2026-07-16 20:00:00
Find me 11,780 things to watch tonight other than Trump’s primetime address that will feature his latest lies about, and efforts to overturn, legitimate election results. Sorry, I’ve seen this show before. Nonstop. The show officially jumped the shark when Trump incited the January 6 insurrection, later pardoned its participants, and was never punished, but was instead rewarded with a second term, more support from sycophantic GOP officials, more power via the Supreme Court, and more election-denying enablers across the administration — and the country. But viewership remains strong and the production is sure as hell making more money than ever. So, the show must go on.
While efforts to find 11,780 votes in Georgia and the Jan 6 nightmare were among the worst episodes, the show started long before that. Trump’s attack on American democracy began, oddly, after he won the presidency. Weeks after his unlikely electoral victory, Trump argued that he would have won the popular vote as well, had the election not been rigged. Here’s his tweet from November 27, 2016: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” When thousands of Stop the Stealers gathered in front of the White House on January 6, it was a chapter of a story Trump had foreshadowed before he had even taken office. And, tonight we get another episode of America’s most damning reality show, Gov Island, USA. Same unbelievable storylines, but with more producers and showrunners, and a lot more people in on the plot. Even after all these years, the networks are still struggling to decide whether to air the lies live. You don’t have to struggle. Skip this rerun.
+ Just because I’m not watching doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. As Jim Himes (a great guy, and the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) explains in the NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Election Denial Has Never Been More Dangerous. “After the 2020 election, our intelligence community found ‘no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process.’ That assessment reflected a rigorous look at all available information and expert judgments by nonpartisan professionals. In fact, there’s been no evidence of successful interference in the tabulation of votes in any federal election since I have been on the intelligence committee, and I have seen no credible intelligence that the upcoming midterms will be different. Those are the facts. But ahead of this year’s midterms, Mr. Trump is setting the stage to undermine the confidence of the American people in our elections. He has packed his administration with election deniers and hired an acting director of national intelligence with zero national security experience and a history of abusing his position to target political opponents. The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has made his career chasing the president’s conspiracy theories, most recently with the devotion of massive resources to a sham investigation in Georgia.” (Jim, Jim, Jim. If you’re going to insist on including lines like “Those are the facts” in your script, this show will never be a hit…)
+ “The big change since 2020 is that people who mistrust election results are highly active, particularly in swing states. The even bigger change is that some of them have risen to positions of power in those states, where they can affect voter rolls, election machines, and county tallies. Nowhere is this more true than Georgia, where I recently visited to meet some of the election skeptics who are—wait for it—now helping run elections.” Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Election Deniers Are in Charge Now. (Consider that Trump cabinet nominees, including Jay Clayon just yesterday, refuse to say who won the 2020 election. And they get confirmed anyway. What should be disqualifying has become a prerequisite.)
+ The plot points are the same, but our protagonist faces an even more existential struggle. Why? Trump approval stuck in the 30s amid pessimism on Iran and economy, poll finds. I’m no script writer, but I’m pretty sure that means you can expect things to escalate.
Why do so many individuals and organizations seem to be cool with the protagonist of today’s top story, even as he plots to damage democracy? Because, in a transactional system, short-term gains outweigh longterm risks. WSJ (Gift Article): The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term. “The president and his allies have built a network of groups financed by wealthy donors and businesses that is advancing his priorities with little public disclosure.”
+ It may not be pretty, but it works. Trump quietly clears the road for Musk’s Cybercab.
You may not be able to make money while you sleep. But that doesn’t mean no one is. In fact, your sleep has become big business. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Americans Are Exhausted. There’s a $3,000 Mattress Cover for That. “Buy a pricey Oura Ring or Apple Watch for sleep tracking? Of course. Fill our medicine cabinets with sleeping pills, potions, gummies and elixirs? Obviously. An $89 celeb-approved eyelash-protecting silk sleep mask? Sure. Sound machine? That’s plebe stuff. Real sleepmaxxers prefer Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds, practically a steal at around $100. Soon you can get your hands on a Kimba, an ‘AI-powered scent therapy’ machine, currently available for preorder; $299 will get you a bedside setup and six months of personalized scents. For big spenders, there’s a $3,000 body-temperature-regulating, manosphere-endorsed mattress cover. Some couples are willing to go even further, outfitting totally separate bedrooms.”
“Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming ‘effeminate, and apologetic’; he insisted that what liberals really want is “soft men, and a weak military,” and he scolded ‘Pentagon pussies’ who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield. As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s ‘effectiveness’ in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos. The latest entry in this genre came earlier today, when Hegseth announced that he is requiring every service member over 30 to have their testosterone tested annually.” Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone. (How do you say you’re the worst lay ever without just actually saying you’re the worst lay ever…)
Get the Low Down: “The Food and Drug Administration approved a daily pill on Thursday that can lower cholesterol levels far below what can be achieved with statins, the cheap cholesterol-reducing pills.”
+ Board of Piece: “Even the envisaged pilot scheme – involving a temporary camp for a tiny fraction of Gaza’s 2 million displaced people, with a Palestinian administration, police and a small international security force – is not expected to take shape before the end of the year.” Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme. Meanwhile, the administration’s focus is definitely elsewhere in the region. Here’s the latest on the stepped-up fighting in Iran (and its neighbors).
+ The Young and the Wrested: “President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shook up his wartime government, drawing thousands into the streets Thursday across Ukraine to protest the ouster of his youthful defense minister — seen as an innovator of the country’s successful drone technology but who clashed with the traditional military establishment.” Mykhailo Fedorov is the tech-savvy leader behind many of Ukraine’s drone advances, and he’s very popular from Kiev to Silicon Valley. This is a story to watch. Zelenskyy fires Ukraine’s tech-savvy defense minister in government reshuffle.
+ Speech Recognition: “President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi.” (Do the people who predicted stories like this win anything?)
+ Trial and Jair: “President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose tariffs on Brazil — even though it is one of the few Latin American countries with which the US has a trade surplus — in response to what he said is the unfair prosecution of the former Brazilian president and his close ally, Jair Bolsonaro.” US slaps 25% tariffs on Brazil.
+ Houring Inferno: In what is part of a bigger story about trying to keep temporary, unconfirmed prosecutors in place, Trump fired a new US attorney in Seattle an hour after federal judges appointed him.
+ Backpact: “Mr. Conner and Mr. Newman began their efforts in 2018 with a few armfuls of backpacks. By 2026, they and almost 40 volunteers had distributed more than 180,000 packs to people living on the streets of Manhattan.” The couple, who died within a few days of each other, provided needed supplies, like socks and wet wipes, to people living on New York City’s streets.
Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal will face off in the World Cup finals on Sunday. But it’s hardly their first meeting. That came back in 2007, when Yamal was five months old (and probably already pretty good at soccer). And we have the (famous and once again viral) photo to prove it. The remarkable story of Lionel Messi’s meeting with a baby Lamine Yamal.
2026-07-15 20:00:00
In an era when Americans don’t seem to be able to agree on anything, a huge majority of people have found middle ground over data centers. Whether it’s energy suckage, climate concerns, noise pollution, water woes, old-fashioned Nimbyism, or just a general feeling of ill will when it comes to AI and big tech, people across the country are crossing the political aisle in opposition to the building of new data centers. While it might seem obvious that humans wouldn’t want to welcome their invading machine overlords with new housing, the negative vibes around data centers are relatively new, and the shift came quickly. “Around seven in 10 Americans now oppose the construction of local data centers to power artificial intelligence. Last fall, people were almost exactly evenly split when asked if they’d support a new data center nearby. Now there’s a 50-point gap. That is an absolutely crazy swing, much bigger than the reversals you tend to see when a new president comes into office or even when someone declares war.” David Wallace-Wells and Robinson Meyer in the NYT (Gift Article): Is This the Fastest Opinion Shift in American Politics? Beneath the broad agreement, some of the old political divides still live on. “What’s interesting is that, at this point, data centers’ net support — Would you support a local data center in your community? — is underwater among all parties: Republicans, independents, Democrats. If we ask, well, what if it was powered only by renewable energy? Then Democrats are more likely to like it, and Republicans are more likely to oppose it.” Craziness is like cockroaches. It can survive anything.
+ Data Centers to Add Billions in Power Costs in 13 States. (Tell people the cost is for AI and they’re up in arms. Tell them it’s for streaming Love Island and they’ll explain that everything has a price.)
+ New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacenters.
+ Most things in tech seem to become more efficient as they scale. AI data center needs just seem to grow bigger and bigger. “The problem is not simply that AI is being deployed so widely or quickly. Other computer technologies have seen similarly massive growth without triggering such a large spike in electricity or a shortage of computer components: Video and music are now streamed around the globe, accounting for many terabytes of internet traffic daily; the smartphone boom required the manufacturing of billions of devices that are now transferring huge amounts of data; billions of household devices are also now part of the Internet of Things; and whole industries have moved their operations to cloud software, which is hosted not in the sky but in, yes, data centers. The problem with generative AI, in the industry’s own jargon, is that it does not scale.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster.
+ Not everyone is against data centers in their backyard. For example, there are those whose backyards just became unimaginably valuable. WSJ (Gift Article): The Americans Striking It Rich in the Data-Center Buildout. “The men told the Kilitis that their 89-acre farm in this rural town of 4,000 might be worth more than $20 million … The couple thought the fields where the family raised and butchered hogs would be lucky to fetch even a fraction of that.” (It turns out a server farm can bring home more bacon than a hog farm.)
Todd Blanche is answering questions from Senators as his Attorney General confirmation hearing gets underway. He’s Trump’s personal lawyer, he has further weaponized the Justice Department, he’s withheld Epstein files and given Ghislaine Maxwell a prison upgrade, he’s targeted the media, he pushed for the fund that would compensate Trump allies (including J6ers), and he’s otherwise wholly unqualified for the job. And with that, he opened the hearings by explaining that as acting Attorney General, he has been “restoring trust” in the DoJ.
+ “On Monday, two days before the Senate hearing to consider Todd Blanche’s nomination to become the nation’s chief law enforcement official, a federal judge strongly suggested that he may not even be fit to practice law. Of all the powers Americans give their government, none can curtail personal liberty like those of the Department of Justice, and this editorial board has listed the ways Mr. Blanche has abused that authority. He has celebrated the Jan. 6 rioters. He has misled Congress under oath. He has said it is Mr. Trump’s ‘right,’ and ‘indeed it is his duty,’ to use the department to investigate people he ‘has had issues with.'” NYT Editorial Board: We’re About to Find Out Whether Republican Senators Can Still Say No. (Don’t get your hopes up…)
+ In other confirmation news, Trump intelligence pick Jay Clayton refuses to say Biden won 2020 election.
+ Think we’re getting closer to a moment when insiders finally stand up to Trump? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Treasury Unveils New $1 Gold Coin With Trump’s Face on It.
“According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based policy group, one of every four vehicles sold globally in 2025 was battery-powered. Analysts with Bloomberg have predicted that in the next decade, that number will more than double, putting gas-powered cars — for the first time ever — in the minority of overall new vehicle sales. Overseas, Asian and European manufacturers have spent years preparing for this eventuality, dumping billions into the development of battery technology.” Sadly, American carmakers have been going in reverse, a move that has cost them dearly in the short run, and could be even more costly in the long run. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It? (Instead of plugging into the future, America is sticking its finger in the socket.)
Frozen yogurt always seems to make a comeback. And each time, the new iteration of the product comes with health promises related to the latest dietary trends. And each time, I doubt the health benefits but eat it anyway. Vox (Gift Article): What the current froyo renaissance is really about. “The third wave of froyo resembles the previous crazes in one key way: The dessert is still marketed and perceived as a healthier choice than other treats. Every time it comes out of hibernation, frozen yogurt has revealed something about the diet culture of the moment, and this resurgence is no different.”
Asking the Impossible: “Three words of advice for President Donald Trump as he tries to extricate himself from the mess of the Iran war: Just stop talking. Let America’s overwhelming military and economic power do the work.
Trump’s daily barrage of bluster and braggadocio amounts to negotiating with himself. He declares victory one day, resumes war the next. He praises Iran’s leaders, then calls them ‘scum.’ He foolishly announces a 20 percent fee for protecting the Strait of Hormuz and then rescinds the rash proposal the next day. Trump must imagine this nonstop trash talk gives him leverage. He’s wrong. It makes him look weak in the eyes of Iran and the world.” David Ignatius in WaPo (Gift Article): Trump pushed the reset button. This is Iran Fiasco 2.0. Here’s the latest on the fighting and the bluster that has replaced negotiations from The Guardian.
+ Trafficking in Bullshit: “Trump said Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should continue traffic stops after two deadly shootings within a week, seeming to contradict a new policy to halt them. To remove criminals from the country, ‘we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!’ the president wrote on social media.” Trump says ICE should do traffic stops, despite new suspension after shootings.
+ Write Wing: A day after 12 states moved to block the merger, Hollywood Writers Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Deal. And here’s a plot twist that is almost too cliché at this point for any Hollywood writer to include in the story. ProPublica: FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals.
+ Sandwich Generation: “On Thursday night, Donald Trump will blast out his version of what happened in the 2020 presidential election and try to build on the Big Lie that he’s been perpetrating for years — that he, not Joe Biden, should have won. That the election was rigged.” Margaret Sullivan on how the media should handle it. (They’ve certainly had enough practice by now.) What we need right now is a big, juicy truth sandwich.
+ Bank Shot: “The Wall Street giant’s market cap stood at about $935 billion. It would be the first bank to ever join the $1 trillion market cap club.” JPMorgan is closing in on a $1 trillion market cap after posting record profits. (This is a trend. Big banks are experiencing bigly good times.)
+ Influencers: “A decade-by-decade look at the books, music, art and ideas that shaped society.” WaPo (Gift Article): The 25 most influential works of American culture. (Moby Dick is in, NextDraft is left out? Please…)
+ Stuck in the Middle Without You: United’s latest Economy Plus gambit? Kick out the middle-seat passenger for more space.
+ Looking Down: The Atlantic (Gift Article): Winners of the International Aerial Photographer of the Year. (Wow.)
“He went into the bank with the cat in his arms, and he walked up to a bank employee and said, ‘Can you hold this?’ And then he wrote a note and handed it to a bank teller and it said, essentially, ‘Give me all your cash.'” Cat burglar steals kitten, tries to rob bank in Maryland, gets caught instead. (Anyone who thinks a cat would be a human’s accomplice should be able to get off with an insanity plea…)
+ WSJ (Gift Article): This Chicago Spirit Quadrupled Sales With Ads Likening It to Fermented Back Sweat. “Last year, a campaign called ‘Malört Tastes Like’ featured consumer comparisons to ‘fermented back sweat’ and ‘moist dumpster residue.'” Hey, at this point, whatever it takes to get a decent buzz…
2026-07-14 20:00:00
Last week, I saw a hilarious social media post that featured a photo of smiling Norwegian soccer star and viral sensation Erling Haaland with the caption: “One thousand years ago this is the last thing you saw before your skull was caved in by a battle axe.” That may have been true back then. These days, Erling Haaland’s face, and his team in general, makes you feel another way: Happy. As the World Cup semifinals kick off, I know it’s a bit odd to be leading the day’s news with a story about a team that’s no longer in the competition. But since they seem a lot happier than the rest of us, I’m trying to adopt a more Nordic view of things, and a key part of that perspective is that winning is not everything (in sports at least, axe battles are another matter). And from the Winter Olympics to the World Cup, not focusing on winning has led to a whole lot of winning. “How does Norway do it? What’s going on in those fjords, exactly? One answer is that, from the youngest ages, Norway thinks about sports in a radically different way. In Norway, teams do not keep score before children turn 11, and the players cannot be separated into ranks until they are 12 or 13. Sports begin not as a race to the top, but as a constitutionally guaranteed social benefit for all, a place to learn, grow, and – perhaps most importantly – have fun.” CS Monitor: Why is tiny Norway so good at sports? It’s more than Erling Haaland.
+ A short video from NBC’s Olympic coverage. The Nor-Way: Turning good times into gold medals.
+ Think this attitude is all hype? Well, consider how Norwegians dealt with the massive disappointment of losing in the WC quarterfinals. Norway turns World Cup heartbreak into celebration as huge crowds pack Oslo. More than 100,000 fans flooded the streets of Oslo as the team led one more Viking Row.
+ Don’t worry. There’s still some overlap between our cultures. Stubborn Norway fan refuses to do Viking Row at World Cup because it’s factually inaccurate.
In what could have doubled as a line from Goodfellas, President Trump announced that the United States would be running the Strait of Hormuz and charging a 20% fee on all passing ships, a payment plan which Trump described as America being “reimbursed for protection.” The idea didn’t go over too well. Anywhere. Thus, a day or so later, Trump “announced a reversal of plans to charge a 20% toll on cargo going through the Strait of Hormuz, saying that Middle Eastern countries will instead make investment and trade deals with the U.S.” When it comes to the war and peace negotiations, Trump has been doing more strike that, reverse it than Willie Wonka. We have to hope that blurting out and then taking back statements, plans, strategies, and ceasefires will somehow lead to a desired outcome.
+ “Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future. As everyone is aware, we have the largest Dollar Investment into the United States, of any Country in History, but these new Investments will make that Number even larger, and we will see Factories, Plants, and Equipment pour into the United States at Historic levels, which will create additional millions of High Paying AMERICAN Jobs! America is WINNING again, winning like never before. The days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protestors, are OVER and, most importantly, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” (Wow, that sounds good. Let’s lock that in before he changes his mind…) Here’s the latest from The Guardian and BBC.
I watch pretty much all of TV. And I’ve noticed a pretty extreme trend. Nearly everyone is smoking. And it turns out that the smoking is not limited to times when the camera is rolling. Cigarettes seem to be on fire again. “Are cigarettes back? Depending on who you ask, cigarettes never really left. But the attitude toward cigarettes and smokers has shifted. After a period of exile to the cultural fringes — when a cig was something you snuck, or that might have gotten you scolded or side-eyed — cigarettes seem to be creeping back to the aspirational center, among both civilians and celebrities. Think of Kylie Jenner lighting a cigarette on her March Vanity Fair cover; Hailey Bieber, a cigarette sticking out of her smile and smoke unfurling in her face, in April’s Interview magazine; ‘Heated Rivalry‘s Connor Storrie posing with a cigarette perched in his pout while prepping for the Met Gala, in GQ. Look at Gracie Abrams, photographed with boyfriend Paul Mescal’s arm around her shoulder and a cigarette in her mouth, or to the woman exuding the most enviable aura around: Dua Lipa, whose pre-wedding Instagram photo dump captioned ‘anyone got a light?’ featured a shot of a cigarette dangling from the pop star’s pursed lips.” WaPo (Gift Article): Cigarettes are back in vogue. How did this happen?
Autonomous vehicles have taken care of the driving duties. But there’s a nagging problem. The passengers are still human. “Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.” (“I was born in a Waymo” is the first line of a memoir I would definitely read…) Bloomberg (Gift Article): Robotaxi Riders Are Falling Asleep, Sparking Frantic 911 Calls.
Road Rage: “The order comes after ICE officers killed two people over the past week in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.” ICE Ordered to Cease Most Vehicle Stops After 2 Killings in a Week. And, ‘Misuse’ of crowd control weapons on ICE protesters led to blindings and traumatic brain injuries. Meanwhile, Mexico demands criminal investigations into ICE killings.
+ Check and Balances: “Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.” E Jean Carroll receives $5.6m owed by Trump after court releases damages. (Trump paying for a crime is the ultimate man bites dog story of 2026. So is the fact that the check cleared.)
+ Another Brick in the Fall: “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the I.C.C. — brick by brick, if necessary.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States will dismantle’ the international court that tries grave crimes. (I wonder what worries them about this court?)
+ K Mart: For those scoring at home: Trump Was Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing a Trade Investigation. “The payment illustrates the minefield Mr. Trump has created by maintaining personal financial ties with foreign businesses while he is in office.” (It’s not a minefield, it’s a goldmine.)
+ Sister Act: South Carolina’s governor names Lindsey Graham’s sister to serve out his term.
+ To the Victor Belong the Spoils: Here’s a lede that summarizes our era: “The right-wing preacher turned politician Victor Marx has said that he first killed a man when he was 7. He’s not sure how many deaths he’s been responsible for since. Marx has been arrested at least twice for disorderly conduct and has described terrorizing a psychiatrist with talk of murdering him. He told the Colorado journalist Kyle Clark that he can perform exorcisms by phone. On Thursday he was declared the winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado.”
+ Sugar on Top: “Our understanding of the Milky Way just got a little bit sweeter. For the first time, scientists have spotted sugar in interstellar space, providing an important clue about the origins of sugar on Earth and possibly the rise of life.” (Next we’ll find out that the Milky Way has Type 2 Diabetes. At least it’s not lactose intolerant.)
Think Outside the Buns? “State and federal officials are looking into whether Taco Bell restaurants may have been a source of food contaminated with the single-cell parasite.” Probe into explosive diarrheal cases points to Taco Bell and bad lettuce. (Just reading that headline gave me a stomachache.)
2026-07-13 20:00:00
You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell … He’s just generally a loser as a person and a candidate. You can’t nominate a nutjob and lose, and expect it doesn’t have consequences … What I see is a demagogue, somebody that has solutions that will never work, that is playing on people’s prejudices and the dark side of politics. That was Lindsey Graham on Donald Trump before the latter rose to the presidency for the first time. Over the course of the next few years (and several rounds of golf), Lindsey Graham, who died over the weekend, became a MAGA mainstay and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. There’s a description for a person like that: A Role Model. After realizing that Trump was popular, powerful, and was remaking the GOP, Graham decided to work within the new Trumpian system, doing whatever he could to manipulate, cajole, and nudge the new boss in directions that would advance Graham’s own policies and personal political power. Sound familiar? That’s what we’ve seen from nearly the entire GOP since Trump’s first term, and during his second, they’ve been joined by corporate leaders, executive branch appointees, university heads, media apologists, and many more, all of whom either actively embrace America’s new, wholly transactional, authoritarian-curious era, or who know things are bad right now, but figure they’ll work within the new system for awhile, until things get back to normal, and then they’ll reclaim their ethics and explain they were doing it all for the greater good (if they, and/or the democracy, live long enough to make that argument.) Lindsey Graham wasn’t an outlier in this strategy; he was its ultimate exemplar. He traded in his ethics and his reputation and got a hefty return on the political policies and power he desired. He was soul-selling’s Epitomizer Bunny. He abandoned his core values and moved toward Trumpism, and he just kept going, and going, and going.
+ Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Quintessential Politician of This Era. “In 2015, Graham described Trump as a ‘race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot’ who should ‘go to hell.’ Also as a ‘nutjob.’ When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator.”
+ “It’s a slow death. The surrender to despotism doesn’t happen all at once. It advances in stages: a step, a rationalization. Another step, another rationalization. The deeper you go, the more you need to justify. You say what you need to say. You believe what you need to believe. So let’s go back to the beginning. Let’s see who Lindsey Graham was before he drank the poison.” Will Saletan: The Corruption of Lindsey Graham.
“As our partners enhance their own resiliency to us, future American administrations must prepare plans for avoiding a more fundamental rupture. Whoever succeeds Mr. Trump will be the first to take office with countries around the world asking not what America can do for them, but rather seeking to do as much as possible without us. The first step to coping with the fallout is realizing just how much — and how permanently — the world has changed.” Jon Finer in the NYT (Gift Article): The World Is Cutting Ties With America. It’s Already Costing Us.
+ In some cases, we’re the ones doing the tie-cutting, and the impact has been immediate and terrible. “Gawande, backed up by recent academic studies, says that the decimation of U.S.A.I.D. around the globe has been responsible for some seven hundred thousand deaths, and that number will likely ascend into the seven figures. The policy is not only immeasurably cruel, Gawande argues; it is also stupid, badly undermining what remains of American soft power and prestige, from Africa to Latin America.” David Remnick and Atul Gawande in The New Yorker on Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the ‘public man-made death’ that they’ve caused: The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on USAID. So if sensible people know how much damage Musk has done, why do they line up to put money into the companies that enabled him to touch trillionaire status? If Lindsey Graham were still around, he could probably explain it better than I can.
Another week. Another deadly ICE shooting. Another case where the officers weren’t wearing body cameras. And another set of protests take to the streets. The latest shooting killed a 26-year-old from Colombia in Portland, Maine. With the recent upheaval in the Senate race, Maine was already receiving a lot of attention. This could put that trend into overdrive. Here’s the latest from the Portland Press Herald.
“Tech industry leaders have been warning for several years that as A.I. grows more powerful, it could quickly take over a large share of human work, leading to widespread joblessness. Economists have tended to greet those predictions with skepticism, noting that technological changes tend to play out more gradually than predicted by industry boosters. Some economists, however, have grown concerned that A.I. is spreading through the economy more quickly and more broadly than past technologies, and that their profession is downplaying the risks. The statement on Monday is the latest sign that such concerns are becoming more widespread. It warns that the effects of A.I. could be ‘larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame.'” Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats. “A letter calls for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential disruptions from artificial intelligence.” (Is that a good idea? In normal times, yes. But these days, it depends on which policymakers we’re talking about…)
Waterways and Means: “After more escalatory rhetoric and attacks, President Trump said the United States was renewing its shipping blockade of Iranian ports, and would charge a 20 percent fee on goods passing through the Strait of Hormuz.” Tehran’s top diplomat responds: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service. Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.” Here’s the latest from the NYT U.S. and Iran Edge Toward War Again, and The Guardian.
+ Proof of Life: With a weird newspaper-grasping photo, Mitch McConnell signaled the world that he’s still alive. He’s not the only political leader who’s been MIA. Iran’s supreme leader is dead or comatose. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. “The funeral procession became less a display of regime strength than a reminder of its uncertainty: the new supreme leader, Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, was nowhere to be seen. His absence overshadowed the entire affair.” (Makes you wonder who exactly we’re negotiating with…)
+ Subpoena Armada: “The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.”
+ Do Not Merge: “A group of states is preparing to file a lawsuit to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery as soon as this week, according to four people briefed on the plans, a legal challenge that would create a major obstacle for one of the biggest media mergers in history.”
+ Jive Talking: What could make all those political texts even worse? How about them asking you to continue the conversation with AI?
+ You Cannot Be Siri-ous: “At every level, from members of its technical staff to its chief hardware officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information … As a natural result, OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” Apple sues Open AI, accusing it of stealing trade secrets. (Luckily for OpenAI, they didn’t steal any of trade secrets about SIRI…)
+ There’s No Fixing the Fixer: Michael Cohen Helped Convict Trump. Now, He’s Making Nice Again.
+ Sam Neill: One of the most recognizable (and consistently excellent) actors, Sam Neill, Leading Man in ‘Jurassic Park,’ Dies at 78.
+ Timing is Everything: Jannik Sinner has never won a match longer than 3 hours in 50 minutes. Yesterday, he won the Wimbledon championship over Alexander Zverev in 3:47. Linda Nosková defeated Karolína Muchová in the Women’s final. 50 Parting Thoughts From 2026 Wimbledon.
“Before he died, he left strict instructions for the application of the nutty paste for ‘Pindakaasvloer,’ or ‘Peanut Butter Floor’: The installation must use 3.2 pounds of smooth peanut butter — never the chunky kind — for every square foot and it must be spread as evenly as possible, according to a statement from the museum.” Museum Spreads 800 Pounds of Peanut Butter in Tribute to Dutch Artist. (This is actually quite close to the coffin-filling directive I’ve left my kids about my desired burial.)
2026-07-10 20:00:00
As much as AI “search” results have changed your internet experience, it’s nothing compared to the way it’s changed things for online publishers. For the entirety of the web’s brief history, using every search engine optimization trick to achieve a high page rank and appear among the top few search results was the name of the internet game. The quest to achieve search result prominence drove nearly every textual element of internet design. But then everything changed. Google stopped sending traffic to web publishers and instead started inhaling the content it indexed and providing searchers with concise summaries of what they were after. Goodbye links, hello answers. Oh, and goodbye web traffic. The strategy may have saved you a click, but it leaves one wondering if anything can save online publishers. Their golden goose is now quite literally sucking the life out of them. How bad is it? Publishers are considering the nuclear option. AdWeek: Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search. “For decades, publishers have done everything in their power, from the legal to the not-explicitly illegal, to rank as highly in Google Search as possible. For many websites, traffic from the search engine was their single greatest source of audience and, as a result, revenue. Now though, a handful of influential players in the digital media ecosystem have begun moving in the opposite direction, laying the groundwork for what was once unthinkable: removing themselves from Google Search.”
Back in September of our Covid year, I was sitting outside on the deck with my 96 year-old dad who grew up in Poland during WWII, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust, and spent years fighting the Nazis as part of a Partisan group. I mentioned that the numbers were looking pretty good for Biden, and Trump was starting to lose his grip (political and mental). My dad said, “Yeah, but he’ll never accept the results.” It was one of many predictions my dad got right over the years. He didn’t live long enough to witness January 6, but nothing about it would have surprised him. He’d seen these kinds of stories play out before. It’s about time that everyone stops being surprised by the extent to which Trump (and his enablers) will go to overturn election results. The latest example: Armed with new powers granted by the SCOTUS majority, “the Trump administration has forced out the three remaining members of an independent, bipartisan commission that supports states in administering their elections, the White House confirmed on Thursday. The move comes as President Trump seeks to cast doubt on the outcome of the upcoming midterms and impose control over how ballots are counted.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Fires Members of Independent Election Group. “Mr. Trump has been laying the groundwork for months to claim that Republicans would face a tough midterm election, not because of the broadly unpopular war in Iran and plummeting approval ratings on the economy, but because the country’s election system is fraudulent.”
While searching for a different person, federal immigration officers in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They later explained that Araujo tried to ram them with his van before they opened fire. Sound familiar? Witnesses of ICE Killing in Houston Dispute the Official Account. “Three men who witnessed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s killing by federal immigration officers in Houston disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account and said the victim never tried to run over a federal agent. The men, who were inside the vehicle, were arrested during the Tuesday encounter and spoke from immigration detention with their lawyer, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra. They said that Mr. Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant who was driving to work at a construction site, did not use his vehicle as a weapon or attempt to run over the immigration officers who opened fire.”
+ Texas ICE Killing Darkens: Rep Says Witnesses Pressured to Self-Deport.
+ “A federal immigration agent killed a man from Mexico on Tuesday in Houston, firing into the car that the man was driving. It was at least the 21st shooting by agents involved in President Trump’s deportation crackdown since he took office for his second term in January 2025. Five people, including three U.S. citizens, were killed as a result of those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles.”
What to Watch: From the creators of For All Mankind comes Star City on AppleTV, which imagines a future (from the Soviet perspective) in which the Soviets got to the Moon first. You don’t need to have watched For All Mankind first to enjoy Star City. But you’ll probably want to start on that show next.
+ What to Read: I first heard about Vijay Gupta’s memoir, Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation from my friend Joel Stein’s newsletter. “By age twenty-five, Vijay Gupta had lived several lifetimes: he played Carnegie Hall at eight, studied at Juilliard and Yale before most had finished high school, joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at nineteen, gave a celebrated TED Talk seen by millions, and launched a nonprofit. But behind the accolades was estrangement, addiction, and a private unraveling.” In addition to being a great musician, Gupta is also an excellent writer. This is a very personal story about personal achievements, family relationships, and how music really connects us, from symphony halls to Skid Row. (Bonus content: What Skid Row Taught Acclaimed Violinist Vijay Gupta About Music.)
+ What to Doc: Rafa on Netflix is a four-part docuseries on the rise and injuries of Rafael Nadal. This docuseries is part of a trend of docs essentially produced with their subjects, so you don’t necessarily get any hard-hitting insights. But if you’re into tennis, you will definitely enjoy this look at the mental and physical challenges faced by one of the greats. (FWIW, his trainer Uncle Toni has basically the same mentality as my pilates teacher.)
Cease Ceased: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran had asked to continue talks and the U.S. had agreed, but that the ceasefire was over. (Of course, we can’t be sure of any of that because of the source.)
+ Playing with Housing Money: Housing affordability bill is about to become law, even after Trump refuses to sign it in PROTEST.” (So he gets to enrage his own party with nothing to show for it.)
+ Nolan Wells: “Nolan Wells was last seen boating with friends around 3 p.m. Saturday on Horn Island, a barrier reef off Mississippi accessible only by boat, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department said. He was wearing blue swim trunks and sunglasses. Wells’ mother reported him missing that night after he did not return on the boat with the rest of the group.” Investigation underway into death of Mississippi 18-year-old who vanished on July 4 boating trip. (This feels like it’s going to become a massive story.)
+ Parasite Unseen: “There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite that causes the illness and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem. Health officials are alarmed by the rapidly growing number of cases, which they say are likely undercounted because some people recover without medical care and are not tested.” Why we don’t know what food is spreading the parasite sickening thousands.
+ The Recline of Western Civilization: “Life is full of ethical dilemmas, some more consequential than others. Should you eat meat? While you decide, the lives of countless animals hang in the balance. Will you use Claude to write your cover letter? While you contemplate, your integrity is at risk. In comparison, seat reclination is small-scale. Only a few inches are at stake, perhaps for just a few hours. And yet that little wedge of space and time looms large: whether you seize it seems to suggest something about how you treat other people, or even conceive of society in general.” The New Yorker: Should You Recline Your Airplane Seat? “Investigating the central dilemma of our time.” (There are still some airplane activities we can all agree are bad. For example: Passenger partly sucked out of window soon after takeoff from Greece…)
+ Messi Business: “They discovered that the name they had chosen in honor of Lionel Messi violated an obscure 1969 Argentina statute prohibiting the use of surnames as first names.” This is why there aren’t thousands of Argentinians named Messi.
“You do not have time for this. You do not have time to sit in a 200-degree box, as if you were a slice of leftover pizza. You do not have time to spend a half-hour in a hotter-than-even-standard sauna, then immerse yourself in a bath of water that is extremely frozen if not actual ice, shocking the eggshell of your sanity from the membrane of your gelatinous insides. You — meaning I, who have lately been thinking of myself as a you — truly do not want to do what is called cold-plunging.” Taffy Brodesser-Akner: I Survived a Cold Plunge and All I Got Was Everything I Ever Wanted.
+ “Long-tenured workers like Barzar are Costco’s secret weapon. They are reliable and experienced, able to speed shoppers through a checkout line and serve as mentors to newer workers, passing down the company’s unique culture.” He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire.
+ This program gives Black single moms $1,000 a month for a year. The results are undeniable.
+ Female US rower reflects on ‘surreal’ record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii.
+ A tiny eye implant invented by a Stanford scientist is helping blind people read again.
+ Jesse Eisenberg Explains Why His Decision to Donate a Kidney Was Very Easy.
+ How Olivia Rodrigo Is Getting Back at the Trump Administration.
+ In any language: English speakers are tuning into World Cup broadcasts in Spanish. There’s really only one word you need to know. Goooooooal.
2026-07-09 20:00:00
If you want a trip to the future, you can either invent a time machine or get a ticket to an event at Madison Square Garden. In addition to being the home court of the NBA champs and recently being transformed into a wedding venue, James Dolan’s MSG also provides a pretty decent glimpse into our looming surveillance society. Everyone who enters the Garden is scanned, and if you’re a known visitor, you’re entered into a database and given a risk rating. “People of concern are ranked on a scale, the source explained. ‘Flag’ is the lowest, an indication to discuss the VIP with a supervisor. Next is ‘low risk’—that’s the marking for [Edie] Falco, [Tracy] Morgan, and Ben Stiller, their fellow Knicks ride-or-die. After that is ‘medium risk’ (Lily Allen, her ex David Harbour, and the country singer Morgan Wallen) and ‘high risk’ (the hip-hop stars Freddie Gibbs, Lil Jon, DaBaby, and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie). The rapper Lil Tjay, who recently was involved in an altercation at the Garden’s Hulu Theater, is ‘BANNED FROM MSG,’ according to the database.” But high-profile visitors aren’t just given risk rankings. “The talent database also tracks some celebrities’ race, gender identity, and sexual orientation; 93 entries are marked as ‘LGBTQIA.’ Why MSG felt the need to label Ricky Martin or Phoebe Bridgers or Geese’s Emily Green in this way is unclear.” Wired: Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities. “An MSG database tracked and categorized hundreds of celebs, famous Knicks superfans, and even some of Taylor Swift’s wedding guests.” Some of these tactics are unique to MSG, but it won’t be long before this is all considered garden variety surveillance. And how do we know about this list? It was accessed and released by a hacker group. Hey, you said you wanted to see the future…
+ More from an earlier Wired piece: The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine.
+ More from the podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out: Tracking Taylor Swift Wedding Guests.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited senior ministers from more than 60 countries to a meeting next week about what the Trump administration views as a major peril: the ‘resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism.'” WaPo (Gift Article): Rubio tries to enlist other nations in antifa fight, but some allies recoil. (I know it sometimes seems like Rubio is one of the comparatively decent ones. But, sadly, it’s time to recoil from that notion.) “The meeting has prompted consternation among career and political U.S. officials, some European allies and independent analysts who do not see the threat in the same terms. Some U.S. officials told The Post that they worry it is part of a Trump administration effort to use powerful counterterrorism tools to crack down on U.S. activists they view as left-wing extremists.”
+ Related: “For much of the past year, DHS has been going after people who criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in emails and social media posts, accusing them of threatening federal personnel or ‘doxing’ agents whose identities are already known to the public. OPR has opened more than 100 investigations into ‘incidents of doxing and threats’ involving ICE.” The Verge (Gift Article): ICE agents are making house calls for online critics.
+ Also Related: Three More People Charged With Damaging Reflecting Pool.
“On a sloping patch of ground less than a dozen miles from where the wealthy pay to swaddle their bushes, on a day cold enough to freeze a brook running through the woods, one of the men who stitched burlap around hedges disappeared on a Thursday in February.” NYT (Gift Article): Where Billionaires Summer, a Gardener Died in the Snow. “The workers’ plight isn’t new. In 2022, a concierge for some of the Hamptons’ wealthiest patrons gave an interview describing how he had spent two years living in a six-by-six-foot tent in the woods. In 2024, a Guatemalan laborer who was living in the woods was struck and killed on a highway while walking to a bus stop, leading to an outpouring of concern. But advocates for the workers say that the scale shifted in the last year. Where once the tents were clustered together, the workers have now spread out for fear of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
“This is not the approach of a president who’s running a war; this is the flailing of a man who’s in over his head and is reacting to events, rather than guiding them. Lest this kind of equivocation lead the Iranians to doubt Trump’s resolve, the president has added that he’s still considering two other terrible ideas: an invasion of Iranian territory, and a campaign of probable war crimes.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Iran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War. “Trump is now going through something like the stages of wartime grief: Denial that America failed; anger, which has led to renewed attacks; and then bargaining, as if the Iranians could somehow be bought off like a gang of recalcitrant construction workers in New York. None of it has worked. Depression and acceptance await.” (That would actually be a perfect new tagline. NextDraft: Depression and Acceptance Await.)
+ For now, it looks like the ceasefire is officially off. Here’s the latest on the renewed and accelerating fighting from BBC and The Guardian.
+ The resumption of hostilities with Iran led the Secret Service to advise the president against using his new Qatari-donated jet. That means the jet was never ready in the first place. So Trump took the old Air Force One and then lied about the reason. Just another day of madness.
Bibi Cued: “Rahm Emanuel, a potential Democratic presidential candidate and longtime defender of Israel, warned Wednesday that the country has become increasingly isolated as its leadership has turned it into a ‘territorial pariah,’ in a speech at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday. ‘You cannot fight indefinitely against a world that has stopped believing you have the right to fight. You must instead find a new sustainable path to peace, security, and economic prosperity.'” Here’s the full speech. And from NPR: In a West Bank cave, Israelis and Palestinians hold an out-of-the-ordinary lunch. (You can love and want to defend Israel and think its leadership is terrible. Just like you can love and want to defend America and think its leadership is terrible.)
+ The View From Canada: “The rupture of the world order is going much better than expected. At first there was rage at America’s betrayal, when President Trump called for the annexation of Canada, threatened Greenland, imposed tariffs on its friends and began his campaign to undercut NATO, which continued at its latest meeting this week, in Ankara, Turkey. Now, a strange feeling is emerging in some of the countries that used to be known as America’s allies: Optimistic determination.” Stephen Marche in the NYT (Gift Article): The Zombification of America. “Zombie America creates, at least in the short term, contradictions. In Canada, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, jointly operated with the United States, continues to be our most important alliance. Yet civil servants here have also started training with drones for the possibility of asymmetrical conflict with the United States. Real security can be found only by removing your country from American influence, on every front as far as possible.”
+ The Reign in Maine Circles Drain: “Behind the scenes, his campaign was messy, disorganized and haphazardly run. Mr. Platner did not disclose explosive, politically damaging secrets to key members of his team. And he was guarded by an insular and zealously protective inner circle of advisers who did not always seem to grasp the seriousness — or strangeness — of what quickly became a steady drip of scandal … Repeatedly, Mr. Platner promised there was nothing else damaging from his past to come. And each time, he was wrong.” ‘A Slow-Rolling Disaster’: Inside the Implosion of the Platner Campaign. (Given his resignation video, it’s not clear that the implosion dust has settled.) Related: US appeals court rejects Trump’s latest bid to delay paying E Jean Carroll $5.8m. (I’m beginning to wonder if politics is attracting our best and brightest.)
+ FanDuel and Your Money Are Soon Parted: “By late November 2024, Thompson had incurred steep losses and resorted to desperate measures to fund his addiction. Then, one afternoon, he flicked open his phone and received a FanDuel reward that momentarily distracted him from his debts: a personalized video message from Philadelphia Phillies superstar Bryce Harper.” FanDuel sent a personal message from Phillies star Bryce Harper to a customer with a gambling addiction.
+ Mail Nurse: “In his job as a nurse and healthcare administrator, Chris decided on appropriate treatments for patients and checked their vital signs. Sometimes, he monitored up to 10 patients in intensive care — and he did it all from Manila, thousands of miles away from the U.S. hospital he worked for.” Your next nurse may monitor you from the Philippines.
+ Error Bags: “The air bag, it turned out, had been purchased on eBay and installed by the Texas dealership that sold him the used car. When he crashed, it sent metal shards flying into Kang’s face.” WSJ Gift Article): Counterfeit Air-Bag Parts Are Killing U.S. Drivers—and the Government Can’t Stop It.
+ Garbage In, Farage Out: “When British right-wing populist leader Nigel Farage announced he was resigning as a lawmaker and triggering a special election in the face of a swirl of allegations over personal financing, he sought the high ground, declaring that the ‘judges of my actions’ should be his constituents. Instead, rival parties dismissed his actions as a stunt and said they would sit out the election, leaving his principal opponent as a garbage-can wearing comedian whose policies include forcing rule-breaking cyclists to ride unicycles.”
+ You Token to Me? M.G. Siegler has been waiting a long time to talk to his computer. And with the latest iteration of ChatGPT, that wait may be over. The First True AI Chatbot. “As in, actually chatting. As in, with voice.”
Pickle Pie. Cracklin’ Corn Ribs. Butter Brew Mustache Pretzel. Yeah, our brand has suffered a bit of late. But it’s Summer, and America is gonna America! Buckle up: Here is this year’s crop of new State Fair foods.