About The Racket
The Racket takes its name from the speeches of Smedley Butler, a legendary Marine who became an antiwar activist in the years before World War II. After decades of advancing the causes of U.S. capitalism, empire, and his own career at the expense of peoples all over the world, Butler became a fierce critic of all three. Butler turned his maverick streak against the powerful, taking the side of the working class and against fascism. And he wasn’t afraid to challenge the institutions he had dedicated his life to, declaring that as a Marine he had been no more than hired muscle for corporations and the banks — a “racketeer for capitalism.”
Written by award-winning author and journalist Jonathan M. Katz (Gangsters of Capitalism, The Big Truck That Went By), The Racket carries on Butler’s legacy: his fearlessness, his eagerness to challenge the powerful, and his willingness to be critical of himself. Building on a career Katz has spent exposing wrongdoing and corruption at the highest levels, each issue will help you better understand the webs of connections that link seemingly disparate parts of our world — in international affairs, disaster, U.S. politics, social issues, and more.
About Jonathan M. Katz
Jonathan Myerson Katz is a journalist and author whose work focuses on politics, history, conflict, and disaster. A former Associated Press foreign correspondent, his work has appeared in the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Guardian, the New Republic, New York Times and New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, and many other publications. He also publishes a widely read newsletter, The Racket.Katz was the only full-time foreign correspondent working in Haiti when the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere struck in 2010. He provided the first international alert of the quake and broke numerous stories about the failures of the aid effort. Months later, he broke the story that United Nations peacekeepers had caused and were covering up their role in a devastating post-quake cholera epidemic. After six years of further investigation, Katz secured an admission from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the U.N. played a role in the outbreak.
For his work in Haiti, Katz was awarded the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism (since renamed in honor of James Foley). He also reported on Mexico's drug wars, the Second Intifada in Israel/Palestine, migration crises in the Dominican Republic, hate crimes in the United States, corruption on Capitol Hill, and many other stories.
His first book, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster(2013), was shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, and won the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award for the year's best book on international affairs. His second, Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire (2022) was the product of six years of on-the-ground reporting in Latin America, China, and the Philippines, as well as extensive archival research. It was a national bestseller and won the 2023 People's Choice Award for Nonfiction from the Library of Virginia.
Katz has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, NPR, Democracy Now!, and other outlets. You can follow him on Bluesky @katz.theracket.news and on TikTok and Instagram @KatzOnEarth.
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Haiti
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Feb 20, 2026
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8 min read
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