After confusion in Iowa and a close contest in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders hit the jackpot in Las Vegas last weekend with a blowout victory in the Nevada caucus. If the Vermont senator can blunt Joe Biden in South Carolina on Saturday and win big three days later in the Super Tuesday states then the contest to be this year’s Democratic nominee could soon be over. In this week’s cover story, Lauren Gambino looks at how a win in the first heavily Latino state confirms Sanders’s pole position in the race. Then, Richard Wolffe looks at what that means for the fight against Donald Trump in November. One man who thinks he can stop the momentum of Sanders is billionaire former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has already spent a staggering $500m on his campaign. Can his funds begin to challenge Bernie’s people power? Amanda Holpuch investigates.
On Monday afternoon, a jury in New York returned a verdict in the trial of Harvey Weinstein. The former movie executive, the allegations against whom helped propel the #MeToo movement into mainstream, was found guilty of third-degree rape and a criminal sex act and will face at least in prison. In addition, Californian prosecutors have levelled more charges against Weinstein with civil compensation cases also underway in the UK. Lucia Graves looks at the disgraced producer’s downfall and its critical role in #MeToo.
Meanwhile, the spread of coronavirus continues to worry public health officials. Parts of Italy are on lockdown; South Korea is testing 200,000 members of a sect at the centre of its outbreak and, in Iran, Covid‑19 has taken hold on a major pilgrimage route. Are current efforts to stop it enough?
Elsewhere in the magazine – as violence in India erupts again – the Long Read’s Samanth Subramanian documents the rise of Hindu nationalism under the rule of Narendra Modi; Sam Walker tells the moving story of a road trip with her terminally ill mother and Alex Clark interviews the wonderful Hilary Mantel as book-lovers around the world wait for the arrival of The Mirror & the Light, the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
