2026-07-08 20:00:00
I’m going to keep this short. If I don’t, you won’t read it. That’s at least what one can glean from reading (or at least skimming or asking ChatGPT to summarize) the latest book stats from the National Endowment for the Arts. If you’ve been procrastinating when it comes to getting around to finally writing that novel, you might want to skip it altogether. “Fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet. The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.” (At least this explains my book sales.) Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The End of Reading Is Here. “And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information. Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn’t mean they are forgetting how to decode individual words. Rather, they are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.” (America is getting close to be postAmerican, too.)
+ It’s not just that people are reading fewer books. The way certain books become hits has also changed. And that change has circled back to how books get written and which books get published. It’s out with the librarian and in with TikTok. “Whether a given book is well written, structurally ambitious, or intellectually dense does not seem to matter much on BookTok. In fact, a book being poorly written is not at all an impediment to a recommendation as long as it otherwise fulfills the requisite tropes and themes set out by its genre expectations, which are precisely what engineer those strong emotional reactions. Even when a book is considered ‘cringe,’ ‘flat and formulaic,’ or ‘written like an 11 year old,’ BookTok users may ‘still love it with all [their] heart’ because it manages to achieve the chief objectives of its genre conceit.” The New Yorker: The Rise of the ‘As Seen on TikTok’ Sticker.
“I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore … They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people … If they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” And with that, Trump announces that the ceasefire with Iran is basically over. (Trump also confused Iran with Japan and Zelensky with Putin during the discussion. So maybe everyone should keep their defenses on alert.) Trump also lashed out at Spain, saying he’s going to cut off all trade with them. In a whiplash-inducing shift, Trump praised Zelensky and said he will let Ukraine build Patriot missiles. (This definitely gives one the sense that US intel is advising Trump that Ukraine has the upper hand in the war. Or maybe there’s a bribe involved.) Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ “Mark Carney swept to power on a backlash to President Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state, which many Americans took for mere shtick. But for the new prime minister, reading intelligence reports detailing the gravity of the crisis, it was a breaking point. In private phone conversations with Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, Trump had threatened to scrap the 1908 agreement delineating their shared border. ‘I tear that up and your whole country unravels,’ Trump told Trudeau in one call.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Canadian Who Steered Europe Away From the U.S.
+ Europe may be moving away from the US government, but it’s not moving away from US software. NATO quietly puts trust in Palantir to move troops and identify targets. “If Russia moves its elite soldiers from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division closer to the border with Estonia, Palantir’s system will flag it. Military officers will be alerted to vulnerabilities in the alliance’s force structure across Europe, and which troops to move from where to fend off a Russian attack. At any one time the system knows how many troops NATO has, where and when, so it can advise what to do next.” (The next world war will be software vs software, with humans caught in the crossfire.)
“Scientists refer to this vast, unexplored terrain as biology’s dark matter. Our bodies are home to more bacteria — on our skin, up our noses, in our guts and mouths and around our genitals — than there are stars in the Milky Way. These microbes have evolved not only with us but inside us, and scientists who study them closely say that hardly a biological process or system exists in which they do not play a role. They helped create our digestive systems and our immune systems. They influence the size and shape of our bodies. At least some research suggests that they also affect our brains, moods, personalities and behaviors. And yet, most of them have still not been identified, let alone studied.” NYT Magazine (Gift Article): Our Bacteria Are Talking. We’ve Just Begun to Understand What They’re Saying. (You can be pretty sure they’re talking shit.)
+ The NYT discovered regularity. Should I Be Taking Psyllium Husk? (For Jewish sons, chugging a first glass of Metamucil with their fathers is a right of passage—it’s like a Talmudic version of playing catch in the backyard.)
“In just the last decade, berries have completed the journey from fragile, local, seasonal treat to worldwide refrigerator staple and marketing juggernaut … Most of that growth has been driven by Driscoll’s, a $7 billion California company that began as a multifamily farm in 1904, patented its first strain of strawberries in 1958 and is still controlled by family members. In 1989, its board made what the company calls the Meadowood Declaration, a resolution that seemed preposterous at the time: to make all four berries available, in every season, in every part of the world. Today the company is the undisputed global market leader, shipping four billion containers of highly perishable fruit across 60 countries each year. (The company developed its signature hinged, ventilated plastic clamshell in the 1990s.) According to Circana, a market research firm, Driscoll’s is now the second-highest-earning brand in American supermarkets, behind only Coca-Cola.” Why Are Berries Everywhere, in Every Season? Driscoll’s.
Chain Yanked: “The global economy is set to slow sharply in 2026 after the war with Iran disrupted energy supply chains and triggered a fresh bout of inflation.” (And the IMF issued this warning before today’s announcement that the truce is potentially off.)
+ K Stop: “‘Oh no,’ she recalled the director saying upon hearing the child’s name. The parents, the director said, had declined the vitamin K injection newborns routinely receive to help blood clot. Without it, infants are vulnerable to spontaneous bleeding.” As Parents Reject Vitamin K Shots, Some Babies Develop Devastating Bleeding.
+ Passing Fancy: 30 million people watched USMNT-Belgium, making it the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history. (For comparison, the NBA Finals deciding game drew about 24.5 million viewers.)
+ British Invasion: “I remember thinking to myself: My goodness, how are journalists ever going to come down off this high … the adrenaline roller-coaster ride of such big news almost every day? How are they ever going to return to engaging with dreary minutiae of NHS reform, when we’re giving them such big stories all the time? And I remember genuinely thinking this feels consequential. And dreadful.” How smartphones (and Brexit) broke British politics.
+ In a Rutte: A Danish reporter asked a question to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that should probably be asked of a few hundred American politicians as well. “Mark, you sit next to Donald Trump in moments where he talks about conquering Greenland, talked about lashing out at allies like Spain, starting trade wars—things that [don’t] seem like the old Mark Rutte would approve of. Does this have any effect on your self-respect when you sit next to him like that and say nothing?” (Spoiler alert: Nah.)
+ No Pitt Stop: The Pitt, Hacks, Widow’s Bay, Pluribus, Beef, and DTF St. Louis are among the leaders in this year’s Emmy noms. Here are some snubs and surprises.
+ Cream Sinks to the Bottom: “The Covid-19 pandemic had supercharged America’s snacking habit: Some 70% of consumers were eating at least two per day, Smucker said. Buying the owner of Ding Dongs and Donettes gave the jam-and-jelly maker entry into a $65 billion market for snacks. Smucker had beat out other suitors for Hostess, most notably General Mills. Three years later, the deal isn’t tasting quite so sweet.” There are a lot of interesting reasons Why Smucker’s $5 Billion Bet on the Twinkie Flopped.
“Everyone has a strategy so particular to their concerns that following someone else’s might not always work for you. In the end, the challenge and the reward of the buffet are exactly the same: In a limited time, with endless distractions, you must figure out what you really want.” NYT: The Disappearing Las Vegas Buffets Hold a Mirror to the American Soul. (Better than a mirror to the body after I go to one of those things.)
+ Two teens learn the hard way not to do toy gun drive-bys from a Waymo. (Cut to the scene where the other guys in the prison yard ask, “So, what are you in for?”)
2026-07-07 20:00:00
One day we were celebrating headlines like this: In the United States, Every World Cup Team Is a Home Team. And the next day, our beloved squad was soundly defeated by Belgium, and our nation was being mocked with disdain as the winning team ridiculed America with a clownish Trump dance and a post that read, Overturn This. As Jerry Brewer writes in The Athletic: The United States’ dream didn’t die. It was overturned. “The president didn’t rescue Folarin Balogun. He didn’t give the U.S. greater odds to win. He didn’t fix the tournament by correcting a mistake. He repossessed the World Cup. He made Balogun, whose class and character represented the entire squad, the face of a fix. He helped create the snooty American attitude that gave Belgium a motivational boost.” What can I say: Football is life. And this is life with Trump. The whole charade was “in many ways, yet another crystallisation of America’s philosophy under Trump, where a rules-based international order can be swept aside when it is deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. One day, it may be climate change co-operation, or it could be economic tariffs on long-standing partners. On another day, it may be withdrawing from the World Health Organization, or threatening to seize Greenland or making Canada the 51st state.” And Trump’s MAGA-red card insertion into the World Cup is a pitch perfect metaphor for the kick-off of today’s NATO meetings, where Trump will further antagonize allies, destroy America’s leadership role, and provide yet another reminder that the election of 2024 was the own goal of the century.
+ “You are not dealing with an administration that has processes, you are dealing with a single volatile individual.” The WSJ (Gift Article) with the backstory of Europe’s split with America. “Hours passed as people talked over each other in a conversation with such seismic implications it seemed surreal: In its 250th year, had America, protector of Europe, now become a threat?” ‘There Is No Going Back’: The Inside Story of Europe’s Rupture With America. The Europeans learned faster than Trump’s American sycophants that even the authoritarian-pleasing false praise has its limits. “The fragile consensus on flattery was starting to splinter, a trend captured by Britain’s MI6. That form of diplomacy, per an assessment from the spy service, was ‘subject to the law of diminishing returns.'” (That’s the one law the administration upholds.)
+ “In remarks to reporters, Trump reiterated his view that the U.S. should take control of Greenland. ‘It should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark.'” This follows Trump’s posting of a picture of himself and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “with the caption ‘restraining order needed,’ a reference to his earlier comments that Meloni ‘begged’ him for a photo during the Group of Seven summit of leading industrialized nations last month.” Here’s the latest from NBC and CNN.
It’s never a good sign when your Nazi tattoo ends up being one of your better attributes by comparison. Graham Platner, the controversial Senate candidate running against Susan Collins in Maine has weathered many political storms. He won’t be able to weather the latest one. Politico: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her.
+ “The allegation is the latest in a string of controversies Platner has faced and so far weathered since the oyster farmer and Marine veteran entered the race. But the seriousness of the assault claim has put the Maine contest — and Democrats’ ability to win control of the Senate — at risk, with even some of his strongest supporters questioning whether Platner should continue his campaign.” (Pretty much everyone has called for him to quit the race. The big question is whether this means Maine is down the drain.)
+ “While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’ If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.” Michelle Goldberg in the NYT (Gift Article): Lessons From the Graham Platner Disaster.
Is he alive? If he’s alive, how alive is he? Why is he in the hospital? What treatment is he receiving? In normal times, these aren’t the questions one would be asking about one of America’s most prominent senators. But these aren’t normal times. McConnell Has Been Hospitalized for 3 Weeks, and Aides Won’t Say Why.
Netflix has a retention problem. You watch the first season of a show, but you don’t come back for subsequent seasons. There are probably a few reasons why this is the case, and one of them could be the business model. “Netflix pays upfront production costs for both originals and outside productions, owns the international distribution, and offers a massive pay bump if the show makes it to season three. This makes sense if your business model is based on gaining new subscriptions. You’re not buying long-running audience-sustaining properties to reliably run ads against. You’re buying newness. So there’s very little incentive in, say, building a solid audience for your live action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation, but there’s a huge incentive in announcing you have one.” Ryan Broderick in Garbage Day with a good overview of the second season problem, and how it mirrors other issues in the digital content business. Netflix and the value of streaming shovelware.
Fire and Ice: “Of course, there have always been heat waves, thunderstorms, power failures and floods. But climate change has been a steroid injection for such disasters, making them stronger and more damaging. And increasingly, as in New Jersey this week, all of these nightmares arrive in tandem, creating compound disasters. In the process, they’re exposing just how unprepared for them we are.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): New Jersey’s Hell Week Is a Warning for Everyone. And the latest weather pattern to worry about: Hail. Inside the United States’ Billion-Dollar Blind Spot. “These balls of ice aren’t just academic curiosities. They are the reason your insurance premiums keep rising.”
+ Out of Le Pen: “The court shortened her ban on running for elected office, potentially reopening the path for her to run. However, it ruled she must wear an electronic ankle tag for a year, making a campaign both logistically and politically difficult.” French court allows far-right leader Marine Le Pen to run for president with ankle tag. (In this political environment, that might be a plus.)
+ History Buff: “The buff George Washington statue in the National Museum of American History speaks for itself. Taking in the washboard abs and determined expression of the 1840 work by Horatio Greenough, a visitor would be hard-pressed to see anything but a Founding Father rendered as a Greek god. Yet in a searing 162-page report on the Smithsonian museum released on July 4, the Trump administration takes issue with the lack of patriotism in even this exhibit.” A Huge Escalation in Trump’s Smithsonian Meddling.
+ Hey Bub: “The document, the existence and contents of which have not been previously reported but was obtained by NOTUS, is a significant departure from the Trump administration’s public tone, which has focused on encouraging unrelenting investment to unlock exponential growth.” Treasury Has an Internal Report Warning About the Dangers of an AI Bubble.
+ Ring a Bell? Vox: Your Ring camera isn’t stopping crime. But it might be making you paranoid. People generally understand this, but they’ll always choose security options, even ones that don’t necessarily provide security. Well, not all people. US Air Force engineer charged with sawing down flock surveillance cameras receives thousands of dollars from supporters across the country.
+ Allies: An Afghan national who fought with U.S. forces died of an allergic reaction in ICE custody. (Feel safer?)
+ Midtown Evacuation: “A safety manager reported that a steel beam was compromised on the 21st floor, according to Buildings Department records. The Fire Department said that two support columns inside the building were buckling, and several upper floors were sagging … A ‘frozen zone’ was set up from 40th to 45th Streets between First and Third Avenues.” Mamdani Warns That Midtown Manhattan Building Remains Unstable.
+ Corruption Eruption: IOC lifts ban on Russian Olympic Committee, clearing path for athletes’ return to Games. (They should have waited. This is supposed to be the week for Trump/FIFA corruption.)
+ It’s About the Journey: There’s been a hell of a lot of hype leading up to the release of Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, The Odyssey. It sounds like it lives up to it, and then some. Variety: First Reactions Are Raves for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Astonishing’ Epic and ‘Flawless Filmmaking’: ‘Breathtaking, Bold and Perfection.’ (I haven’t read raves like that since I first launched NextDraft.)
“Check your bathroom cabinet, as CVS Health has recalled thousands of medicated hemorrhoidal wipes due to a lack of child-resistant packaging.” Here’s a shocker: “As of July 2, CVS was not aware of any injuries related to the recall.”
2026-07-06 20:00:00
I call offside. I need sports as an escape from the Trump-dominated news cycle. Since my wife and I have watched TV (all of it, seriously), and I’ve memorized the first five seasons of The Office, sports are the only escape I have left. And no sporting event has provided that escape as powerfully as the World Cup. And it worked for a while. But, like everything else, the beautiful game has been soiled by the ugliest American. The place we all went for a break from Trump is now being dominated by headlines about him. There is no escape. The World Cup has become one more algae-filled pool reflecting the orange pathological prevaricator whose distorted open-mouthed image ripples over everything. I guess we need to offer some credit where credit is due. You know how hard it is to be more corrupt than FIFA? “President Trump called Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, in the hours after the United States men’s soccer team played Wednesday and asked him to review the suspension of the team’s top goal scorer in the World Cup, Folarin Balogun, after he was given a red card, according to four people familiar with the conversation. On Sunday, FIFA reversed the suspension, announcing that Mr. Balogun would be eligible to play Monday against Belgium. The reversal is highly unusual and is the first time since 1962 that FIFA has allowed a player to appear in a game when they would have been suspended after being sent off in the World Cup.” (Maybe Trump can get Infantino to negotiate a new peace deal with Iran…) I’m partly leading with this story because it’s dominated headlines across the globe, and it fits into a storyline that has more countries viewing America as corrupt. And I’m partly leading with it in what will probably be a futile effort to get it out of my mind and into a newsletter in time for me to actually enjoy the game this evening. I mean, this has got to be the last time Trump will insert himself into this story. It’s not like he’s giving out the winning trophy. Oh, wait…
+ “Following Wednesday’s victory against Bosnia and Herzegovina, White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani alerted President Donald Trump to Balogun’s punishment for a rash tackle — removal from the Bosnia match and a routine one-match suspension that would keep him out of a must-win encounter against Belgium.” Politico: Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field. And from the WSJ (Gift Article): Inside the White House Campaign to Overturn a World Cup Red Card. (I would say it’s ironic that Trump’s intervention in this matter will result in a birthright American getting to play for the US, but Trump had irony overturned, too.)
+ Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
Here in the Bay Area, we wrapped ourselves in overcoats and huddled under blankets to watch a Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show that mostly just made the low-hanging fog glow. And believe me, we know how lucky we were compared to much of the rest of the country, where (like much of the rest of the world), it was brutally hot. You aren’t the only one surprised by the climate in your neck of the woods. So are the experts, even the ones who predicted the worst. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Extreme Heat Isn’t the Only Climate Impact Shocking Scientists. “While scientists have long braced for climate change, the growing severity of its impacts is shocking them.”
+ Just when you thought there wouldn’t be a solution for climate change… NYT (Gift Article): To Beat the Heat, the Wealthy Are Building Snow Rooms. “A snow room is more or less the opposite of a sauna — a cavelike space of ice and snow. In some, white flakes descend gently from the ceiling to create the feeling of being inside a snow globe.”
“Over the course of the past two decades, the US has lost 2,000 golf courses and 7,000 bars and nightclubs, and Americans now own 1.3 million fewer boats. It’s prohibitively expensive to open a new summer camp and practically impossible to build a beachfront resort or marina. Venue shortages afflict musicians looking for performance spaces, children looking to play in local sports leagues and adults looking to go out dancing. The best time to book a rental for this summer was last summer, and the best time to book for next summer is … well, it may already be too late. America appears to be suffering from a fun shortage.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable.
“The lightbulb. The internet. The telephone and the iPhone. Since the founding of the United States, we have built airplanes, refrigerators and Costco. We dreamed up the microchip and we gave the world chocolate-chip cookies. But the greatest American innovation that you won’t ever find on a list of America’s innovations might just be one that you see every day. It’s an unsung idea that changed a nation and spread all over the world—and it was driven by one guy.” WSJ (Gift Article): This Simple White Line Is America’s Greatest Unsung Innovation. “In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road.”
Unmasked: “Hundreds of masked men carrying banners, including the Confederate flag, marched through Washington DC on the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the US’s inception … Members chanted ‘Life, liberty, victory!’ and ‘Reclaim America!’ during the Saturday demonstration, according to video posted on social media.” Hundreds of masked white nationalists march in Washington on Fourth of July. (The sick display resulted in what may be the most revealing image of 2026, from Cheney Orr of Reuters).
+ Dealer’s Choice: “What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” That is a powerful commentary. Guess who wrote it? JD Vance in 2016. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Opioid of the Masses. (This was before JD became a dealer…)
+ RSVP Minus One: “Iranian state media showed huge crowds at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla — a large prayer complex in Tehran — visiting the casket of Ayatollah’s Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28 at the start of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. The caskets of four of his killed family members were also on display.” Dayslong funeral for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei begins in Tehran. Not everyone is attending. Time: Khamenei’s Funeral Is Meant to Project Strength. But Iran’s New Leader Has Yet to Appear.
+ Fishing Expedition: “Government officials and agencies closest to the action, at sea and on America’s streets, tell a different story. In hearings, official reports, and interviews they have all but given up the pretense that the campaign has succeeded in reducing the flow of drugs into the U.S., even as 221 people have been killed in more than 60 strikes.” The Results Are In On Trump’s Boat Strikes Campaign.
+ Ven Diagram: “When a giant earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, the United States mounted an enormous relief effort involving more than $3 billion in aid, 7,000 U.S. troops on the ground and a halt to deportations of Haitians to their devastated country.” Things have changed. With $8 Billion in Venezuelan Oil Money, U.S. Gives $300 Million in Quake Aid.
+ Packing Heat: “In the view of critics and even some A.T.F. veterans, the agency, in closely mirroring the demands made by gun owners and manufacturers to lighten their regulatory burden, is enacting changes at the expense of public safety. The moves, they worry, come as the bureau has already been weakened, with hundreds of its officials diverted to immigration enforcement.” Trump Administration Rolls Back Dozens of Gun Regulations.
+ Walk This Way: Can you outrun dementia by walking really fast? NPR: Fast walkers in their 80s cut their risk of cognitive decline by half, a study finds.
+ Humanoidian Slip: “Around small pets, around small children, there’s still work to be done.” The robots are coming. Are we ready? More importantly, are they? The New Yorker: Are Humanoid Robots Ready to Be Deployed?
+A Nietzsche Business: My kids wanted to get into coding. But told them to follow the money and get into a major that pays off. Philosophy. NYT (Gift Article): The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors.
“The red-white-and-blue popsicles are the ultimate shorthand Americana — a throwback to the simple days of ice cream trucks, July 4th fireworks and humid summer nights. But after the Bomb Pop came on the market in July 1955, some parents revolted over the symbolism of selling a frozen weapon of war to children.” Bomb Pops, the Kansas City invention that defined American summers and patriotic nostalgia. (Greatest popsicle ever.)
+ During his team’s epic win over Mexico, England’s Jordan Henderson got a yellow card and suffered a serious wrist injury. Even though he didn’t play.
2026-07-02 20:00:00
I decided to celebrate America’s 250th a little early; specifically, at the 45-minute mark of the US Men’s World Cup knockout win against Bosnia and Herzegovina, when Folarin Balogun scored a go-ahead goal. Balogun was born in the US to Nigerian parents who were visiting Brooklyn. They “were living in London, but visited New York when his mother was seven months pregnant. However, on their intended return flight, airline staff refused his mother permission to fly due to safety concerns over the advanced state of her pregnancy at that time.” They made their way back to London when their new baby was two months old. 24 years, 11 months, and 28 days later, Folarin Balogun scored for the US. A Nigerian birthright American who grew up in England puts the USA up by a goal? With all due respect to baseball, hot dogs (which were German and Austrian immigrants), and apple pie, it doesn’t get much more American than that. As a bonus, Folarin even has the word gun in his name! Stories like this one are exactly what make America great—along with the messy and often brutal fight to maintain that greatness. It’s not just about who’s winning games or who’s scoring goals. It’s about what makes a World Cup in America something wholly unique, and yes, uniquely great. It’s about this headline from the NYT (Gift Article): In the United States, Every World Cup Team Is a Home Team. As you’re enjoying your 4th of July hot dogs, be sure to remember how America’s sausage was made.
+ “Melting pot, tapestry, mosaic, kaleidoscope, salad bowl. Every cliché is true.” How a Nation of Immigrants Traces Its Roots.
+ “President Trump has spent years telling the world that America is closed and other countries don’t matter. The American people spent this summer proving him wrong.” The World Cup Shows What’s Great About America.
+ This World Cup isn’t all about America’s traditional values. It’s about some new ones, too. USMNT proves it’s built different with first World Cup knockout win in 24 years. “They have won three matches in a single World Cup. While that is common for the powerhouses of soccer, sometimes in the group stage alone, the U.S. had never before accomplished that. Heck, before this summer, it had won nine World Cup matches in its history. In other words, this is not a normal World Cup for the U.S. Then again, this is not a normal U.S. team.”
+ If I don’t see you at the Travis/Taylor wedding, have a great holiday weekend. NextDraft, like the US Men’s team, will be back at it Monday!
Immigration isn’t the only core American value being attacked these days. Among the other ones: Voting. NYT (Gift Article): The Many Ways Trump Is Trying to Tip the Scales for the Midterms. “The relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results. Agencies and officials across the federal government have, at the direction of Mr. Trump, undertaken dozens of actions grounded in novel strategies and aimed at insulating Republicans from potential losses in November.”
“According to some measures, A.I. is contributing to high unemployment rates among new graduates and might already have destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. Other sources suggest companies might actually be adding workers as a result of the technology. A.I. might be contributing to the U.S. inflation problem, or part of the solution to it. It might be responsible for a recent pickup in productivity growth, or might be playing virtually no role — or the productivity boom itself might be a mirage. Researchers can’t even agree on basic questions like how many companies are using A.I. or which workers are most vulnerable to the disruptions it could cause.” A.I. Is Reshaping the Economy. Good Luck Measuring How.
+ “OpenAI has proposed giving the Trump administration a 5% stake in the company as part of a broader arrangement in which leading U.S. artificial intelligence firms would cede similar equity to the government through a sovereign wealth fund vehicle.”
“I went through the magnetometer to enter the National Mall for President Trump’s Great American State Fair this week, putting my pens, notebook, phone and wallet on the table for inspection. ‘You have to throw away these pens,’ the guard said … It’s unclear who I would have attacked with my Bic ballpoint, anyway. The musicians who were slated to perform at the fair backed out because of the partisan tenor, and several states also declined to participate. There were no lines to get in when I arrived, and the crowd inside appeared to number in the high two figures. Acres of green lawn were vacant, and three huge tents for concessions were empty. ‘You’re my first customer,’ said the vendor when I bought a $5 bottle of ice water.” Dana Milbank: Trump’s Nutty State Fair Hijacked the Fourth of July. And My Pen.
+ “‘It’s as if there were a natural disaster, and we’re looking at the damage after a hurricane. Or think of Manhattan after the World Trade Center was hit by an act of terrorism,’ Charles A. Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, told me. ‘If you were just to parachute into Washington, you’d say: Gosh, what happened here?‘ Happy birthday, America.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Capital Is a Mess.
+ OK, in fairness, there are differing perspectives on the big birthday bash in DC. For example: “The woman in the yellow jersey may have said it best when she clapped her hands and shouted to her friend marching by: ‘Everything’s O.K.! Lookin’ good, lookin’ good!’ It was a grand day for the … parade in the nation’s capital today, and it was a grand parade celebrating the diversity that is America. It was warm under a hazy sun but not one of Washington’s blistering summer days, and 500,000 people, according to the official estimate, turned out to see more than 50 bands, GO floats and 90 marching units.” Oh, wait, this isn’t from the 250th, it’s from the 200th. If you’re feeling a bit bicurious, here’s a look back. 500,000 View Capital’s Bicentennial Parade. That event didn’t devolve into an authoritarian-esque, ego-driven campaign rally. In fact, Gerald Ford didn’t even attend. He was playing golf.
Different Sides of the Same Coin: “Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. Instead, the value of those tokens tanked. While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project.” WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Made $1 Billion on Crypto Deals While His Fans Lost a Fortune. (Tying the corruption to affordability seems to be a possible sweet spot for midterm messaging.) I covered Trump’s crypto haul yesterday. “Donald Trump finally found a business he could succeed at. Presidential Corruption.” You’ve been Crypt Off.
+ Standing Guard: “Rescuers pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement early Thursday, ending a grueling days-long operation that became a symbol of hope after the devastation of twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela eight days earlier.”
+ Putin Attacks Kyiv: “Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the assault as a ‘night of horror’ and referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a ‘war criminal.’ ‘Putin can only wage a vile and terroristic war against civilians, women, and children. Because in his war against Ukraine’s Defense Forces he cannot achieve a single result.” Russia Launches Drone and Missile Attack on Kyiv.
+ Excommunication Breakdown: “An estimated 16,500 people gathered in Ecône for the ceremony, including members of New Force, an Italian neofascist political party, and National Future, a new far-right force threatening the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s chances of winning a second mandate in general elections next year.” Vatican excommunicates all members of ultra-conservative rebel group SSPX. “Schism caused by Society of Saint Pius X ordaining four bishops without consent presents first crisis for Pope Leo.”
+ Burning Question: “One major concern stemming from wildfire prediction markets is arson.” Will betting on wildfires lead to arson? (Or to ask the same question another way: Have we lost our f-cking minds?)
+ Silver Spoon? AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and Evernote. Web names from the internet past? Actually, they’re all part of a corporate roll-up that just went public. Bending Spoons IPO prices above range at $18.4 billion valuation.
+ A Loss For Words: “Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear. Sadly, many Americans remain trapped in the former dimension of understanding; that dim-witted first stage of constitutional awareness where one looks at the document, finds the relevant words, and believes the words mean something.” McSweeney’s: The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning.
“Two Russian ‘rooftoppers’ who staged an apparent marriage proposal at the peak of the Empire State Building’s spire were reportedly arraigned in New York on Thursday on a slew of charges including reckless endangerment … They spent the first night of their reported engagement in separate cells close to lower Manhattan’s New York City criminal court … charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, criminal tampering, disorderly conduct, and possession of burglar’s tools.” As stressful as this all sounds, I still don’t think it adequately prepares them for the first year of marriage.
2026-07-01 20:00:00
Donald Trump finally found a business he could succeed at. Presidential Corruption. While he’s been lining the Oval Office walls with gold, he’s been giving his pockets the same treatment. In what is certainly an undercount, Trump reported $2.2 billion in revenue during his first year back in office, and a whole lot of that came from crypto payoffs. “One of his biggest hauls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise.” Blurred is doing a lot of work there. The line has been obliterated. And I don’t mean obliterated like Iran’s nuclear arsenal, I mean like, the line is really gone. From pardons to legislation to international deals, there’s always a money-making angle, and it will likely take us years to account for all the ill-begotten gains. NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Moneymaking Run: Unrivaled in Presidential History. “Never before in American history has there been anything like Donald J. Trump, a president who in his first year back in office has collected about $1.4 billion in new revenues from cryptocurrency businesses that directly benefited from his actions as president.”
+ As recently as 2021, Trump called Bitcoin “a scam.” So, I guess you can see the attraction. And Trump isn’t the only leader who’s getting in on the action. WSJ (Gift Article): How a crypto exchange became a major hub for illicit Iranian cash.
+ It’s not all about crypto; there are also some bucks stopping here. And many of those are coming from a combination of Trump’s two long-favored side gigs. Attacking media. And Suing. Trump Is Making Bank Off Suing News Organizations.
+ In an act of perfect symmetry, we’re getting this accounting on the same day that Trump is taking his first voyage on the plane gifted to him by Qatar. “The new jet will only temporarily be in the nation’s service, as Boeing is expected to deliver in 2028 long-delayed planes that will permanently serve as Air Force One. Trump … has said in the past that the Qatar plane would end up in a presidential library.” (Anyone wanna bet some crypto that’s not where the plane ends up?)
“Putin appeared to be making up facts as he went along. No encirclement around Rubtsi (population: 350 ) has been reported by any reliable source in Russia or Ukraine, and there is no river called Stary Oskol in that region. The Russian president’s obsession with the details of the fighting appears to have crossed the line into delusion.” Simon Shuster in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Putin Is Slipping Into Delusion. “Does that mania for war make him any more likely to cut his losses and accept a negotiated peace? Probably not. His interview on Monday illustrated what many in Ukraine and Europe have long concluded about Putin’s state of mind. He has convinced himself that the attritional math of the war favors Russia, and he will continue to press the numerical advantage of his forces regardless of how long the lines for gasoline in Moscow might get.”
+ Long lines for gas are hardly the only costs being paid for this insane invasion. NYT (Gift Article): Troop Casualties in Ukraine War Top 2 Million. “The study, published on Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Russia has borne the heavier toll, with 1.4 million troops killed or wounded since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.”
+ Here’s the story of one of those deaths. The Prom Went On in Kyiv, but Masha’s Date Danced Alone.
“This is a shocking development that should upend all expectations that this court can be trusted to apply the most basic constitutional guarantees when a Republican president seeks to nullify them. If a theory flatly rejected by all serious legal scholars and historians can come one vote away from success, no rights are safe. Everything is on the table.” The Supreme Court’s 5–4 Vote in the Birthright Citizenship Case Is a Scandal.
+ To really understand how extreme (and extremely nuts) the (slim) minority opinions were in this case, I recommend these two segments from Lawrence O’Donnell’s episode on the case. Here’s Laurence Tribe on the law. And Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian David Blight on the history.
“The possibility that artificial intelligence will steal all our jobs has been hyped by industry leaders. It has roused politicians to sound the alarm. It now ranks at or near the top of the public’s concerns about the new technology.” Is it the right thing to be worried about? I’ll have an answer for that question when AI replaces me. Zeynep Tufekci with some interesting takes on the matter in the NYT (Gift Article): The Unstoppable Force of A.I. Hype Is Meeting One Immovable Fact. “Air Canada disabled its chatbots after they mistakenly promised a customer a refund — and the customer sued and won. McDonald’s scuttled the bot taking orders at its drive-throughs after a number of viral videos showed it to be wildly dysfunctional. In one case, the bot mistakenly added hundreds of dollars of chicken nuggets to a customer’s order. These scary — OK, OK, funny — incidents aren’t the result of coding errors. They’re the result of an essential, inescapable fact about the artificial intelligence that has become so common in so many aspects of our daily lives: Large language models are not reasoning machines. They’re plausibility engines.”
250 Ways To Leave Your Govern: “Inevitably, the Trump administration has destroyed the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations. I was 11 in 1976, during the bicentennial, and that July 4, I was at a summer camp in North Carolina. I remember celebratory flag-raising and patriotic songs, as well as sparklers in the evening. At the time, we didn’t think there was a permanent cultural divide between red states and blue states. In retrospect, I’m sure some of my fellow campers came from families with views different from mine. It didn’t matter to our celebration of the bicentennial, mostly because we were 11. But it also wouldn’t have mattered even if we were adults, because everyone knew that the bicentennial was for all of us. The tall ships, the fireworks, the Freedom Train that carried a moon rock around the country—all of these were symbols we shared, no matter which part of America we came from. President Gerald Ford didn’t try to make the events of that year about himself or his base, or his tribe, or his bank account. This year is different, because the White House is inhabited by people who don’t believe in the ‘abstractions’ that we usually celebrate on the Fourth of July. And this affects the rest of us, whether we want it to or not.” Anne Applebaum nails it in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump’s Anti-Patriotic Trap. (I think the best bet is to focus on the local and enjoy your friends and family this Fourth. I’m going to watch the SF fog light up in different colors the same way I do every year. Hopefully, America’s 252nd-and-a-half birthday is going to be the greatest party in history.)
+ Strike Struck: As the Pentagon stays quiet, AP reconstructs a US strike that killed over 100 Iranian children. “In almost any other conflict, these haunting truths would be seared into national memory. Yet more than 120 days since at least one U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there remains no final accounting of what happened.”
+ Deport to a Storm: “The plane carrying 146 Venezuelans deported from the United States arrived at Venezuela’s main airport last Wednesday — just eight hours before the ground began to violently shake. Venezuelan officials welcomed the deportees — 120 men, 19 women and 7 children — and recorded carefully staged videos celebrating their arrival after spending weeks in U.S. detention centers. Most, if not all, were then ferried away from the cameras to a state-run holding facility, where they settled into bunk beds and were told they would be released the next day, after being processed.” Killed by the Venezuelan Quakes Just Hours After Being Deported From U.S.
+ Unnatural Disaster: “Venezuela’s man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one. For 28 years and counting, Venezuela’s rulers have stolen or squandered much of the oil revenue of the most oil-rich country in the world. Oligarchs pocketed the petrodollars of the late-aughts oil boom and left the nation somehow poorer and more indebted. In the hours just before the earthquakes struck, the regime released a total figure for the amount that it owed its creditors: $240 billion. The humanitarian consequences of this wastefulness were well documented before last Wednesday. Now they have acquired a fresh urgency.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Vultures Arrived Before the Rescue Teams. “The lack of preparation is unforgivable. Worse, the regime led by Delcy Rodríguez—under the heavy-handed management of the Trump administration—has taken active steps to make matters worse. The government deployed the military to the disaster areas not to help but to diffuse any expression of public discontent.”
+ Establishing a Trend: First, it was New York. Now it’s Colorado. Politico: Anti-establishment avalanche buries a pair of Colorado Democratic stalwarts.
+ Anthropics Or It Didn’t Happen: “The Trump administration and Anthropic have reached an agreement to restore access to the company’s most recent general-access artificial-intelligence model, resolving a fight that showed how the White House is intervening to address security concerns in the fast-growing industry.”
+ City on a Mission: “Mission Dolores was founded by Spanish missionaries the same year the U.S. declared its independence. It has borne witness to its own version of the American story—not the one you learned in school but one with much to say about what it means to be American.” Esquire: The San Francisco Church That Holds America’s Secrets.
+ A Tough Cell: “Scientists have long dreamed of discovering the alchemy by which chemicals can be turned into life. On Wednesday, a team at the University of Minnesota announced that it had taken a major step toward that vision. Blending together dozens of ingredients, the researchers have synthesized simple cells that feed, grow, reproduce and compete with one another for food. If these cells are not yet fully alive, they have most of the hallmarks of life.” NYT (Gift Article): This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. And It’s Manmade. (Call me when it can distill the news…)
Attention Kmart shoppers: “One customer shared photos of a T-rex balloon she purchased for her child, only to discover something unexpected about the item’s design. ‘Bought this balloon for my daughter’s birthday, and there’s something a little off-putting about the blow hole.'” (Hey, even inflatable dinosaurs deserve some pleasure in this life. But if your T-Rextion lasts more than four hours…)
2026-06-30 20:00:00
Call it a judicial man bites dog story. A 6-3 decision actually went the right way. Even though it should have been 9-0, we’ll take what we can get from this Court. The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” And this time around, six judges agreed that the Constitution means what the Constitution says. “The ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, herself a birthright citizen born to Chinese parents, argued the birthright case in April before the Supreme Court. As she put it, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment deliberately chose to confer automatic citizenship on the child, not the parent, the idea being that ‘in America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean. When you’re born in this country, we’re all American, all the same.'” NPR: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds. It’s nice to know some of those grounds are still above ground.
+ WSJ (Gift Article): “The decision rebuffs Trump’s bid to upend the deep-rooted understanding that virtually everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen. That understanding, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, was enshrined in the Constitution in 1868.”
+ Back to our regularly scheduled 6-3 decisions: “The Supreme Court yet again loosened campaign finance restrictions on Tuesday by striking down limits on how much political parties may raise and spend on candidates. By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court ruled the law, which had been enacted in 1974, violates political parties’ First Amendment rights. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.”
+ SCOTUS “upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, in another setback for transgender people. The court’s six-justice conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution. The court unanimously agreed that barring transgender girls and women also doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026.
“During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised again and again that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Of course he didn’t. We are now more than 1,580 days into this war and it still rages. But here is the irony. Trump’s own actions, none of them meant to help Ukraine, may have brought the end of this war closer than anything that came before … One of his first moves was to choke off American money and weapons. He demanded that Ukraine pay America back for Biden’s aid through a one-sided minerals deal. And he humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the world in that Oval Office meeting, telling him, ‘You don’t have any cards.'” It looked like a disaster at the time. But it turns out that not having Trump on his side may have been just the card Zelensky needed. Bill Browder: Despite his best efforts, Trump may just have won the war for Kyiv. “Once Washington no longer bankrolled Ukraine, Washington could no longer give Ukraine orders. The leash was off. The United States could no longer demand that Ukraine spare targets inside Russia. That single change has altered the course of the war.”
+ For example: Putin Faces Increased Pressure as Moscow Is Again Attacked by Drones.
“Two climbers—an experienced mountaineer and his girlfriend, a novice—set out to take on Austria’s tallest peak in the dead of winter. After the woman was found frozen to death near the summit, a court in Innsbruck had to decide whether the hike was merely a tragedy, or a case of homicide by neglect.” The always excellent William Finnegan in The New Yorker: No Return: “Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?” (Alt link.)
Let’s focus on something about America we can all celebrate. Our food history. “When Thomas Jefferson travels to Paris in 1784, he brings along James Hemings, an enslaved man who has worked at Monticello since childhood. Hemings studies French cooking, and when they return, he cooks at formal events hosted by Jefferson.” What came out of that trip? Mac and Cheese. (Yup, thank you, France!) In the 1810s, we got canned food. In the 1840s, the gold rush brought us something even more valuable: Chinese restaurants. 1880s: Coca-Cola. The 1920s brought us a great invention and equally great “American linguistic yardstick for innovation:” Sliced Bread. Then came Cheetos and McDonald’s. All that said, our winning streak may be over. In 2026, we’re all about suppressing appetites and looksmaxxing. But before you go from hungry to hangry, let’s celebrate. NYT (Gift Article): The Pursuit of Hungriness: 250 Years of American Food Innovation.
Sliding Into Your DMs: Early on, one of my biggest worries about AI was that evil politicians would use it to identify what people wanted to hear, tweak the truth to match those desires, and then deliver targeted, personal messages to manipulate the public. I was a little off the mark. It’s not just the evil ones who are doing it. NYT (Gift Article): How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office. “Behind the scenes, campaigns are using the technology to analyze voter data, craft campaign materials and write custom messages.”
+ Ooh, Aah, Ooh, Awful: “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon.” The White House Considers Granting 250 Pardons for the Nation’s Birthday. (Sometimes, it’s unclear if we’re marking a birthday or a funeral.) Meanwhile, Trump’s July 4 fireworks to start much later and last much longer. And they’ll follow a Trump speech. He can’t even take the Fifth on the Fourth.
+ More Signal Noise: “The identities of nearly all of the group members are visible, revealing even broader use of Signal by top Trump-administration officials than was previously known. The names of the groups are also telling, including one called ‘Iran/Ukraine Planning’ and another labeled ‘State USAID.’ The records raise the possibility that top administration officials failed to follow federal laws that require the preservation of government records.” Hegseth, Rubio, and Caine Had an Auto-Deleting Signal Chat.
+ Assistant (to the) General Manager: “Congress passed the consumer protection law, the No Surprises Act, with wide bipartisan support in 2020. It aimed to prevent unexpected charges for patients treated in the emergency room by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.” Well, it didn’t quite work out as planned. $22,000 Per Hour: Assistants Use a Legislative Loophole to Outearn Surgeons. (Seems like good news for Dwight Schrute.)
+ Millionaire Apparent: The world added nearly a million new millionaires in 2025 — but most people got poorer.
+ Search for Rescues: “Jennifer Raymond waited until the dead of night to make her move. On April 12, the animal welfare advocate pushed through thick brush and cut a hole in her Fortuna neighbor’s fence, trespassing with one goal: to uncover the truth about the animal rescue next door.” It didn’t take much digging. She bought a NorCal Victorian, and then found a mass dog grave next door.
+ Put Some Pep in Your Step: FDA panel on peptides will include experts who promote the unproven chemicals favored by RFK Jr.
+ Gray Area: “Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level … To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as ‘gray beard’ engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.”
Penalty kicks are stressful, stupid, genius, luck, skill, joyous, painful, ridiculous, and ridiculously awesome. They are the human condition. And we’ve already had some crazy ones in the World Cup knockout rounds. So you may be wondering how goalkeepers win penalty shootouts. “It’s not like you’re going, ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.'” (It actually looks like they’re going eeny meeny at most…)
+ The World Cup is getting amazing. The World Cup After Hours with James Corden is a fun watch and makes many of the storylines more accessible for part-time football fans.