The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Elizabeth Weil, Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel, Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisinger, Sean Patrick Cooper, and Priya Krishna.

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1. He Helped Build an Artists’ Utopia. Now He Faces Trial for 36 Deaths There.

Elizabeth Weil | The New York Times Magazine | December 12, 2018 | 45 minutes (11,312 words)

“Max Harris did chores and collected rent at the artists’ warehouse where he lived. Now he faces trial for the deaths at a concert there — including some of his close friends.”

2. Is the Women’s March Melting Down?

Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel | Tablet Magazine | December 10, 2018 | 41 minutes (10,467 words)

An investigation into the leadership, organizational and financial status, and affiliations of the increasingly fractured Women’s March. Among many other explosive issues, the article interrogates the alleged anti-semitism of some of the March’s leaders, who support the outwardly anti-semitic, misogynistic, and anti-LBGTQ Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan.

3. How the IRS Was Gutted

Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisinger | ProPublica and The Atlantic | December 11, 2018 | 22 minutes (5,600 words)

Tax evaders, rejoice: the Internal Revenue Service may not have enough resources to come after the vast majority of those offshore bank accounts. It also doesn’t have enough resources to investigate white collar crime, curb suspicious corporate activity, shore up the nation’s rising budget deficit, or answer tens of millions of law-abiding taxpayers’ questions. And now, just when morale is at its lowest, the IRS stands to lose a third of its most valuable and experienced workers next year as the organization’s most senior cohort becomes eligible for retirement.