Whatever wag-the-dog distraction Bondi tries to stage with the Maduri show trial, the Epstein files are still coming. What they're showing so far: 5 decades of an extractive overclass.

I'm attending Indivisible Brooklyn's event, “No War, No Kings March and Rally” - sign up now to join me! www.mobilize.us/indivisiblen...

Remembering the terror and trauma on this day five years ago, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Jamie Raskin, who were there. No paywall. Well, This Is About to Go Down open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

To a year of freer consciences and more pluralism. Here's the piece on William Penn (that Google didn't want you to see): virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/tolerating...

This was palpably chilling. Searching Google for the complete text of William Penn's treatise on religious tolerance, I got nothing but the American Heritage Education Foundation. Two pages of nearly identical returns, then nothing. Looked like this. Tried an incognito window, same. Bing is OK.

My son gave me A Chill in the Air, Iris Origo's Italian war diary, 1939-1940. It's an antifa document in retrospect, but in the foreground it's just a diary. We need books like this now. I hope diaries are not extinct & not every observation or voice of anguish is being spent on Bluesky or TikTok.

Will never forget the day that both the New York Times and the Washington Post saw a catastrophic war crime and said, huh, seems like a pretty good idea

After decades of imperialism by other names we seem to have settled on imperialism by the name imperialism

Early aptitude. Is that what they call it now. Google's AI is like reading the Epoch Times or Pravda these days.

I really like traditional New Year’s resolutions. This year mine is simple: to cultivate belief in other minds. The way to do this is by (1) meeting people (2) reading. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

Dead: economics Ahead: philosophy virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/can-you-re...

Love that @longlead.com

First in a short series on empathy, which is both too much and too little to ask of humans. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

""And you cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament. You cannot. You cannot.” OK, so Erika Kirk doesn’t hate Jews. She just wants to turn them into Christians." - @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social Merry Christmas, chaverim. newrepublic.com/article/2046...

Watch Torture Video Bari Weiss Doesn't Want You to See — and get some news about our podcast. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-tortur...

Killing the CECOT story multiplied its potency. 60 Minutes has exposed Trump's cruelty for years but no other segment that has gotten this kind of attention. The 7 in 10 Americans who already oppose ICE should expect company. Well done, Ms. Weiss. www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...

The American people don't like ICE. And they don't like CBS News under Bari Weiss. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

Ask high school pals abt CBS if you’re home for the holidays. WaPo lost public trust last year & CBS has now. People vote with their ratings; the Weiss-Kirk town hall lost 40 percent of younger viewers for the timeslot. CECOT wd have been a ratings win but they don’t care about viewers anymore

So whose obituary is in the balance? Clinton, Summers, Brooks, Chomsky - whose obit will have it in paragraph 5 (“marred by scandal”), whose in line one, like it’ll be for Maxwell? Does it matter if Brooks lives for decades & we’re talking the Times obit only? Obituary bookmakers please advise

There’s something despair-inducing about a former professor of mine (& Larry Summers’s wife) being asked to get Epstein yet another copy of Lolita and saying oh hey check out Willa Cather if you’re looking for literary novels

The Times should not pretend to be surprised by David Brooks’s proximity to Epstein & the edgelords Epstein sponsored. Brooks was one of them. I originally published this in Wired in 6 years ago.

On that Vanity Fair masterpiece. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

"OK, so Erika Kirk doesn’t hate Jews. She just wants to turn them into Christians." newrepublic.com/article/2046... Fascinating piece by @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social

New @vanityfair.com piece has singlehandedly reminded the young why expensive feature journalism in glossy magazines exists. And the simmering subtle grotesquerie of the photos reminds us why they’re glossy. Congrats to Chris Whipple, Christopher Anderson, Guiducci, all involved.

Searched for a transcript of the Weiss-Kirk town hall & found this one fr/a Christian site. It's somehow an ChatGPT version of the interview as if "Kirk" was Charlie & not Erika. Why o why. Something is sideways when a question starts with, "After your death, some people argued—"

Ellison’s CBS and soon TikTok seem to be moving heaven and earth to keep Christian Zionists onsides

Gemini, this is not what Adriana Smith’s death, forced life support, and forced birth of this infant, still in the NICU after 6 months, “highlights the need for.”

Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes: What Could Go Wrong? Thank you @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social

So glad @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social wrote this piece about the phrase "purity tests," the latest tactic that Dem pols use when asked to take a real stand on anything. And she named the right names: Booker, Buttigieg, Obama. newrepublic.com/article/2039...

"There is no connection between having a lot of money and having anything valuable to offer society... Extreme power will lead to extreme abuse." @cybelecanterel.bsky.social on the latest What Rough Beast podcast with @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/why-smart-...

"Progressive Democrats..oppose all billionaires..[they] have long rigged politics and the economy to consolidate power, exploit workers, pursue white nationalism, and wage war." Great takedown of Dem rhetoric on "purity tests" (™️Obama). @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2039...

Huge beneficiary of the Nuzzi Affair: the other “Method journalist” who gave aid and comfort to a scoundrel. Michael Wolff.

Welcome to social media, AI. Here’s what I hope you can teach us. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/how-to-liv...

Black Friday deal: $15/year, 75 percent off. And to start: Could Jeffrey Epstein Read? Thinking did not come easily to him. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/could-jeff...

Could Jeffrey Epstein Read? Thinking wasn’t easy for him. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/could-jeff...

"The crackpots & wokes were right. They were silenced, and now 100s of 1000s in RU and UA are dead, while 66,000 people are unlawfully detained in the U.S. More than 50,000 children in Gaza have been reported as killed or injured since October 2023. Thousands more are starving, sick, or missing."

Marjorie Taylor Greene has defied three child s*x-abuse networks: the one in the Catholic Church, the fictional one in QAnon, and now the Trump-Epstein ring. newrepublic.com/article/2036... via @newrepublic.com

The Wokes and the Crackpots Were Right virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-wokes-...

"...if big PAC money and lavish spending actually hurts a politician’s chances at victory, that might be a curious new incentive for thrift." The incomparable @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social on the failed billionaire buy-out of big-city mayoral elections. newrepublic.com/article/2033...

The presser with Mamdani and Trump is yielding a lot of far-ranging and complex insights across the political spectrum and it's that I want to make New York City affordable for all New Yorkers

I've been writing in three parts about the moral catastrophes roiling American religion. It's an urgent subject, and we need as many perspectives as possible. So I've just dropped the paywalls. 1. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/religious-...

"The problem for billionaires is written on the tin: It’s their billions. Lately, once the money of the private-jet set enters a campaign, the stink of the oligarchy sticks to the campaign." Me today @newrepublic.com : newrepublic.com/article/2033... via @newrepublic.com

VH: It’s my opinion that Catholics shipwrecked in the 1990s with the priest-abuse revelations. Protestants likewise shipwrecked in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. And Jews are shipwrecking right now, terribly, with the fall of Israel into authoritarianism and crimes against humanity.

It’s amazing to me that a few yrs ago I looked into the owner of Business Insider. First it was some Christian Democrats of Germany, a center-right family that sounded far-right to me. Didn’t subscribe. Then I was told “private equity” had acquired it so I thought “that sounds normal” & was all in.

Also Sherlock Holmes, with all the sleuthing around the dog that didn’t bark. But from his nutbag punctuation it’s clear Epstein could barely read beyond the title of one of Nabokov’s books. He’s not curled up with Ada or Speak, Memory

What’s private equity and is it new?

Nick Fuentes is an incel Catholic, and Charlie Kirk was a married evangelical family man. This matters a LOT in the current splintering of the right. (DM me if you need a comp subscription.) virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/protestant...

Remember 2021, when MTG tried to start an America First caucus, dedicated to “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and had it rejected by her own party as racist and nativist?

Sobering and profound piece by @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/of-course-...

The world of “history is complex and it’s not evil mustachioed men exchanging bags of money and trafficked girls in back rooms” has some explaining to do