Reading archive 2026-09-17

At trial, a tale of two Trayon Whites emerges: Undercover videos show the Ward 8 councilmember both deeply involved in the community and taking wads of cash from a businessman.

Former youth minister indicted on sex abuse charges after FBI investigation: Jeff Taylor, 66, worked at the Falls Church Episcopal in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Judge says Trump’s board may not demolish Kennedy Center without warning: Rep. Joyce Beatty asked a federal judge to clarify that the center cannot be torn down after images surfaced of the president reviewing what appeared to be a printout related to the institution.

Just the FAQs: A Deep Dive on China’s Most Secretive Hydropower Project: Going deep on the Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project in eastern Tibet

Reading archive 2023-09-16

Everyone Loves to Claim Grindr Goes Down at Republican Conventions. But Is It True?: We investigate the claims circulating on social media about the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas.

NHL star Alexander Ovechkin campaigns for pro-Putin party in new ad: Russia this weekend holds its first parliamentary elections since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Marlon James may have written the novel of the century. One CD set him on that path.: James didn’t know he was a writer. Then he heard an Icelandic electro-pop queen’s third album.

FBI director faces sharp questions from senators about his firing of agents: Kash Patel defends his numerous dismissals at the FBI, saying he is fighting political weaponization at the bureau.

Senate control may hinge on whether this Democrat can win back voters drawn to Trump: Sherrod Brown is seeking to return to the chamber two years after losing his seat when many blue-collar voters embraced Donald Trump.

Trump administration moving ahead with signs outside Smithsonian museum: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said about a dozen signs would be installed outside the National Museum of American History warning of curators’ “personal viewpoints.”

Iran’s Hormuz leverage is dwindling: The longer the passage remains disrupted, the more states will spend to reduce their dependence on it.

Battle with Trump is sending Canada into the arms of the E.U.: The head of the E.U.’s executive branch is proposing “associate membership” for Canada, as Ottawa also pursues new trade deals with China.

Gas prices are about to take a big jump, analysts say, with the worst still to come: The forecast of economic impacts beyond November’s midterms contrast with the Trump administration’s optimistic messaging.

Fed raises interest rates by quarter point to tackle inflation: The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter a percentage point on Wednesday to try to tame inflation, raising the borrowing cost on a variety of business and consumer loans.

Reading archive 2026-09-15

University of Texas responds after GOP statewide candidate’s racist posts: The university said it is “proud to celebrate” all its students after posts by Bo French, GOP nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, that were condemned by members of both parties.

Vance’s presence in Kansas signals how spooked Republicans are as map tilts in Democrats’ favor: The vice president is campaigning in the state on Monday as Sen. Roger Marshall (R) faces a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton.

David Petraeus: The race to make Putin’s aggression unaffordable: The Ukrainian theory of victory: Demonstrate military genius on an industrial scale and show Russia that time isn’t on its side.

ICE is quietly firing new hires. For one recruit, it was devastating.: Joseph Moore killed himself after learning ICE was going to fire him. Investigators had identified issues in his past that ex-officials say should have blocked his hiring.

Trump’s planned sale of controversial bombs to Israel is largest in years: The pending transfer of the 2,000-pound munition, involved in scores of incidents resulting in civilian casualties, sets up a potential litmus test for Democrats. - "Though described as a sale, the transaction is financed through a mechanism known as Foreign Military Financing, in which the United States provides the money that Israel uses to buy the weapons."

Sarah Longwell’s Playbook for Defeating MAGA: The Bulwark publisher and author of How to Eat an Elephant on what voters want to hear - "A longtime Republican, Longwell now says, 'The Republican Party has to be defeated, and I think MAGA specifically, I want to defeat it and then salt the Earth with its ashes.'"

Russia’s Real Strategy in Europe: Moscow doesn’t want a conventional war, but it is busy fighting a hybrid one.

What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Xi: The Chinese leader cares very little about personal rapport. - "This expectation has no observable foundation in Xi's 14-year rule. Even by the standards of authoritarian rulers, such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, Xi has shown himself to be unsentimental about personal relationships-including those with members of his own inner circle, to say nothing of the leader of China's principal geopolitical rival. Xi is very different from Putin in this regard. Whereas Putin takes extravagant risks on the international stage but is loath to hold his associates accountable for incompetence, Xi is just the opposite. He is calculating and measured in international politics but pitiless in jettisoning even longtime associates for perceived malfeasance.

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"Trump's desire to parlay personal charisma into deals may be one of his least idiosyncratic qualities. In fact, there is something about the impulse that is quintessentially American. Even-perhaps especially-for a Beltway outsider, ascending the American political ladder requires a tremendous amount of glad-handing and personal magnetism, if not charm. Those who reach its pinnacle often assume that the same qualities will serve them on the international stage. Joe Biden rose through the Senate, which required cordiality and the ability to strike deals with rivals. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were known for their affability. Overbearing friendliness might even be described as our national affect. 

"By contrast, Xi grew up in a system that punished openness and personal dynamism. His father's boss and mentor, the reformer Hu Yaobang, whose death in 1989 sparked the protests in Tiananmen Square, was known for his outspokenness, which played a crucial role in his political demise. Hu's ouster extinguished freewheeling politicking from the ranks of China's leadership ever after."

The Biggest Obstacle to Universal Child Care: Babies: Infant care is incredibly expensive to provide. But one solution could reduce the burden on both states and parents.

Reading archive 2026-09-14

Dead malls dot America. Why not get rid of them?: Across the country, dead malls remain locked up by decades-old agreements with former anchor tenants.

GOP secretaries of state ask Supreme Court to block Trump mail-in ballot rule: The proposed change would significantly increase the likelihood of midterm election issues, they warned. - "The officials in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas warned in an amicus curiae letter to the Supreme Court on Wednesday that late implementation of the rule could disrupt the midterms."

Facing historic White House pressure, Smithsonian tells the history of 9/11: Twenty-five years after the attacks, the Smithsonian is preserving the objects and memories of Sept. 11, 2001 for generations who weren’t there — as the White House challenges how it tells American history.

Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

Retail Vacancies Downtown Are Still High, and Some Landlords Are to Blame: A quarter of downtown retail space sits empty, and some landlords are keeping it that way to forgo paying for upgrades or to avoid lowering property value. - "Leinberger believes the biggest obstacle for downtown D.C. is that it has too much office space, and not enough other offerings. About 85% of real estate downtown is office space, with only 7.5% for apartments or condos and 7.5% for entertainment, such as theaters, museums and music venues, according to a report he did with commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. He said the optimal environment for economic development is having a healthy blend of 'work, play and live.'

...

"For some landlords, an empty storefront isn't neglect, but a symptom of a loan condition, Price said. Many building owners are locked into agreements with their lenders that bar them from signing a lease below a certain rent, or from letting a building's income fall under a set threshold. Renting the space out at a discount, in other words, could put them in violation of their own loan or impact its overall market value."

Reading archive 2026-09-11

102 MINUTES: Last Words at the Trade Center; Fighting to Live as the Towers Die

Reading archive 2026-09-09

In cod we trust As Northern cod stocks rebound, Newfoundlanders are expressing cautious optimism over a fish they nearly lost - "This year, inshore harvesters were allocated 70 per cent of the quota, while offshore harvesters were allocated 20 per cent — up 10 per cent from the 2025 quota. Indigenous groups were allocated 10 per cent. 

"Offshore harvesters use much larger vessels than inshore boats, enabling them to navigate rough winter waters far from the coast. They also use a trawl system that has been heavily criticized by scientists and environmentalists, due to its indiscriminate catching of unintended species and destruction of the ocean floor."

Authorities decline to prosecute woman who made false report against Buttigieg: The accuser has a history of alcohol abuse, hallucinations and delusional thinking, according to an Indiana prosecutor who determined she was not able to form criminal intent.

Health care, potholes, rats: D.C.’s presumptive mayor gets an earful from her city: On her “listening tour,” Janeese Lewis George reminds voters she is still on the ballot in November.

Honoring 9/11 heroes, Trump repeats disputed account of his role in recovery: Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Welles Crowther, who saved an estimated 18 people before dying in the World Trade Center.

Ukraine’s way of fighting war can’t match what’s coming: Russia is shifting its strategy to erase Kyiv’s battlefield advantages.

Reading archive 2026-09-08

Smithsonian chief to retire as Trump fights to reshape the institution: Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s first Black secretary, said President Donald Trump’s pressure played no role in his decision and vowed to defend the institution’s independence until he leaves.

Citing ‘ethnic cleansing,’ U.K. bars imports from Israeli West Bank settlements: Numerous other European countries immediately pledged support for the effort, which prompted warnings from the United States. - "In a joint statement Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden framed the trade ban and sanctions as a bid to salvage hopes for a two-state solution, with Israel and a Palestinian state as autonomous neighbors. While acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas fighters from Gaza, they called for immediate action by Israeli officials to control settler violence in the West Bank."

The War for the Rio Grande - "Before the river makes it even twenty miles from its headwaters, it’s pooled behind an earthen dam, into the Rio Grande Reservoir. This reservoir, like all the others along the river, was built for agriculture; in this case, it allowed growers in Colorado to plant thousands of hectares of alfalfa, hay, and potatoes. Much of the alfalfa harvested in the U.S. is shipped overseas to support massive cattle herds in countries including Japan and Saudi Arabia.

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"Hydrologists say rivers have memory—when they’re full, they stay full; once they’re dry, they stay dry. The same is true of reservoirs. When bodies of water diminish, the lack of cool depths accelerates rates of evaporation, and salts and sediment build up.

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"The consensus among growers in Texas was that Mexico was the true villain. Over the past three decades, agricultural water use has decreased in every American state that the Rio Grande touches. There’s one place where it has gone up.

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"Yet he also knew there was plenty of blame to go around. In 2024 he and other lobbyists pushed the federal government to complete a study of tributary health on the American side of the border, where Texas rivers like the Pecos and Devils empty into the Rio Grande. Preliminary data from the study found that the amount of water flowing into Amistad and Falcon from U.S. sources had collapsed by a stunning 33 percent."

Mexico says US agents killed in crash weren't permitted to operate there [ed. note: from April]

Oil executives just accidentally exposed the industry’s greatest weakness: To keep drilling, Big Oil needs permission to dump treated fracking wastewater into rivers and onto cropland. We don’t have to give it to them. - "Republican state Senator Tan Parker was even more blunt. If they didn’t approve permits to dump treated fracking wastewater onto crops and into rivers, he said, 'we’re going to find ourselves in two or three years with a gun to our head.' 

"Without meaning to, Parker had just told his opponents exactly where to apply pressure."

Man Pretends to Hallucinate in Job Interview With an AI Bot, Causing It to Go Haywire: "It sounds like you're looking for a position where you can really lean into those raccoon protocols, and the plumes of gauze."

'It allows workers to experiment with the same logic their employers have been applying to them' — developers reportedly lost their jobs to an ‘AI Transformation’, so they built an AI that can replace the CEO: Fired developers turned management’s favorite cost-cutting argument against the people at the top

Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?: You see a mushroom in a forest, take a photo, and pass it to an AI chat.

Why Doesn’t the US Tax Its Big Corporations More?: The Myth of “Global Tax Competitiveness” - "Corporate tax is not just a business cost to be minimized but a necessity for funding the essential public goods that are the prerequisite of an attractive investment climate."

The IRS slashed its staff. One result? More taxes going uncollected

As Canada’s countertariffs kick in, Trump’s escalating threats draw political rebuke: Canadian countertariffs on $20 billion worth of U.S. imports came into effect Tuesday, as Bombardier said it valued its partnership with American companies.

As Social Security fund runs dry, some Republicans say it’s time to raise taxes: Raising the payroll tax is gaining traction as a fix — even in the anti-tax GOP — to fend off deep cuts in retirement benefits.

What the Floods Say About Xi Jinping: China’s leader behaves more like an emperor than a man of the people.

The DSA’s Problem Isn’t ‘Media Training’: Authoritarian extremists are speaking for American socialists, and a lot of people don’t like what they say. - "The idea that the DSA's troubles on prime-time television are a technical matter solvable by the right training is surely comforting, but it is also wrong. The group has a bigger problem: It is led by unpractical extremists whose views are a far cry from those that its electorally successful figures, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, espouse. 

"This disconnect is partly explained by a sharp division within the DSA. One wing engages in mass politics and includes AOC, Mamdani, and other socialists committed to democratic principles. The other wing is sectarian and extremist: It evinces little commitment to democracy and includes open admirers of Hamas, the Iranian regime, and historical dictators such as Mao Zedong. If the interviews with the DSA's co-chairs were embarrassing, that's a result not of a lackluster media performance but of the actual positions the group has embraced.

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"This pro-left-authoritarian orientation explains why DSA electoral observers shamefully reported no fraud when they were dispatched to monitor the electoral sham organized by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2024. Those results were so bogus that even the left-wing governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay couldn't accept them. Yet at a DSA session on the subject, a pro-Maduro organization's assessment that Venezuela's electoral system was 'one of the very best in the world' was presented as fact, as was the false claim that Venezuela's main opposition candidates were 'fascist.'"