HUGE NEWS from the new Epstein files: Records show that Maria Farmer, who worked for Epstein, filed a "child pornography" report to the FBI in 1996. The FBI has never before acknowledged that complaint. The case went nowhere, and mass abuse followed. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u...

"At a gathering at Mailer’s, Ginsberg accosted Podhoretz and called him a 'dumb fuckhead.'" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

“This was not a holiday address from the leader of a great democracy to its citizens. This was a desperate, enraged tinpot, yelling into a microphone while cornered in his palace redoubt.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

More than 2,900 attorneys quit the Justice Department or were fired during the first 10 months of this year -- about triple the number who depart in a typical year. personnel records obtained by Reuters show.

"This could be Donald Trump’s heaven, if only the world would cooperate. But instead everything he touches turns to brass. His pop turns to country; his Broadway turns to Christian rock; his disco turns to gospel." Petri on the KenCen Honors: www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

I've waited nearly ten years to tell this story: In 2016, I developed a source in Iranian intelligence named Mohammad Hossein Tajik. He told me he came from a politically connected family. That he had led Iran's cyber army. And that he had secretly worked for the CIA. 🧵

An incredible story from @shaneharris.bsky.social - on the Iranian cyber officer he once knew. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Regrettably, this overused music cue is somehow responsible for the best directorial choice in the movie while being, itself, the worst directorial choice. It totally took me out of what is otherwise a mesmerizing climax. www.indiewire.com/features/cra...

Happening now: Texas leaders announcing a rollout of a statewide program to put TPUSA chapters in high schools and colleges across the state. Gov. Abbott adds that schools that stand in the way should be reported to the Texas Education Agency.

NEW: Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal www.propublica.org/article/trum... w/ @robert-faturechi.bsky.social @amierjeski.bsky.social

The Signalgate report showed that Hegseth risked American lives. Instead of taking responsibility, his sniveling responses were the worst kind of bureaucratic ass-covering. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

“The people that sent me to Iraq & Afghanistan are still the people in charge. Fucking Chuck Schumer can’t be an oyster farmer. Susan Collins isn’t going to fix outboard engines. By trying to destroy me, they’ve now forced everybody to maybe listen...” www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Hegseth’s actions “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots,” according to the Pentagon’s own inspector general. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

“…he had been lonely living in Maine and was not getting adequate health care. After visiting him there, she invited him to move to Normandy. For several years, Mr. Shay performed a sage-burning ceremony overlooking Omaha Beach in honor of the dead.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/u...

“The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Swings of no less than 7 points, and up to 25 points. #TN07

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Trump pardons cocaine kingpin who once boasted that he would flood America with drugs, who accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo, and who ran a vast trafficking conspiracy that enriched cartels while impoverishing Honduras. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/n...

His greatest line may have been the opening one to his Oscar acceptance speech. “I’m behaving like Roberto Benigni, underneath.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/t...

If the U.S. was at war, Pete Hegseth's order would be a war crime, a military lawyer said. Instead, it might just be murder. wapo.st/49KbUJ1

"No one is coming to collect all the useless pennies. And no one is explaining how to get along without them. The government, in other words, is treating the pennies the way it has for decades: by making them Americans’ problem." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

RFK Jr "oversees one 1 of every 4 dollars in the federal budget & regulates about 17% of the economy. How, I asked him, did he explain going from scorned activist to the boss of the public-health apparatus?" “I would say in one word: providential,” Kennedy said. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"The fact that many men believe they no longer even have to pretend to respect women in order to participate in public life makes it unlikely that anything will change anytime soon. The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

Same-day split screen: @ericlipton.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) agreed to confirm RFK Jr. after the latter promised that the CDC would not do exactly this.

NEWS: During a hearing in federal court in VA, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey was never shown to or voted on by the entire grand jury before it was presented in open court. Defense counsel argued that’s a complete bar to further prosecution

"This is just the cost of doing business. They will write a multimillion-dollar check to avoid the $2 billion lawsuit. It’s a business decision.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

San Francisco dystopia intensifies. “Talk about a tale of two cities. Here we are waiting in line to get food, and you have robot cars.” wapo.st/4a0QMy6

Read this interview with @peterthorne.bsky.social to understand how dire the situation is with respect to US science funding. The US has played an outsized role in Earth observations and global coordination, and even if other nations decide to step in, it would take at least a decade to recover.

"A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol was arrested on child molestation charges, according to Florida officials, who said he tried to use an anticipated Jan. 6 payout to silence the victim." www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

The federal court that struck down Texas' redistricting plan says the letter from a Trump DOJ appointee that kicked off the whole thing is "challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors. " storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This seems fine 👍www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

“The Trump Organization is in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments … Trump is set to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington next week.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/w...

“I cannot keep most of them straight anyway, but their names are all something like Bonnet, McKenzla, Christmas and Breeee. (If I accidentally revealed one correctly and turn up dead, Hulu’s parent company is in Burbank; send the police there first).” wapo.st/4r0oLwH

The ad is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends. www.propublica.org/article/kris...

“Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names.” www.propublica.org/article/chic...

genuinely very few things more satisfying than reading the kinds of emails rich and famous people send each other

“…lines snaking out of food pantries … the gleaming new bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, renovated in gold fixtures and marble.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

Remember Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch saying hello on a tarmac. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

Kara Voght was there first, in terms of understanding who Jack Schlossberg is and what he's doing. www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/1...

Great portraits here of centenarian WWII vets by Maxine Wallace. wapo.st/4p277a7

“If you’ve already figured out that the promise of AI is nothing more than a corporate attack on human curiosity, contemplation, critical thinking & free will, ‘Lux’ will sound like a new kind of feel-good music. Listen up and try not to get swept away. Focus feels better than awe.” wapo.st/47XrLS2

Vince Gilligan: “A.I. is the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires … selling a bag of vapor.” variety.com/2025/tv/news...

We must "determine whether we are to have a Government of respectability,” or one “springing perhaps from anarchy and Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue.” — George Washington (1787) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

DOJ has lost thousands of experienced attorneys & has backfilled a fraction of the jobs, with the process snarled by a lack of qualified candidates. Last year it had ~10k attorneys; this year 5k+ people—not all of them attorneys—have quit the dept, been fired or taken a buyout. wapo.st/3JG4ImA

“Patel’s inexperience, his dismissals of top F.B.I. officials and his shift of bureau resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift…” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...

BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president's assault on the rule of law. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

FEDWATCH: “.. The chaos is escalating, with 3,800 flight cancellations since Thursday, and some states reporting a 40- to 60% increase in visits to food banks. Some of the disruption is evident in private sector weekly economic indicators .. and even the price of electricity.”

1: shoots gun at Capitol on J6 2: slueths tell fbi his name 3: he kills a man, claims self defense 4: he tells police he was the j6 gunman 5: he’s finally arrested 6: trump pardons him for j6 7: he allegedly kidnaps and sexually assaults someone www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

Went back to the history of the Sicilian Mafia to illustrate something obvious but worth stating explicitly: The Trump administration behaves like an organized crime syndicate running a protection racket, not a representative government www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...