Reading archive 2026-06-11

How D.C. lawmakers avoided deep cuts to child care and social services: The outstanding deficits in popular programs have led some advocates and lawmakers to suggest raising taxes on the wealthy — a move opposed by the mayor.

A majority of D.C. residents are unhappy about the city’s direction. We asked them why.: Some of the most common concerns are crime, the cost of living, the economy and concern about federal control.

An obscure race to control the D.C. Democratic Party comes with high stakes and controversy

Oil executives warn White House that gas prices will get worse: Grim predictions add to the problems of a president already facing a sharp rise in inflation.

How Joyce Beatty Saved the Kennedy Center: The Ohio congresswoman tells us why she's hopeful about a judge's ruling that zapped Trump's name from the building—and what she expects to happen next.

Solo dissents are uncommon. Justice Kagan just made her first.: Justice Elena Kagan’s first solo dissent came nearly 16 years after she joined the Supreme Court bench.

Musk’s Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.: The billionaire’s satellite internet service is a lifeline to many, but some users who face higher prices say Starlink has amassed too much power.

Reading archive 2026-06-10

A new wave of anti-immigrant violence hits U.K. as riots convulse Belfast: Attackers torched neighborhoods across Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, after a Sudanese asylum seeker was arrested and accused of stabbing a man.

Restaurants add World Cup service charges, fearing tourists won’t tip: Visitors to U.S. host cities may not know about tipping customs, so operators want to ensure that their workers share in the tournament’s financial benefits.

How to let go of things you don’t use and declutter your life: Hanging on to items that you aren’t actively using contributes to a chaotic existence.

Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All: University of California faculty are in open revolt over the lack of standardized test scores.

Driving in America Is Headlight Hell: Car bulbs don’t have to be this blinding.

Eat More Deer: America is letting good meat go to waste.

Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files: The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.

Reading archive 2026-06-09

I know firsthand why Graham Platner shouldn’t be a U.S. senator: I quit the campaign last fall, disturbed by what I'd learned about the Maine Democratic Senate primary candidate.

The White Identitarians Are Having a Moment: Now that DEI and anti-racism are in retreat, they’re moving on to a more ambitious goal. - "The white identitarians' ultimate goal seems to be the moral and institutional power that comes with victimhood status, which is now anyone's prize in post-woke America. So-called heritage Americans would like their own 'standpoint' to howl from. Whipping up racial consciousness to beget incessant complaint: This is the rule that Trump has campaigned and governed on, that Elon Musk has tapped into with his preposterous grumbling about 'white genocide,' and that Vance has constructed most of his public persona around."

Ukraine Is Not Losing. Russia Is Not Winning.: A momentum shift that changes everything

Why Republicans Aren’t Condemning Trump’s Meet the Press Walkout: Denying the legitimacy of vote-counting has become party doctrine. - "That Democrats carried out a massive criminal conspiracy, leaving no trace of concrete evidence behind, to spare the incumbent mayor from online ads is the kind of conspiracy theory that no sane figure would touch. And for a period of time, many Republicans resisted these kinds of absurdities. But Trump has driven most of those dissidents out of the party, and has either drawn the remainder to his side through the gravitational force of partisanship or intimidated them into silence."

Reading archive 2026-06-08

Trump’s plan for golf course threatens pillar of D.C. cycling culture: For more than three decades, an eclectic mix of bikers has been gathering daily for the “Noon Ride.” Now they worry it could end.

Yet More Damning Revelations About Graham Platner: Voters may be questioning the Senate candidate’s claims that he is a changed man.

Maine Has a Graham Platner Problem: Are we really going to do this again?

Reading archive 2026-06-07

Democrats’ midterm ‘blue wave’ dreams face an icy challenge: Negative partisanship rules as voters mildly like their own party but detest the opposition.

Flesh-eating screwworm found in Texas, sparking fears for U.S. cattle: The parasite was found in a 3-week-old calf decades after it was largely eradicated in the U.S. Authorities said the risk to humans is low.

The four Republicans who broke with Trump on Iran and now face his wrath: There are still hurdles before Congress could force the president to end hostilities, but the House resolution reflects lawmakers' growing impatience, including within Trump's own party.

Archbishop removes D.C. priest as exorcist for saying UFOs are demons: Monsignor Stephen Rossetti had been an archdiocesan exorcist in Washington for nearly two decades.

China’s Economy Is Taking Everyone Down: American and Chinese workers are paying a high price for all the cheap goods.

Political dynasties carry new baggage as voters vilify the elite: Family names have long given candidates a boost. In the era of No Kings, they can also make for an easy attack.

The Left Needs to Rediscover Its Patriotism: A left that rejects a hopeful, empathetic love of the United States can never win the country to its side.

The Real Problem With the Democrats’ Ground Game: Democratic organizers are hesitant to admit when get-out-the-vote efforts don’t work. One group is trying to change that.

Red Tape Isn’t the Only Reason America Can’t Build: The failure to deploy rural broadband has become synonymous with excessive bureaucracy. The real story is more complicated. - "The lesson of rural broadband is that some government failures are due not to procedural excess, but to giving up on regulatory tools that might antagonize Big Business. ... It's tempting to think that America can learn how to build again without having to wage difficult battles against powerful corporate interests, simply by eliminating bureaucratic red tape. But if efficient building were really so easy, we'd already be doing it."

The FBI’s Leaders ‘Have No Idea What They’re Doing’: A casualty of Trump’s purge speaks out.

Can San Francisco Be Saved?: Introducing No Easy Fix, a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic, about the widespread addiction and homelessness that threaten the city’s future

Why South Park Did an About-Face on Mocking Trump: The show’s creators once said they had nothing more to say about the president. What changed their minds?

Reading archive 2026-06-05

A Shocking Betrayal of Black Americans - "The attack on democracy and Black political power in the South was made possible by justices in Washington, a president from Queens and a Democratic Party that has so far failed to stop them." ed. note: fuck you

As scandals follow Graham Platner, Democrats are losing patience: The Maine race is considered crucial to Democrats’ hopes of flipping the Senate, but Platner’s web of controversies is overshadowing other issues.

A surging liberal gives Democrats anxiety over Senate chances: Abdul El-Sayed, who is leading in many polls, is unapologetically progressive. Democratic leaders fear he could cost the party in November.

Reading archive 2026-06-03

The National Debt’s Unforgiving Math: If you’re not worried about this country’s fiscal outlook, you’re not paying attention.

Condemning a Nazi Tattoo Shouldn’t Be This Hard: Why aren’t more Democrats calling out Graham Platner? - "Platner has a unique personal story, having reinvented himself from high-born prep-school student to blue-collar oyster farmer, and from willing Marine who talked about wanting to go to war to kill people (and who later worked for a military contractor) to a victim of Collins's vote to authorize the Iraq War. Although Platner is by no means the first politician to reshape his personal narrative during a campaign, he is likely the first to attempt an innocent explanation for having had, for 18 years, a tattoo of a Totenkopf, the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS - the most dedicated and fanatical component of the Third Reich, whose members were the architects and executioners of the Final Solution."

The Spanish Exception: The country’s leaders avoided a populist backlash by engineering an economic boom. Now the boom is creating problems of its own. - "The new arrivals injected life into the Spanish economy. By filling labor shortages, they allowed existing businesses to expand to serve more customers, which, in turn, created the need for even more workers. The migrants were also, of course, consumers, who bought goods and services. Many also started their own businesses. Rather than harming native-born workers, the immigration surge seems to have helped them. The unemployment rate for native-born Spaniards has plummeted while incomes have risen by double digits; the poorest workers experienced the largest increase. A report from the Bank of Spain estimates that a quarter of the rise in the country's per capita GDP from 2022 to 2024 could be attributed to immigrants. "I've been writing about Spain for 50 years at this point, and I've never seen its economy perform quite like this," William Chislett, a senior fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute, in Madrid, told me. 'And there's little doubt in my mind that immigration is the most important factor.'" [ed. note: but housing costs skyrocketed]

D.C. Progressives’ Great Socialist Hope: The bitter contest for Washington’s mayor has replicated the Democrats’ central ideological struggle. - "Her second pledge is to build 72,000 homes in five years. While Lewis George is pledging to liberalize zoning laws and reduce permitting times - a nod to the yes-in-my-backyard urbanism that has gained force among wonky D.C. Democrats - her pledge would be extraordinarily difficult for private developers to deliver amid the deep recession that the D.C. housing market is in. House prices peaked in May 2021. Since then, they have fallen 26 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, making investments in new-home construction less likely to pay off. 

"'A couple of years from now, we're looking at almost no housing production going forward,' Emilia Calma, the director of housing studies at the D.C. Policy Center, told me. Calma attributed the problem to high interest rates, high rates of rent nonpayment, and an extremely slow eviction process. D.C. has also just come off an incredible construction boom: From 2019 to 2026, the District added 45,000 new homes. As a result, real rental prices dropped by nearly 11 percent (even as rents rose across the country). Already discouraged developers will not exactly be lured back by the new tenant protections and expanded rent-stabilization laws that Lewis George is proposing."

Democrats Must Learn to Talk Sports: Politicians need as much attention as possible, as frequently as possible, while seeming as relatable as possible. A cheat code exists to hit all three objectives. - "Indeed, the sports world offers fertile terrain for class politics. Progressive Democrats have been trying, with limited success, to convince Americans that billionaires are their true enemy. Well, guess who loves to hate billionaires: aggrieved sports fans. Why not take a break from complaining that billionaires don't pay their fair share of income taxes to focus instead on team owners' obsession with avoiding the luxury tax by trading away their best players? Perhaps AOC could earn some support in Staten Island if she hammered Hal Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, for letting Juan Soto go to the crosstown Mets to save on his tax bill."

The Ordinary Miracle of Existing: Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience. - "Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to our jobs, move through our routines, worry about deadlines, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous. Because we experience that miracle every day, we treat it as ordinary, even guaranteed, mostly unnoticed at all. We postpone joy, assuming there will always be more time. We don't see the beauty in small moments. We simply go about the business of life, without taking a second to notice life itself. In making this comment, I am aware that in the time-driven, frantic pace of our world today, many people do not have the luxury of pausing to take stock of such moments."