Reading archive 2025-10-02

Trump Isn’t Interested in Competing With China: To see how the president is losing ground to Beijing, consider his disastrous relationship with India. - "India is not the only Asian partner the Trump administration has alienated. ICE agents arrested more than 300 South Koreans who had entered the United States legally and were building a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia. The move generated outrage in Seoul. On the same day, Trump imposed a punitive investment deal on Japan that drew the ire of Japanese officials and business leaders."

The Running Mate Kamala Harris Didn’t Dare Choose: “I love Pete,” she writes in her new book. But picking a gay man would have been too risky.

It’s Fun to Be a Board-Game Sociopath: What can I say? I love to betray my friends. - "For example, if I were to offer aspiring Werewolf champions one piece of advice: When caught in a lie, do not admit to it. Rather, you must double down and commit to your lie even harder, so that the other players are forced to choose sides between you and your accuser."

Trump’s Campaign of Vengeance Is Already Backfiring As the president knows too well, efforts to censor or convict foes can often make them more popular.

Moscow Can’t Stop the Music: The Kremlin is trying to suppress songs that defy Putin’s rule. It isn’t working.

The 4th Amendment will no longer protect you - "Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rendered obsolete the 4th Amendment’s prohibition on suspicionless seizures by the police. When the court stayed the district court’s decision in Noem vs. Vasquez Perdomo, it green-lighted an era of policing in which people can be stopped and seized for little more than how they look, the job they work or the language they speak."

Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause :By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy.

Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, and the Cost of Civility-Theater Liberalism: “Talking across divides” is laudable—until it becomes a license to launder antidemocratic and dehumanizing ideas. - "This outrage-packaged-for-attention market that incentivizes mockery and monetizes contempt is the roadshow that made Charlie Kirk famous—an old playbook Dinesh D’Souza and David Horowitz ran before him, now optimized for an algorithmic age: a ritualized antagonism, audience participation as culture-war cosplay, the triumphant edit pushed out to millions before the house lights are up. Strip away the self-flattery of a university crowd congratulating itself on its open-mindedness, and the illusion that a staged confrontation with a celebrity provocateur constitutes pedagogy, and what remains is a reel factory masquerading as a public forum."

Ophelia Disappeared: A Wall Street Analyst and a Deadly Shootout: The group was passionately vegan, mostly transgender and highly educated. Seven of them are now in jail. This is the story of one who did not survive.

Russian gasoline production buckles under Ukrainian drone strikes: In annexed Crimea, drivers are limited to five gallons of gas at the pump, and all Russians face higher taxes and less social spending as the war drags on.

Senior government officials privately warn against firings during shutdown: The Trump administration has telegraphed that mass firings are coming, but officials have cautioned that such moves could violate appropriations law.

How Trump’s 2020 election falsehoods are shaping a marquee Georgia race: Warring factions at odds over his failed effort to overturn the outcome are renewing their rivalries in a major midterm contest.

Why do women outlive men? A study of 1,176 species points to an answer.: Let’s talk about sex chromosomes, baby. - "The 'heterogametic sex hypothesis' holds that if something goes haywire with a gene on one of a woman’s X chromosomes, her cells have a spare to rely on. But men, with only a single X chromosome, have no such reinforcements. The same sort of problem may happen with a male’s unpaired Y chromosome."

Democrats are putting money into solidly red Mississippi. Here’s why.: The DNC is investing in low-profile state races there as the South is on track to wield more power in future elections. Will it work?