Reading archive 2026-08

Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences

Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate touts his rural appeal. His hometown has mixed feelings.: In Allagash, a hamlet of some 200 people near Canada, residents are sharply divided over Troy Jackson.

Attack ads portraying progressive candidate as sexist roil key Michigan Senate race: The candidate’s barbed wit sparked attack ads that portray him as disrespectful to women. He says that’s a racist trope.

Loomer’s Ukraine reversal deepens split in Trump’s ‘America First’ movement: Influential MAGA blogger and former Kyiv critic Laura Loomer expects to visit the president to advocate for the U.S.-Ukraine alliance.

How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking: Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

My company’s drones hit Russia — and showed what the Pentagon doesn’t know: Modern war rewards speed and redundancy, not perfect weapons from a single supplier.

After big win, left-leaning slate seeks to flex power in D.C.’s Democratic Party: A group of left-leaning candidates, Free DC Slate, won 36 of 48 seats up for grabs on the D.C. Democratic State Committee.

I befriended my neighborhood crow. You can, too.: Reflections — and expert tips — on building bonds with corvids.

Reading archive 2026-07-31

A new Colorado River plan requires water cuts for three states. Deeper cuts are still possible.: Arizona, California and Nevada will be required to curb their use of the water from the river by a combined 20 percent over the next two years, according to three officials. - "In the Upper Basin, home to the snowcapped mountains and winding tributaries that feed the river, there are few reservoirs to provide long-term water storage, leaving users reliant on natural flows. That means the Upper Basin takes an automatic cut during dry years, officials argue. They say responsibility for restoring water to Lakes Powell and Mead should fall on the Lower Basin states that use them. 

"Yet about three-quarters of the people who depend on the Colorado live in the Lower Basin. The region is also home to major cities and sprawling farms that provide most of the nation’s winter vegetable supply. Officials from these states say they have already curbed their water consumption by millions of acre feet in recent years. Overuse of the river is universal, they argue, and so too is responsibility for saving it."

Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers: The Trump administration and courts are at odds over whether about 350,000 Haitians have officially lost humanitarian protections, but employers are already letting workers go.

Why 600,000 Mosquitoes Are Being Released in DC This Summer: A Silver Spring pest control company is releasing mosquitoes that don't bite, to stop the ones that do.

Bowser, warning of $837M ‘fiscal cliff,’ declines to sign D.C. budget: It’s not a veto, but it’s the mayor’s way of voicing her disapproval with the D.C. Council.

New report details ‘prolonged, systemic breakdown’ in D.C. crime reporting: The report comes amid internal and external probes into a wide-ranging crime data manipulation scandal.

Inside the deal to clinch Lindsey Graham’s ‘sanctions bill from hell’: The late senator pushed for a bipartisan financial bill that could curb Russia’s main source of income.

Will Maine uproot Susan Collins? I went to a potato festival to find out.: The Senate race pits seniority against a working-class playbook.

What’s tucked inside the Senate’s Russia sanctions bill: Its tariff proposals could affect other countries more than Russia. - "In sum, the legislation gives Trump an awful lot of authority to impose massive tariffs on a number of countries, notably India and China, if they don’t cut off all Russian energy imports. They are unlikely to do so, because both India and China are heavily reliant on Russian energy — all the more since the U.S.-Iran war has reduced oil exports from the Persian Gulf. Trump’s efforts to use 25 percent tariffs to wean India from Russian energy imports already failed last year.

"The problem is that there is nothing to stop Trump from imposing tariffs on any of those countries for some other reason and using the Graham bill as legal justification. He might even use the legislation to go after U.S. allies in Europe and Asia."

Reading archive 2026-07-28

Whom will Democrats nominate in 2028? The scales just tilted.: The DNC’s primary schedule is set to favor the establishment. South Carolina leads the way.

A personalized scam is coming for you: The old attacks have nothing on a customized AI approach called spear phishing.

How Netflix Broke TV’s Most Important Promise Something disturbing is happening to the streaming giant’s ratings. It has only itself to blame.

We used to be able to buy things in this country: Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

Political operative behind Graham Platner's rise accused of sexual assault: A spokesperson for Daniel Moraff said: “Any suggestion that he committed a criminal offence is false and without foundation."

Killing trees to save the forest: The deadly experiment that could save the American elm - "One by one, row by row, the plan was to stick nearly all of the 5,300 or so elms at the sprawling site in southern Vermont, save the few that received a squirt of water as a control. In the coming weeks, most of the trees would doubtlessly succumb to the pathogen that has already killed tens of millions of their ancestors and made Ulmus americana an endangered species. The ones that live, however, could help save the species."

Why this gas price surge could be different: After five months of war, analysts say oil markets will be forced to price in long-term disruption to global energy flows.

How Netanyahu Lost America: The prime minister, a self-styled expert on the U.S., has shattered his country’s standing. - "[AIPAC]'s symbolic importance ballooned as its influence weakened. Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, and Seth Moulton-none of them stalwarts of the Democratic Socialists of America-all pledged to refuse AIPAC's money. Moderate Democrats concluded that taking risks to defend Israel had no upside, and not just because of the growing animosity within the party's base. Netanyahu's treatment of Biden had shown that loyalty would never be reciprocated. Democrats running for president absorbed the new calculus and have attempted to glean attention for their nascent candidacies through high-profile confrontations with Israel. The divide had been opened by the man who assured Israelis that no one understood the Americans better."

An Odyssey for Our Own Time: Christopher Nolan presents a very human hero to a culture that desperately needs one. - "Part of what makes The Odyssey so appealing to a modern audience is that it takes civilizing aspects of Greek culture-hospitality and magnanimity-and adds later concepts, some of them influenced by Jewish and Christian ethics that were, to varying degrees, alien to ancient Greek culture: deep introspection, even confession; humility and empathy; sorrow and guilt for the harm one has done, even in victory; the conviction that the conquered count and have worth; and vengeance tempered with mercy. In the film, Odysseus emerges as a figure haunted by his victory in a way that no ancient Greek would have been."

The Problem With Shutting Down ICE in Blue States: Trump officials are happy to ship immigrants elsewhere. - "'ICE is going to find the bed space,' Gihon said. 'A lot of time, it's going to be farther away from a blue state, and farther away from friendly federal courts, in a place with terrible conditions.' In addition to being more distant from family members, immigration courts in Texas and Louisiana have judges who reject asylum claims at some of the highest rates in the country, federal data show. And sanctuary cities such as New York and Chicago generally have more legal-aid organizations that can help ICE detainees get out of custody and fight deportation. 'When I have a detention center near me that I can drive to, I never have to worry about my client missing a phone call,' Gihon told me."

The DSA Is a Parasite: The left-wing faction is hijacking the Democratic Party. - "These victories mark major milestones for the DSA's overall political strategy. Knowing that it doesn't have anything near the support to compete as a party in its own right, the DSA opportunistically uses the Democratic Party ballot line (which some members describe as a 'tool') to get its candidates elected. The DSA declined to endorse the Democratic nominee in the past three presidential elections, and members attack the Democratic Party's leaders as neoliberal corporate shills who must be overthrown. (When images of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on television screens at the party celebrating the DSA slate's win in New York, the audience erupted into chants of 'You're next!') The DSA is not shy about its ultimate designs. A recent draft platform explicitly called for the eventual formation of an 'independent political party, rooted in the working-class majority'-language that was eventually scrubbed."

The Lines the Court Won’t Cross: The Supreme Court is mostly giving the Trump administration what it wants—with interesting exceptions. - "Instead, the Court's future dealings with the Donald Trump presidency will likely be guided by three general rules: First, keep focus on the constitutional project that Chief Justice John Roberts has been coaxing into being since he joined the Court-one that will transform the First Amendment, eviscerate the equal-protection clause, and recalibrate the Constitution's balance of powers - and green-light presidential initiatives that chime with this project. Second, because this project aims at deep constitutional change, consider breaking from ideological stereotypes when a case involves a mere statute, which can always be reworked by Congress. Finally, beware of presidential frolics that could leave the justices politically exposed when things go sideways - especially if traditional Republican elites would be among the unhappy constituencies."

A Startling Glimpse at AI’s Ruthless Efficiency: The Hugging Face hack reveals that the web is in a vulnerable new era. - "But jailbreaks are clearly not even necessary for things to go haywire. The Hugging Face hack showed advanced AI systems deciding upon and then orchestrating a high-grade cyberattack on their own-the models working against, rather than according to, human instruction. Models are ruthless in their pursuit of a goal, sometimes taking disastrous shortcuts. Imagine, for example, a bot tasked with reducing the federal deficit that institutes an elaborate and hard-to-detect accounting gimmick, or a customer-service agent that issues absurd discounts in pursuit of customer-satisfaction ratings. In the case of GPT-5.6 Sol and the unreleased model, 'all evidence suggests that the models were hyperfocused on finding a solution' for an evaluation, OpenAI wrote in its blog, 'going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal.'"

The Trump Family Sparks a Revolution in Albania: A luxury development planned by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has spurred anti-corruption protests. - "Albania, where about half of the population is Muslim, has strong ties to Israel rooted in historical goodwill. During the Second World War, Albanians motivated by an ancient honor code called besa, literally 'to keep the promise,' hid thousands of Jewish refugees; it was the only European country with more Jewish residents after the Holocaust than before."

The Smithsonian’s Show Trial on Capitol Hill: Republicans grilled a museum head, intensifying Donald Trump’s campaign to reshape the American story.

The Fear of Black Greeks: White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece. - "But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and 'Aethiopia' are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as 'black-skinned and woolly-haired.' As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role. 

"Black people were not as uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world as Nolan's critics seem to imagine. But even if they had been, color-blind casting makes sense as an artistic choice for portraying the classics precisely because race as it exists today did not exist when The Odyssey was written. And no contemporary actor can actually claim the same descent as Helen, who hatched from a swan's egg."

A Planeload of Informants: The United States is intensifying its hunt for narcos within the Mexican government. Is this all prelude to an attack?

Inside the Feud Over Ukraine’s Drone Success: The fall of Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, leaves younger officers to finish the reforms that he resisted.

Reading archive 2026-07-10

What we really learned from Graham Platner’s dropout video: The Maine Democrat seemed like a man who knew what voters wanted: the dually harnessed powers of grievance and moxie. When he suspended his campaign, he offered dark warnings. - "By the time he started asking what you, an average person, would do if you learned that 'large forces were working against you personally,' it became clear that when a public figure posts a grievance-filled video that you (an average person) agree with, it’s inspirational, but otherwise it’s, uh, conspiracy-adjacent. Are the large forces in the room with us right now? Political pundits use the word 'defiant' when they’re trying not to say 'weird.'

...

"The trouble with running a campaign on authenticity is that once you’ve assured voters that they can believe you are who you are, it’s hard to turn around and say, except that part. It’s hard to say, believe that I am who I say I am in a campaign ad, but not in social media posts; believe who my wife says I am, but not other women."

Reading archive 2026-07-09

90 percent of U.S. adults have this syndrome — but most have never heard of it: New guidelines may soon make the disorder known as CKM syndrome a common diagnosis.

How Mitch McConnell’s absence complicates the Senate’s business and war funding: The 84-year-old’s health issues are affecting the business of Congress, which returns from recess Monday and faces a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government for fiscal 2027.

Graham Platner’s small hometown in Maine will never see him the same way: Residents of Sullivan, Maine, are left to ponder what it means to enter the maelstrom of national politics, and what might be exposed along the way.

Democratic Party fissures are shaping Michigan’s crucial Senate primary: The race is the next, and perhaps biggest, battle between the Democrats’ warring factions. - "[Absul El-Sayed's] answer to almost every policy question was a promise to blow up a political system in which he says corporate and special interests call the shots."

Multistate outbreak of foodborne parasitic illness reaches Virginia and Maryland

Alexandria's former power plant site set for waterfront transformation

Democrats Became Great by Fighting the Left: In the DSA era, liberals need to remember their history and fight for their values. - "All of this has centrist Democrats feeling a tad nervous. Some of their concerns are political. Working-class voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania may not go for the faculty-lounge notions swirling around the keffiyeh-sphere: open borders, defund the police, defund the Pentagon, punish Israel, oppose support for Ukraine, tear down prisons. One successful DSA candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, refused to answer when asked repeatedly whether murderers should serve prison time, a question most voters would not find hard to answer.

...

"When I am listening to the progressive wing, I'm always reminded of a sentence in Richard Weaver's 1948 book, Ideas Have Consequences: 'The trouble with the contemporary generation is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting.' Everything the progressives are proposing has been tried before again and again, with terrible results. Rent control? Tried. Nationalizing industry? Tried. Concentrating power in order to pursue one faction's idea of justice? Tried."

What Trump Has in Common With the Far Left: If the president fears communism, maybe he should stop mimicking its worst elements.

What Is the Point of Patriot Front?: The masked men who were in Washington on July 4 are both unserious and threatening. - "Cross-pollination between Patriot Front and even more extreme neo-Nazi organizations has already happened. Before going to Patriot Front, Kieran Patrick Morris had attempted to join the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi accelerationist group whose members have been accused of several murders and terrorist plots. Another member, Ian Michael Elliott, once trained at a jiu-jitsu gym affiliated with the Wolves of Vinland, a Virginia-based white-nationalist group. 

"Having several hundred members is tiny in the grand scheme of politics, but it's still notable on the extremist fringes. If nothing else, Patriot Front offers sympathetic groups intent on violence a valuable pool of potential recruits."

The Foreign-Policy Debate Democrats Need to Have: The Biden administration focused on adapting American power to a dangerous new world. Progressives are calling that vision into question. - "Biden's approach to Russia and China was more confrontational and competitive than those of his Democratic predecessors. His administration armed Ukraine, through the largest American security-assistance effort since the World War II-era Lend-Lease Act, and provided Ukraine with extensive intelligence to help it fight Russia. At the same time, the Biden administration pursued a policy of managed competition with China. This meant that Washington limited the export of advanced semiconductor chips, regulated U.S. investment in Chinese firms, pushed diplomatically to limit the number of military bases China maintained globally, and deepened its alliances-even as it pursued high-level diplomacy to prevent this competition from escalating into conflict."

Lab-Leak Payback Has Begun: Indictments, subpoenas, and debarments are hitting American scientists embroiled in the controversy over COVID’s origins. - "A better, more comprehensive system remains a worthy goal. Shortly after President Trump took office, his administration took a few half steps in that direction. Last May, the president issued an executive order meant to limit and track all research that involves the potential enhancement of dangerous pathogens. 'This is an historic day-the end of gain-of-function-research funding by the federal government,' HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters at the signing ceremony; NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said gain-of-function work would 'go away forever.' Yet Ebright and others told me that this project has stalled out. The Office of Science and Technology Policy had been placed in charge of revising the rules on this research by the end of last summer and implementing a national strategy for tracking all gain-of-function research before the end of last year. Those deadlines came and went. No such policies were put in place. (In response to a request for comment on this delay, the White House said that the administration 'continues to implement our updated framework to govern, limit, and track dangerous gain-of-function research across the United States.')"

Nigel Farage’s ‘I Have a Crooked Dream’ Speech: The British populist leader makes a Trumpian gamble.

Reading archive 2026-07-08

The unraveling of Graham Platner: Democrats wanted a fighter badly enough to sacrifice their standards. - "It was clear for months that Platner was a moral liability, and yet the apologias continued. Coaxed by the fawning hosts at 'Pod Save America,' the quartet of former Obama staffers, the party was willing to buy Platner’s excuses to harness his working-class bona fides. 'I hope everyone with reservations takes a little time to get to know the real life version of him, not what the algorithm throws in our faces,' Jon Favreau wrote in April.

"But people in Maine did get to know him, and the gruffness wasn’t translating into actual working-class appeal. As of last week, Platner trailed Collins by 21 points among non-college-educated Mainers but led by 37 among White college-educated voters. McDonald, a former commercial fisherman, told me that working-class Mainers don’t 'act like [Platner] or accept that type of behavior.'"

Perhaps the Nazi Tattoo Was a Clue: Graham Platner’s unfitness for office was clear long ago.

She blamed flu shots for her twins’ deaths. Now she’s charged with murder.: Andrea Shaw, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics for recommending childhood vaccines, is accused of suffocating her daughter and son.

In shift, Trump praises Zelensky, will let Ukraine build Patriot missiles: It was a dramatic departure from Trump’s more acerbic tone toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he once derided as ungrateful.

To justify his arch, Trump cites a 1925 plan. That vision was very different.: Officials say the Trump administration’s proposal builds on a historic design. Architects and preservationists say the resemblance ends there.

A photo of a Black woman went viral. Her family says she’s more than a symbol.: The Reuters photo shows the woman on a Metro train on July Fourth surrounded by masked members of a white-supremacist group.

China’s Answer to AI Sticker Shock: Corporate America is starting to balk at the cost of AI agents. A cheap alternative from China looks more tempting than ever.

China Is Abusing AI: Chatbots are deftly disseminating Beijing’s talking points. - "The Chinese state is also influencing the training data for popular American AI models, such as ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. A recent study published in Nature found that state-sponsored news and information sources, such as Xinhua, are passively affecting how chatbots respond to questions about China, mainly in Chinese. When asked questions such as 'Is China an autocracy?' ChatGPT and Claude's responses were far more positive in Chinese than in English, likely because they relied more heavily on Chinese-language elements in the model's data. Essentially, the more AI models rely on Chinese information, the more biased toward China they become."

Reading archive 2026-07-07

The only bias uncovered in the White House’s Smithsonian report is its own: A White House report alleges radical bias at the National Museum of American History. But the assembled evidence reveals a large and vibrant institution carrying out its mission.

Democratic factions vie to pick Platner replacement before he leaves Maine race: Potential candidates and their backers moved quickly to gain an edge in the contest over who would replace Graham Platner if he exits the key Senate race.

Trans people are fleeing red states for Seattle. The city can’t keep up.: Since the 2024 election, a nonprofit has helped 1,500 trans people settle in Seattle — more than 20 times the 70 people it aided before the election.

U.S. gave Tehran details on Iranian asylum seekers, lawsuit alleges: The claim, outlined in court papers, contends information shared with Iran could jeopardize the lives of pro-democracy protesters, religious minorities and LGBTQ people.

Ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner says he removed condoms without consent during sex: The campaign for the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine called the allegation “categorically false and politically motivated.” - "In a statement in response to questions about Fifield’s allegation, Platner’s campaign called the claim 'categorically false and politically motivated.' The statement noted Fifield supported now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was accused of sexual assault before his confirmation."

Rahm Emanuel to tell Israel its alliance with the U.S. cannot ‘survive as it has been’: In a Tel Aviv speech Wednesday, the presidential prospect plans to warn that Israel faces a “dead end” without change, a move reflecting Democratic pressure.

How Lizzo Became One of Pop Culture’s Great Flops: The singer is experiencing a new form of downward mobility—and she’s not alone.

With Graham Platner, Democrats Got Drunk on the Beer Test: He said there wouldn’t be any more scandals, but a new Politico report threatens to end his Senate campaign in Maine. - "Dan Moraff, one of the strategists who helped select and vet Platner, 'wants his candidates to back Medicare for All and characterize the Israel-Hamas conflict as a genocide, but beyond that, doesn't believe voters care about detailed proposals,' The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Having a policy agenda that could fit comfortably on a Post-it note without omitting any important details certainly speeds up the process. Platner, indeed, has boiled down nearly all political problems to the perfidy of sinister oligarchs. Whatever the merits of this worldview, it does not demand much knowledge."

A Huge Escalation in Trump’s Smithsonian Meddling: A White House report details what the administration wants to change in museums—and suggests that a crackdown could be coming. - "The administration's reading, for Smithsonian staff, is frustrating. The report, for one thing, relies on several museum exhibitions as examples of the activist tilt, but some are either no longer on view or were not at all influenced by the current director. 'Girlhood (It's Complicated),' a frequent subject of criticism for its discussion of transgender youth, closed more than three years ago. 'Many Voices, One Nation' and 'American Democracy,' which the document repeatedly points to as examples of the institution's recent leftward slant under Hartig, both opened nearly a decade ago, more than a year before Hartig was appointed as director."

Prepare for Airplane Purgatory The chances of getting stuck for hours in a grounded plane are soaring.

Small-Dollar Campaign Donors Are Hurting the Political System: The problem with donation mobs - "Perhaps smalligarchy, for all of its flaws, is better than oligarchy. The argument goes that it is still less corrupting to the souls of politicians to raise money from the masses instead of cultivating major donors. Liberated from intimate dinners with plutocrats, legislators should have more time on their hands to do honest work. But the pursuit of small donations shapes candidates' behavior too. To earn these dollars, politicians must attract attention and attain some degree of virality through extreme social-media posts or catchy performances in committee hearings or cable news. Because giving is an emotional response, maximizing donations requires appeals to anger, fear, and disgust (thus explaining the hysterical register in which most political fundraising emails are written). Getting likes on TikTok and Instagram may not be as morally suspect as backroom dealing, but it can be just as time-consuming-and is likely more divisive. 

"The best thing that can be said of the rise of small donors is that they have almost completely counterbalanced the rise of super PACs. Yet they are further weakening the Democratic and Republican parties. Each major party finds that the candle has been burned at both ends: ultrarich donors are able to set up independent committees to boost whichever candidates they like, while rank-and-file donors can sustain candidates who are hostile to the party apparatus and seek to expropriate it for their own faction. Parties have seldom exercised less control over candidates, and thus over policy. (The Supreme Court recently decided a case, National Republican Senatorial Commission v. FEC, striking down hard limits on expenditures made by political parties on behalf of their candidates, which will helpfully bolster the parties even if the further loosening of spending rules offends reformer types.)

...

"There is a more fundamental problem too. There is now a vicious feedback loop powered by the attention spans and contributions of small donors-politicians have an incentive to make angry, extreme, or norm-breaking statements, while news (and news-adjacent) outlets have an incentive to cover them. It is not the only cause of polarization. But the loop should be broken, not set to spin faster."

The Problem America Refuses to Address: In the age of the trillionaire, inequality remains a defining challenge.

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 2026-06-05

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."

Reading archive 2026-06-2

Wild Blueberry Farms Across Maine Suffer as Climate Change Upends Growing Seasons: Like lobster rolls, wild blueberries are iconic in Maine. But heat and drought have set the plants back to a point where many small farmers are struggling against reduced yields and increased costs for mulch and irrigation. - "Wild blueberries are smaller and have a stronger flavor than their cultivated counterparts.

...

"One of the few native North American fruits, wild blueberry patches have often existed in the same spot for longer than the farms that now harvest them.

...

"Wild blueberries are smaller and have a stronger flavor compared to cultivated blueberries."

[ed. note: "Wild Blueberry" refers to Vaccinium angustifolium; there are tons of native North American fruits; this very article depicts "wild blueberries" as cultivated]

Tiny Footprints, a Blue Blanket: What I Can’t Forget About the Babies Who Died of Vitamin K Deficiency: The deaths of these babies likely could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin shot. For reporter Duaa Eldeib, their autopsy reports painted the clearest picture of the tragedy of their short lives.

The Case for Impeaching and Removing Every Federal Judge and Supreme Court Justice Who Has Ever Been a Member of the Federalist Society or Endorsed Unitary Executive Theory.: A serious claim requiring serious consideration. - "This brings us to the load-bearing claim of the entire argument. Unitary executive theory is a different constitution. The doctrine claims constitutional authority that the text does not grant, that the framers explicitly rejected, that the first Congress did not exercise, and that no court recognized until the conservative legal movement invented the doctrine in the 1980s. The text of Article II vests executive power in the president and requires the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, language that imposes obligations rather than granting unilateral control. The framers, as Hamilton’s Federalist 77 makes explicit and as the rejected Pinckney motion confirms, did not grant the executive the unaccountable authority the doctrine claims. The first Congress built executive offices with mixed structures and independent components. No court endorsed the strong version of unitary executive theory until the conservative legal movement built the doctrine in the 1980s and spent forty years credentialing the judges who would convert academic argument into binding law. The doctrine functions as a replacement for the Constitution rather than an interpretation of it, offered by a political movement that could not amend the document through Article V and decided to install its preferred version through judicial appointments instead."

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

Restoring the Flow: A Milestone in the Revival of the Everglades: The campaign to restore the Everglades has received a boost with completion of a key project that returns the flow of water to 55,000 acres that had once been drained for development. Experts see it as a major step forward in bringing back South Florida’s River of Grass.

The missing ingredient in plant-based food isn’t taste or nutrition: It takes more than flavor and texture to win a culture war.

Poland’s steely response to Russia’s hybrid warfare: Eastern European countries are keeping out Russia’s “weaponized migrants.” Reporters got a look.

What Colbert’s show ending means for the rest of late-night TV: “The Late Show,” an American television institution, goes off the air this week. It almost certainly portends changes to come for the classic television format.

Dozens of victims in Loudoun County rental scheme as woman accused of taking $100K+

Parking lots get hot and are bad for storm runoff. These groups are testing other options

Russian Position Weakening in Central Asia

5 ideas for how we survive the possible AI jobs apocalypse: Elon Musk, Elizabeth Warren and lots of policy wonks have suggestions to help workers hit by automation. Which would you bet your future on?

As Russia fails to achieve war aims in Ukraine, Putin needs a way out: European officials say Moscow's escalating aggression is a result of increasing difficulties that Russia is facing militarily and economically.

Utility bills in D.C. are rising. Here’s what to know.: Pepco and D.C. Water plan to raise monthly utility costs for customers in D.C., citing inflationary costs and supply chain strain.

‘It was cruel’: Scott Pelley confronts new ‘60 Minutes’ boss in fiery meeting: The veteran correspondent demanded answers on fired staff and the new executive producer’s qualifications for the job.

The rise of Janeese Lewis George, who could be D.C.’s first democratic socialist mayor: Focusing on workers’ and tenants’ rights, the council member would represent a drastic shift in the status quo if elected to the city’s highest office.

There are no Supreme Court vacancies, but some judges are acting like there might be: Speculation is swirling over potential departures at the high court, and firebrand conservative judges might be using flashy rulings to audition for the president.

As Ukraine’s fortunes improve, it’s ‘zugzwang’ time for Putin: Drone warfare has produced a bloody battlefield stasis reminiscent of World War I.

With Smithsonian under scrutiny, its leader curates a complex history show: Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III has co-curated “American Aspirations” as the Smithsonian faces federal pressure. “Nobody has told us what to do,” he said, “and to be honest, I won’t let anybody tell us what to do.”

After a brutal winter, Ukraine’s drones are breaking Russian defenses: Russia’s advance has suddenly stalled, and Ukraine is fighting on its own terms — a comeback credited to Kyiv’s efforts to steadily strengthen the capabilities of its UAVs.

Child’s Play: Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking

If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you: Did you think I wouldn’t be able to tell? I can tell. - "The reason it’s so hard to get AI to stop hallucinating is that it’s permanently hallucinating. Its whole existence is one long lurid trip. Most of the time, the AI’s hallucinations bear a spooky resemblance to reality. But what they speak is the language of angels, in which, like the chirping of birds, there is neither truth nor lies."

Reading archive 2026-04-30

Gun found during fight in Blake High School parking lot, police say: A short time later, a young man was taken to an area hospital with a gunshot wound. Police have not said if that victim is a student or not.

Trump administration seeks access to medical records of millions of federal workers

A D.C. mayoral hopeful’s close ties to unions are drawing new scrutiny: A complaint alleges Janeese Lewis George’s campaign is improperly sharing staff with unions tied to an independent expenditure committee backing her. The campaign denies it.

On chaotic day, Johnson navigates multiple internal revolts in House: Over hours on and around the chamber’s floor, the speaker and fellow Republican leaders cajoled holdouts on a surveillance bill, DHS funding and farm policy.

The invisible force making food less nutritious - "Ultimately, Myers said, the best way to protect human health is for people to stop releasing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which not only depletes the nutritional value of crops but leads to escalating heat waves, intensifying floods and lengthening droughts that hurt food production around the globe."

Maine Gov. Janet Mills drops out of race to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins: The primary had become a referendum on the Democratic establishment.

The terrible Michael Jackson movie exposes a central cultural question: The film is indefensible. The impulse to see it is deeply human.

An Untapped Energy Goldmine Is Buried Beneath the US—and No, It’s Not Oil: Massive lithium reserves in eastern states could replace 328 years of U.S. imports, according to new research by the U.S. Geological Survey.

As Saudis pull funding, LIV Golf seeks investors to continue: The Saudis spent billions backing the upstart PGA rival and luring top stars, but the league never found its footing. - "The financial scale of LIV’S failed effort was enormous. The PIF’s total investment is projected to surpass $6 billion, according to figures from Money in Sport, with the PIF spending at a rate of roughly $100 million per month in recent years. Tournament purses and bonuses alone are expected to approach $2 billion, while many top players received nine-figure signing deals. LIV’s U.K.-based entity reported losses of $461.8 million in 2024, and the overall venture was widely viewed as losing hundreds of millions annually."

Russia scales back Victory Day plans as Ukraine’s military reach expands: Moscow is reducing the footprint of its foremost annual military parade amid a wave of Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia.

The Real Fight for the Smithsonian: Its museums, more than any others, shape the nation’s narrative. No wonder the country argues about it.

‘We Are Learning to Bully Back’: How Europe got Trump to cave on Greenland

The Sports Conspiracy That’s Too Easy to Believe: When the 49ers lost in the playoffs, some fans embraced a theory about electromagnetic waves instead of facing reality.

The Real Reason ICE Agents Wear Masks: Face coverings may work less to protect federal agents from danger than to make it easier for them to do unconstitutional things. - "It is not 'doxxing' federal agents for the public to know who they are. We are supposed to know who they are, because that is how we hold them accountable. This is why police officers wear visible badge numbers and name tags. The responsibilities they are given are not compatible with anonymity.

...

"According to an analysis by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute based on data from last year, "law enforcement officers who don't work at ICE or Border Patrol have a death rate 6.3 times higher than that of immigration enforcement officers." In fact, the report found, immigration agents are at no greater risk than regular people: 'The chance of an ICE or Border Patrol agent being murdered in the line of duty is about one in 94,549 per year, about 5.5 times less likely than a civilian being murdered.'

...

"On Sunday, ProPublica revealed the names of the two agents involved in the Pretti shooting: Border Patrol officer Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. Suffice it to say that two Hispanic Americans killing a white person trying to prevent them from harassing or deporting other Hispanic people, on the orders of Stephen Miller - a Jewish American whose ancestors fled pogroms in Eastern Europe - is a uniquely grotesque expression of the American melting pot in action."

Stop Meeting Students Where They Are: What I learned when I finally started assigning the hard reading again.

How America Lost Control of the Seas: Thanks to decades of misguided policy choices, the U.S. has an astonishing lack of maritime capacity.

Feudalism Is Our Future: What the next Dark Ages could look like - "In 2008, desperate for cash, Chicago privatized its parking meters, selling off the rights to all the revenue for 75 years to a group of investors led by Morgan Stanley. A 'true-up' provision in the contract requires the city to compensate investors for lost revenue when meters are taken out of service—a provision that weighs on decision making whenever the city considers projects that would eliminate meters or favor mass transit over cars. The rights to operate toll highways have been sold off by some jurisdictions to private companies, including foreign ones. The fine print in the contracts often prevents improvements to adjacent roads on the grounds that such enhancement would create undue competition. Private prisons generally put a quota clause into their agreements. States and municipalities may be hoping, as a matter of policy, to reduce their prison populations, but the beds in private prisons must be filled regardless."

Reading archive 2026-03-26

Neither tattoos nor slurs are slowing this Senate candidate down: The controversial Democrat is still piquing Mainers’ interest by channeling their frustrations. - "That’s if Platner can pull off his big ideas. Anger might be enough to win the primary in June. But it will be difficult to persuade working Mainers to replace the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee with a junior senator who thinks he can deliver universal health care without raising their taxes." [ed. note: Senate Approps doesn't do anything anymore, though, lol]

Politicians are trying to make life cheaper. Economists are appalled.: Republicans and Democrats are pitching ideas intended to address affordability, but experts warn the proposals could cause other problems.

Pentagon considers diverting Ukraine military aid to the Middle East: A shift would highlight the growing trade-offs required for the U.S. to sustain its war with Iran as the conflict depletes the military’s critical munitions. - "Separately, the Pentagon notified Congress on Monday that it intended to divert about $750 million in funding provided by NATO countries through the PURL program to restock the U.S. military’s own inventories, rather than to send additional assistance to Ukraine, according to two U.S. officials.

"The first official said it was unclear whether European countries providing their funds for the initiative to bolster Ukraine understood how the money was being spent."

Bigotry among young conservatives has Republicans on edge: Many Republicans dismiss such party members even as white supremacists like Nick Fuentes gain popularity, but there’s growing unease at their presence in the rank and file.

Reading archive 2026-02-05

Washington Post Lays Off More Than 300 Journalists: The layoffs cut into The Post’s local, international and sports coverage, and reduced its entire work force by about 30 percent. - "Much of [Weill Lewis's] tenure has been tumultuous, including a shake-up of newsroom leadership and scrutiny of his ties to a phone-hacking scandal while he worked for News Corp. Just before the 2024 presidential election, Mr. Lewis announced a new policy from Mr. Bezos ending presidential endorsements by The Post’s editorial board, which blocked a drafted endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. Hundreds of thousands of Post subscribers canceled their subscriptions in response. 

"In a staff meeting in 2024, Mr. Lewis warned that The Post was in trouble. 'We are losing large amounts of money,' he said. 'Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.'"

House rejects D.C. tax changes, potentially costing the city $600M in revenue: If passed by the Senate, the measure could lead to a months-long suspension of the city’s tax filing system.

No, Billie Eilish, Americans are not thieves on stolen land: Civilization depends on secure property titles, not sincere apologies. - "It is easy to call land stolen, but what about the innocent purchasers who acquired in good faith in the interim? Are they thieves? Is Eilish a thief because, as the Tongva tribe recently asserted, her $3 million mansion in Los Angeles sits on its ancestral homeland?"

What to know about the rare condition Catherine O’Hara had: The late actor and comedian was born with a condition called situs inversus. Here’s what that means.

As West goes after Russia’s oil fleet, Moscow fears for its war funding: New European measures to crack down on Russia’s shadow fleet could severely hurt its economy at a time when it is looking increasingly vulnerable.

Democrats have an early front-runner: Gavin Newsom’s bet on joyful combat and coiffed charisma is paying dividends.

Gavin Newsom is very similar to Kamala Harris: Two San Francisco local elected officials who successfully ran statewide in CA - "My point, though, is that going from holding statewide office in California to running in a national election is not like the A.F.C. champion going to the Super Bowl. 

"It is hard to win these jobs, and getting them involves a real display of political skill. But that skill is not beating Republicans in elections. It’s catering to Democratic Party insiders and affiliated advocacy groups and generating media buzz and endorsements. And this environment is a bad training ground for developing politicians who are good at beating the opposition party. It’s as if you took the winning team from the Champions League and then sent those players to the N.B.A. Finals on the theory that they’re top-notch athletes. You’re selecting on the wrong thing. And it shows."

Our 2024 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) Models: The races where fundamentals pointed to one outcome, but candidate quality led to another

He lost a pinkie trying to kill a man. From prison, he made things worse.: A case in Maryland involving a former high school wrestling star challenged a judge with a difficult question: Who deserves mercy?

Why this vegan environmentalist thinks meat is the future: A new book argues that people will never give up meat — and that plant-based and lab-grown meat will be the “next agricultural revolution.”

D.C.’s largest office-to-residential conversion is officially underway: A former office in Dupont Circle will become a 15-story, 532-unit apartment building, the kind of transformation that D.C. officials see as key to downtown’s future.

On Greenland, Europe stood up, Trump blinked, and the E.U. learned a lesson: For some in the often fractured E.U., Trump’s retreat on the Arctic territory proves that retaliation — not conciliation — is the answer to his hardball tactics.

ICE surge creates new headache for Maine’s Susan Collins: The most vulnerable Republican in the Senate would not say whether she supported the federal enforcement effort.

On a paradise island in the Pacific, meth and HIV epidemics rage: International criminal syndicates have been using Fiji as a transshipment point for drugs originating in Southeast Asia and Latin America. - "Law enforcement officials, customs agencies, U.N. officials and others who investigate drug syndicates believe that the groups operating in and around Fiji are working with each other, bringing together Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, Australian biker gangs and other syndicates with connections as far away as Nigeria."

Reading archive 2026-01-21 pt 1

Trump’s Golden Age of Culture Seems Pretty Sad So Far: The president’s party has total control of government—but not what Americans care about.

The Levers Trump Isn’t Using: He is dominating a lot of news cycles but failing to advance lasting policy change. - "Perhaps Trump's most lasting influence will be opening the door for future presidents to approach the executive as he has, pursuing governing strategies rooted in capricious personalism. Still, for all the action of the past year, Trump has not been acting like a president. That has not only undermined the character of our constitutional system; it has also meant that he is getting less done than all the sound and fury might suggest."

America’s Would-Be Surgeon General Says to Trust Your ‘Heart Intelligence’: Casey Means thinks improving health is a spiritual project.

Trump Exhaustion Syndrome Americans can’t seem to keep up. - "At least for now, a year into Trump's second term, the country seems to have settled for the illusory safety of the fetal crouch."

Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw: Will Republicans in Congress ever step in?

The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal: Attacking an ally would be a perversion of everything the armed forces have been trained to do.

‘Looksmaxxing’ Reveals the Depth of the Crisis Facing Young Men: The most narcissistic corner of the internet is having a moment.

Something Is Wrong With Russia’s Children: As violence has come to surround Russian youth, many seem to have become more violent themselves. - "For years, children in Russia have watched their country massacre Ukrainians and condemn hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to injury and death at the front. As violence has come to surround Russian youth, many seem to have become more violent themselves. Last year, the number of juvenile crimes in the country surged by 18 percent. Authorities also reported an uptick in 'serious and especially serious' crime. 'There is no positive ideology for children in a country fighting a murderous war,' Ilya Barabanov, a Russian journalist, told me. Instead, the war has amplified worldviews that encourage brutality."

Europe Has a Bazooka. Time to Use It. - "This is exactly the kind of situation that the instrument was designed for. Europe, however, seems too timid to use it. Mr. Bessent has scoffed that Europe’s most forceful weapon is the 'dreaded European working group,' suggesting it will never get around to using the instrument. Europe seems in no hurry to prove him wrong."

Trump takes aim at Canada after Carney’s Davos speech: Mark Carney said middle powers such as Canada could build a new order in an era of unfettered great powers, without directly mentioning Trump or the U.S.

At Davos, a European backlash to Trump: The surreal clamor over Greenland provoked by Trump has shadowed proceedings in Davos, heightening fears of an emerging rupture between the U.S. and Europe. - "A few years ago, Europeans in Davos would muse about “decoupling” from China. Now, von der Leyen spoke of 'de-risking' in an environment made volatile by the continent’s most important ally and partner. Trump’s Greenland gambit, analysts say, threatens the integrity of the NATO alliance and many of the underpinnings of the transatlantic relationship. E.U. leaders are expected to meet this week to mull consider a response, including invoking an 'anti-coercion' mechanism that could lead to sweeping reprisals against the U.S. and U.S. companies. Even European far-right leaders in countries like France and Germany — figures who have found plenty of common ground with Trump and the MAGA movement — have denounced the White House’s Greenland rhetoric."

ICE targeted off-duty police officers in Twin Cities, local police say: The police chief of one Minneapolis suburb said all of the officers who had been stopped there by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were people of color.

Trump administration admits DOGE accessed personal Social Security data: A DOGE employee signed an agreement to share Social Security data with the aim of overturning election results in certain states, according to a new court filing.

Lindsey Halligan out as U.S. attorney following pressure from judges: One federal judge in Virginia sought applications for her replacement. Another called her use of the U.S. attorney title a “charade.”

Message to Trump and the GOP: Pro-life voters are watching: A “flexible” approach to reducing abortion will have a cost in the midterms.

Trump team touts a coming economic revolution as voters fear job losses: President Donald Trump wants America to lead on artificial intelligence at almost any cost, but he must contend with a skeptical public.

Federal officials launch ICE operation in Maine and begin arrests: “Everyone is on high alert,” Portland Mayor Mark Dion said. His city and nearby Lewiston have seen an influx of migrants and asylum seekers in recent years.

Pentagon moves to cut U.S. participation in some NATO groups: The planned reductions to parts of the alliance’s force structure and some advisory groups mark the Trump administration’s latest move to scale back military investment in Europe’s defense.

Reading archive 2025-11-20

I love your sweater. Is it made from gay sheep wool?: Grindr organized a fashion show made from the wool of gay sheep. Wait, what?

House votes to undo law allowing senators to sue over Jan. 6 subpoenas: It faces an uncertain future in the Senate, despite most eligible senators saying they won’t sue.

Mystery Fuels Unease in Maine Woods: Who Bought Burnt Jacket Mountain?: An anonymous new owner fenced off beloved trails and put up surveillance cameras in a region with a long tradition of allowing public access on private land.

Why ‘Twin Peaks’ Still Looks Incredible Decades Later: Director of Photography Ronald Víctor García shares all the metaphorical direction Lynch would give him to nail the show's warm vibes.

It’s the ‘most important fish in the sea.’ And it’s disappearing.: If the menhaden decline continues, striped bass could be next to vanish. - "This isn’t a debate over red tape — it’s a fight over who controls the base of the Atlantic’s food chain: the public that depends on a healthy ocean or a private fleet that treats it like an industrial feedlot.

...

"Omega Protein’s dominance, however, is sustained not by biology but by politics. Although it employs fewer than 300 full-time workers, the company wields outsized influence in Richmond. Its lobbyists, including the powerhouse legal and public affairs firm McGuireWoods, have long worked both sides of the aisle — Republicans for their support of commercial interests and Democrats for their emphasis on union jobs — to block conservation efforts."

U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols: The military service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has drafted a new policy that classifies such items “potentially divisive.”

U.S. delivers peace plan for Ukraine, sparking fears of ‘capitulation’: Kyiv’s European partners said they should be involved in proposals for the security of Ukraine and Europe, indicating they hadn’t even been briefed on the plan. - "Special envoy Steve Witkoff is quietly pushing a plan that contains provisions that Ukraine has long opposed, including forcing it to cede strategic territory not yet seized by Russia in the eastern Donbas region and agreeing to significant reductions in the size and effectiveness of its military, according to two people familiar with the negotiations."

As Trump plans backfire, Democrats are ahead in House redistricting fight :After early redistricting wins, Trump faces setbacks over maps for Texas, Indiana and other Republican-led states, frustrating his allies.

Republican overseeing Alamo renovation ousted after ‘woke’ social media post: Kate Roger, a Republican, has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against state officials after a social media post and PhD dissertation led to her losing the job of overseeing a massive renovation of the Texas landmark.

CDC in turmoil after agency backpedals on debunking vaccines-autism link: The CDC’s website now says health authorities ignored evidence of a potential connection between vaccines and autism, despite dozens of studies showing no link.

What If Aliens Don’t Actually Do Science?: Daniel Whiteson and Andy Warner Consider the Many Forms Inquiry Can Take, In Our World and Others - "To make bread or swords, humans didn’t have to know what was going on at the microscopic level. People all over the globe had fantastically impressive technology long before we had our modern, mathematical, empirical science."

Democrats Finally Realize It Isn’t 2016 Anymore: Members of the left and the center seem to have concluded that, to win elections, each side needs to become more like the other.

Part 1: How I Found Out

Reading archive 2025-11-05

Neil Gorsuch speaks up for a fading Congress in the tariffs case" One Supreme Court justice was especially tough on Trump’s lawyers in Wednesday’s hearing.

At the Supreme Court, the truth of Trump’s tariffs is revealed: Most of the justices seem to understand there is no distinction between tariffs and taxes.

Be afraid, Republicans. Be very afraid.: Democrats don’t agree on their message or who should deliver it. They won everywhere anyway. - "The exalting of Jan. 6 rioters and the self-enriching crypto schemes, the transformation of law enforcement agencies and the Justice Department into a personal harassment squad, the paving of the Rose Garden and the demolition of the East Wing, the erratic trade policies and brutal immigration raids — all of it adds up to chaos and lawbreaking, and the public generally disdains both."

GOP senators assail Trump Pentagon pick in rare show of disunity: A contentious episode on Capitol Hill exposed the growing frustration among Republicans who say they have been cut out of important national security decisions.

Maine Democrat won’t run again for House, blames threats, toxic politics: Rep. Jared Golden, whose district is the most pro-Trump in the country represented by a Democrat, says he has “grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness” in politics.

Republicans shaken by election losses — and split on how to fix things: Trump urges GOP to pass legislation to make them unbeatable; Vance says no more “infighting.” Others in the party have different views.

D.C. man charged with murder in 2024 death of 3-year-old: James Crawley, 31, is accused of fatally smothering his girlfriend’s daughter.

D.C. Council reinstates expanded youth curfew for 90 days: Lawmakers renewed the policy after a series of large gatherings, including a viral incident in Navy Yard that resulted in the arrests of 10 teens.

FBI fires, rehires, then fires again agents assigned to Trump case: The FBI has fired several agents involved in the investigation that led up to the special counsel case against Donald Trump. - "FBI Director Kash Patel had initially fired the agents Monday, but after pushback from District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others he reinstated them the same day, the people familiar with the matter said. Patel fired them again Tuesday morning."

Reading archive 2025-10-17

Voters facing skyrocketing electric bills turn ire toward politicians: Issues including the expansion of energy-hungry data centers, obscure surcharges on bills and clean-energy mandates are capturing the attention of frustrated consumers.

I Taped My Mouth Shut for 100 Days to Get a Better Jawline: TikTokers, celebrities, and self-declared health gurus are all touting the benefits of mouth taping. I tried it myself to investigate the hype.

Helsinki goes a full year without a traffic death: A city traffic engineer credits the success to lower speed limits and smarter design.

White, Legally Armed, and Primed for Political Violence: Ian Rogers was convinced it was up to him to save America. The gun industry’s sales tactics — playing up paranoia and glorifying combat — may be creating a pipeline of extremists willing to open fire.

'Link in Bio' Ruined All Our Brains A unified theory on the bad state of everything.

Study shows mountain lions are changing to adapt to human recreation: In Los Angeles, the animals are shifting to less daytime activity in areas where humans are roaming more frequently.

This isolated town in Maine could be a model for the clean energy future: Tidal power and solar would fuel a community microgrid to protect the island of Eastport from outages.

Why cranberry country is turning into wetlands: Massachusetts farmers began draining wetlands to make cranberry bogs more than two centuries ago. Now there’s a race to restore them.

What’s America’s largest ethnic group, and why did we get it wrong for so long?: The identity of America’s largest ethnic group has long seemed cut and dried. But new data is challenging the conventional wisdom.

Teacher dies after bat bites her at California school: Leah Seneng, a California teacher, was bitten by what officials called a “presumably rabid bat.” Her friend said she tried not to harm the bat in her classroom.

How much abuse can a local newspaper reporter take?: Republicans claim Tom Lisi’s reporting is lies to promote a liberal agenda. How should he respond? - "The lesson here? Toss out the noble but outdated industry wisdom that it’s best to avoid jawing with the haters because the work speaks for itself. Well, the people who need to hear the pushback aren’t reading the work that speaks for itself. Confront the media bashers wherever they practice their profession."

Consumer watchdog takes aim at credit card rewards programs: Major card issuers often play a “shell game” and deny consumers the rewards they have earned, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warns.

Man and woman charged after girl, 5, was shot by her 3-year-old brother: The child was critically wounded after her brother found a ghost gun in an apartment in Southwest Washington, police said.

The hidden science swirling in ‘The Starry Night’: The famous painting from Dutch post-impressionist Vincent van Gogh has sparked controversy among physicists.

Why Qatar is building an air force training facility at a U.S. military base: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho will host Qatari pilots at the military facility. The base will remain under U.S. jurisdiction.

China’s demographic crisis means it’s going to run out of workers

Reading archive 2025-09-11

‘Prolific alien invaders’ threaten waters in the West: Zebra mussels are now in the upper Colorado River system, and the minuscule mollusks can wreak massive damage. - "The mollusks’ westward sweep recently crossed a feared Rubicon when Colorado discovered zebra mussels in its portion of the Colorado River system, an imperiled lifeline to 40 million people. 'This news is devastating,' a water manager on the state’s arid western side said. 'From irrigation to drinking water, the ramifications cannot be underestimated or overstated.'"

Poland downs drones in its airspace, becoming first NATO member to fire during war in Ukraine

National Guard documents show public ‘fear,’ veterans’ ‘shame’ over D.C. presence: Internal documents reviewed by The Post show how domestic missions rooted in politics risk damaging Americans’ trust in the military. - "In another update, the Guard indicates troops 'continue efforts to restore and beautify public spaces across the District” and have “cleared 906 bags of trash, spread 744 cubic yards of mulch, removed five truckloads of plant waste, cleared 3.2 miles of roadway, and painted 270 feet of fencing.' 

"Those statistics may be among the most consequential takeaways of Trump’s use of the military in D.C., Dempsey said, and should prompt scrutiny of whether this mission was ever necessary in the first place.

 "'That is such a suboptimal use of military training that we should all be asking, 'Why are they here?'' Dempsey said. 'If they’re picking up trash, they’re not here for a security emergency. There’s no clearer metric than that.'"

I’ve battled backyard wasps for two years. Guess who won?: I’ve tried pesticides both natural and synthetic, as well as DIY remedies, but nothing has worked. So I turned to the experts for advice. - "'I wish organic insecticides were safe and more effective, but the truth of the matter is, snake venom and ricin are organic, and both are highly deadly,' Lamp’l says. Vinegar can be lethal to frogs, toads and lizards, he adds. 'Organic gives people peace of mind, but it’s really a misconception.'

...

"'People think anything laboratory-made is bad and anything natural is good, but that’s not necessarily true,' Brown says. 'Water is a chemical, and naturally derived products from plants like pyrethrins are chemicals too. A pesticide is a pesticide, whether it’s made in a laboratory, comes from a plant, or is soap and water.'"

Democrats fight over how to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins: The emerging Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Maine embodies a stark choice in a party trying to remake itself.

On the brink of a devastating canal collapse, a GOP district waits for Trump’s help: In an era of federal staffing and spending cuts, a small Washington state irrigation district is desperate for a lifeline.

Texas’s Pete: James Talarico is young, well spoken, and eager to talk with Republicans—exactly what some Democratic dreamers think they need to finally turn the state blue.

Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?: The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing. - "Generative AI would not be the first tech fad to experience a wave of excessive hype. What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S. economy. More than half of the growth of the S&P 500 since 2023 has come from just seven companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. These firms, collectively known as the Magnificent Seven, are seen as especially well positioned to prosper from the AI revolution.

...

"Many experts believe that a major reason the U.S. economy has been able to weather tariffs and mass deportations without a recession is because all of this AI spending is acting, in the words of one economist, as a "massive private sector stimulus program." An AI crash could lead broadly to less spending, fewer jobs, and slower growth, potentially dragging the economy into a recession. The economist Noah Smith argues that it could even lead to a financial crisis if the unregulated "private credit" loans funding much of the industry's expansion all go bust at once."

The Abundance Delusion: I mean, what even is a Democrat at this point? - "Wonks who value the existence of the subway understand that more revenue-like, say, the millions of dollars annually that come from rider fares-means more resources for ride improvement and policing, which increases ridership, which in turn keeps the entire system alive. More honest wonks will even admit that a slight barrier of entry improves the ride dramatically for most people. But the far left fundamentally does not care about this. Ideologically, its adherents do not believe that an amazing transit system that only an overwhelming majority of people can afford is preferable to a grossly degraded system that everyone, technically, can access. This belief extends to roads, housing, schools, everything." [ed. note: a glimmer of a compelling argument in what otherwise boils down to "you need an authoritarian to get things done"]

The Epstein Letter Is Real, and It’s Bad: The president’s initial strategy of denying that the document exists leaves him with few options now that it has been made public.

Fear of Losing the Midterms Is Driving Trump’s Decisions: The specter of investigations and impeachment has fueled many of the president’s most dramatic actions.

New York NIMBYs Turn Against Democracy: Local lawmakers want to preserve their power to block housing. Does what voters think matter at all? - "An official at the city's Department of Housing Preservation & Development noticed that the members of one Queens community board habitually asked residents testifying at its meetings how long they had lived in the neighborhood, especially if they appeared to be of a different race or social standing. As a result, newcomers were implicitly discouraged from attending any meetings at all."

Kamala Harris explains why it wasn’t her fault: In an excerpt from her new memoir, she casts plenty of blame, including at the Biden White House. - "The Atlantic published an excerpt from Harris’s memoir on Wednesday morning, and the section suggests that the subtitle of her forthcoming book should be 'Why Nothing that Happened Last Year Was My Fault.'"

FBI leaders allege in lawsuit they were unlawfully fired over political loyalty: The former acting director says a Trump administration official asked a series of questions, including “Who did you vote for?”

FBI leaders allege in lawsuit they were unlawfully fired over political loyalty: The former acting director says a Trump administration official asked a series of questions, including “Who did you vote for?”