Reading archive 2026-01-22

Jasmine Crockett is daring Democrats to rethink electability. Some aren’t sold. ‘I get that I’m not a traditional candidate. And that’s exactly why I’m going to win,’ the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas said.

How to bike safely through the dark winter months: Buy lights, wear reflective clothing and pay attention to your tires while riding in the cold, experts say

This obsession has held Iran back for a half-century: Time and again, idealism untethered from reality has brought ruin to Iran.

The Five Farcical Principles of the ‘CBS Evening News’: Tony Dokoupil and Bari Weiss’s new broadcast has been one debacle after another. Let’s try to make sense of it all, with or without whiskey. - "[Bari Weiss] isn’t a conservative! She just independently thinks her way to conservative conclusions over and over again. If you’re a rich white man convinced that pronouns and trans athletes are the greatest threats facing America today, Weiss is there to assure you not just that you’re right, but also that your bile is proof of your intellectual fearlessness."

‘Blood in the water’: Bari Weiss’s chaotic first three months in charge of CBS News: Weiss is embroiled in her first major controversy as editor in chief as her handpicked anchor takes evening news show

Inside Tony Dokoupil’s chaotic first week as the CBS Evening News anchor

The Old World Order is Dead Unipolarity was given, not taken - "A quieter camp pointed out that the United States was generally doing a lot—not all it could, but a lot—to make its leadership attractive to the other major powers: providing security, yes, but also shouldering a good share of global burdens in many fields while also linking its economy and society to the rest of the world. This approach, a few observers noted, managed to satisfy the range of potential powers who could actually undermine the United States and its order. One prominent theory noted that since the Second World War, the United States had engaged in practices of self-binding—generally asking for less than it could have taken and giving more than it needed to in order to make its leadership more attractive to others than the alternatives open to its rivals. For this group, there was an ongoing process of ratifying the U.S.-led order that relied on Washington realizing that its power conferred influence but its right to rule relied on the acquiescence of (most) other leading powers.

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"The unipolar world, what was left of it, has died—of suicide, not murder. As I wrote several years ago, 'the most successful blow to American primacy came not from external balancing, as realists long predicted, but from the free choice of American voters.' Twice, now, in fact."

A New Memoir Blasts Kamala Harris for Being Offensive, Ideologically Obsessed: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro discusses the strange questions he received during his vice-presidential vetting.

The Great Crime Decline Is Happening: All Across the Country Even cities with understaffed police departments have made record gains. - "But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities-including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana."