paper trail

John Lewis’s final words; Justice Department moves to lift press protections in Portland

Rep. John Lewis in 2006. Photo: US Congress/Wikimedia Commons

John Lewis’s staff has provided the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with an essay he wanted published on the day of his funeral. “Democracy is not a state,” he wrote. “It is an act.”

At the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan considers Trump’s praise of Stella Immanuel—the Houston doctor spreading COVID-19 falsehoods on Facebook and Twitter—and a new Pew research study showing that Americans who get their news primarily from social media are more misinformed than those who rely on print or other sources.

Numerous literary agents have signed a letter in protest of how attendance cancelations earlier this year for the London Book Fair were handled. Agents who canceled tables due to the pandemic before the official announcement calling off the fair received no money back, while those who canceled subsequently were offered refunds.

The Justice Department is asking a US district court judge to lift the order protecting journalists from federal agents in Portland, Oregon. The filing claims that the temporary restraining order has become “an instrument of wrong.” A leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security describes how agents can evade the order and legally arrest reporters and legal observers.

The Feminist Press is having a one-day ebook sale today.

Tonight via Zoom, Powell’s Books is hosting Justin Taylor talking about his new memoir, Riding With the Ghost, with novelist Tracy O’Neill. In Bookforum’s summer issue, Taylor wrote about Søren Kierkegaard’s emo existentialism.