What's next? "Perhaps no one outside of Venezuela or Cuba should care more about the U.S. capture of nominal President Nicolás Maduro than the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei," writes Aaron Pilkington @uofdenver.bsky.social theconversation.com/today-venezu...

"Removing a leader – even a brutal one – is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order," says Monica Duffy Toft @fletcherschool.bsky.social. Force "may deliver short-term obedience, but is a counterproductive strategy for building durable power" theconversation.com/can-the-us-r...

So did an editor miss this (clear/unclear), or was it on purpose: “…Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday made it clear that it is somewhat unclear what’s next for the Latin American country” www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Congress has "a legal, constitutional, one might even say moral, responsibility to assert themselves as a branch" and say, “We have a role here" says war powers expert Sarah Burns in an interview with me about the US attack on Venezuela theconversation.com/i-wrote-a-bo...

With more Trump administration pressure on the Smithsonian this week to sanitize US history, George Orwell, via historian Laura Beers, helps you understand what's going on: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” theconversation.com/the-orwellia...

Headlines in the past focused on unidentified elites who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the first place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked, writes Sam Martin at Boise State theconversation.com/as-doj-begin...

Are Americans about to be led again into a war with Venezuela based on misrepresentations and lies? It’s happened before, writes Betty Medsger, who describes the run-ups to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam theconversation.com/deception-an...

What to do when Orwell is all I can think of while watching Karoline Leavitt? Ask Orwell expert @fieryparticle.bsky.social to analyze the "transparency," doublespeak, doublethink & constant reminders of “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” theconversation.com/karoline-lea...

Orwell expert @fieryparticle.bsky.social finds the Orwell in Karoline Leavitt's White House briefings: "In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase ...that... had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning" theconversation.com/karoline-lea...

Headlines about the Epstein files "focus on unidentified elites and who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the 1st place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked," writes Sam Martin theconversation.com/epsteins-vic...

As reporters and the public wait breathlessly for more Epstein files to be released by the end of this week, Sam Martin says Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’ theconversation.com/epsteins-vic...

Trump politics infect the US Mint's America 250 coins sethographer.bsky.social writes. "The Black Abolition, Women’s Suffrage & Civil Rights quarters were replaced with quarters that commemorate the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War & the Gettysburg Address" theconversation.com/trump-admini...

"My takeaway as an American citizen and as a former judge is that at bottom, President Trump simply lacks respect for our system of justice. The president believes the law is whatever he says it is" -- Dickinson College President John E. Jones III theconversation.com/as-a-former-...

Here's TCUS's version. @democracyeditor.bsky.social and I both edited this piece, so you know it's going to make the necessary connections reproductive rights and the state of U.S. democracy.

Too many words, people. While there are great Substacks to read right now, as a reader, writer and editor, I beg all of you to get an editor and cut your content down by half. I promise you, you can say it in 750 words.

The 5 different ways to "hold accountable those who ordered and carried out the...operation in the Caribbean that killed two survivors of an earlier attack," laid out by military law scholar Josh Kastenberg, who spent 20 years as a lawyer & judge in the Air Force theconversation.com/pete-hegseth...

House Speaker Mike Johnson's in trouble with a growing number of his frustrated GOP colleagues. Is it because he's been giving away the House's power to President Donald Trump? theconversation.com/speaker-john...

Giving it away: Most speakers, says UVA's SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, worked "to strengthen the position & power of Congress; Johnson’s choice to lead by following President Trump drifts the position further from the framers’ vision of congressional primacy" theconversation.com/speaker-john...

Donald Heflin, career diplomat and director of Fletcher's Murrow Center, analyzes the peace plan presented to Ukraine by the U.S. @us.theconversation.com @democracyeditor.bsky.social theconversation.com/peace-plan-p...

As Matthew Sitman points out — like @zohrankmamdani (and MLK, etc) ‘1984’ author George Orwell was a Democratic Socialist who fought for workers. He also opposed communism because the two are not the same things and words have meanings. theconversation.com/orwells-oppo...

"In a war that’s been going on now for almost four years, you don’t say, 'OK, within the next week, come up with a very complicated peace deal and sign off on it and it’s going to stick.' That’s just not the way it works," says former diplomat Don Heflin theconversation.com/peace-plan-p...

"Something’s missing from RFKJr.’s accounts of 'Operation Northwoods,'” writes @fatalpolitics.bsky.social in a sharp essay that challenges RFKJr.'s version of that menu of false flag operations. "Something about his father." theconversation.com/what-robert-...

The Democratic lawmakers' video about refusing illegal orders: Many service members "do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so," say two @umassamherst.bsky.social scholars theconversation.com/just-follow-...

I have a new understanding of Boston’s scary bad drivers after watching the new @kenlburns.bsky.social documentary: they’re all the aggressive, opinionated descendants of Sam Adams

I give you the Minister of Mixed Metaphors: The tax proposal, said campaign strategist Dan Newman, “opens up a can of worms sliding down a slippery slope" www.wsj.com/business/cal...

Can Graham Platner attract more than Southern Maine progressives? Nick Jacobs says "Every few years, Democrats try to convince themselves they’ve found the one – a candidate who can finally speak fluent rural, who looks and sounds like the voters they’ve lost" theconversation.com/why-rural-ma...

Upset about the government shutdown at any of its various stages, including how it might end? Consider @roberttalisse.bsky.social's take: The fault, dear voter, lies in ourselves and not the politicians theconversation.com/blame-the-sh...

The old days: "The framers viewed congressional oversight as a key component of legislative authority. They wanted presidents to take Congress seriously and structured the Constitution to ensure that the executive would be accountable to the legislature" 1/2 theconversation.com/a-brief-hist...

If you're gonna write a story from the vast perspective of "half a decade" in Maine, please get the details right: It's the Common Ground FAIR, not "festival" and lose the "h" in "Sarah" Gideon - the big loser of that race was Sara Gideon www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Clearly something going on here: Abigail Spanberger was born in NJ and was just elected governor of Virginia; Mikie Sherrill was born in Virginia and was. just elected governor of NJ. These are the random thoughts of a tired politics editor

Dick Cheney's less-well-known effect on today's politics: "...a decades-long effort to enhance presidential power, to reinvigorate an office that he believed Congress had wrongly diminished" post-Watergate, writes Graham G. Dodds theconversation.com/dick-cheneys...

So 'Throw out the bastards!' doesn't make Congress work better. The very outsiders voters elect and hope will “fix” Congress "contribute to the partisan divisions that keep it from functioning," write @rachelporter.bsky.social & Jeff Harden @notredame.bsky.social theconversation.com/amateur-hour...

David Soule & Kyle Redican say the scale of changes in mid-cycle redistricting is "staggering: 10.4 million Texas residents, @ 36% of state population, and 9.2 million California residents, @ 23% of state population, will be in unfamiliar congressional districts" theconversation.com/voters-lose-...

"Unwilling to assert itself as an equal branch of government," Congress has been "content to hand over many of its core constitutional powers to the executive branch...Yet Congress’ path to irrelevance...did not begin during the shutdown" writes @charlesrhunt.com theconversation.com/the-shutdown...

I’m glad the Red Sox aren’t in this series because I’d be a widow by now

Have I mentioned I think the intentional walk is chicken sh*t? Play baseball, guys

Terrific story by my fave AK reporter, Nat Herz, who demonstrates that he is my son by not turning down an offer to be a reporter on a boat trip www.northernjournal.com/on-rivers-an...

I don't normally bash headlines but the NYT does great injustice - it's not about Trump! - to this excellent @jamellebouie.net column, a much-needed civics & history lesson about how and why the US, "at this moment, does not have a functioning national legislature" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

Blowing up boats, building up the Navy's presence, announcing covert ops - surveying Trump's Venezuela moves, political-military analyst Jeffrey Fields @dornsife.usc.edu finds it "hard to discern a coherent strategy or objective" theconversation.com/trumps-anti-...

For the unauthorized, unsanitized, unpalatable and unpleasant truth about Henry Kissinger, Ken Hughes is your guy, whose essay allows you to see how Kissinger and Nixon "divided America to conquer it, sowing hatred while calling for unity behind themselves and their misbegotten policies."

Conflict-of-interest 101, from Berkeley J-School's Ed Wasserman: "Creators who conceal financial support while weighing in on matters of interest to their funders are...no less deceitful than the business journalist who covers a company they secretly invest in" theconversation.com/influencers-...

You're confused, right? Seems like federal courts issue daily & different opinions on whether Trump has the right to deploy National Guard troops to various cities. What's the law? @andreascoseriakatz.bsky.social says there’s no simple answer, not even from SCOTUS theconversation.com/trumps-natio...

Now what? theconversation.com/10-effective...

Partisan bashing on gov't websites: Federal agencies exist to administer laws impartially, on behalf of the people, says Sam Martin ‪@boisestate.bsky.social‬. Using infrastructure for partisan messaging erodes the neutrality on which democratic governance depends theconversation.com/when-governm...

Every day was "No Kings Day" for Thomas Paine theconversation.com/in-1776-thom...

Saying “no” – especially to those in power – is an underrated American pastime, and Thomas Paine was its Babe Ruth. If you plan on joining No Kings rallies and need a slogan, Paine’s got you covered: “In America, the law is king!” “No King! No Tyranny!” theconversation.com/in-1776-thom...

Warrior ethos? Not for General George Washington, contra Pete Hegseth’s vision of the tough guy who kills for a living. Maurizio Valsania writes Washington "saw soldiering as the highest exercise of discipline, patience and composure...more statesman than warrior" theconversation.com/where-george...

It's that time of year again, with reporters jostling each other in basement hallways of the Capitol, trying to get tidbits from lawmakers about whether the fed'l gov't will shut down. @charlesrhunt.com breaks down the big problem that's kind of new this year theconversation.com/facing-a-shu...

One of the best ledes I've read in a long time, in this Hollywood Reporter review of Kimmel's monologue last night: "At some point in the past few days, Jimmy Kimmel ceased to (just) be Jimmy Kimmel." www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-review...

Kash Patel's been enacting Trump's vengeance agenda since he got to the FBI. As Betty Medsger writes today, "This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies." theconversation.com/trumps-use-o... 1/