2025-03-18 20:00:00
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Then things got a little out of hand. Let’s fast forward a bit to Oklahoma, circa 2025, for the latest. State superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters is pushing a mandate requiring that public school students learn from the Bible. (He also famously “proposed spending $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the Bible that has been endorsed by the president and for which he receives royalties.”) The mandate is getting pushback from some unexpected places. “Opposition here has come from pastors, religion professors, students, parents, teachers, school board members, and the school district superintendent, among others. The prevailing philosophy among Norman residents, who are predominantly Christian, is that they do not want the state—and namely, Walters—mandating how children should be taught scriptures. They want their children to learn from holy books at home or in church.” Vanity Fair: How Oklahoma’s Right-Wing Superintendent Set Off a Holy War in Classrooms. Yes, this bible studies mandate is so extreme that even many of the most religious Oklahomans view it as decidedly not OK. But plenty of things that once seemed extremely extreme are now common in our daily headlines, and the Oklahoma fight is representative of a broader religious war being fought to post the ten commandments on campuses, use public funding for religious schools, merge the idea of American and Christian identities, and constantly push for the de-separation of church and state. If you have an idea idea how to reverse this trend, pray tell.
Kings don’t have much patience for negative feedback from other branches of government. And so it is with Trump who “called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg after he blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants.” In a social media post, Trump (like Musk and others running the country) called for getting rid of judges who uphold the law. “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President – He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES … This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” This kind of quackery would be easy to dismiss if it weren’t coming from the president of the United States who is leading a transparent, concerted effort to ignore, defy, and damage the judicial branch. And I’m not the only one worried. “Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back on President Donald Trump’s escalating rhetoric against the federal judiciary on Tuesday in a highly unusual statement that appeared to be aimed at the president’s call to impeach judges who rule against him. ‘For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” It’s a positive sign that the Chief Justice would give voice to these concerns. The big question is whether—after giving Trump so many court wins (including the bewildering immunity ruling)—it’s too late to tame the beast.
There’s the legal debate about Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people (which led to the judge’s ruling, the Trump call for impeachment, and the Chief Justice’s rebuke). Then there’s the human story. “Unbeknownst to his family, Yamarte had been put on a plane after President Donald Trump secretly signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The wartime provision gave Trump the power to quickly remove Venezuelans accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang, taking away their chance to make their case to a judge before deportation. A federal judge blocked Trump from using the power and ordered the administration to turn around any planes that were already in the air. Three planes landed in El Salvador hours later.” It’s important to understand that many people aren’t just getting deported back to their home countries. They’re getting shipped off to one of the world’s most notorious prisons in El Salvador, sans any criminal conviction. WaPo (Gift Article): For four Venezuelan friends, Alien Enemies Act cuts short an American dream.
“In a quarterly report published Monday, the Paris-based research body cut its growth forecasts for most of the world’s largest economies over this year and next, the main exceptions being China, Argentina and Turkey. Its largest downgrades were reserved for the two economies that trade most heavily with the U.S. and face significantly higher barriers to their exports.” Mexico and Canada stand to be the most hurt by the trade war. But they won’t be the only ones. Much of world’s economy could suffer. WSJ (Gift Article): U.S. Tariff Increases to Slow Global Economy, Boost Inflation.
+ And it’s not just your portfolio. The stock market is suffering. And investors are pulling out in a big way. BofA Survey Shows Biggest-Ever Drop in US Stock Allocations. “While high valuations and tepid economic growth have made investors jittery about the US, European markets are riding a wave of newfound optimism with Germany getting ready to unlock billions in defense and infrastructure spending.” Make Europe Great Again?
Ceasefire Ceased: With the ceasefire talks stalled, the resumption of war in the Middle East approached like a slow motion disaster. Now it’s here. CNN: Ceasefire shatters as Israel pounds Gaza with wave of deadly strikes. Here’s more from BBC. And from The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Gaza Cease-Fire Was Always Going to End. “More war is not what the people of Gaza or Israel want. But Gazans have no ability to control or restrain Hamas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not responsive to the preferences of the Israeli public.”
+ A Call Between Allies: “President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone conversation on Tuesday as the White House pushes for Russia to sign off on its 30-day ceasefire proposal aimed at ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The White House and Kremlin did not offer any immediate details about the substance of the conversation, but both confirmed that the call had ended.” (Well, I guess that’s a start.)
+ Native Tongue Tied: “Until recently, a page on the Defense Department’s website celebrated Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six Marines photographed hoisting a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, as an emblem of the ‘contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the United States, not just in the military, but in all walks of life.’ But the page, along with many others about Native American and other minority service members, has now been erased.” Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Iwo Jima flag-raiser. Then there’s this: The military banned cultural awareness celebrations – except for St. Patrick’s Day. And this: “After a recent change by the Trump administration, the federal government no longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains.” (We’ve segregated America from decency.)
+ Peace Out: “As Mr. Stanley opened a door leading to the roof of the building, which is directly opposite an entrance to the White House, he tripped an alarm that alerted the Secret Service to his presence. It created a dramatic scene as a uniformed officer rushed to respond.” Oh it was nothing, just Elon Musk’s Starlink Expanding Across the White House Complex. And a headline that perfectly captures this American moment: Musk’s Team Evicts Officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
+ Wiz Bid: Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion. “Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has announced its largest-ever acquisition, entering into a deal to buy New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz, making it a part of its Google Cloud division. This is the company’s second attempt to buy Wiz after talks stalled last year at a lower $23 billion evaluation.” In part, the move is a big bet that the Trump administration will approve the merger.
+ Innovate Expectations: FastCo has an interesting look at The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025. The top five: Waymo, Nvidia, Nubank, WNBA, and Byd.
+ Guess Who’s Back: “NASA’s two stuck astronauts headed back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to close out a dramatic marathon mission that began with a bungled Boeing test flight more than nine months ago.” Let’s wait a few hours before we answer their first question: “So what’s been going on down here?”
+ Play Ball: The regular season started early for two major league teams who met in the Tokyo Dome. The result was one we might need to get used to. Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto lead Dodgers past Cubs in Tokyo opener.
“The residents of what Ms. McMahon described as a ‘country club for older animals’ are sectioned off from three other islands inhabited by youngsters via a mesh gate in the water. They can still see their fellow seabirds, but from the remove of a craggy rock island that has less pecking and noise. ‘The birds are definitely quieter, there’s less territoriality,’ said Ms. McMahon. ‘There’s a little bit more laying down and resting.'” NYT (Gift Article): At a Penguin ‘Retirement Home,’ a Slower Pace and Plenty of Fish.
2025-03-17 20:00:00
Millions of Americans woke up this morning to fill out their March Madness brackets, choosing who will survive among more than 60 universities. But this March also features another challenge to more than 60 universities—one that would have been considered pure madness in any other era. These challenges to universities have the appearances of being about the defense of Jews against antisemitism, the defense of the nation against illegal immigration, or the defense of America against so-called wokeism. But as Anne Applebaum explains, they’re really about a defense of the current administration. “The attacks on Columbia, along with the assault on other universities, have an even broader purpose: They are designed to intimidate hundreds of other academic institutions in America. The point is to make every university afraid to offend the administration; to make academics self-censor; to make students wary too, concsious that something they might say on campus could trigger a MAGA social media campaign or cuts to their university’s funding.”
+ As Franklin Foer explains in The Atlantic, the point is not to deny that antisemitic acts happened at Columbia. The point is to address that reality while also being fully aware that it’s being used as a pretext for a broader plan. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Columbia University’s Anti-Semitism Problem. “Now that Donald Trump and his allies control the federal government, they have used anti-Semitism as a pretext for damaging an institution that they abhor. In the name of rescuing the Jews of Columbia, the Trump administration cut off $400 million in federal contracts and grants to the university … The Trump administration’s war on Columbia stands to wreck research, further inflame tensions on campus, and destroy careers—including, in a supreme irony, those of many Jewish academics, scientists, physicians, and graduate students whom the administration ostensibly wants to protect.” (As a Jew and the son of two Holocaust survivors, let me offer this piece of advice. Don’t trust groups that heil and want to give Mel Gibson his guns back when they say they’ve come to protect you.)
+ “A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.” (Remember how they were going to target the criminals first?)
+ “Autocrats — both left-wing and right-wing — always attack universities. The public rationale varies. Some, like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, reportedly accuse universities or students of supporting terrorism; others, like pro-government outlets in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, accuse them of working for foreign interests; still others, like Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, accused universities of supporting “neoliberalism” and corruption. But these are pretexts. Universities are independent centers of ideas and often prominent centers of dissent. Autocrats are allergic to sources of dissent, so they almost invariably seek to silence, weaken, or control them.” Harvard Crimson: First They Came for Columbia. The big question right now is how universities, especially the most powerful and deep-pocketed ones, respond to the challenge. So far, the reaction has been muted. “Not only is silence in the face of mounting authoritarianism morally objectionable, but, as the Columbia case suggests, it’s not working. Columbia’s leadership made repeated concessions to right-wing critics, only to be the first to come under attack. Remaining silent will not protect us.”
Maybe the real madness this March will be if no one marches at all.
“The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.” Like the story above, it’s important to distinguish the pretext (Getting rid of gang members seems like a good idea) from the broader story: ignoring the courts. Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants even as a judge orders their removals be stopped.
+ “The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy — a mega-prison where visitation, recreation and education are not allowed — became the latest tool in U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration on Sunday, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were transferred there.” What to know about CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison for gang members.
+ How the White House ignored a judge’s order to turn back deportation flights.
+ Trump’s border czar: “I don’t care what the judges think.”
I don’t want violent gang members coming to America. I don’t want campuses to let antisemitism flourish in the name of free speech. These are easy positions to adopt. But that’s exactly why the administration picked them. You can’t ignore our values, our laws, and our courts in some areas without destroying the foundation of those laws. Once you chip away enough of the foundation, there is no bottom. And you get this: “President Donald Trump claimed without evidence early Monday that his predecessor’s pardons for members of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol are invalid because then-President Joe Biden didn’t use a real pen. ‘The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social online platform.” (The truth, of course, is that it’s sickening that Biden even had to issue these preemptive pardons in the first place. Sickening, but not unwarranted.)
“Since 2022 content creators Jasmine and Freya Smith in Tokyo have been posting on TikTok about Japanese food and travel, including all things matcha. Dozens of the sisters’ videos feature them at cafes and restaurants stirring matcha lattes, drizzling matcha-flavored syrups and showing off pastries and pancakes tinted the telltale shade of leafy green. But one of their most recent videos came with a warning: ‘Unfortunately,’ Jasmine told their 47,000 followers in January, ‘there is a matcha shortage in Tokyo right now.’ She was correct.” Social media influencers and an increase in tourism to Japan has created a green tea powder boom (and shortage). Bloomberg (Gift Article): The Global Matcha Boom Is Driving a Shortage in Japan.
+ As I covered last week, Japan has more pressing shortages: Rice. And people to serve rice.
What, When, Why, and Houthi: “Dozens of people have been reported killed after US President Donald Trump ordered ‘decisive’ military action against Houthi rebels in Yemen, opening a new salvo against the Iran-backed group that has targeted shipping lanes in the Red Sea.”
+ Money Shot: One way universities are trying to maintain diversity on campus during the Trump era: Making tuition free for some students. Harvard Will Make Tuition Free for More Students.
+ Tariff Push Comes to Shove: “China has targeted corn farmers and carmakers. Canada has put tariffs on poultry plants and air-conditioning manufacturers, while Europe will hit American steel mills and slaughter houses. The retaliatory tariffs are an attempt to put pressure on the president to relent. And they have been carefully designed to hit Mr. Trump where it hurts.” NYT (Gift Article): Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest. (This is a pretty predictable move. Thus, there’s not much evidence Trump cares about it.)
+ Dem Bones to Pick: “Many Democratic activists, desperate for their leaders to stand up to President Trump, have been staging protests outside of Senator Chuck Schumer’s home and calling for his resignation.” Schumer Postpones Book Tour Amid Backlash to Voting With Republicans. (I’ve wondered why the Dems stick with the same old leadership and continually seem to bring a face to a fistfight. But if you’re out protesting something or someone, and Schumer is at the top of your list, you may need to rethink your strategy.)
+ Whale Wail: “A hungry whale is a quiet whale. A new first-of-its kind study found the marine mammals vocalized less after a marine heat wave decimated their prey, making whale songs a barometer of the effects of climate change on ocean ecosystems.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Why We Should Worry When Whales Stop Singing.
All right, enough of the bad news and the political March madness. Let’s get to the actual March Madness. The 2025 NCAA Men’s Tournament Bracket Breakdown. And your preview for the Women’s March Madness. Sports may be at the bottom of the news in NextDraft, but it’s top of mind for me. These days, every second I’m not drowning in the news I’m watching sports. Opening day can’t come soon enough.
2025-03-14 20:00:00
“You are not serious people.” One of the greatest lines from Succession could easily be applied to Pete Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon. But here’s the rub. America’s most unserious people are systematically sidelining its most serious assets. One such example from the NYT (Gift Article): Hegseth Closes Pentagon Office Focused on Future Wars. It’s called the Office of Net Assessment and it’s populated by some of the best and smartest people in the country working on plans to protect us and our children from worst case scenarios. Many of them have turned down seven figure salaries in the private sector out of a sense of sacrifice and duty. Like so many of the public servants being reassigned or canned willy-nilly by those often ignorant of what they even do, they deserve our admiration, not the politically-motivated wrath of unserious people.
+ How unserious? “Arlington National Cemetery has scrubbed information about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War from its website, part of a broader effort across the Defense Department to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its online presence.” You can delete information from websites, but you can’t delete the real threats facing the country. And I’m dead serious when I say we’re a little less safe today.
When a sports team fails, players are cut and coaches are fired. The same doesn’t go for political parties. Instead, the pent-up frustration just keeps penting. And right now, the pent is too damn high as Democrats are eating their own over the decision whether or not to support a GOP bill to avert a government shutdown. The choices are both pretty bad: Shut down the government or acquiesce to an administration that seems hell bent on deleting it. As Cory Booker explained, “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way.” Chuck Schumer has opted to wreck it by voting to support the GOP stopgap spending bill. The decision has set off something of a generational war between younger and older Dem leaders. NYT (Gift Article): Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Schumer Retreats on Shutdown. “Younger Democrats are chafing at and increasingly complaining about what they see as the feebleness of the old guard’s efforts to push back against President Trump. They are second-guessing how the party’s leaders — like Mr. Schumer, who brandishes his flip phone as a point of pride — are communicating their message in the TikTok era, as Republicans dominate the digital town square. And they are demanding that the party develop a bolder policy agenda that can answer the desperation of tens of millions of people who are struggling financially at a time when belief in the American dream is dimming. In other words, the younger generation is done with deference.” (Mos def.) The divide, it’s worth noting, is not entirely generational. Nancy Pelosi has split with Schumer: “Let’s be clear: neither is a good option for the American people. But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
+ This headline is unlikely to cool the Chuck roast. Trump praises Schumer’s “courage” in backing spending bill. Here’s the latest on the Senate vote on bill to avert government shutdown ahead of midnight deadline.
Some listeners may have been a tad dubious when Trump proclaimed that the theme of his inaugural speech would be unity. But give credit where credit is due: Our allies are ushering a period of extreme unity. It just doesn’t include us. WaPo (Gift Article): Trump is pushing Canada and Europe closer together. Sadly, unity is not the only thing our (former?) allies might be unifying around. FP: An Unreliable America Means More Countries Want the Bomb. “For the last eight decades, the United States has served as a security guarantor to many countries in both Europe and Asia. Trump insists that Washington has received the short end of the stick from these arrangements, since it was the U.S. nuclear arsenal that served as the ultimate deterrent in defense of the United States’ allies. The massive upside of U.S. security guarantees, however, including for Americans, has been the astonishing containment of nuclear proliferation elsewhere.” (Not what we had in mind when conservatives promised a focus on the nuclear family.)
+ In the great journalistic spirit of both-sidesism, let’s not ignore the unity when it comes to spirits. AP: Trump’s tariff wars forge rare bipartisan alliance in Kentucky as bourbon makers fear escalation.
What to Watch: Let’s celebrate our Canadian neighbors and watch Shoresy on Hulu. There are four seasons of this spinoff from a show called Letterkenny that features our hero, Shoresy, who joins the Sudbury Bulldogs of the Northern Ontario Senior Hockey Organization (aka The NOSHO) on a quest to never lose again. It’s not necessarily for everyone. You have to be able to “set the tone.” You’ll quickly know whether it’s your kind of thing. Drop the gloves and find out.
+ What to Pod: These days, I like to hear Michelle Obama’s voice more than ever. Luckily, she has a new podcast with her brother. And a bonus, Issa Rae is their first guest. Check out, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
+ What to Book: “The novel explores the global financial crisis, through the eyes of a business reporter turned poet.” It probably goes without saying that there’s also a lot of marijuana involved. Jess Walter: The Financial Lives of Poets.
Good Old College Trial: “More than 50 universities are being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs that his officials say exclude white and Asian American students.” (It’s important to note that this, like the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, is about a broader attack on universities specifically, and expertise in general, and an attempt to silence critics. It’s not about wokeism. It’s about putting a sleep-hold on institutions. That’s why this is part of the same story. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The NIH’s Grant Terminations Are ‘Utter and Complete Chaos.’)
+ Not Buying It: “Consumer sentiment in the U.S. sank this month, as worries intensify over what the tariffs, government layoffs, funding cuts and immigration restrictions that President Trump has introduced might mean for the economy.”
+ Doge-matic: “Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI.” No one is covering this story better than Wired: Inside Elon Musk’s Digital Coup.
+ Dark Tank: In today’s episode of How Corrupt? … This Corrupt!, we present this from the WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Family Has Held Deal Talks With Binance Following Crypto Exchange’s Guilty Plea. “Representatives of President Trump’s family have held talks to take a financial stake in the U.S. arm of crypto exchange Binance, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would put Trump in business with the firm that pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering requirements.”
+ Read in the Original English: “In an effort to put his ‘America first’ stamp on the nation’s speech, US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order making English the country’s official language. It marks the first time in the US’s nearly 250-year history that the nation has had an official language. Yet, on this small 9.6-square-mile island surrounded by the swirling waters of the Atlantic, residents still speak what is arguably the most English version of English in the country – and many Americans don’t understand it.” The US island that speaks Elizabethan English.
+ Trim Job: “Tesla Cybertruck deliveries reportedly on hold because the trim is flying off.” (No biggie. Cybertruck owners are used to not getting any trim.)
Happy Pi Day. As we do every year, we’ll celebrate by watching my wife recite the first 314 digits of Pi while taking shots of tequila. (Akira Haraguchi once recited 100,000 digits of Pi in Tokyo, but he was sober, so it didn’t count.) BTW, just so you don’t think stupid politics is anything new: Indiana’s House of Representatives Once Voted Unanimously to Change the Value of Pi.
+ Looking for a reason to believe. Ted Lasso is coming back for a Season 4 on AppleTV (hopefully he can explain what’s going on in Severance), and Spinal Tap 2 will be released in September.
+ Warriors’ Stephen Curry reaches 4,000 career 3-pointers. (I missed the 4,000th because I had to pick up my daughter at the mall. But luckily, I caught the first 3999.)
+ Brilliant young minds honored in prestigious science competition.
+ California Woman is Reunited with Beloved Cat 2 Months after Wildfire Destroyed Home.
+ Patients with long Covid regain sense of smell and taste with pioneering surgery.
+ Vice President Vance gets booed at the Kennedy Center.
2025-03-13 20:00:00
My wife and I attended the same high school. I had a crush on her back then, but it was unrequited. We didn’t see each other for a decade after high school, until one new year’s eve when we both ended up at the same IHop. Something about the cut of my jib as I consumed my French Toast must have triggered a change, because she started to finally come around. Long story short, it took me 14 years to get laid in high school. It turns out that my lack of romantic prowess may have been ahead of its time. According to Faith Hill in The Atlantic (Gift Article), fewer young people are getting into relationships. Teens Are Forgoing a Classic Rite of Passage. “In a 2023 poll from the Survey Center on American Life, 56 percent of Gen Z adults said they’d been in a romantic relationship at any point in their teen years, compared with 76 percent of Gen Xers and 78 percent of Baby Boomers. And the General Social Survey, a long-running poll of about 3,000 Americans, found in 2021 that 54 percent of participants ages 18 to 34 reported not having a ‘steady’ partner; in 2004, only 33 percent said the same.” (We’ve ruined young people’s attention span for everything else, so maybe we’ve ruined it for relationships, too. Or maybe the modern difficulty everyone seems to have forging meaningful real-life connections has spilled over into romance. Or maybe teens just use different lingo to describe relationships. I try to avoid the topic altogether with my own Gen Z teen children, aside from my one non-negotiable rule: No eating at IHop until college.)
“Maybe President Trump isn’t clamoring to push Ukraine under the bus after all. Tuesday’s meeting in Jeddah, between his top officials and their Ukrainian counterparts, ended with the Americans handing Kyiv a clear advantage—militarily and diplomatically—and putting Moscow in a tight, awkward spot.” The U.S. Just Handed Ukraine a Clear Advantage.
+ CNN: “Even if Russian negotiators can impose their own conditions on the ceasefire – a Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk, for example, the small pocket of Russia captured by Ukraine, where fighting is now raging – it is hard to imagine that its greater territorial demands, yet alone the goal of removing NATO from its western flank, would be met.” Trump said Russia had ‘all the cards,’ but this ceasefire proposal just called Putin’s bluff.
+ Needless to say, this situation could change dramatically on the drop of a dime – or a Truth Social post. But the tariff-like flip-flop on this issue is surprising. My guess is that there is some serious daylight between what Trump wants and what some in his administration want. But it’s just a guess. Speaking of guessing, I’ve seen about 50 headlines on Putin’s response to the ceasefire proposal, and none of them seem to agree on his position. AP: Putin agrees in principle with proposal for Ukraine ceasefire and says more discussions are needed. “We agree with the proposals to halt the fighting, but we proceed from the assumption that the ceasefire should lead to lasting peace and remove the root causes of the crisis.” (There may only be two people in the world who aren’t clear on the root causes of this crisis.)
Benzos are featured prominently in two major series: The White Lotus and the Pitt. I’m guessing they’re also featured prominently in the way many Americans are managing the 2025 news cycle. They work fast. But getting off of them can be a long, difficult effort. NYT (Gift Article): Don’t Underestimate the Risks of Benzodiazepines.
The price of eggs in America has become a major story. But it’s nothing compared to this. Japan is short on rice. NYT (Gift Article): Going Once, Going Twice: 165,000 Tons of Rice. “Japan doesn’t have enough rice, a pillar of its diet. A shortage forced supermarkets to implement buying limits, and soaring prices have driven restaurants to hike prices of everyday food. Things have gotten so dire that, for the first time, the government is tapping its emergency stockpile in an effort to drive down prices.”
+ Japan also has a shortage of people to serve rice. Enter the cat-eared robots. Japan’s service robot market projected to triple in five years.
Probationary Status: “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.” Judge orders Trump administration to reinstate most fired probationary staff. Meanwhile, Democratic Attorneys General Sue Over Gutting of Education Department. And a “federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked parts of President Trump’s executive order targeting a prominent law firm for its representation of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and for causes unpopular with his administration. Can the courts hold the line against these attacks on government and the rule of law?
+ Well Done, Weldon! Aside from Matt Gaetz, is any nominee bad enough for the GOP Senate to reject them? Shockingly, yes. Congratulations to Dr. Dave Weldon. White House withdraws controversial pick to run the CDC.
+ Global Virus: So much for American exceptionalism. A lot of the self-inflicted trends afflicting us are afflicting the rest of the world as well. Measles highest in 25 years in Europe, WHO says. We’re also exporting some afflictions. NYT (Gift Article): Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally. These programs don’t cost much. Cutting them doesn’t gain a single MAGA vote. So what’s the point other than cruelty? Speaking of which: U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer deported to Mexico with undocumented parents.
+ Bald Truth: “Soon after taking the medicine, Millich said he felt strange symptoms. He woke up one day anxious, dizzy and slurring his words. Later his libido plunged, and his genitals shrank and changed shape.” WSJ (Gift Article): They Wanted a Quick Fix for Hair Loss. Instead, These Young Men Got Sick.
+ Oversharing? Meta is trying to block ex-employee’s book alleging misconduct and harassment. “An arbitrator has instructed the book’s author and its publishers to stop publishing the book.”
+ Come as a Revelation “It wasn’t until my early 20s that I learned women don’t urinate out of their vaginas. If sperm are stupid, so are men. At the same time, while humanity’s future may feel difficult to imagine, some people are already living in it. And they’re designing technology that is next-level bonkers, both reassuring and frightening in terms of fatherhood, which may destroy traditional ideas of reproduction altogether.” Rosecrans Baldwin in GQ: Are men in a spermpocalypse?
“It is not known how widespread the practice of manipulating pre-approved suits is within ski jumping. Lindvik and Forfang said they knew nothing about deliberately altered equipment, but their coach Magnus Brevig and equipment manager Adrian Livelten confessed.” Three more ski jumpers suspended as cheating scandal engulfs sport.
+ Kay Cheon of Dune Coffee Roasters is the 2025 US Barista Champion.
+ Wisconsin boy, 4, calls 911 because his mom ate his ice cream.
+ Taxi stars reunite to pay tribute to castmate Danny DeVito more than 40 years after show’s end.
2025-03-11 20:00:00
On March 11, 2020, my son texted me to see if he could stay after school for his volleyball practice. At first I said yes, but then his mom and I decided it wasn’t a good idea. He wasn’t happy. He was even less so when we picked him up and headed to the grocery store to stock up on frozen goods (luckily, we were already flush with toilet paper). The missed volleyball season didn’t mean much in terms of training since the season would soon be canceled. But it meant a lot in terms of everything else, as it was the last time my son, and everyone else, had a chance to do something normal for a long time.
From my book, Please Scream Inside Your Heart, here’s a quick look back at the day everything changed. We had no idea what we were in for in the near term. And we certainly had no idea how much our country and world would change in ways entirely unpredictable.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
There’s almost nothing that can make a virus seem more real faster than finding out that someone you know has it. Someone everyone knows got COVID-19. Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, announced they had tested positive for the virus and would be getting treatment under quarantine in Australia.
The NCAA announced that its wildly popular March Madness tournament would be played in front of arenas that would be empty, other than essential personnel and limited family members.
We’d learn that this NCAA plan was overly optimistic within hours. Fans at an NBA game in Oklahoma City were waiting inside of their arena for their home team Thunder to face the visiting Utah Jazz. What could be weirder than something from Utah being named after jazz? This. Fans sat in Chesapeake Energy Arena waiting for the game to start. Thirty-five minutes after the scheduled tipoff, the PA announcer told them that game had been postponed: “You are all safe. And take your time leaving the arena tonight and thank you for doing so in an orderly manner.” Within twenty minutes of that announcement, we learned that, following a positive test for a Jazz player named Rudy Gobert, the NBA would postpone its entire season. On the same day, the NHL made the same decision. Out of nowhere, we were confronted by a new rule of thumb. Every gathering is a clusterf-ck.
Update: it’s still March 11.
President Trump, who two days earlier was still blaming the fake news and the Democratic Party for inflaming virus concerns, gave only his second Oval Office address. It was an ineffective presidential address, but by giving it at all, Trump acknowledged a crisis he had heretofore denied. For him, that was a pivot. He didn’t, however, pivot when it came to substance, and he certainly didn’t pivot when it came to his bedside manner. Viewers of the address learned about a partial European travel ban at the same time European officials learned about it. This was on top of a partial China travel ban already in effect. (Side note: the virus was. already. here.) There was no clear plan, and no soothing, not even for his favorite constituent, the stock market. Market futures began to plummet as he spoke, and the next morning, the Dow suffered its biggest drop since 1987.
Trump canceled trips to Colorado and Nevada, “out of an abundance of caution” (a phrase that would be repeated by everyone in every industry until it became clear that it wasn’t an abundance, it was just caution). New York City canceled the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Seattle closed its schools for at least fourteen days. San Francisco banned large-group gatherings. Disneyland officials decided to close the park later in the week. Fox News execs prepared an internal email sent out the next day that would announce the implementation of several safety measures, including a directive that any staff member who was able to work from home should begin doing so. (Their viewers received no such warnings. On air, the lies about the virus continued apace. At least in this one way, it was just another Wednesday.) In Washington State, ten long-term-care facilities reported virus cases. Late-night shows recorded in front of empty studios. Twitter announced all employees would be required to work from home. Twenty-three states declared a state of emergency. US State Department employees were barred from nonessential travel. The WHO, for the first time, labeled COVID-19 a global pandemic. The US had 1,267 COVID-19 cases, and the death toll was at 37.
Donald Trump on March 11: “I think we’re going to get through it very well.”
+ “By early February, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver began buying extra toilet paper. ‘My wife was laughing at me and saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Silver told ESPN. ‘I go, ‘This is what we’re talking about every day at work. It’s only toilet paper, but let’s get the extra toilet paper.’ She told me I was being an alarmist.'” ESPN: ‘He’s got it’: An oral history of the NBA’s COVID-19 shutdown — and how it changed sports forever.
+ If you missed it last week, here’s David Wallace-Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): How Covid Remade America.
+ NYT Upshot (Gift Article): 30 Charts That Show How Covid Changed Everything – In March 2020.
+ The defining photos of the pandemic — and the stories behind them.
+ Scheduling note: NextDraft will be off on Wednesday because I am getting some oral surgery. It will be a nice break from the daily news!
To many of us, the rapid arrival of the Covid vaccines achieved an oxymoronic status of legendary proportions: It was a scientific miracle. But somehow, the life-saving (and normality returning) work of vaccines did not increase trust in vaccines. In fact, many Americans seem less sure of their value today than before the pandemic. Consider the case of Peter. “Peter said that he has doubts about vaccines too. He told me that he considers getting measles a normal part of life, noting that his parents and grandparents had it. ‘Everybody has it,’ he told me. ‘It’s not so new for us.’ He’d also heard that getting measles might strengthen your immune system against other diseases, a view RFK has promoted in the past. But perhaps most of all, Peter worried about what the vaccine might do to his children. ‘The vaccination has stuff we don’t trust,’ he said. ‘We don’t like the vaccinations, what they have these days. We heard too much, and we saw too much.'” Tom Bartlett in The Atlantic (Gift Article): His Daughter Was America’s First Measles Death in a Decade. This is the story of a personal tragedy. It’s also the story about a trend that threatens more of them. “A recent poll found that nearly one-third of all Republican and Republican-leaning voters, for instance, think that routine inoculations are ‘more dangerous than the diseases they are designed to prevent.'”
+ NYT (Gift Article): Kennedy Links Measles Outbreak to Poor Diet and Health, Citing Fringe Theories.
+ Meanwhile… National Institutes of Health to cancel grants designed to study vaccine hesitancy.
Poor diet and health is not a measles story. But it is an American one. The excellent Eli Saslow follows a nurse as she makes home visits to her patients in Mingo County, W.Va. NYT (Gift Article): She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease. “She had worn out five cars while visiting patients on the back roads of Mingo County, and over time she had come to recognize every pothole, every scar on the hillsides left from logging, deep mining and mountaintop removal. It was a place where every resource, including the residents, had been exploited for a profit. Sam turned into Williamson, population 3,042, where two local pharmacies had distributed more than 20 million opioid painkillers over the course of a decade, though the drugs didn’t so much numb people’s pain as exacerbate it. Now the downtown was largely vacant except for rehab centers, budget law offices and a methadone clinic. She drove by a liquor store offering three-for-one shooters of vodka and a gas station advertising two-liter bottles of soda for a dollar each. ‘Every business is either trying to kill you or selling a cure,’ she said.”
+ Meanwhile… USDA cuts more than $1bn in local food purchases for schools, food banks.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a small story. It’s just about one guy in a country of hundreds of millions and a few guns in a nation flooded with them. But what it represents is something far broader. It’s the new way things work in Washington. DOJ Official Fired After Refusing to Restore Mel Gibson’s Gun Rights. “Oyer refused to add Gibson to the list, and was then asked if her position was ‘flexible.’ She said it was not. ‘He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,’ she said. ‘I literally did not sleep a wink that night because I understood that the position I was in was one that was going to either require me to compromise my strongly held views and ethics or would likely result in me losing my ability to participate in these conversations going forward.'” (That’s the basic choice facing everyone in the administration these days.) Sidenote: Isn’t it interesting that Trump is targeting campuses and protestors for acts of antisemitism but Mel Gibson is getting special treatment from him?
Everything is Tariffic: Trump threatens to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in response to electricity duties. The market continues to slide. But one stock is getting some help (if it actually helps). Trump says he’ll buy a Tesla to support Elon Musk as the stock tanks. In other Elon news, he just called Sen Mark Kelly (a former Navy pilot and NASA astronaut) a traitor for calling for resumption of military aid to Ukraine. Seriously dude, go cybertruck yourself.
+ Drug Test: “Some were shot by vigilantes on motorbikes. Others had bullets in the head, execution style. In killing after killing, the police would only describe the victims as ‘drug suspects’ who had resisted arrest, a charge that rarely stood up to even minor scrutiny. And yet the slaughter continued with impunity, at the behest of the man who was elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.” Duterte, the former Philippine president, was arrested on Tuesday in Manila and was flown to The Hague to face International Criminal Court charges of crimes against humanity. (Here’s a news quiz for you. Can you name the world leader who said this to Duterte? “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing.”)
+ Forecast Away: “As hurricane forecasts improve, that translates directly into saving lives. When Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, causing around $27 billion in damage, most forecasts could happen only a day or two in advance of a hurricane. Now, forecasts five days in advance can be as accurate.” Wow! That seems like a great advance! FastCo: He flew into the eye of Hurricane Helene and helped improve forecasts. Then Trump fired him. It’s a tough time to be a weather expert if you work (or worked) for the federal government. But some people are hiring. Hedge Funds Paying Up to $1 Million for Weather Modeling Experts.
+ Regime Change: “Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be ‘gently mobbed.’ (In the end, she doesn’t have to; his desire is satisfied during an appearance at a Jakarta shopping mall with Indonesia’s president-elect instead.) He tells her that Andrew Jackson (who signed the Indian Removal Act into law) was the greatest president America ever had, because he ‘got stuff done.'” The NYT (Gift Article) on Sarah Wynn-Williams insider account of the ethical fall of Facebook. “Careless People,” a memoir by a former Facebook executive, portrays feckless company leaders cozying up to authoritarian regimes.
+ This is Your Brain on News: The U.S. is making more seizures of illegal eggs than fentanyl at its Canadian and Mexican borders.
+ Ash Backwards: “Can you do me a favor? Can you stop scattering your dearly departed’s ashes all over my favorite golf course? I want to play Pebble Beach, not your grandpa. For that matter, stop dumping your meemaw’s sandy ‘cremains’ on Disneyland rides. Last year, somebody on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance pulled the stunt, forcing the ride’s shutdown for cleaning. What are parents in the next car supposed to tell the kids when a cloud of human ash hits them in the face?” Rick Reilly in WaPo (Gift Article): Please. Stop. Spreading. Human. Ash. In. Public.
“When the Minnesota boys’ high school state hockey tournament wraps up each year, John King retreats to his basement in White Bear Lake, Minn., so he can pore through footage of mullets, bleached mops and caterpillarlike mustaches. The resulting video montage — his ‘All Hockey Hair Team’ — was released on Sunday, taking its annual place as a cultural touchstone in Minnesota and beyond. Without a whiff of irony, it pays tribute to the ‘lettuce,’ ‘ramen’ and all-around ‘flow’ that players show off during their introductions, helping the tournament become a phenomenon on social media and beyond.” NYT (Gift Article): No One Loves Hockey Hair More Than This Guy.
+ Here’s a look at his 2025 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team.
2025-03-10 20:00:00
Buy low, sell high. It’s the basic tenet of stock market investing. Usually, during down periods like the one we’re currently experiencing, smart money investors go bargain shopping. When the market as a whole goes down, it takes even high quality, thriving companies with it; which offers a opportunity to pick up quality shares at discounted prices. In a normal time, I’d tell my son (who just started dabbling in the stock market) that the market overreacts to bad news and this is a perfect moment to double-down on companies he believes in. But this is not a normal time. And this is not a normal presidency with the normal stable leadership we’ve come to expect from an American administration. And this, therefore, is not a normal market. At this point, the only investing advice I’d give my son or anyone else is that it might be a good time to go to the mattresses. I don’t mean that in The Godfather sense (although retreating to a hideout and laying low for four years doesn’t sound half bad). I mean it in the sense that the safest place to put your money right now might be under your mattress. At least until they figure out a way to put a tariff on that money, too. The truth is that no one can give you good advice on how to play this market because the situation is so unpredictable. The only sure investment in 2025 is grift. Meanwhile, with a great and stable market merely six weeks in the rearview mirror, we’re getting headlines like these: Stock Rout Picks Up Steam With Recession Warnings Blaring, The Dow plunges 900 points — and the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are bleeding even worse, and Stocks tank as Trump declines to dismiss recession risk.
+ Trump’s reaction to the 401KO? “You can’t really watch the stock market.” That might sound strange considering the fact that Trump spent much of the Biden era attacking him over the performance of the stock market, starting with a presidential debate in which he explained: “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.” (I guess it just took a while?)
+ Even crypto, seemingly the surest thing bet of the Trump economy, is sucking wind.
+ And we’re not just talking about the stock market. “President Trump inherited an economy that was, by most conventional measures, firing on all cylinders. Wages, consumer spending and corporate profits were rising. Unemployment was low. The inflation rate, though higher than normal, was falling.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Policies Have Shaken a Once-Solid Economic Outlook.
+ Starving the investor class may not be part of the plan. Starving the government most certainly is. NYT (Gift Article): Stalled Audits and a Skeleton Staff: Inside Trump’s War on the I.R.S.
+ “It was the Gilded Age, a time of rapid population growth and transformation from an agricultural economy toward a sprawling industrial system, when poverty was widespread while barons of phenomenal wealth, like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, held tremendous sway over politicians who often helped boost their financial empires.” AP with some of the backstory about Trump’s tariffs. Trump loves the Gilded Age and its tariffs. “Experts on the era say Trump is idealizing a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality. They argue he’s also dramatically overestimating the role tariffs played …’The most astonishing thing for historians is that nobody in the Gilded Age economy — except for the very rich — wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy.'”
Full disclosure: Although I am a pro-two state, anti-Netanyahu liberal on matters related to Israel, most of the campus protests (some of which celebrated Hamas and many of which started before Israel even responded to the Oct 7th attacks) upset me deeply, the way they morphed into antisemitism sickened me, and the passivity with which some colleges responded to that antisemitism confounded me. And given that the protests (along with the constant haranguing of Kamala Harris on the campaign trail) helped turn the election for Trump who now suggests remaking Gaza as a resort, one could argue that this movement was the one of the most counterproductive in history. All that said, we should all be worried about an American government clamping down on free speech and threatening higher education in ways that will not stop at the targeting a few of the most ardent campus agitators. Of course, anyone who intimidates people or acts violently at a protest should be held to account. But in this case, it’s not just about what’s happening in terms of law enforcement. It’s about who’s doing it. ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests. “Federal immigration authorities arrested a Palestinian activist Saturday who played a prominent role in Columbia University’s protests against Israel, a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s pledge to detain and deport student activists … ‘As ICE agents arrived at Khalil’s Manhattan residence Saturday night, they also threatened to arrest Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.'” Trump said, “This is the first arrest of many to come.” Meanwhile, “a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed Khalil’s arrest in a statement Sunday, describing it as being ‘in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.'” (As a Jew, orders prohibiting anti-semitism would be a lot more believable coming from a group that heiled a little less often…)
+ Again, this is about a lot more than Khalil and protestors. Harvard Freezes Hiring Amid Anxiety Over Trump.
“America is walking away from global health leadership, making the entire world less safe—including us.” Americans vastly overestimate the amount of money our government spends on foreign aid and we vastly underestimate the extent to which that money is spent on programs that ultimately benefit Americans. We may find out the hard way. Craig Spencer in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Diseases Are Coming. (Today, Marco Rubio announced the official cancelation of 83% of USAID programs.)
+ And if the diseases come, what will the diseases find? A population increasingly dubious of vaccines and science. WSJ (Gift Article): In Rural Texas, a Measles Outbreak Hasn’t Swayed Vaccine Skeptics. “Despite a child’s death, residents say personal choice—not public-health policy—should guide their decisions.”
“When we hear tariffs, we think of avocados. This is how a Mexican import conquered the U.S. market … It’s a tale of economics, geopolitics, marketing, government legislation, scientific advances, dietary trends—and weevils.” WSJ (Gift Article): Why America Now Eats a Crazy Number of Avocados. To paraphrase the great Erma Bombeck: If Life Is a Bowl of Avocados – What Am I Doing in the Pits?
Friendship Put on Ice: “Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form … We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves, so the Americans, they should make no mistake: In trade as in hockey, Canada will win.” 5 things to know about Mark Carney, Canada’s next prime minister. As I mentioned last week, Canada (our ally, neighbor, and friend) is now consumed with the threat posed by the US. Blame Canada. Meanwhile, Canada’s Moosehead Brewery is selling a crate of 1,461 beers to help Canadians survive the next 4 years. (You’re gonna need something stronger…)
+ Let’s Take This Offline: Want to better understand the tech overlords who are now coming for terrestrial life? Kara Swisher has been covering them for decades. Move Fast and Destroy Democracy. “Musk’s behavior is emblematic of tech’s most heinous figures, who now feel emboldened to enter the analog world with the same lack of care and arrogance with which they built their sloppy platforms.”
+ Social Insecurity: “They came in aggressively, a former official who witnessed Elon Musk’s team take over the Social Security Administration said, demanding access to sensitive taxpayer data and refusing briefings on how the agency ensures the accuracy of its benefit systems. They recklessly exposed data in unsecured areas outside Social Security offices, the official said, potentially disclosing personally identifiable information on almost every American to people not authorized to see it.” Former Social Security official describes hostile takeover by Musk team.
+ Ruth and Truth: Democracy dies in darkness continues to read more like a directive than a slogan. WaPo Columnist Ruth Marcus Quits Paper After 40 Years Over ‘Spiked’ Column on Jeff Bezos. In related news: Donald Trump’s ‘The Apprentice’ Seasons 1-7 to Stream on Amazon Prime Video.
+ Man Down: “The researchers were able to pinpoint the reasons why. The biggies: cardiovascular disease, cancer, opioid use, and suicide. COVID didn’t help matters either.” GQ: The Longevity Gap Between Men and Women Is Getting Bigger.
+ The Religious War, Continued: “The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to a Colorado law preventing most mental health professionals from offering conversion therapy.”
+ Good Sports: “As we bid farewell to the first quarter of the 21st century, there’s no time better than now to celebrate the moments in this era of sports that stand above the rest—the ones that brought tears to eyes, left jaws on floors, and exemplified why we all spend so much time watching this stuff.” The Ringer: The 100 Best Sports Moments of the Quarter Century. (I’ve watched at least a quarter century of sports since Jan 20th.)
+ Does She or Doechii? “The rising rapper Doechii has earned the title of Billboard’s 2025 Woman of the Year, landing her in the same company as Taylor Swift, SZA, and Lady Gaga.” This comes just days after an even more monumental achievement: An inclusion in NextDraft’s Weekend Whats.
Over the weekend, my family went out to lunch to celebrate my aunt’s 99th birthday. The subject of today’s bottom of the news was one of our topics of discussion. Let’s see how many of my family members read today’s edition! Is the viral ‘let them’ theory really that simple? “Even if you haven’t listened to The Mel Robbins Podcast, or bought one of Robbins’s books, you’ve probably been exposed to her work online. She’s the person getting women on social media to make their beds every morning and high-five themselves in the mirror. Most popular is her viral two-word phrase, ‘let them.’ The advice is as simple as it sounds: Your teenager wants to dye their hair? Let them. Your spouse is wearing a shirt you don’t like? Let them. You think your co-workers are gossiping about you? Let them.” (They want to manage your stock portfolio for the next four years? Let them…)