The Slatest for Sept. 28: About Last Night …

At last night’s chaotic second GOP primary debate, the members of the field’s second tier fought amongst themselves, as Trump was once again a no-show. But a few things about the 2024 election are becoming clearer, after last night. Namely:

• The candidates are starting to attack Trump directly. Jeremy Stahl, who was present at the Reagan Library for the debate, captures the atmosphere in the room, and how it felt like Trump’s absence was finally starting to matter.

• There’s one issue that stands out as the biggest boogeyman hanging over the GOP field, Stahl writes. His testy exchange with former Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denialist Kari Lake provides some sense of how thorny abortion is going to be in the general election.

(“Kari Lake!” you might be thinking. “What’s she been up to since she lost that governor’s race and pretended she didn’t?” Shirin Ali is here to catch you up.)

• It’s still up in the air who will emerge as the dominant contender to Trump, but the list of who it could be is getting narrower. Jim Newell runs down who still seems to have a fighting chance, and who is a lost cause at this point. Plus, he recaps all the most cringeworthy jokes of the evening (come for serious political analysis, stay for Mike Pence trying to make a sex joke).

To wit, Nikki Haley emerged from the evening with “the only noncringeworthy zingers,” Newell writes. Shirin Ali recaps the exchange that brought us Haley’s best line of the evening.

• The Fox Business moderators asked an impressive array of tough questions. David Faris takes a look at the opportunities they gifted the candidates to distance themselves from wildly unpopular policy positions—and how they all said no, thanks!

• And Alexander Sammon homes in on a big question that wasn’t asked Wednesday night: What about tax cuts for the rich?

Between the UAW, WGA, and SAG strikes, the narrowly averted Teamsters strike, and many others, 2023 has been a big year for organized labor. And there’s another huge benefit to all this: Terri Gerstein explains why unions may be saving democracy.

As the start of the Supreme Court term approaches next week, Dahlia Lithwick takes a look at what’s in store, particularly the possibility of gun rights for abusers post-Bruen and the impossible tension between medicine and the law post-Dobbs.

Thanks to climate change, flesh-eating bacteria infections (though still quite rare!) are on the rise. Bill Sullivan explains how to protect yourself.

Remember that whole flap where David Brooks complained about spending $78 on a burger and fries at Newark Airport last week?

Luke Winkie couldn’t help but feel he was on to something. “They do rob you at the airport, don’t they?” he writes. “I don’t want to play devil’s advocate for David Brooks, but I do think we might have missed the forest for the trees here.”

Winkie spoke with Blaise Waguespack, a professor who specializes in the air-travel industry, to find out why airport food is so expensive—and found there’s actually a (somewhat) reasonable explanation.

The largest form of criminal punishment in the United States isn’t prison—and it’s still awful, Cristian Farias writes. He explains why probation and parole simply aren’t working.

Reservation Dogs is “the best television show about teens” that we’ve seen in recent years, Nadira Goffe writes. Now that it’s coming to an end, she spoke with co-creator Sterlin Harjo about the show and its themes of life, love, death, and community.

… much like Cat Cardenas was by the arrival of Spy Kids. She explains why she’s been preaching the gospel of the franchise to anyone who will listen.

Thanks so much for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.