passion and pain on “Party of One.” She’d al-
ways been something of a renegade folk-rock star. In
the past year plus, she’s become something more — a
leader of a musical resistance, fighting hate with mercy.
She also performed for Joni Mitchell, appeared in A Star
Is Born, booked her own all-women festival in Mexico,
raised more than $700,000 for Syrian refugees, held a
spot on Barack Obama’s favorite-songs playlist (for the
second year in a row) and welcomed a little girl. “I sat
down Catherine and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but this year I’m
going for it,’ ” Carlile says, peeling back the wrapper on
a granola bar. “Because this is the record.”
Among other things, By the Way, I Forgive You is the
finest showcase yet for Carlile’s vocal power: She can
belt like Adele or push to the very edge of her range,
then pull back to warmth. “Brandi is the only singer to
make me consistently cry when I hear
her voice,” says McCready. “Perhaps
some demons are being exorcised in
her brutal honesty of forgiveness.” Brandi is the
Like many, Carlile was angry after
the last presidential election. She re-
only singer,”
calls sobbing at Heathrow Airport the says Pearl Jam’s
morning of November 9th, 2016. It Mike McCready,
didn’t take long for her to decide to
channel that rage into action and, even-
“to make me
tually, into music. “[Trump] is so ag- consistently cry
gressive and loud and ugly — we don’t when I hear her
need more aggressive and loud and
ugly,” Carlile says. “We need debilitat-
voice.
ing empathy.”
It’s an approach with some striking
similarities to that of her most famous fan, President
Obama. “They have similar outlooks,” says Pete Souza,
the former White House photographer who turned
his boss on to Carlile’s music. “Though I don’t know if
[Obama] has as much forgiveness as Brandi does.”
G
ROWING UP IN Ravensdale, Washington, about
10 miles down the road from her current home,
Carlile didn’t just want to sing: She wanted to
be a rock star. “I became obsessed with making it, and
I willed myself to be talented,” she says. As a kid she’d
lock herself in a closet, singing “Unchained Melody” or
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” pushing herself over and above
the highest notes. “Pretty soon I could hit them, and
then I could hold them. And then I could hold them as
long as Freddie Mercury.”
She entered contests around the state, but she never
won anything. The Queen frontman was a particular
source of inspiration, as was Elton John. “I was uncom-
fortable in my gender, I was poor, I was gay,” she says.
“I was pretty convinced I was a flamboyant gay rock star
in the making.”
When she first started playing around Seattle, it was
primarily restaurant gigs: an Irish pub, a clam shack, a
joint where she’d sit after closing and drink grape soda
while the owner snorted cocaine. She’d do nightly sets
at these places, and during the breaks she’d go table to
table, talking to folks in attendance and getting their
5
6 ROLLING STONE
phone numbers and email addresses. Then, when she
had a proper club show, she’d call them all and invite Teddy
them out. “Pretty soon,” she says, “I started selling out
regular venues. I always thought that I was right on the
verge of making it.”
Geiger
Around this time, Carlile met twin brothers Tim and A pop auteur who sounds
Phil Hanseroth, who became her band and co-writers. like no one but herself
Her second album, 2007’s The Story, was an early break-
B
through, with the title ballad landing on Grey’s Anatomy. EFORE TEDDY GEIGER
Carlile spent the better part of the next decade making was one of pop’s most in-
records and touring nonstop, ending up in a bitter cycle demand songwriters and
of sleeping pills, steroids and caffeine to get through producers, she was a kid in west-
the days. Then she met Shepherd, who was Paul Mc- ern New York state who wore a
Cartney’s charity coordinator at the time, and who pendant embossed with the Vir-
promptly fell for another side of Carlile: the rural artist gin Mary. In her twenties, during
who’d grown up fishing and still rides tractors. “She told a time of personal upheaval, she
me, ‘I think you should integrate that into your work, started seeing Mary everywhere.
and be a little more honest about the other parts of “I’d really feel it — ‘She’s here for
you,’ ” Carlile recalls. “So I did. As that a reason!’ ” says Geiger, 30.
happened, my albums have resonated The Virgin Mary appears again
with people differently. Maybe I wasn’t on the cover of LillyAnna, Geiger’s
as cool as I thought I was.” first album as teddy<3, and her
Carlile has done activist work for first since publicly coming out as
years, launching campaigns against vi- a trans woman in 2017. Released
olence and hunger with her nonprofit last November, the same day her
group, the Looking Out Foundation, girlfriend proposed with a heart-
but she says becoming a mother awak- shaped ring, it’s full of irresistible
ened a new urgency in her. She kicked alt-rock hooks and intense vul-
off her Girls Just Wanna Weekend fes- nerability, the same qualities that
tival in Mexico in January as a way of have made her a key collaborator
fighting the festival circuit’s gender im- for stars like Shawn Mendes.
balance, headlining a bill with Margo Geiger signed to Columbia Rec-
Price, Maren Morris and others. She ords at age 15 as a pop singer with
also utilized an all-women crew for her a rock edge. She scored a Top 40
“Party of One” video, which portrays pure, passionate hit in 2006, but quickly became
love that just happens to be between two women. “She disillusioned with the pop ma-
fights the good fight for truth and equality and puts her chine. “They had me go out on
money where her mouth is every time,” says her friend acting auditions, and I was doing
Jim James. “And I believe her every step of the way.” a lot of sessions with people who
She’ll carry this philosophy through to her next proj- were like, ‘We’re going to write
ect, an all-star country band with Amanda Shires called you a song!’ ” she says. “It was
the Highwomen — a nod to Willie Nelson, Waylon Jen- very not about me as an artist.”
nings, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson’s Highway- Her second act began around
men. “Yes, we don’t want to hear the words ‘female 2014, when Mendes got wind
singer-songwriter’ ever again,” she says. “But we have of a demo she’d written called
to use it right now. Because we need representation.” “Stitches.” It became his break-
Carlile remembers that the Secret Sisters are prob- through hit, and Geiger has gone
ably waiting for her to get to work, so we head to the on to co-write many of Mendes’
studio, a place she helped build herself, “ice-picking best songs, along with ultracatchy
trenches across the driveway.” Inside she finds the sis- blasts of attitude like Lizzo’s “Fit-
ters and the Hanseroth twins, eager to perfect the ar- ness” and 5 Seconds of Summer’s
rangements for a song called “Quicksand.” “Woke Up in Japan.”
The recording space is warmly decorated, but it feels Most of the vocals on LillyAnna
different than other studios — mostly because it isn’t are from demos she recorded
loaded with endless instruments collecting dust. Car- during her tumultuous twenties:
lile tells me that she isn’t big on holding on to things echoes from the past, now given
like that. “If it’s sitting on the wall just because it’s valu- closure. “You can’t re-create it ex-
able, and you are not playing it, and there are 18-year- actly,” Geiger says of her sponta-
old girls everywhere scraping to earn enough money to neous, intuitive studio approach.
buy a guitar, how can you not give it away?” she told me “It’s personal.” SASHA GEFFEN
earlier, as the fire crackled. “It’s not useful until it’s out
in the world.” YA NA YATSUK
» MARCH 2019
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T H E F U T U R E
HANNAH
GADSBY
Her explosive comedy special Nanette created a new paradigm. By Carina Chocano
‘I
AM BUILT LIKE a brick shithouse,” Hannah Gadsby tells
me over tea in a Hollywood cafe. “Solid, solid human.”
She’s explaining how she survived being struck by five
cars in the span of seven years. It would be a mira-
cle for anyone else, but Gadsby, who’s been plagued
by catastrophe her entire life, takes it more or less in
stride. When she was nine, she crashed her bike and
needed 56 stitches. When she was 15, she developed
gallstones. After high school, she got a job at a super-
market, slipped on some chicken fat and tore ligaments
in her knee. She developed pancreatitis. She was the
victim of a hate crime. “I’ve had a lot of surgery, and
I’m in a lot of pain,” she says, “but you get on with it.”
Trauma has been Gadsby’s constant companion. It has forged her
experience, her self-concept and, more recently, her third comedy
GROOMING BY MOLLY GREENWALD. STYLING BY ALEXANDRA MANDELKORN FOR THE ONLY.AGENCY
special, Nanette, which catapulted her to global fame after its release
on Netflix last June. Nanette is a scorching deconstruction of the ways
in which comedy — and art in general — serves power and perpetu-
ates privilege, its stages functioning as an arbiter of who gets to speak,
who gets to determine what’s true and legitimate. (Hint: It’s not usually
working-class queer girls from remote rural areas.)
Performing her trauma — she revisits her assault twice in Nanette
— has proved traumatic as well. As someone on the autism spectrum,
Gadsby doesn’t just recall memories, she relives them. “When I think
about things, I see them,” Gadsby tells me. “Nanette was excruciating. It
nearly killed me.” It also felt like a risk every time she stood in front of
an audience. “I was breaking the contract,” she says. “They were there
for comedy, and then I didn’t give it to them. That tension in the room,
there’s no guarantee that I can hold it. There’s a fear every time I go on-
stage. Every show was alive and dangerous.” Having gone from “extreme
invisibility to extreme visibility” in a very short time, Gadsby now gets
recognized in places like New York, where people attempt to trauma-
bond with her on contact. “It’s not a lighthearted ‘Can I have a selfie?’ ”
she says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, hi, I’ve been abused. Can I have a selfie?’ ”
Nanette is the critical and comedic version of an anti-ballistic mis-
sile designed to explode the dominant narrative, and it has sparked
a big evolution in the form. In this way, ironically, Gadsby resembles
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
Pablo Picasso, the archnemesis she dissects in the show, whom West-
ern culture enshrines despite his unrepentant misogyny. But whereas
Picasso was considered a genius for blowing things up, Gadsby is being
challenged for it — something she expected even as she wrote. “I was
keeping in mind that bullshit criticism that always comes with those
who step outside of the script. Like, ‘Aw, it’s not comedy, is it? It’s just
a one-woman show.’ No one says that to a man pushing [the limits].”
Comedian Ted Alexandro, for one, welcomes Gadsby’s voice. “It’s
rare when you see somebody who knows exactly who they are,” he says.
“It was just someone who was really comfortable in her skin and in her
power, with something to say.”
Gadsby grew up in a small town in Tasmania,
I was breaking where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. Her
the contract. father was a math teacher, her mom a cleaner at a
golf club where Gadsby played whenever women
They were there
were allowed to. Her culture’s hostility toward
for comedy, and gay people contributed to her deep self-loathing
then I didn’t give as a child. The assault she describes in Nanette
took place during her first year at university. After
it to them. Every the attack, she transferred to study art history on
show was alive the Australian mainland but struggled due to her
and dangerous. autism and “ended up drifting and homeless.” She
worked on farms as an itinerant laborer. Then she
injured her wrist and was recovering from sur-
gery when a friend signed her up for a comedy contest. “I’d always
been funny, and I’d always failed,” she says. “So for me to fail at comedy
didn’t seem like a big deal. I was living in a tent.” She won. That was in
2006. Now she’s pushing comedy into its next phase.
“My issue with Picasso is not that he should be erased from our col-
lective consciousness,” Gadsby tells me. “Quite the opposite. I think he
should stay there, but we shouldn’t be weaving a positive angle onto his
misogyny and violence. That is part of the story.” A man on the other
side of the cafe suddenly bursts into laughter. It’s loud and grating, and
Gadsby loses her train of thought. “I’m sorry,” she says with a grin.
“That is an awful laugh. Someone should tell him.” Nobody does.
RYA N PFLUGER
5
9
 Kiyoko in
L.A., January
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
Hayley
Kiyoko
LGBTQ pop fans embrace her
as an icon: ‘Lesbian Jesus’
‘M
Y DREAM was to be like
’NSync,” says Hayley
Kiyoko. The 27-year-
old singer- songwriter had this
epiphany in fourth grade, when
she saw her favorite boy band
perform live. “My dream was to
have screaming girls around and
be successful and popular,” she
adds. “But I thought, ‘I’m a girl,
and I don’t know if that’ll ever
happen.’ ” Fifteen years later,
Kiyoko mustered the courage to
come out via her self-released
breakthrough single, “Girls Like
Girls.” (“Like boys do,” she adds
in the chorus, “nothing new.”) The
video, which she directed, centers
on two friends who brave a boy’s
jealous rage to share a kiss. Fans
responded by heralding Kiyoko
as their new pop idol, calling her
Lesbian Jesus. Born in Los Angeles
to figure-skater Sarah Kawahara
and comedian Jamie Alcroft,
Kiyoko came of age in show busi-
ness, starring in Nickelodeon and
Disney productions as a teen. “I
never felt like I had a communi-
ty growing up,” she says. “We all
just want to feel understood and
loved. It sounds cheesy, but my lis-
teners create that for me.” Kiyoko
raised the bar with her 2018
debut, Expectations — a textured
set of synth-pop ballads on the ups
and downs of being a woman who
loves women. By the middle of her
Expectations tour, fans had tossed
about 78 bras onstage, all of which
she donated to a nonprofit group
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ARTISTS. MAKEUP BY MARLA VAZQUEZ. STYLING BY KATIE
for homeless women. Her next
goal: to hear her songs on main-
QIAN. LOCATION COURTESY OF BREAK ROOM 86.
stream radio. “These were stories
that made me feel so alone for my
whole life,” Kiyoko says. “Now I’m
playing catch-up in my twenties
[and] just beginning to talk about
these experiences. And eventually
begin new experiences . . . I went
on my first date a couple of years
ago!” SUZY EXPOSITO
SAMI DRASIN
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
JEMELE HILL
Hill’s podcast,
Unbothered,
launches in March
on Spotify.
Cindy Holland
Netflix’s VP of original content is reshaping Hollywood
A
MID ALL she has to watch — some 1,500 shows and count-
ing, to feed 137 million members — Cindy Holland still
fields the occasional video from water-skiers asking her
to assess their form. Now Netflix’s VP of original content, Holland
was once an elite, competitive water-skier (yes, it’s a thing) who
trained for a time in Florida and amassed a devoted following of
students. That they blithely ask one of the most powerful people
in entertainment to give feedback on their technique speaks to
one of her strengths: “I like to be in the service of others,” Hol-
land says. With writers and producers, too, she views herself as
nurturer, not kingmaker (though she can make or break careers).
“I’m about helping creators get the best of their vision,” she says.
“People know me to be straightforward. I try to be very clear and
give a fast answer. There’s a real trust that comes from that.” M.F.
LEANN MUELLER
Speaking truth to power, the
 I
sportswriter found a new purpose
T IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to talk about
Jemele Hill today without talking about
Donald Trump. Which is the opposite of
how Jemele Hill would have it, under-
standably. “If the lead line in my obitu-
ary is ‘She once tweeted that the presi-
dent is a white supremacist,’ I will see my life
as a professional disappointment,” Hill says.
But it was that September 2017 tweet — so sim-
ple and honest — that brought Hill, a longtime
writer and on-air personality at ESPN, to where
she is today: a columnist for The Atlantic and a
bold new voice at the forefront of national dis-
cussions about race, gender and other hot-but-
ton issues. Hill is not blasé about the furor that
erupted over her politics — she was suspended
by ESPN and received a deluge of death threats
— but she was well-prepared for it: She’s been
getting hate mail since her days as a columnist
at Michigan State University. And thanks to her
idol, her mom, a rape survivor and recovering
addict now on her way to a master’s degree,
Hill also has the gift of perspective. “The worst
thing that happened to me is the president
tweeted I was a failure? Who cares? I’ve seen
way worse than that.” MARIA FONTOURA
ROZETTE R AGO
Netflix earned
an industry-
best 112 Emmy
nominations
in 2018.
6
1
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
S TAC E Y
ABRAMS
The Georgia Democrat is transforming Southern politics. By Britt Julious
 A
FTER ELECTION DAY, Stacey Abrams
briefly considered moving far away
from Atlanta. “There was probably
a 24-hour period, maybe 48 hours,
where I was ready to move to a
small island and become a writer
full-time,” she says. As the author
of eight romance novels, Abrams
could have done just that. She
claims to be “an introvert by na-
ture,” though you wouldn’t know
it from all the hands she held and
homes she visited during her his-
toric run — and disputed loss — for
the Georgia governorship last year.
“I’m someone who typically, after a while, I just need to go sit by my-
self,” she says. But she knew pretty quickly her island escape wasn’t
going to happen. “Instead of going off to lick my wounds, I doubled
down,” she says. “I’m the first black woman to do what I have done, and
that means my obligation to make sure other women of color, other peo-
ple, believe they can try too — that lesson is going to be taught through
my actions, and so I’ve gotta get to work.”
Abrams was the country’s first-ever black female nominee for gover-
nor, and the sheer audacity of her campaign was enough to make histo-
ry. In a state where every previous governor has been a white man and
where there hasn’t been a Democrat in that seat in 15 years, political wis-
dom — and the history of the South — should have dictated her candida-
cy was a no-go. That history proved to be alive and well in the form of her
opponent, Republican Brian Kemp, who, as Georgia’s secretary of state,
was in charge of overseeing his own election, and had purged more than
1.5 million voters from the rolls, among other voter-suppression trickery.
Kemp eked out the election with just 50.2 percent of the vote. “I had a
very difficult, very public ‘not win,’ ” Abrams says. “I don’t like to call it
a loss, because I am not convinced of that, but I certainly did not win.”
Never has a “not win” so expanded the nation’s sense of what is politi-
cally possible. After a resounding primary victory, winning 153 out of 159
counties, Abrams went on to attract the highest voter turnout for a Dem-
6
2 ROLLING STONE
ocrat in Georgia history — 1.9 million votes — and helped gain 13 seats in
the statehouse, potentially laying the blueprint for making Georgia a pur-
ple state. “I may not get to have this seat, but we transformed an elec-
torate,” she says.
And she did it by being unapologetically herself, willing to talk about
the “hard beginnings and middles of her life” — growing up in a poor but
educated family in Mississippi, with a brother wrestling drug addiction,
and then having the all-too-common experience of being saddled with
debt in adulthood. “I ran the campaign I wanted to run, I talked about
the issues I wanted to talk about,” she says. “There is a fearlessness that I
stepped away from the campaign with.”
And with a proven legislative track record after
I ran the campaign 10 years in the Georgia House of Representatives
I wanted to run, and the grassroots coalition she built — register-
ing hundreds of thousands of minority voters
talked about the with the bold intention of actually making the
issues I wanted to state’s electorate reflect its population — there’s
talk about. There’s every reason to believe that, at 45, Abrams is just
getting started. “I learned I can do this, we can
a fearlessness I do this,” she says. “We need to be thinking about
stepped away from what else do we want? What else can we have? I
the campaign with. want to be part of that conversation.”
Abrams is more likely to be leading it. She
was chosen to rebut Trump’s State of the Union
in February, and pundits have floated her name for a presidential bid.
She’s signaled interest in a 2020 run for the U.S. Senate or taking on
Kemp again in 2022. Regardless of what her political future holds, she’ll
be fighting for electoral reform, she says: “The horrendous disenfran-
chisement that we saw in Georgia cannot be allowed to be repeated.”
Right after the election, she launched the organization Fair Fight Geor-
gia to combat voter suppression as well as amplify the progressive pol-
icies central to her platform: expansion of Medicaid, public education,
criminal-justice reform. “Whether or not I’m in office, my responsibility
is to advocate for the changes I believe are necessary,” she says. “I’m in
a space where I have a pretty big megaphone, and I intend to use it.”
DA NA SCRUGGS
» MARCH 2019
BACK ROW, FROM LEFT: Farah Alibay
(SYSTEMS ENGINEER), Emily Manor-Chapman
(SYSTEMS ENGINEER), Annick Sylvestre-Baron
(DEPUTY PROJECT MANAGER), Julie Wertz
Chen (SYSTEMS ENGINEER), Sarah Elizabeth
McCandless (NAVIGATION ENGINEER),
Pauline Hwang (MISSION OPERATIONS LEAD)
and Aline Zimmer (SYSTEMS ENGINEER).
FRONT ROW, FROM LEFT: Sue Smrekar
(DEPUTY LEAD INVESTIGATOR), Marleen Martinez
Sundgaard (LEAD TEST-BED ENGINEER),
Brooke Harper (SYSTEMS ENGINEER),
Anne Marinan (SYSTEMS ENGINEER), Ingrid
Daubar (PLANETARY SCIENTIST) with Arthur
(BABY), Hallie Gengl (IMAGE-PROCESSING TEAM
LEAD), Jaime Singer (INSTRUMENT DEPLOYMENT
LEAD), Cinzia Fantinati (OPERATIONS ENGINEER),
Cristina Sorice (ROBOTICS ENGINEER),
Elizabeth Barrett (INSTRUMENT OPERATIONS
LEAD), Christine Szalai (SYSTEMS ENGINEER)
and Louise Thomas (OPERATIONS ENGINEER).
Mission N
ASA’S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY in Pasadena was buzzing with
people as the countdown clock approached noon on November
26th. Eyes around the world were on engineers Julie Wertz Chen

to Mars and Christine Szalai, who were working the main console in mission con-
trol, giving the play-by-play as the Mars InSight spacecraft began the “seven
minutes of terror” — plunging through the atmosphere at 16 times the speed
The engineers and of sound to then softly land on the dusty Red Planet’s surface. 
scientists uncovering
the Red Planet’s secrets SAMI DRASIN

6
5
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
 MISSION TO MARS
Only 40 percent of Mars land-
ings have ever succeeded, and In-
Sight just joined their ranks. “You
can’t do a full test until you land
on Mars, so we [had to] get confi-
dent enough to risk launching it,”
says Wertz Chen, who had been
leading simulations on the preci-
sion landing for months. It was
only NASA’s second EDL attempt
— entry, descent and landing —
this decade, and the U.S. is still
the only country to have success-
fully touched down on Mars. “It
was definitely the experience of a
lifetime,” says Wertz Chen.
The InSight mission is excep-
tional for another reason. Half of
the core EDL team are women.
“It happened very organically,”
says Wertz Chen. “Everyone was
brought on for their skills, and
then someone said, ‘Hey, there
are as many women here as there
are men.’ ”
As of 2016, only 15 percent of
NASA’s planetary missions were
made up of women — up from
an average of five percent before
2000. So InSight’s more diverse
team was a not-so-small step for
womankind at NASA. “It’s great to
be on a team like this,” says geo-
physicist Sue Smrekar, InSight’s
deputy principal investigator.
“There are more women in leader-
ship roles. It feels like we’re mov-
ing in a positive direction.”
We’re far from having the tech-
nology to send a crewed mission
to Mars, which NASA started ex-
ploring via robot in 1975. The two-
year InSight mission is the first
to focus on the planet’s interior,
using a probe to gather data on the
planet’s geological history, which
could tell us more about how the
inner solar system was formed
and whether Mars ever support-
ed life.
“No one’s done what we’ve
done before,” says systems engi-
neer Farah Alibay. “My guidance
counselor told me I shouldn’t
be an engineer, because it was
a male-dominated field and I’d
struggle,” she says. Now, “I get to
be the modern version of an ex-
plorer. I go to work to operate a
robot on Mars.” SHANNON STIRONE
6
6 ROLLING STONE
Whitney
Wolfe Herd
The founder of Bumble is
disrupting the dating world
I
N THE SUMMER of 2014,
Whitney Wolfe Herd found
herself in a “perpetual state
of utter anxiety.” The 29-year-old
had just left Tinder, where she
was co-founder and VP of market-
ing until she sued for sexual ha-
rassment. Overnight, she became
a target of vicious misogyny. “Hate
was coming at me at all times,” she
says. The experience made her re-
think the power dynamic between
men and women — especially in
dating, where men are expected to
make the first move but risk rejec-
tion “that can fuel ugly stuff — ag-
gression, abuse.” Her fix: Bumble,
the feminist dating app that re-
quires the woman to reach out to
matches first. Initially, Wolfe Herd
was told the idea was a nonstart-
er; it’s now the fastest-growing dat-
ing app in the U.S., valued at more
than $1 billion. The success is vali-
dating, but so is upending assump-
Bumble’s tions about how men and women
downloads want to relate. Says Wolfe Herd, “I
have increased was right.” ALEX MORRIS
by 570 percent
since 2016.
SARAH FRANKIE LINDER
FOSTER FOR THE ONLY.AGENCY. BODYSUIT BY ALEXANDER WANG X UNIQLO. JEANS BY J BRAND.
THIS PAGE, BOTTOM: HAIR AND MAKEUP BY HARPER FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS. OPPOSITE PAGE:
Rachel Morrison
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The Black Panther cinematographer stands alone
I
SHOES BY PIERRE HARDY. NECKLACE AND EARRINGS BY LANA JEWELRY.
F YOU’RE FLIPPING through Rachel Morrison’s family albums
looking for an early glimpse of the groundbreaking direc-
tor of photography — whose one-two punch of Mudbound in
2017 and Black Panther in 2018 made her the first woman to score
an Oscar nomination for cinematography and shoot a superhe-
ro film — look for the photos young Rachel isn’t in. The four-year-
old was holding the camera. Her mother, a photography buff, was
diagnosed with cancer around that time; Rachel picked up her
mom’s old Olympus and dedicated herself to living behind the
lens. In high school, she learned about cinematography, marveling
that “you could take 24 still photographs per second and be part
of telling an emotional, complete story.” Years later, Morrison still
prefers to go unseen: “If people walk out of a movie talking about Morrison calls
2018 “the most
the cinematography and not the story, you’ve failed.” AMY NICHOLSON
insane year of
my life.”
JESSICA LEHRMAN
» MARCH 2019
 ASHLEY
GRAHAM
A model who’s moving the
needle for size acceptance

 W
HEN ASHLEY Gra-
ham walked on-
stage in December
to interview Sere-
na Williams for the season fina-
le of her podcast, Pretty Big Deal,
she felt intimidated. As the crowd
erupted into deafening cheers for
the tennis icon, Graham gave her-
self a pep talk: “Own this shit,
girl. You got it.” It’s a mantra that
has served the model well. Dis-
covered in a Nebraska mall at age
12, Graham became the first size-
16 woman to cover Sports Illus-
trated’s Swimsuit Issue, in 2016.
The next year, she was the first
curvy model to walk the Michael
Kors runway at New York Fashion
Week. Along the way, the 31-year-
old became outspoken about body
diversity, railing against unrealis-
tic beauty standards. The message
resonated with her 8 million Ins-
tagram followers — and the indus-
tries that want their dollars: As a
face of Revlon, Graham is a key
part of CVS’s Photoshop-free beau-
ty campaign. Given her massive
reach, Graham has grand plans
for media moguldom. Beyond
the podcast, she hosts Lifetime’s
American Beauty Star, a competi-
tion for hair and makeup artists,
and has launched Fearless, a re-
ality lifestyle show on Ellen De-
Generes’ digital network. All the
while, she’s brushing off old-fash-
ioned attitudes. Recently, Gra-
ham says, a stylist offered a back-
handed compliment: “He said,
‘You’re over 30, right? You’re not
just a game-changer for your size,
you’re a game-changer for your
age.’ ” Her reply: “Huh. Breaking
barriers in my age, in my size —
you never know what’s gonna hap-
pen next.” ALISON PRATO

MEI TAO
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E

G R E TA
THUNBERG
How a teenage girl’s lone strike against climate
change became an international movement

A
T THE END of a record-hot a room of statesmen and dignitaries three and
summer in Sweden last Au- four times her age, telling them, “You are not
gust, then-15-year-old Greta mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that bur-
Thunberg decided she den you leave to us children.”
would not be going back to Thunberg’s movement comes amid an on-
school. Frustrated by the slaught of increasingly dire warnings about the
lack of attention paid to the climate. Scientists recently announced that the
existential threat of global world’s oceans are warming 40 percent faster
warming — not least by politicians campaign- than was previously thought. In October, the
ing for upcoming elections — she set up outside Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
the Swedish parliament with a water bottle, her reported that global temperatures could rise
rucksack filled with books and snacks and a by the dreaded benchmark of 1.5 C above pre-
homemade sign announcing her “School Strike industrial levels in just 12 years. “We are living
for Climate.” “I tried to bring people along to in a very interesting time, where something is
join me,” she says — she’d been inspired by the going to happen,” Thunberg says. “Change is
Parkland, Florida, students who walked out of on the horizon, but to see that change we also
class to protest gun violence — “but no one was have to change ourselves.”
really interested, and so I had to At home, Thunberg persuaded
do it by myself.” her parents to swear off air trav-
Thunberg wasn’t alone for el and stop eating meat. “They
long. By the end of the first You can’t really were frequent fliers and high
week, her strike had drawn stand up for consumers,” she says. “And then
coverage from Sweden’s big- something I showed them articles and films
gest newspapers. As reporters without walking and I told them about the situa-
flocked and she handed out fli- the walk. That’s tion. You can’t really stand up for
ers bearing the message “You something without walking the
grownups don’t give a shit about
what I did. walk. That’s what I did.”
my future,” supporters dropped Thunberg has Asperger’s syn-
by to join the homespun pro- drome, and has cited her neuro-
test on their lunch breaks. After three weeks of diversity for her dedication to the issue. “I see
missed classes, Thunberg finally went back to the world kind of black-and-white,” she says.
school — mostly. She still strikes every Friday. “Everyone says that there is no black-and-white
Now she’s become the unexpected founder issue, but I think this is. Either we go on as a
of an international youth movement. Since the civilization or we don’t.”
summer, tens of thousands of students in nearly Although she finds all the sudden personal
300 towns and cities from Australia to Ugan- attention a little strange, she says, “As soon as
da to the U.S. to Japan have joined her #Fridays they write about me they have to write about
ForFuture protest. In Belgium, at the end of the climate, so that’s good.
January, more than 30,000 students walked “In five years, I hope I don’t work on the cli-
out of classes. “Before I started, I didn’t expect mate because that would mean that everything
anything,” Thunberg says. “I could have never is OK,” says Thunberg. “But I probably will, and
imagined this reaction. It’s crazy.” many other people will because of where we
Her stark truth-telling and cherubic face are at. We see the consequences of it today, and
caught fire online after she spoke at the U.N. we will see it more clearly then.” KATE ARONOFF
climate talks in Poland in December, where,
“Emperor’s New Clothes”-style, she called out A NNA TÄ R NH U V UD

6
8 ROLLING STONE » MARCH 2019
 Thunberg at a
nature reserve
outside Stockholm
in January
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
STEVIE NICKS
Wisdom from the first woman to make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. By Rob Sheffield
S
TEVIE NICKS HAS the only kind
of BDE that matters: Bella Donna
Energy. Fleetwood Mac’s gold-dust
woman is adding yet another se-
quin to her top hat this spring by
going into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame as a solo artist, 21 years after she got
enshrined with the Mac. She’s the first woman
inducted twice — as she puts it, “at the ripe
and totally young age of 70.” She’s also tour-
ing the world with Fleetwood Mac after their
surprise split with Lindsey Buckingham. As
eloquent and witty as ever, Nicks went deep
with ROLLING STONE for an epic late-night chat
about her 50 years as a rock goddess, discuss-
ing love, poetry, platform boots, her closeness
with Tom Petty, how “Stand Back” makes her
miss Prince, and the joys of sharing a band with
her friend Christine McVie. Rock on, queen.
Congratulations on the Hall of Fame. How
is it different going in the second time?
It’s 22 to zero. Twenty-two guys who’ve gone in
twice, and zero women — Eric Clapton is prob-
ably in there 22 times already! Maybe this will
open the doors for more women to fight to
make their own music.
You’re one of the few rock stars with both
a band and a solo career.
My solo career is much more girlie-girl than
Fleetwood Mac is. I never wanted a solo career
— I just had so many songs! To this day, I write
all the time. I have a poem that I’ve written
about Game of Thrones, and I have a really
beautiful poem that I’m writing about Anthony
Bourdain.
You were a pioneer, too — a female rock
star, when that was virtually unknown.
I was a female rock star in a band with another
female rock star, which was totally cool. If I had
been the only girl in Fleetwood Mac, it would
have been very different. People said, “Does
Christine want another girl in the band?” I said,
“I hope she likes me.” And she did really like
me. We got Mexican food, and we laughed and
went, “This is going to be great.”
Then I did the Gemini thing where you’re
two different people — let’s give Stevie her solo
career, without breaking up one of the world’s
biggest bands. I hope that inspires the women
musicians out there. I just had this hysterical
talk with Haim: “OK, at least one of you needs
to start making your solo record.”
7
0 ROLLING STONE
Who were the women singers who in-
spired you most as a kid?
I started singing in fourth grade: R&B, the
Shirelles, the Supremes and the Shangri-Las.
All those amazing songs Carole King and Gerry
Goffin wrote. When I first listened to the Fleet-
wood Mac recording of “Dreams,” I said,
“There’s that little girl that was singing along
to the Supremes.”
Right now women are changing the world
and changing music like never before. What
was it like when you first joined a band?
I met Lindsey in 1966. Two years later, I joined
his band, and we played all over San Francisco.
I got to watch Janis Joplin and Grace Slick — the
best school of rock ever. We opened for Chi-
cago, with Bill Graham standing on the side of
the stage. That was the only time in my life I
was heckled. Some guy went, “Hey, baby. You
want to come home with me?” Bill Graham
screamed at this guy and told him to get the
f-u-c-k out. Basically, “If I ever see you again, I
will kill you.” Years later, I reminded him of that
night. He said, “Yeah, I don’t let that happen.”
Was it tougher to get a break as a song-
writer at first because you were a woman?
I didn’t face a lot of the things that a lot of
women have faced. I was very lucky. Christine
and I made a pact the day I joined Fleetwood
Mac. She and I said, “We will never be treated
like second-class citizens. We will never be not
allowed to hang out in a room full of intelligent,
crazy rock & roll stars — because we’re just as
crazy and just as intelligent as they are.” We
promised that we would fight for everything
we wanted and get it, that our songs and our
music would be equally as good as all the men
surrounding us. And it was.
You and Tom Petty were close friends. He
gave you the star on your top hat, right?
He did, and he gave me “Stop Dragging My
Heart Around.” Had he not given me that song,
let me candidly tell you, Bella Donna [Nicks’
1981 solo debut] might not have been a hit. My
biggest sadness about the Hall of Fame is that
Tom is not here to enjoy this with me, because
he would have been the proudest of anyone.
I loved how you did “Stop Dragging My
Heart Around” on your recent solo tour — as
a duet with Chrissie Hynde.
She’s not great at harmony, but neither was I.
We never actually sang the song — we would
just look at each other and giggle like two girls.
“Christine Then you have “Stand Back,” a real soul
and I said, song that you recorded with Prince.
‘We will Prince and I never played that song onstage
never be together, but I feel like Prince is with me. When
treated
I’m nervous, I’ll talk to Prince. Before I go on, I
like
second- always say, “Walk with me, Prince.”
class You and Prince both had unique style. You
citizens.’ ” never look or sound like anyone else.
I don’t put the boots on until right before I walk
up to the stage. When my little foot goes into
that boot, it is like Cinderella. All of a sudden I
become me. I become six inches taller. I walk
like an African queen. Halloween is my favorite
day, but I never have to wonder, “What am I
gonna be?” A witch, of course. Wearing my
Stevie Nicks clothes.
Where do you keep all your shawls?
I have my shawl vault — they’re all in tempera-
RANDEE ST NICHOLAS
ture-controlled storage. I’m trying to give my
shawls away, but there’s thousands of them. If
I ever write my life story, maybe that should be
the name of my book: There’s Enough Shawls to
Go Around.
» MARCH 2019
Here’s to
celebrating
women in music.
We believe in the power of women in music. With
one of the biggest entertainment offerings in the
industry, Citi is committed to growth and progress
for the women who continue to move us — on the
stage and beyond it.

Proud member of #SeeHer, a movement advancing gender equality

in media and entertainment.

© 2019 Citigroup Inc. All rights reserved. Citi, Citi and Arc Design and other marks used herein
are service marks of Citigroup Inc. or its affiliates, used and registered throughout the world.
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
Ohashi on the
UCLA campus.
Her two-minute
clip garnered
40 million views
on Twitter.
KRISTEN ROUPENIAN
 I
An author’s exploration of dark relationships makes for a bright future
T’S BEEN A WHIRLWIND few years for Kristen
Roupenian. In 2014, as she was finishing a Ph.D.
in English at Harvard, she abandoned her plan to
work at the State Department and decided to go
for an MFA in fiction instead. For many people,
such a choice is the first step on a journey toward debt
and eventual obscurity. For Roupenian, it’s resulted in
a $1 million two-book deal, TV and film adaptations of
her work, and an original screenplay in development.
The turning point for Roupenian, 37, was “Cat Person,”
her viral short story, published in The New Yorker in
2017, about a college student’s date-gone-bad with an
7
2 ROLLING STONE
Katelyn
Ohashi
A gymnast of uncommon
strength and infectious joy
I
N JANUARY, UCLA gymnast
Katelyn Ohashi charmed
the internet with a fiercely
spunky, smiley, physics-defying
floor routine at a meet that scored
her a perfect 10 — and more than
40 million views. A gymnast since
age three, Ohashi quickly climbed
the elite ranks. She beat Simone
Biles to win the 2013 American
Cup and was on track to make
the Olympic team. But she strug-
gled with an eating disorder and
that year learned she’d fractured
her back, a potential career-ender.
“It was a relief,” she says. “Then,
once I figured out I didn’t have
anything else I knew how to do,
it was devastating.” After a year-
long break, Ohashi rediscovered
her love for the sport at the col-
legiate level; she was the NCAA’s
top-ranked gymnast in floor ex-
ercise last season. “The joy won’t
always be there,” says Ohashi,
who’ll graduate this spring with
a gender-studies degree. “But the
dedication you learn from stick-
ing to it is a reward.” DANIELA TIJERINA
MAGGIE SHANNON
older man. Her new collection of horror-tinged tales,
You Know You Want This, tackles more twisted romantic
relationships, kinky sex and children navigating paren-
tal divorce. While her darkest work is “not remotely au-
tobiographical,” Roupenian says, it is cathartic. “When
I think about the stories that are ugly, that come from a
messier place, I feel like something’s getting purged. I’ll
have a bad feeling, like something is bothering me that
I can’t interpret. And through the process of writing, in
the end, I’m safe from that feeling.” ELISABETH GARBER-PAUL
BR ITTA N Y GR EESON
» MARCH 2019
W ITH E V ERY S TEP, W E ALL
MOV E FORWARD
K E E P WA L K I N G A M E R I C A

JANE WALKER BY

Go t o Wa lkW i th Ja n e .c om to lea r n mo r e
PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. IMPORTED BY DIAGEO, NORWALK, CT.
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
LEANA WEN
The new president of Planned Parenthood is tackling the ills in the health care system. By Alex Morris
S
OMETIMES WHEN Dr. Leana Wen
thinks about how public policies af-
fect private lives, she thinks of lit-
tle scraps of paper. In September,
four months after Cecile Richards
stepped down as president of
Planned Parenthood, Wen, 36, became the first
physician in almost 50 years to hold that role,
and the first Asian-American and immigrant.
Born in Shanghai, Wen moved to the U.S. short-
ly before her eighth birthday to escape the per-
secution her family faced as political dissidents
after her father was incarcerated for his activ-
ism. Her mother was the first of them to leave
the country; Wen and her father were meant to
follow shortly thereafter. “Then my father had
a massive gastrointestinal bleed,” says Wen.
“He was in the ICU, and we wanted to postpone
our trip, except that we thought we would not
be reissued a visa and wouldn’t have the money
to buy another plane ticket.” Her parents had
saved for their tickets for years.
Wen and her father left the hospital for the
airport, where her grandfather, who spoke Eng-
lish, pulled out scraps of paper and began writ-
ing instructions for any number of outcomes. “I
had all these pieces of paper with English and
Chinese — because I read Chinese — all these
pieces of paper where if a certain situation hap-
pened, I would show it to the airline stewardess
or to immigration to explain what was happen-
ing if my father died.”
Thankfully he didn’t, and the family even-
tually settled in Compton. “I mean, we had a
typical immigrant story, even though there’s
no such thing as a typical story,” she says. In
China, her father had been an engineer and her
mother a college professor; in California, her fa-
ther delivered newspapers and washed dishes
in a restaurant while her mother cleaned hotel
rooms. They depended on Medicaid and food
stamps. Wen’s mother — and later Wen and her
younger sister as well — went to Planned Par-
enthood for health care services. In the low-
income neighborhoods where her family lived,
says Wen, “I saw all the time what happens
when people go without access to health care.”
Her perspective made her want to become
a doctor, but it seemed like an impossible goal
for someone in her position. At age 13 — the
same year she started an early-entrance college
program — she got a job in a lab. One day, one
7
4 ROLLING STONE
of the doctors asked her, “‘What do you real-
ly want to do? Because I can help you do that.’
I thought that he would laugh, because who
was I to become a doctor?” says Wen. Instead,
he began to mentor her. At age 18, she started
medical school, having been offered full schol-
arships at eight schools. She went on to become
a Rhodes scholar, president of the American
Medical Students Association and a Harvard
Medical School clinical fellow. She also did a
fellowship with the World Health Organization
in Geneva, worked in Rwanda with women af-
fected by HIV/AIDS, and took a year off to lobby
in D.C. for reproductive rights. She became an
ER doctor because she “never wanted to turn
anyone away.”
Now, it’s hard for Wen to pinpoint the piv-
otal moment when she realized that medicine
was not just a matter of science but of social
justice. Of course, there was her journey from
China, but there was also the time in elemen-
tary school when she watched a neighborhood
boy die of an asthma attack because his un-
documented family was too scared to call 911.
There was the woman she saw die in the ER
after a botched abortion, the young mother
without insurance who waited more than a
year to have a breast lump examined and died
of metastatic cancer, the middle-aged woman
who couldn’t afford her blood-pressure medi-
cation and was paralyzed by a stroke. “I mean,
there are dozens, hundreds, countless exam-
ples like that,” says Wen. “My patients are sick
not just because of their illness, but because of
so many other factors in our system that are
making them ill. And I would not be the best
doctor I can be if I did not also fight against
these systemic injustices.”
Which is exactly what she did as commis-
sioner of health for the city of Baltimore, where
she instituted a program that reduced infant
mortality by 38 percent, provided free eyeglass-
es to every public-school student who needed
them, and saved nearly 3,000 lives by making
the opioid-overdose antidote Narcan available
over-the-counter to every resident in the city.
She also sued the Trump administration — and
won — when it cut funding for a sex-education
program. Another suit, “for intentionally and
willfully sabotaging the Affordable Health Care
Act,” is still pending.
In her new role, Wen provides a clear sig-
nal that Planned Parenthood is, above all, not
“I saw all an advocacy group but a health care provid-
the time er, serving 8,000 people in this country every
what day with services such as birth control, breast
happens
exams and STD screenings. But, as she well
when
people go
knows, access to health care requires activ-
without ism. “We should not be singling out and stig-
access matizing one aspect of health care,” she says.
to health “I know, as a physician, that reproductive
care,” health care is health care, that women’s health
says Wen.
care is health care, that abortion is part of the
JESSICA FOLEY/© PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA
full spectrum of reproductive health care and
needs to be treated as the standard medical
care that it is.” She’s heartened by the election
of the 116th Congress, which was being sworn
in the very day we spoke: “The last midterms,
the American people, particularly women of
color, rose up and made clear that as a country,
we are pro-women, pro-reproductive health,
and pro-reproductive rights.” As Trump tries to
squeeze Planned Parenthood out of economic
existence, and Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment
to the Supreme Court threatens Roe v. Wade,
Wen keeps this more-silent majority in mind.
“We’re going on the offense,” she says. “We’re
looking to expand.”
» MARCH 2019
SERIES PREMIERE
THIS SUMMER
Gorman at TKplace,
TKmonth
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E
Amanda
Gorman
A young poet laureate on a
mission to spread literacy
B
Y THE TIME Amanda Gor-
man was 16, she was al-
ready the executive direc-
tor of a nonprofit that promoted
literacy, a youth delegate for the
United Nations, and on her way to
publishing her first book of poet-
ry, The One for Whom Food Is Not
Enough. “What I really wanted to
do was fuse creative writing with
activism,” she says.
The L.A. native’s evocative,
free-form poetry earned her the
honor in 2017 of being named the
first-ever youth poet laureate of
the United States. Now 21 and a
junior at Harvard, she credits her
mom, an English teacher, for her
creativity. “She kept the TV off
because she wanted my siblings
and I to be engaged and active,”
she has said. “We made forts, put
on plays, musicals, and I wrote
like crazy.” Gorman’s work is full
of historical imagery — from the
first photo of Earth from space to
scenes of the Jim Crow South —
and reads in part like a disserta-
tion. “I do so much research that
people will never see,” she says.
“I’ll look to the past to construct
a poem about our future.”
In her commissioned work —
for organizations like Al Gore’s
Climate Reality Project — she’s
found poetry can be a valuable
tool to pierce otherwise paralyz-
THIS PAGE, TOP: HAIR AND MAKEUP BY REBECCA TAFF FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS.
ing subjects. “Being able to com-
BOTTOM: HAIR AND MAKEUP BY ALEXIS ARENAS FOR T.H.E ARTIST AGENCY
municate not just the science of
climate change, but the humani-
ty,” she says. “It gets people not to
feel scared, but to feel prepared
to become agents of change.”
The promotion of education
is at the core of her activism,
and she’s currently collaborating
with two nonprofits to develop an
essay contest for high school stu-
dents. “The judicial system might
not be aware yet,” Gorman says,
“but literacy is a fundamental
human right.” HANNAH MURPHY
KELIA ANNE
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE
DOMINIQUE
CRENN
“It’s not awards
that matter,”
says Crenn. “It’s
what you do
with them.”
Vanita Gupta
Defending civil rights in the age of Trump
A
FTER BUILDING A career at the NAACP, ACLU and De-
partment of Justice, where she oversaw reforms includ-
ing more than a dozen consent decrees with police de-
partments to curtail abuse, Vanita Gupta now helms “a strategic
hub of the resistance” to the Trump administration. As president
of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of 200
of the nation’s most prominent civil- and human-rights organi-
zations, Gupta is coordinating the response to attacks on voting
rights, immigration, LGBTQ equality and more. “We’re fighting
like hell to protect vulnerable communities,” she says, “and to
make sure that we’re a country as good as our ideals.” ZOË CARPENTER
L E X E Y S WA L L
The three-Michelin-star chef
is on fire in the kitchen — and
confronting issues outside it
 D
OMINIQUE CRENN, the first
woman in America to receive
a third Michelin star, says she
has “a big mouth. And I’m not
afraid to use it.” She used it
when she left Paris for San Fran-
cisco in her twenties, talking her way into a job
with one of the country’s most acclaimed chefs,
Jeremiah Tower, despite having zero restaurant
experience. (“I’m French, I know how to cook,”
she says, only half-joking.) She used it to report
sexual harassment at another gig — and, after
being told to leave if she didn’t like it, to offer
a polite “fuck you” before quitting. Three dec-
ades later, having won acclaim for her French-
inspired, avant-garde tasting menus, she’s
using her voice to address larger issues: gender
inequity, the environment. In 2017, she exco-
riated San Pellegrino, publisher of an annu-
al list of the world’s best young chefs, for hav-
ing no female jurors on its selection committee.
She ran a sold-out Women of Food chef series
last year, which she would like to reprise in
2020. And she’s opening a 5,000-square-foot,
waste-free restaurant this year. “Yes, chefs feed
people,” she says, “but we have so much more
responsibility.” RACHEL LEVIN
A M A NDA M A RSA LIS
Gupta at home
in Arlington,
Virginia
7
7
 WO M E N S H A P I NG
T H E F U T U R E

The Minnesotan disarming

the GOP and charming Dems
ahead of 2020. By Tessa Stuart

 
T
HERE’S A THEORY that
every president is fol-
lowed by his opposite. If
that’s true, it would be
good news for Amy Klo-
buchar. The Democrat-
ic senator from Minneso-
ta, who announced her
2020 candidacy in Febru-
ary, is the president’s antithesis: competent,
detail-oriented, even-tempered, Midwestern. In
a 2010 survey of congressional staffers of both
parties, she was voted one of the funniest mem-
bers of Congress (alongside Saturday Night Live
alum and fellow Minnesotan Al Franken) and
the least likely to become embroiled in scandal
(unlike Franken, as it turned out).
And compared to our current commander in
chief, Klobuchar tweets sparingly, but when she
does, things actually get done. Case in point:
On the evening before our interview in January,
Klobuchar logged on to Twitter to announce
that Attorney General-designate William Barr
was refusing to meet with her and other Demo-
crats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead
of his confirmation hearings, having cited the
partial shutdown of the federal government.
The senator was having none of it: “Memo
To Whoever Is In Charge: Last time I checked,
AG nominee Barr was not a furloughed work-
er.” She wanted a meeting, and added dryly,
“Will serve coffee.” Whether it was the prom-
ise of caffeine or the widespread outcry that
followed, Barr was in the senator’s office with-
in a matter of hours, where, as promised, there
was a small silver serving tray and a pot of cof-
fee waiting for him.
As members of both parties retreat deeper
into their respective corners, Klobuchar has
stuck out for operating under the charmingly
novel pretense that it is possible to treat mem-
bers of the opposing party as humans worthy of
engagement, even empathy, rather than blood-
feud rivals. “That doesn’t mean you’re naive, it
just means that you have goodwill toward our
Klobuchar in
country and you have goodwill toward people
front of the
even if they didn’t vote for you,” she says. First Avenue
It’s such an exotic concept in the capital club in
these days that it’s become its own kind of tac- Minneapolis
tic for catching Republicans off guard. When,

AMY KLOBUCHAR
7
8 ROLLING STONE » MARCH 2019
 for example, Klobuchar shared during Su-
preme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confir-
mation hearings that her father had struggled
with alcoholism, before she asked Kavanaugh
if he’d ever blacked out, the nominee angrily
spat the question back at her, again and again,
before offering a sheepish apology. The ugly
exchange gave Klobuchar the high ground to
argue for further investigation of Kavanaugh’s
behavior — a request to which Republicans be-
grudgingly submitted.
A former prosecutor, Klobuchar insists she
wasn’t baiting Kavanaugh. “I really wanted to
get him on the record and answer the ques-
tion, as opposed to just rage,” she says. His re-
action surprised her, but it also felt familiar.
“The click that went on in my mind was, ‘I am
not going down there with you. I am going to
take the keys away from you’ — I literally had to
do that with my dad,” she says. “You have to be
the grown-up in the room.”
Minnesotans appear to like
that about her. While Hillary
Clinton nearly fumbled the I was being
state to Trump in 2016, claw-
asked by
ing out a win with just 1.5 per-
centage points to spare, in 2018 newspaper
voters re-elected Klobuchar re- editors, ‘Could
soundingly. She cruised to vic-
tory with a 24-point margin.
a woman
“The Midwest felt left behind” actually win
in 2016, Klobuchar says. Broad- in our state?’
It was 2006.
ly speaking, there’s a lack of un-
derstanding and attention to
rural issues at the national level,
she says: “It is understanding
where our food came from and not being all
snobby about it. It is understanding that the un-
employment rate for rural kids is higher than
in urban America, that there is a whole Ameri-
ca up there that felt forgotten, and I think that
was part of why they voted for Donald Trump.”
The Kavanaugh hearings spotlighted a steely
restraint, but it was righteous fury that drove
Klobuchar into politics more than two decades
ago. She was a lawyer in private practice when
THIS PAGE: HAIR AND MAKEUP BY ERIKA TANIGUCHI AT KERN REPRESENTS
— you just start talking about epidurals and
breast-feeding; they were so embarrassed, they
were like, ‘OK, we’ll go for this thing,’ ” she says.
Lobbying led her to seek public office, and
Klobuchar became the first woman elected as
the top lawyer for the state’s biggest county,
then the first woman elected as senator from
Minnesota. “Literally, I was being asked by
newspaper editors, ‘Do you think a woman
could actually win in our state?’ It was 2006.”
In the 12 years since, she’s become one of the
most industrious members of the Senate — in
2015-2016, she sponsored or co-sponsored 27
bills that were enacted into law, more than any
other senator. Her portfolio ranges from craft-
ing language that would lift the Cuba trade em-
bargo to strengthening online-privacy protec-
tions and revamping the mediation process for
sexual-harassment complaints on Capitol Hill.
There was a certain degree of irony in her
spearheading of that bill: Klo-
buchar was one of only three
Democratic women in the Sen-
ate who didn’t call for Sen. Fran-
ken’s resignation last year after
he was accused by eight women
— including a former congressio-
Jennifer
nal staffer — of forced kissing and Doudna
groping.
“It really wasn’t that close a A biochemist pioneering the science —
call for me,” she says of the deci- and ethics — of gene editing
sion not to speak out about Fran-
B
ken. “We had long talks during ERKELEY PROFESSOR Jennifer Doudna
that time period, including that worked in an obscure area of biology
day. . . . And I always believed — — how bacteria fight viral infections —
maybe naively, given what hap- when she helped make a discovery that could
pened — that it would go through the [Senate] change life on Earth: CRISPR, a gene-editing tool
ethics committee. I still believe that was the capable of changing the DNA of any living thing
right thing,” she says, adding, “For some of almost as simply as using a find-and-replace
these things, there should be due process, and function in a word processor.
I felt like this was one of them.” Genetic diseases from cancer to congenital
Klobuchar has become known for focusing blindness could be cured, but CRISPR’s possi-
on legislation that governs the minutiae of ev- bilities go far beyond that, from bioengineering
eryday life, like a bill that forced public pools to crops to resurrecting extinct species (scientists
add safety covers to their drains. “People some- at Harvard are working on the woolly mam-
times say, ‘Oh, those are small things.’ They moth) to the moral slippery slope of designing

she gave birth to her daughter, who was three
weeks early and very sick. Abigail was whisked
into intensive care immediately after her birth,
but Klobuchar, who had been up all night in
labor, was shown the door. Back then, the hos-
pitals had a rule: “You got kicked out after 24
hours.” Her husband would wheel her back and
forth to the ICU every day from a hotel room
they booked nearby. “I refused to get rid of a
hospital robe,” she says. “I would wear it just to
make a point. I was so mad.”
That anger turned into action: Klobuchar
lobbied the state Legislature to enact a law that
would double the guaranteed hospital stay for
new mothers to at least 48 hours. Today, it’s
federal policy. “With these legislators — men
are not small when all these kids were dying,”
she says emphatically. “The Consumer Product
Safety Commission testified that not a kid had
died since we passed that bill.”
The “people” she’s referring to are GOP op-
eratives in her home state, who have fixed her
with the derisive nickname “The Senator of
Small Things.”
She acknowledges a certain sexism in the cri-
tique — “like I’m a little girl, doing little things”
— but just rolls her eyes at it. “You can’t let
it dominate your mindset,” she says, smiling.
“You have to keep going. That’s the only way
you’re going to get power.”
JENN ACKERMAN
“better” humans. Doudna has inadvertently
gone from biochemist to public ethicist, travel-
ing the world to talk about how CRISPR should
be used and writing about our “unthinkable
power to control evolution” in 2017’s A Crack
in Creation. She recently led the condemnation
of a Chinese scientist who edited the embryos
of twin girls, a practice banned in more than 40
countries. “It made me think of horrible Nazi
experiments,” says Doudna. “I felt that level of
horror.” But she’s hopeful about CRISPR’s ulti-
mate impact — its “ability to radically improve
human health and the world we live in. The
promise is truly that immense.” CLAIRE HOFFMAN
C AYCE CL I FFOR D

7
MARCH 2019 » ROLLING STONE 9
I can.
So I did.
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ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
Wherever Magazines Are Sold
Music

A COUNTRY
STAR’S BIG
POP MOVE
Maren Morris
makes her bid for
Top 40 glory with
an adventurous
second album
By ROB SHEFFIELD

Maren Morris
Girl
COLUMBIA NASHVILLE

M
AREN MORRIS made
her bones as one of
country’s brightest
new upstarts three years ago
with her major-label debut,
Hero. She introduced herself
as a Texas songwriter with
a sharp eye, a velvet voice
and a mean streak, especially
when it came to her irrever-
ent attitude toward Nashville
pieties. “My Church” was
her profane hymn about
hitting the highway and
blasting Hank Williams on
the car radio. From “Drunk
Girls Don’t Cry” to “80s
Mercedes,” Morris sounded
fresh, wry, electric, full of
hip-hop and R&B, yet down-
home — the kind of voice
people felt like they’d been
waiting years to hear.
The title track from her
new one, Girl, sets the

ILLUSTRATION BY
Hsiao-Ron Cheng
Reviews Music

MAREN MORRIS
bar high right away. It’s the most ambitious
GARY CLARK’S NEW FIRE
and eccentric song she’s done yet, an emo- Texas guitarist finds fresh motivation and focus
tional powerhouse driven by jagged rock gui-
tar. “Man, that shit’s unflattering,” she begins,
on his third album By JONATH AN BER NSTEIN
before launching into a sisterly pep talk. “Girl,

G
don’t you hang your head low/Don’t you lose ARY CLARK JR. has restraints that once held him
your halo,” she sings — and in case anyone spent the better back, has never had more to
misses the Beyoncé reference, she drops an part of a decade say. “Exploitation wants me
explicit echo of “Halo” into the bridge. “Girl” figuring out how to trans- to be the same,” as he puts it.
ventures far from country: That chugging late his guitar wizardry into “I don’t want to.”
guitar riff could come from early New Wave compelling album-length There are two dominant
records by the Cars or the Motels. But that just statements. His first two of- narrative threads contained
adds to the song’s bighearted appeal. ferings — 2012’s Blak and Blu within This Land: one, a col-
As “Girl” suggests, this album is where and 2015’s The Story of Sonny lection of private confession-
Morris makes her pop move. She’s stretching Boy Slim — were steeped in als that meditate on success,
out musically, going for more of a Selena a sleek, modern blues-rock Gary Clark Jr. marriage and fatherhood; the
Gomez-Camila Cabello vibe. She got a taste of production style that mostly other, an embittered series
This Land
the Top 10 last year with “The Middle,” her of pleas for social justice in
Warner Bros.
surprise EDM hit with Zedd and Grey, which which Clark dives into polit-
clearly whetted her pop appetite. The high # ical songwriting in ways he’s
points on Girl have major emotional reach: never come close to before.
“A Song for Everything” follows in the style The latter group of songs,
of “My Church,” as she sings about music anchored by the righteously
memories: “What’s your time machine?/Is indignant, prog-funk title
it Springsteen or ‘Teenage Dream’?” (Weird track and the cautionary
footnote: Morris yearns for the good old days tale of “What About Us,” is
“back when Coldplay still played clubs.”) impressive, and these will
“All My Favorite People” is a country-rock likely serve as the album’s
hell-raiser with the Brothers Osborne, lifting main draw. But it’s during
a cup to everyone out there who blows their the former batch when Clark
paycheck on drugs and booze. “Not every- sounds most himself. On a
body drinks on a Tuesday night/Mixes their series of guilt-ridden songs
liquor with Crystal Light” — but all her favorite about leaving his family for
people do. “Flavor” is an unexpected nod to the road, the Texas guitarist
ZZ Top’s synth-rock phase, with some tough offers moving repentance.
talk: “I speak my piece, don’t do what I’m Highlights like “Pearl Cadil-
told/‘Shut up and sing’? Well, hell no, I won’t.” lac” and “Guitar Man” are
Despite “Flavor,” there’s a lot less salt in her pop triumphs, full of lust and
vocals this time. Even the song called “Shade” redemption, that split the
is shade-free. (It’s a piano ballad about seeing difference between Miguel,
all the colors of love.) For the most part, she’s Prince and Stevie Wonder.
writing happy midtempo love songs about failed to capture the thrilling keyboards, and a series of Elsewhere, though,
“The Feels.” If you loved her scrappy attitude dynamics of his live show. programmed samples that Clark’s approach to songcraft
on Hero, the change can be hard to take — es- Clark’s third major-label add a convincing contempo- remains a relative work-in-
pecially the bland homilies that clog the LP, This Land, arrives as an rary accent to the survey of progress. There are moments
album’s second half. But when Morris is on, ambitious corrective. This is genres (Eighties R&B, funk, of heightened emotional
she can come up with a winner like “Make Out the first time it’s felt like the rockabilly, punk, reggae) depth, like when he declares,
With Me,” where she sends a lusty voicemail singer-guitarist is embracing Clark draws from this time. “I walk alone because ‘alone’
while her flame is on the plane, knowing his the possibilities of studio His studio experimen- won’t say I’m sorry.” But as
phone is off, but begging him to come over as production as a creative tation has also led to an a songwriter, Clark is still
soon as he touches down. She might be on her asset rather than a nuisance. outpouring of songwriting. prone to clunky cliché (“You
best behavior on this LP, but the liveliest In place of copious guitar At 35, the singer, unen- got me feeling like a million
moments come when she gets out of line. solos, we get bass synths, cumbered by the musical bucks/Make me wanna fall in
love”). On the Marvin Gaye
pastiche “Feed the Babies,”
his social commentary sim-
BREAKING ply feels trite: “The world is
FROM TOP: FRANK MADDOCKS; ALYSSE GAFKJEN

my buffet,” Clark sings over

a light funk groove, “and I’m
A British Singer With a Powerful Voice just looking to eat.”
THIS YEAR'S MOST thrilling reinterpretation yet of pop’s past belongs to British singer-song- At 17 tracks, This Land feels
writer Yola and her Dan Auerbach-produced debut, Walk Through Fire. On a dozen songs packed with too many ideas,
that range from laid-back country soul (“Ride Out in the Country”) to grand orchestral pop only some of them landing.
(“Lonely the Night”) to smooth R&B (“Keep Me Here"), the 35-year-old singer offers insightful At its best, though, the album
reflections on a multitude of bygone lives and loves. It’s Yola’s commanding voice, which points to a new way forward
Yola shifts from delicate whisper to confident croon to emotional release, often within the same song, for Clark. It’s a crucial stride
that makes this album transcend the sum of its influences. J.B. for an artist who’s long been
searching for direction.

84 | Rolling Stone +++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.
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 POWER TRIO The garage-rock swagger
Ex Hex
4
here draws a line from the Shangri-Las to
It’s Real Blondie to Sleater-Kinney to this D.C. trio,
while the pop-metal sheen suggests CBGB
DAVID FRICKE
Merge
punks upscaling to arena rock. FRICKE’S PICKS

Karen O and DANGER DUO The Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer

Majesty
4
Danger Mouse and the super-producer ride down the

Lux Prima
milky way of their distinct sensibilities,
mixing raw vocals and stargazing atmo-
sphere. On this trip, all seats are first class.
and
Sadness
BMG

GOING ELECTRONIC One of rock’s finest

Stephen Malkmus Two under-the-
#
guitar poets messes with synths, drum

Groove Denied machines and a vaguely British accent on

his first-ever electronic LP. Come for the
radar acts nod
Matador
textures, stay for the typically great songs. to the past with
sublime new LPs
FOUND IN SPACE Philly rock lifer Timothy
Strand of Oaks
#
Showalter enlists members of My Morning With his plaintive, swoon-
Jacket for an excellent collection of
Eraserhead spaced-out power pop and dreamy, War
ing voice and the luxuriant
sweep of his records with the
Dead Oceans
on Drugs-indebted psych rock. Canadian indie-rock band the
Dears, Murray A. Lightburn
can’t help being compared
Helado Negro MAGIC AND LOSS Roberto Carlos Lange to Morrissey. But Lightburn

#
makes a bilingual dream-pop opus, evokes a more intriguing
This Is How packing in a song about the merits (and ideal – Scott Walker produced
You Smile setbacks) of brown skin and a bossa-nova
meditation on a nation divided.
by the early-Seventies Curtis
RVNG Intl. Mayfield – with his vulnerable,
urgent writing and deep-
soul flair on Hear Me Out
Steve Earle TROUBADOUR TRIBUTE Earle was born to (Dangerbird), his second

#
and the Dukes tackle Guy Clark’s craggy laments, as this solo album. His overdubbed
tribute to the late singer proves. Backing street-corner-army harmonies
Guy band the Dukes help out by punching up in “Anew” and “I Give Up” add
New West Clark’s sometimes too-dry melodies. a layer of Brian Wilson to the
gloss. There is a great Smiths-
go-R&B moment in “To the
CALIFORNIA DREAMING On Weezer’s 13th Top,” although ”Centre of My
Weezer Universe” is a more exhila-
3
LP, Rivers Cuomo continues his midlife
Brian Wilson fantasy with a self-styled rating throwback, a Northern
Weezer “Black Album” full of Los Angeles malaise Soul-style stomper decked
Crush Music
and Toto-style sugar-pop synth glitz. out like a majestic ’65
Motown outtake.

FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: BRIAN J RITCHIE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; RICH FURY/INVISION/AP IMAGES/

REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; JOE PAPEO/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; LARRY MARANO/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; GUS
From the other side of

STEWART/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; AMY HARRIS/INVISION/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

BACK TO CHURCH The Irish singer-song- the world, Rain Lover (ABC
Hozier writer follows a hit debut with a mixed Music) is the sublime,

Wasteland, Baby bag. Too much of the album leans on

folksy hand claps or gospel choirs (often
3 country-dusted sixth album by
the eight-man Australian band
Columbia Halfway, a secret too long
both) to deliver its emotional resonance.
held there. John Busby and
Chris Dale are earthy
Avril Lavigne WELCOME BACK The Canadian star was storytellers in the local
tradition of Paul Kelly and

@
sidelined for five years with Lyme disease.
Head Above On this comeback LP, the angsty tracks are the Go-Betweens, while
the pedal-steel-kissed
Water name-brand potent, but the ballads and
giddy new-love pop songs feel generic. “Swineburn Ashes” and
BMG
“Crescent Lagoon” bring
the driving melancholy
Foals of early Wilco and classic
SKIPPABLE SCI-FI A concept album
R.E.M. right up to date.
Everything Not
@
apparently involving ecological disaster,
looming apocalypse and Trumpian news
Saved Will Be Lost feeds. Post-punk groove jams shine; the
Pt. 1 aspirational U2-Coldplay tropes, less so.
Warner Bros.

CONTRIBUTORS: JONATHAN BERNSTEIN, DAVID BROWNE, SUZY EXPOSITO, WILL HERMES, CHRISTIAN HOARD, ROB SHEFFIELD, BRITTANY SPANOS Karen O

86 | Rolling Stone | March 2019

MEANINGFUL JEWELRY, LEATHER GOODS
& ACCESSORIES FOR MEN WHO ROCK.

STEPHENDAVIDLEONARD.COM

TV
LEARNING TO LIVE OUT LOUD
Surrounded by people obsessed with her size, the winning
hero of ‘Shrill’ learns to dismiss them with a smile
get out.” (“Well, I hope that
small person’s OK in there,”
Annie quips, sadly used to
this behavior.) But the drame-
dy’s most important measure-
ment is not discussed, even
though it will be plain to any-
one who learns to love Annie
while watching: It’s the small
ALAN SEPINWALL but unmistakable distance
the corners of her mouth
have to travel between the
O
VER THE course of winning grin that is her face’s
the six-episode first natural resting state and the
season of Shrill, Aidy frown that appears whenever
Bryant’s Annie, an alt-weekly someone assumes that her
staffer in Portland, Oregon, is physique is an open invita-
repeatedly interrogated and tion to insult her. There’s a
hassled about her weight, lifetime of frustration and
her dress size and her caloric pain contained within those
intake. Strangers feel com- few millimeters, no matter
pelled to offer unsolicited diet how optimistic she manages
and exercise advice, or even to appear most of the time.
to grab certain parts of her Written by Bryant, Ali
body to figure out whether, as Rushfield and Lindy West
one puts it, “There is a small — loosely adapting West’s
person inside of you, dying to memoir, Shrill: Notes From a
88 | Rolling Stone | March 2019
Loud Woman — the season is
short but a slow burn. When
we meet Annie, she has plen-
ty of reasons for that smile,
and just as many for those
frowns. She’s living with best
friend Fran (Lolly Adefope),
on mixed but relatively good
terms with her mom ( Julia
Sweeney, playing all the right
passive-aggressive notes) and
ailing dad (Daniel Stern), and
has frequent sex with Ryan
(Luka Jones), a man-child
who views her as one notch
below a fuck buddy. (He
makes her climb over
his back fence to
leave every time
so his roommates
won’t see her.)
Her smug boss,
Gabe ( John
Cameron Mitch-
ell, perfectly
insufferable),
shoots down all
eat anything,’ ” she shares
about one commenter, before
quoting even more of his vit-
riol too nasty to print here.)
The show is very much
about Annie’s size but not
about her attempt to get
thinner or otherwise win the
approval of the fat-shamers.
Rather, it’s about her learning
to be comfortable in the
body she has, to stand up
for herself and to try harder
for the things she wants.
Shrill gets granular about
some of the challenges of
being big in America, like
Annie’s ill-timed discovery
that the morning-after pill is
much less effective for her
than it would be for a skinny
woman. Mainly, though, it’s
Bryant’s Annie about the feeling of never
faces her fears knowing exactly when or
at a pool party. how your weight will become
an issue, but knowing that
it inevitably will. In one of
the series’ more powerful
and joyous moments, Annie
attends a pool party for plus-
size people, and even there
Shrill she’s reluctant at first to strip
NETWORK Hulu down to her bathing suit. As
AIR DATE March 15th Ariana Grande’s “One Last
Aidy Bryant Time” plays, Annie starts to
STARRING
Lolly Adefope modestly sway to the music,
Julia Sweeney
worried that people will
Luka Jones
Dana Millican gawk at her for daring to put
John Cameron Mitchell her midsection in motion,
4 and when she realizes that
nobody but her cares, she
cuts loose in the exuberant,
infectious manner that fans
her article pitches, even after of Bryant’s Saturday Night
her empathetic profile of the Live work will recognize.
dancers at a local strip club The sketch-comedy version
(assigned as just a review of Bryant is not on display
of the place’s buffet lunch) here. Nor, for the most part,
hits big — his dismissiveness is West’s cutting persona.
primarily motivated by his This first season is an origin
disapproval of how she looks. story — like the start of a
And her online success brings superhero franchise, the
with it the nastiest of trolls. second installment seems
(“He wrote, ‘Eat shit, which I designed to be the more
know you will, because you’ll exciting one — but even in
this more self-conscious
version of the role, Bryant’s a
star, and Shrill lets her
shine as brightly as Annie
so badly wants to
herself. Laugh-out-
loud moments are
FROM TOP: ALLYSON RIGGS/HULU, 2
few (often coming
from the idiocy of
Ryan or the
smarm of Gabe),
but before long
you’ll be smiling
Bryant and as broadly as
Sweeney Annie.
 WATCH LIST
What to stream, what to skip this month
FLESH AND BONE
Now Apocalypse
NETWORK Starz
AIR DATE March 10th, 9 p.m.
3 as a continuous take, but mainly
On its face, this peculiar L.A.-set
comedy is about four friends
trying to turn their lives into a porn
plot. See: the time Ulysses (Avan
Jogia) seduces a hot delivery
guy seconds after signing for a
package. But then Ulysses starts
seeing lizard aliens — horny ones,
of course — everywhere he looks,
and the line between reality and
fantasy is blurred. Now Apocalypse
plays coy about its science-fiction
leanings (the lizards tend to pop
up while Ulysses is high), prefer-
ring to just have fun with its misfit
main characters: Ulysses’ best
friend, Carly (Kelli Berglund), an
aspiring actress bettering her craft
through cam-girl work; his sweet
but dim screenwriter roommate,
Ford (Beau Mirchoff), who’s obliv-
ious to the effect his fit body has
on people of all persuasions; and
Ford’s scientist girlfriend, Severine
(Roxane Mesquida), who’s strug-
gling to get her beau to embrace
PHOTOBANK/GETTY IMAGES; JUSTIN LUBIN/NBC; TYLER GOLDEN/THE CW
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KATRINA MARCINOWSKI/STARZ; TAYLOR JEWELL/
group sex. The show is a mess, but
INVISION/AP IMAGES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ANDREW ECCLES/NBCU
a periodically hilarious one.
PURE GENIUS
Jane the Virgin
NETWORK The CW
AIR DATE March 27th, 9 p.m.
4 show co-star (Brooke Shields) turn
Midway through the fifth and final
season premiere of the warm-
hearted telenovela, the epony-
mous heroine (Gina Rodriguez)
spends a seven-minute-plus scene
gradually freaking out over the
apparent resurrection of her late
husband, Michael (Brett Dier), and
what it may mean for her and her
family. The scene is impressive
in small part because it was shot
because it does that thing that has
always made Jane special: Use the
craziest of soap-opera tropes (evil
twins, amnesia, kidnapped babies)
while letting Jane and her loved
ones react to them like the very
Rodriguez
frets a
ghostly
come-
back.
human beings they are. Michael’s
return is wild yet emotionally
grounded. Like so much of what
creator Jennie Snyder Urman has
done thus far, the development
functions simultaneously as a
parody of a telenovela and the
genuine article, self-aware (thanks
to the joyous work of narrator
Anthony Mendez) but also sincere.
All of the new episodes are sim-
ilarly deft. The show seamlessly
juggles the antics of criminal
mastermind Rose (Bridget Regan)
with Jane and frenemy Petra (Yael
Grobglas) passive-aggressively
texting each other parenting
articles, or lets the comic feud
between Jane’s narcissistic father,
Rogelio (Jaime Camil, always a
delight), and his show-within-a-
into a serious commentary on
both the gender pay gap and this
precarious moment to be brown in
America. This series is a miracle.
Enjoy it while it’s still here.
Jogia
(left) and
Mirchoff
explore
carnal
pleasures.
DOWN THE HATCH
Abby’s
NETWORK NBC
AIR DATE March 28th, 9:30 p.m.
# the show is meant to be seen?
“Abby’s is filmed in front of a live
outdoor audience,” co-star Neil
Flynn says at the start of each
episode of this charming new
comedy about an unlicensed bar
run by the title character (the su-
premely likable Natalie Morales) in
her backyard. The announcement
signals the series’ DNA: a hybrid of
old-school and new-school sitcom
aesthetics. With that live audience
and familiar setup/punchline
rhythms, Abby’s feels like a
traditional comedy. But it’s also ca-
sually woke (Abby is bisexual and
a Marine veteran of Afghanistan)
and has the loose, hangout vibe
of a more modern single-camera
show like New Girl (where creator
Josh Malmuth worked); the jokes
are less important than the chance
Morales
tends bar.
to spend time each week in the
company of some appealing goof-
balls. It’s not wildly funny yet, but
executive producer Michael Schur
has a lot of history with shows
(The Office, Parks and Recreation,
Brooklyn Nine-Nine) that needed
some time to fine-tune. The foun-
dation’s already there. A.S.
NOSTALGIA
‘Friends’
Forever
Thanks to streaming, the iconic
sitcom Friends has had a second
life, spawning feverish fandom
among millennials 25 years after
its premiere. Co-creator Marta
Kauffman weighs in.
Why is Friends resonating so
much with young audiences?
It’s warm, it’s cozy, [the charac-
ters] love each other. . . . These
are trying times. I think certain
people want the comfort food
rather than the difficult show.
Does streaming change how
A little bit. There was a together-
ness about “We’re going to meet
every [Thursday]. . . .” When I
was in college, it was Mary Tyler
Moore and Rhoda. We would all
crowd into a room and watch as
a community. That’s lost. Now,
you know, people lie in bed and
watch on their computers.
You’ve been adamant that
there will be no reunion. Why?
The show is about a time in
life when your friends are your
family. It’s not that time anymore.
All we’d be doing is putting
those six actors back together,
but the heart of the show would
be gone. And I don’t know what
good it does us. The show is
doing fine, people love it. . . . [A
reunion] can only disappoint.
“The One Where Everyone’s Dis-
appointed.” MARIA FONTOURA
They’re
still here
for us.
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WILD HEARTS CAN’T BE BROKEN
A closed-off convict and a bucking bronco stage a bruising
battle to stay untamed in this sensitive, sensational drama
PETER TRAVERS
I
T’S RARE WHEN a young
female filmmaker scores
a breakout like Laure de
Clermont-Tonnerre did when
TAYLOR JEWELL/INVISION/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
FROM TOP: TARA VIOLET NIAMI/FOCUS FEATURES;
she unleashed The Mustang at
Sundance 2019. With the film
in wide release, audiences
can see what all the shouting
is about. The ticking time
bomb of male rage — dan-
gerous if you get too close
— may seem like an unlikely
topic for a French actress to
tackle in her feature debut
as a director. But don’t
expect this firebrand to stay
corraled by sexist preconcep-
tions. Kathryn Bigelow (The
Hurt Locker) didn’t let that
happen — and she’s still the
first and only woman in 91
years of boys’ club rule at the
Academy to win an Oscar for
directing. Clermont-Tonnerre
comes from the same place
of defiance, and her fearless
instincts surge through every
frame of The Mustang. Each
time you think you have this
movie pegged, it’ll knock you
for a loop.
On the surface, the film is
a prison drama mixed with
an animal-bonding movie
— think The Shawshank
Redemption meets The
Black Stallion. Roman
Coleman (an incendi-
ary, indelible Matthias
Schoenaerts) is a hardened
convict who can’t exist
within the system. “I’m not
+++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor
good with people,” he says.
Talk about an understate-
ment. Released from solitary
confinement, Roman blinks
into the light like a caged
gladiator. He bristles when a
shrink (Connie Britton) at his
Nevada correctional facility
sentences him to a state-man-
dated rehabilitation program
Director Laure de Clermont-
Tonnerre
Schoenaerts
meets his
match.
The Mustang
DIRECTED BY Laure de
Clermont-Tonnerre
STARRING Matthias
Schoenaerts
Jason Mitchell
Connie Britton
Gideon Adlon
Bruce Dern
$ sting like hell.
involving horse therapy.
These are the facts, per the
movie: There are more than
100,000 wild mustangs
roaming free in the U.S.,
many about to be euthanized
in the name of overpopula-
tion. A few hundred of them
are sent to prisons where
those that can be are broken
and trained by inmates, then
sold at public auction.
It sounds like a cornball
setup for love at first sight
between a convict and his
mustang, who eventually will
take on human characteris-
tics that deny the animal’s
feral DNA. In short, the
usual Disney-movie bull-
shit. Not this time. Cler-
mont-Tonnerre worked
at the Sundance lab to
develop a sparse, sharp
script with Mona Fastvold
and Brock Norman Brock.
Roman and the horse he calls
Marcus don’t meet cute. In
March 2019
a scene of wince-inducing
cruelty, Roman smashes the
steed’s ribs with his fists.
By now you’ve probably
guessed that Clermont-Ton-
nerre and her dynamite
actors are allergic to anything
predictable. Bruce Dern is
all grizzled authority as the
old-timer in charge of the
horse-therapy program. And
the reliably superb Jason
Mitchell plays the fellow
inmate whose ingratiating
smile reveals a man who’s
learned how to game the sys-
tem. Everyone stands alone,
including Roman’s pregnant
teen daughter (a terrific
Gideon Adlon), who can’t
crack the shell of a father still
scarred by the crime that put
him in prison. The film with-
holds the core of Roman’s
torment until the end. But
Schoenaerts silently tells you
everything you need to know
in his quietly devastating
performance. Best known as
Marion Cotillard’s bouncer
lover in Rust and Bone and
the Putin-esque uncle of
Jennifer Lawrence in Red
Sparrow, the Belgian actor
springs to the head of next
year’s awards race. You’ll cry
over his final scenes with the
horse. But the tears here are
honestly earned. And they
Comparisons will be made
to The Rider — another man-
meets-horse saga directed by
a woman (Chloé Zhao). But
Clermont-Tonnerre’s savage
plunge into the ferocity and
fragility of the male ego is its
own animal. What Roman
and Marcus find in each
other isn’t redemption, but
an understanding that’s
forged in loneliness. The
give-and-take between the
two beasts is emotionally
crushing. Clermont-Tonnerre
missteps with a drug-sting
subplot, but quickly recovers
her footing. She won’t let
the soaring poetic majesty
achieved by cinematogra-
pher Ruben Impens and
composer Jed Kurzel ease the
hurt in this open wound of
a movie. Above all, The Mus-
tang marks the birth of an
exceptional new filmmaker, a
woman hellbent on bucking
Hollywood gender bias. By
any standard, that’s cause for
celebration.
| Rolling Stone | 91
Reviews Movies

SINGLE WHITE FEMMES

I T’S I R R E S I ST-
Greta ible whenever the
DIRECTED BY
great French actress
Neil Jordan Isabelle Huppert plays
STARRING someone suspicious
Isabelle (see her Oscar-nom-
Huppert, Chloë
Grace Moretz
inated role in Elle).
As the title character
# in the English-lan-
guage Greta, a thriller Digital trouble
A dance for Skarsgård
for Moore directed for maximum chills by Neil Jordan
and Eisenberg
and Turturro (The Crying Game), Huppert is up to delicious
mischief. Chloë Grace Moretz, doing nice with

THE MOORE YOU KNOW BIRD ON A WIRE

JULIANNE MOORE
Gloria Bell lights up the screen in
DIRECTED BY
a remake of Chilean
Sebastián director Sebastián
Lelio Lelio’s 2013 Gloria, in
STARRING which Paulina García
Julianne Moore
John Turturro
played a fiftyish divor-
cee trying to negotiate
4 the Santiago singles
scene. Hollywood
retreads of foreign films are rarely a good idea
(did you see Miss Bala?), but Gloria Bell is a
playful, pleasure-giving exception. It helps
that Moore wanted Lelio to direct it himself,
and he makes the switch to L.A. dance clubs
with no loss in empathetic intimacy.
And Moore is just phenomenal as this
mother of two adult children (Michael Cera,
Caren Pistorius) who mostly ignore her. She
finds Gloria’s loneliness and frustration in
being stuck in a dull office job, but also her
exhilarating joy. That comes at a disco where
Gloria relives her youth and forges a tentative
connection with the more recently divorced
Arnold ( John Turturro). Moore and Turturro,
in the tricky role of a man who maybe can’t
be trusted, are perfection. And Lelio, an
Oscar winner for the trans drama A Fantastic
Woman, improves on the original, creating
something funny, touching and vital. P.T.
just the right hint of naughty, is a New York
waitress named Frances. She finds Greta’s
purse on the subway and decides to return it.
Bad move.
During a thank-you visit to Greta’s W H AT E V E R I T
apartment for tea, Frances hears disturbing The takes to keep a
banging sounds. Construction? Maybe. After Hummingbird techno hellraiser on
exchanging phone digits, which even Frances’ Project its feet, The Hum-
roommate (Maika Monroe) regards as a no- DIRECTED BY mingbird Project
no, Greta starts showing up at the restaurant Kim Nguyen doesn’t have it. Just
where the young woman works. This new STARRING don’t blame the film’s
Jesse Eisenberg
friend might make a good sub for her mom, two lead actors. Jesse
who died a year ago. Seriously? Has this girl
Alexander
Skarsgård Eisenberg surges
never seen a horror movie? Let the stalking @ with all the manic
begin. Originality is not the strong suit in the energy he showed in
script Jordan conjured with Ray Wright. But The Social Network,
Huppert pulls out all the funny-scary stops playing Vincent, a hustler behind an idea to
playing cat to Moretz’s mouse. And Jordan Huppert run fiber-optic cable from Kansas to a Wall
squeezes the plot for every ounce of campy, menaces Street databank in Jersey to gain a millisecond
disreputable fun. What’s not to like? P.T. Moretz. of info advantage — the speed of a humming-
bird’s wing beat — that could bring in billions.
Alexander Skarsgård excels as Vincent’s
cousin Anton, the genius coder behind the
scam. Playing geek with a vengeance, Skars-
gård shaves his head and walks stooped. Even
that can’t distract from the fact that the con-
voluted script, written by Quebecois director
Kim Nguyen (War Witch), keeps tripping over
itself. There’s a health crisis for Vincent and
a hedge-fund manager (Salma Hayek) eager
to steal the tunnel concept from the cousins,
who used to work for her. Got that? Didn’t
think so. Hummingbird feels as humdrum
and impersonal as a blueprint. P.T.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JAIMIE TRUEBLOOD/A24; THE ORCHARD; JONATHAN

HESSION/FOCUS FEATURES; PICTURELUX/THE HOLLYWOOD ARCHIVE/ALAMY
Madonna:
RECONSIDERED Truth or Dare
1991
AVAILABLE ON
Blonde on Blonde: ‘Madonna: Truth or Dare’ YouTube, Vudu,
Google Play and
“L AST W E E K I N Spain, I really thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown,” Madonna iTunes
says near the beginning of her 1991 documentary, her voice trembling. Then, instead of trash-
ing her hotel room, she tidies it up. For the definitive chronicle of her Blond Ambition Tour, the
singer gave carte-blanche access to 26-year-old Alek Keshisian — and she was rewarded with the most influen-
tial tour-diary movie since Don’t Look Back. But you can also see the invention of a new pop-star doc genre:
the control-freak confessional. Keshisian was given final cut, but Our Lady of the Corsets and Tantrums was
the executive producer: Every fly-on-the-wall moment comes with her approval. It taught an entire generation
how to construct highly supervised “peeks” at megastar insecurity in the name of image management. You
don’t get Beyoncé fretting into a camcorder or Katy Perry sobbing backstage without it. DAVID FEAR

92

NAN CY PELOSI
[Cont. from 45] consumer protections. Almost every
day they do something very destructive, but you
don’t want to be a fearmonger. You have to kind of
just keep the fight where it needs to be and win the
elections, because they have ramifications.
One more complicated legislative agenda is the
need to deal with the tech giants. All the privacy
violations are pretty staggering — and then they
are behaving like classic monopolies, which we’ve
seen throughout history, and which requires a leg-
islative solution, no?
The more people know about how some of the busi-
nesses are conducted, I think the stronger the case is
for how we go forward. And again, you have to han-
dle it in the most strategic way, so you succeed. This
is not a question of making headlines back home —
it’s a question of making a statute to make a differ-
ence. But some of the things that were made known
about Facebook in the past couple of weeks are very
stunning, in terms of exploiting children’s access to
Facebook, using their parents’ credit cards. The mo-
nopoly issue is something we have to look into be-
cause it’s so related to privacy. You can’t really sep-
arate them out.
I think we’ll have more hearings. Some of these
firms are responsible, some are exploitive. And I
don’t know how you make a judgment — whether it’s
the size of the company, or the vertical or horizon-
tal expansion of their control of the system. I don’t
want to go into it right now with names, but some of
them are much better than others. So we have to do
it with care.
This is what the majority is about: to have the
hearings, to get the data, to make the judgment. Oth-
erwise, you have a hearing that’s a grandstand, and
it never leads to anything. On privacy, just know that
we will have legislation.
We have to ask as part of our official duties:
What is your favorite music of all time? And what
are you listening to these days?
Usually, I like to leave my kids’ music alone, you
know? And now my grandchildren. But we have
three generations of U2 fans. We’re obsessed. We go
to every concert. I’ve probably been to more U2 con-
certs than, well, certainly anybody in Congress.
I love all the music. I saw the Bruce Springsteen
show on Broadway; that was great. I loved that. I
loved that. I love all music from rap to — I won’t say
Wagner, but I’ll say Beethoven. I mean, I like Wag-
ner, but there are other, easier things that I like. More
Italian, shall we say? Even though Beethoven wasn’t
Italian.
Can we be more specific? What’s your favorite
album?
I hate to say this, because it sounds not as relaxed as
it should. I love some of the songs better than oth-
ers, but “One” is so appropriate now. Read the words
to “One.” In fact, my daughter just sent them to me
over the phone.
There’s not like a “Deadhead” thing for U2 —
there’s not a name for U2 fans.
Deadheads are like family to us. No, I’m telling you,
in California, that’s like family to us. And actual-
ly, [Dead & Company] was planning a concert the
night of our swearing-in. Idina Menzel was coming,
too, and they were going to play this thing together.
But since the government shut down, we had to can-
cel the concert, so that was too bad. We lost a lot of
money.
Beatles, Stones, Dylan? Where are you on the
three greats of the Sixties and the Seventies?
I probably know the words to more Beatles songs,
if that means anything. I love Dylan, and I love the
Stones. I’ve been to many of their concerts. I was at
one concert in Argentina. I was down there for a se-
curity visit. On the street, they had the banners: THE
ROLLING STONES WITH BOB DYLAN. Oh, my God! We
had to go, right? So we had to rearrange everything.
And we go, and there is Bob Dylan singing “Like a
Rolling Stone”! It was just incredible. And at that
concert — this is having nothing to do with anything
— [Rep.] Nita Lowey, who’s [Appropriations] chair
now, she’d never been to a concert. I said, “Look,
Nita. We’re concertgoers. You may smell things you
don’t recognize, but we are concertgoers. If you go,
you have to stay.”
Through the last song.
So we go there, and I’m telling you, Argentina — the
mosh pit must have been 50,000 people. They just
turn out, right? Now it’s the Stones and Bob Dylan.
This guy comes up to Nita, who’s sitting on the end,
at her first-ever concert, and he says to her, “Miss,
make a contribution to fight HIV/AIDS, and then you
get this gift.” And the gift was a pack of condoms.
And she’s like, “What? What?”
“Never mind, just put it in your purse.”
Of all people, 80,000 people in the place, they
pick her to go give a pack of condoms to, at her first
concert ever.
As you’re looking toward the next two to four
years, what is one thing you feel you need to get
done before you retire?
The Affordable Care Act, to grow it and expand it,
and increase the number of people who are covered
by it. The climate thing is a big deal for me. It is. But,
here’s the thing: We have some overarching challeng-
es to our economy, and therefore our society. The dis-
parity in income in our country is an obscenity. And
I’ve said to the members, “Everything that we put
forth has to be in furtherance of reducing that dispar-
ity.” Whether we’re talking about tax policy, wheth-
er we’re talking about investments in education and
workforce development, whether we’re talking about
infrastructure and how we do it in a way that increas-
es paychecks, or how we do our oversight. We don’t
begrudge anybody their success or their wealth. We
just don’t like exploitation of the worker.
And we’ve had this conversation a number of
times. Forty years ago, the disparity between income
was maybe 40 times, [between] the CEO and the
worker. When productivity increased, everybody’s
pay went up. About 20 years ago, that all changed:
bottom line, quarterly reports. So now the disparity
is more like 350 to 400 times. CEO pay goes up be-
cause he’s cut costs by either firing people or they’re
not paying them very much. This is sinful, this is sin-
ful. So for me, how we get onto a path of address-
ing that has to be a very important part of this next
Congress.
The only way our economy is going to be real-
ly strong is if you have increased purchasing power
of the middle class. It’s not about giving tax breaks
to the wealthiest people in our country. That wasn’t
supposed to happen. The [Republicans] told us that
wasn’t going to happen: “Oh, we just want to change
the corporate tax — we’re not changing anything with
individuals.” And then they did it in the dark of night
— 83 percent of the benefits to the top one percent. It
is shameful what they’re doing to the national debt,
to enrich people. I mean, again, we don’t resent peo-
ple their success and their wealth, but then they say,
“Well, now we have to cover it by cutting Medicare
and Medicaid and Social Security and the rest of that,
because we have this national debt”?
The budget should be a statement of our values.
And I look forward to putting us on that course. Then
before you know it — 18 more months or so, 19, is it?
— we’ll have a new president. And we can accom-
plish some of that. But you have to be ready. And you
have to build the case. I call it “crescendo,” to use a
musical metaphor. You’re always building, building,
building. Building the knowledge, building the pub-
lic awareness, building the strategy, as you keep re-
vamping it in new circumstances, so that we can win.
As you look back on your legacy in the House,
and at your career, do you have any regrets?
Regrets? I don’t know if I have any regrets.
I’ve become a target of the Republicans because
I’m effective. And because I can out-raise them, out-
smart them politically and out-negotiate them and
the rest. And they know that, and they had to take
me down. My name was in 132,000 ads paid for by
the Republicans in the last election. Some people
said, “Oh, you should have had your own PR cam-
paign.” Well, I couldn’t even think of doing that. I
spent every dollar to elect the Democrats. I don’t
know, I don’t call that a regret. Regret? Do I have any
regrets, Drew? Have I ever mentioned regret?
Drew Hammill: No.
Pelosi: We don’t deal in regrets. What we deal with
is, every situation is an opportunity, including the
guy down the street [points behind her head toward
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the White House]. How do we use this to spring into
something better? And quite frankly, he’s been a real
asset. Terrible for the country, but a great organizer.
You mentioned all of the commercials that were
run about you in the last election—
Yeah, 132,000.
In the past, when you’ve been asked about
those kinds of commercials, you’ve brushed it off
and said, “I’m not worried about my own approv-
al, I’m worried about electing more Democrats.”
That’s right.
But does it feel good to finally be getting some
approval? Do you get to enjoy it?
Well, it feels good. I accept all the compliments on
behalf of the unity of my caucus. As I say to them,
and maybe I said it earlier, forgive me, “Our diversi-
ty is our strength, our unity is our power.” I always
remember Mario Cuomo saying this to me when he
became governor [of New York]. I knew him through
the Italian community. I said, “How’s it feel to be gov-
ernor?” He said, “I feel like the Thanksgiving turkey.
They bring you out on the tray and everybody oohs
and ahs, and then they begin to carve you up.”
So, who knows what’s next? But for the moment,
we want to do what we can to protect the workers,
800,000 families deprived of a paycheck [in the shut-
down]. We want to do what we have to do to protect
our DREAMers and the Temporary Protective Sta-
tus folks, and end this conversation about who’s sin-
cere about protecting the border, so people can see
the other work that we are doing, which is address-
ing their kitchen-table issues. It’s all about that kitch-
en table. And now our caucus looks like America —
60 percent of it women, people of color, LGBTQ. Isn’t
that a fabulous thing?

T R U M P ’ S S W A M P C R E AT U R E S
[Cont. from 37] Secretary Leon Panetta as part of
Broidy’s team.
As the Qataris ramped up their D.C. presence, Broi-
dy redoubled his efforts to, as he wrote Nader, “crush
the snake!” He helped organize another conference
on Qatar that attracted bigger names than the first,
including Panetta and Gen. David Petraeus as well as
former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. (Bannon, emails
show, earned $100,000 for the appearance. He de-
clined to comment.)
In an email titled “Strictly Confidential” sent to
Nader on November 10th, 2017, Broidy outlined 11
different efforts underway to pressure the Trump
administration into action. A handful of Republican
and Democratic lawmakers would soon sign on to
letters to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Treasury
Secretary Mnuchin (“a close friend of mine,” Broidy
claimed) that were critical of Qatar. Rep. Ron De-
Santis, R-Fla., Broidy wrote, would introduce legis-
lation allowing victims of attacks by Hamas to sue
Qatar. (Broidy would join DeSantis’ fundraising team
when he successfully ran for Florida governor.) Sen.
Tom Cotton, R-Ark., had agreed to “educate” his fel-
low senators about the wisdom of relocating the U.S.
air command center out of al-Udeid. (Cotton also re-
ceived donations from both Elliott and Robin Broidy.)
When Broidy needed help publicizing a classified
State Department agreement signed with Qatar, he
said he turned to “my friend” Rep. Robert Pittenger,
a three-term GOP congressman from North Carolina.
According to Broidy’s memo, he and his team “con-
vinced” Pittenger to read the document in a secure
classified-information facility at the State Depart-
ment, get the document moved to Capitol Hill and
arrange a “viewing party” so that other members of
Congress could read it and speak out about it. (Pit-
tenger received the maximum donation from Broidy.)
Pittenger tells ROLLING STONE that Broidy’s de-
scription of their relationship is not true. Pittenger,
who lost his seat in 2018, says he can’t recall meet-
ing Broidy. He decided to view the classified Qatar
agreement at the State Department on his own, he
says, and Broidy seems to have taken credit for things
he’d already done. “He’s a guy that blows a bunch of
smoke,” Pittenger says. “There’s a lot of flaky people
in Washington, and they love to promote themselves,
and unfortunately he seems to fit in that category.”
Similarly, McChrystal tells ROLLING STONE that
Broidy exaggerated their relationship when he listed
him as the chairman of Circinus’ special-operations
division. McChrystal says he spent a few days in the
UAE as part of a small team Broidy had assembled to
compete for business in the region. He says Broidy
asked him to accept a long-term role with Circinus
and he declined. “I never thought I was the chair-
man of any part of the firm, although he was clear in
his desire that I do so,” McChrystal writes in an email.
“After that trip I did no more work with him.”
A spokesman for Panetta tells ROLLING STONE in
a statement that Panetta “was never involved in any
of Mr. Broidy’s companies. Those claims are false.”
Nader told Broidy he wanted to get his picture
taken with Trump. According to the leaked emails,
when Nader had previously tried to get a photo
with Trump at an event, he was turned away by the
Secret Service over “something in his background.”
On October 10th, 2017, Broidy and his wife drafted an
96 | Rolling Stone | March 2019
email intended for John Kelly, the president’s chief
of staff, to vouch for Nader, whom Broidy referred
to as “George Vader” so that Nader could get his
photo with Trump. Some emails sent and received
by Broidy also use the name Vader; another men-
tions Nader’s real name multiple times. Ultimately,
Nader got in. A few months later, Broidy sent him his
photo with Trump.
By late 2017, Broidy was deep in negotiations
with Emirati officials to sign contracts with Circi-
nus potentially worth $120 million, according to an
email Broidy sent to his lawyer. A month later, Broi-
dy emailed Nader to say that the first payment from
the UAE had gone through: $36 million. Nader got
the news as he was getting ready to travel to Flori-
da to join Broidy at Mar-a-Lago for a celebration of
the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.
“Terrific! First among many to go!” Nader replied. At
Dulles Airport, according to the Associated Press, FBI
agents working for Robert Mueller intercepted Nader.
O
N FEBRUARY 27TH, 2018, two political op-
eratives sat across from each other at
the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown.
One was Nick Muzin, the Qatari lobby-
ist. The other was Joel Mowbray, a conservative
journalist-turned-consultant who has worked for Broi-
dy. Muzin had come to ask for Mowbray’s help to end
the blockade against Qatar. When Mowbray declined,
Muzin allegedly divulged a startling fact: The New
York Times was investigating the connections among
Broidy, Nader and the Middle East. Mowbray was
surprised. He didn’t know about any story, and no
one at the Times had contacted him or Broidy. From
there, things completely unraveled for Elliott Broidy.
Two days later, The Wall Street Journal ran a story
citing “a cache of emails from Mr. Broidy’s and his
wife’s email accounts” that revealed the Broidys’ plan
to press the Justice Department to end its investiga-
tion into Malaysia’s investment-fund scandal. Soon
after, the Times broke the story of Broidy and Nad-
er’s campaign for the UAE and Saudi Arabia, citing
Broidy’s memo describing his October meeting with
Trump, a copy of which was provided by “someone
critical of the Emirati influence in Washington.”
Many suspected that Broidy had been hacked and
someone was parceling out his emails to news orga-
nizations. When Muzin and Mowbray met again a few
days later, Muzin denied any role in the hack-and-
dump attack targeting Broidy. But he allegedly told
Mowbray that there was “a lot more coming” from
the Times and that Broidy was “in deep shit.” More
stories soon appeared in the Times, AP, McClatchy,
BBC and other outlets citing the hacked documents.
The stories prompted an outcry among Democrats:
Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren
called for an investigation into whether Broidy had
violated FARA or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Broidy hired Boies Schiller Flexner, founded by
David Boies, one of the country’s most high-profile
litigators, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore
and more recently worked for Harvey Weinstein. As
for Nader, he’s kept a low profile and is cooperating
with the Mueller investigation.
On March 26th, Broidy sued Qatar, Muzin and
Muzin’s firm for orchestrating the hack, later adding
Allaham as a defendant. (Muzin did not respond to
requests for comment. A lawyer for Allaham says, “As
Joey has said 100 times, he had nothing to do with
the hacking of Mr. Broidy’s emails.”)
The complaint described a “hostile intelligence op-
eration” in which Qatari agents duped Broidy’s wife
with a fake Google message into giving up her email
password, which was then used to access her and El-
liott Broidy’s accounts, while also breaking into Broi-
dy’s company servers. In the winter of 2018, some-
one using the email account LA.Confidential@mail
.com disseminated to the media batches of Broidy’s
emails, memos, contracts and more. The documents
appeared to be organized by the various countries
with which Broidy had pursued business deals — Ma-
laysia, Romania, Angola, Republic of Congo, and of
course the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Broidy and his law-
yers have verified that his email was hacked, blaming
Qatar. (A Qatari spokesman has said Broidy’s allega-
tions are “completely fabricated and without merit.”)
Two weeks after Broidy filed his suit, federal
agents raided the office of Michael Cohen, the presi-
dent’s lawyer. The raid set off an embarrassing chain
of events, leading Broidy to admit that he’d had an
extramarital affair starting in 2013 with a Playboy
Playmate named Shera Bechard. In 2017, Broidy had
allegedly gotten Bechard pregnant and demanded
she get an abortion; he agreed to pay her $1.6 mil-
lion in exchange for her silence. Just as he had done
for Trump’s affairs with porn actress Stormy Daniels
and Playmate Karen McDougal, Cohen helped bro-
ker Broidy’s agreement with Bechard. Soon Daniels’
lawyer Michael Avenatti was tweeting about a “prom-
inent GOP donor” who had used Cohen to sign a
“hush” deal. (Avenatti says didn’t disclose any con-
fidential information.) Broidy acknowledged to The
Wall Street Journal that he was the donor in Avenat-
ti’s tweet and said he would no longer pay Bechard.
Broidy was toxic once again. Members of Con-
gress, including Royce and Pittenger, returned his
donations. He resigned from the RNC’s finance team.
Then, in July, Bechard sued Broidy, arguing that he
had violated their agreement and owed her close
to $1 million. Bechard’s complaint contained multi-
ple redactions, but an error by Broidy’s lawyers dis-
closed Bechard’s allegations that Broidy kept a gun in
his car and claimed to have connections “who could
make people disappear.” (Broidy called Bechard’s al-
legations “false, malicious and disgusting” and ac-
cused Bechard of trying to blackmail him.)
Broidy’s efforts also caught the attention of federal
law-enforcement agencies. In May, FBI agents twice
interviewed a former associate of Broidy’s about
his efforts to win contracts with Angola and about
African nationals paying to attend Trump’s inaugu-
ration, the associate tells ROLLING STONE. In August,
The Washington Post reported that the Justice Depart-
ment was investigating Broidy’s work involving the
Malaysian investment-fund scandal.
By all indications, Broidy is undaunted and has
no plans to go quietly, as he did after his 2009 guilty
plea. After a judge dismissed his first lawsuit against
Qatar and Muzin, Broidy filed a new one on January
24th in D.C. federal court against Muzin, Allaham and
a former Qatari agent.
Broidy and his company have made tens of
millions for their work, with the prospect of earn-
ing more in the years ahead. (Circinus has multiple
postings for job openings in Abu Dhabi.) Whatever
price he pays for his influence operation may sim-
ply be the cost of doing business in Donald Trump’s
swamp. But for now, Broidy has taken Trump’s ad-
vice for what to do when dealing with scandals:
Fight, fight, fight.
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# LOV E ALLWAYS

LIBERAT OR. C O M
Mavis Staples
The singer on turning 80, wanting to skateboard, and why
she could knock out her friend Bob Dylan in the boxing ring
You turn 80 in July. How
do you feel?
I feel good. When I was a
kid, 80 was old, but I don’t
feel old. I’m not as sharp as I
used to be when I’m talking,
but I feel like I’m ready for
another 10 years.
How are you going to
celebrate on the big day?
Oh, Lord. I told a friend of
mine I want him to show me
Staples is touring
right now in support
of her new album,
‘Live in London.’
how to ride a skateboard,
and I might want to go
skydiving.
Why skateboarding?
I’ve seen my friend Ben
Harper skateboarding and
I said, “Ben, I’m scared for
you on that.” And he said,
“Well, Mavis, this is beautiful.
You’ve got to try it.”
If you could talk to your-
self at age 20, what would
you say?
Get your rest, Mavis. Don’t
start barhopping, and
take your time with your
romances. You don’t want
to get married too soon.
Did getting married
young slow you down?
That’s exactly what it did. I
was married back in 1964,
and my husband decided he
wanted me to stop singing.
He would tell me, “I don’t
want a songbird.” I said,
“Well, you wanted a songbird
when you proposed to me.”
One argument led to another,
and I finally went and got a
divorce.
Was there ever a moment
in your life when you ques-
tioned your belief in God?
98 | Rolling Stone | March 2019
Never. I have prayed so
much, the Lord’s been tired
of me. I feel that God is taking
care of me right now. Because
I’m all alone, and I still have
sellout crowds everywhere
I go. There’s an old saying:
“If you wait, deliverance will
come.” And right now, it’s
harvest time for me.
What do you do to stay in
shape?
Every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday I go to the fitness
center. I have a personal
trainer that gets all the kinks
out. I do the treadmill and
boxing. I got the pink boxing
gloves, and I take the ball and
work with it.
Your old friend Bob
Dylan also boxes. Do
you think you could
knock him out?
I’d knock him out
with one swing. He’s
so little. It would
hurt me to hit Bobby
like that, but, oh yeah,
I’d take him out.
Is America better off
now than it was in the
Sixties?
We’ve done better, but we
left a lot by the wayside, and
those are the ones who voted
for Mr. Trump. Things are
better as far as us being able
to go into bathrooms in the
South, to go into the restau-
rants in the South, and to
stay in hotels, but you never
know who’s lurking on the
sidelines waiting to knock
you down again.
Trump ran for
president on an
openly racist
agenda. What
does that say
about America?
That scared me. That
made me feel like so
ILLUSTRATION BY Mark Summers
many are thinking like him.
Someone with Obama’s heart
won twice, and here comes
this man; he’s like Satan.
Seeing people marching in
Charlottesville with torches
took me back to the Sixties.
Are they gonna start burning
crosses and lynching
people?
You’ve lost most of
your family in recent
years. How are you
doing emotionally?
Sometimes I feel iso-
lated. I still have my
brother [Pervis] —
I can’t believe
that everybody
else is gone.
I’m just trying
to stay strong.
I get lonely
at times, but
I do have
people around
me that I feel
love me, and I’m
safe. I’m all right.
What music
still moves you the
most these days?
Gospel music. I still
like sister Mahalia
Jackson and the
Dixie Hummingbirds,
the Mighty Clouds of
Joy, Albertina Walker and
Shirley Caesar. When I listen
to those people, I feel like my
burdens have been lifted.
Are you afraid of death?
I’ve done what I’ve been
put here for. I don’t want to
die no time soon, but I’m
ready. My vision of death is
me singing with the angels in
the heavenly choir, me with
my wings just running my
mouth and making every-
body laugh, keeping every-
body happy in heaven. I’m
not afraid. ANDY GREENE