Very excited to be part of this year’s 🔥 lineup at San Antonio Book Fesitval. April 11! Would love to see you there 🥊🥊🥊 (And thanks for mentioning THE SLIP, @expressnews.com!)

I couldn't imagine a more inane and useless discourse than MFA discourse but I did not anticipate the Democratic primary for Senate in Texas.

Why should we be listening to people who don’t like books and don’t read books about the future of the thing they don’t like and don’t read?

Paperback cover 6.23.26 🥊🥊🥊

I suspect the AI-is-the-future-of-art crowd has never seen a Frederick Wiseman film

Frederick Wiseman, a director whose rigorously objective explorations of social and cultural institutions constitute one of the more revered bodies of work in American documentary filmmaking, died on Monday. He was 96. nyti.ms/4qGpq55

In a year when independent bookstores are (again) proving to be essential champions of free expression, honored to be on the longlist for the James Patterson and @bookshop.org Prize alongside 9 other debuts, all nominated by booksellers. bookshop.org/info/the-jam...

In a year when independent bookstores are (again) proving to be essential champions of free expression, honored to be on the longlist for the James Patterson and @bookshop.org Prize alongside 9 other debuts, all nominated by booksellers. bookshop.org/info/the-jam...

crickets from the free speech crowd, of course

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

on the balance i think partisan gerrymandering is bad but the only way it ends is if democrats weaponize it against republicans everywhere they can. wiping out republican lawmakers in blue states might bring the GOP to the table to end the practice.

Canceled my Post subscription, not so much in “protest” as just like… it doesn’t make financial sense for me to pay the same subscription price for like 1/3 of what I used to enjoy reading. Like Mr. Bezos I am a businessman

Incredible. They destroyed a great newspaper because they hated the people who actually paid for it and read it so much that they'd rather scrap the paper if they couldn't get Tucker Carlson's audience bsky.app/profile/maxt...

Every time there is a mass layoff I hope people remember that newsletters cannot save us. The Free Press started as a newsletter but came to influence as something more like a newspaper (without the journalism). We need to somehow invest in media infrastructure, not a thousand little ladders.

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

All the smartest, best people I know are broke and losing their jobs, while the stupidest, meanest, most vicious and violent people are thriving. It’s awful, and of course it’s just one part of the terrible times we’re in. If you feel as hopeless as I do, go read a story, poem, or essay today.

At a time when critical reading and critical writing is more needed than ever in this country - and when people are hungering for more thoughtful discourse - the @washingtonpost.com decision to gut their books section is distressing and bleak but also very foolish.

Thanks to the Notable Books Council for including THE SLIP on its Notable Books list 🥊 rusaupdate.org/2026/01/2026...

Equal parts heartening and infuriating to watch small business owners weigh what to do tomorrow with so much thoughtfulness and intention while our corporate leaders remain as morally bankrupt and mediocre as ever.

remember what JD Vance said of the ICE agents that arrested this little boy: “what did you expect them to do?”

Nice to see THE SLIP is @passportmag.bsky.social Airplane Read of the Month! “Ribald and revelatory… a slab of fabulous comic Americana reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer-winning MIDDLESEX.”

An entire community of thousands, here legally, having been demonized with deranged lies about eating pets, is about to be arbitrarily DECLARED illegal so they can be forcibly ethnically cleansed. I don’t want to hear one more fucking word about comparisons to Nazi Germany being overwrought.

This is a white supremacist paramilitary operation. Their goal—their stated goal!—is to force America to submit to the President's racist domineering vision for the country. The sooner everybody starts confronting it on the terms that they themselves have stated, the better.

- cancel all EOs - fire political appointees - strip clearances - appoint special prosecutor for DHS - hire a zillion IGs - investigate and prosecute crimes - investigate and refer policy violations for disciplinary action - recode ICE and CBP jobs out of 1811 series - revert name changes

From this moment forward (and before, but clearly now): -If you work for ICE. -If you vote for money for ICE. You are complicit. This is the gestapo. You're on the wrong side. You can't pretend not to know.

Nuremberg trials for ICE is the moderate position

MS NOW news crew capturing ICE/DHS agents firing pepper balls, flash bangs, and tear gas at non violent protesters. file:///C:/Users/Nikki/Downloads/Velshi-2026-01-24.mp4

Everyone protesting in Minnesota has been risking being murdered. The rest of us Americans can make some fucking phone calls. That goes for those with Repub senators as well as those of us with Dem senators. All of them.

I’ve been to large protests. The protest today will likely not be record turnout. (It was -22 when I got out the car this morning!) It’s the depth and breadth and *non public* organizing.

school being canceled because the president sent armed thugs to harass and imprison the populace for voting against him should be the biggest domestic scandal in american history

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Honored to be a finalist for the 2025 NBCC John Leonard Prize in this amazing company. Thank you to the book critics who have championed THE SLIP, and who champion books & reading (& reading critically). We need critics, especially now! 🥊

Keep calling these chumps and tell them ICE OUT OF OUR CITIES is the BARE MINIMUM. Get them OUT right now, and ultimately DEFUND AND ABOLISH. Also, NO to failed "reforms" like training and bodycams that change nothing and just give ICE more money to hurt people. Find your reps here: reps.fyi

I know people on Bsky know this but I hope it filters out: The feds are OCCUPYING the Twin Cities. This is a blockade, a siege. They are shutting down economic and civic activity. They are conducting "papers please" stops. They are criminalizing being a bystander/witness. You could be next.

Today at 34 & Park in Minneapolis, a woman tried to drive down the street where a protest had broken out in front of a home ICE was raiding, saying she had a doctor apt to get to. ICE agents busted out her windows, cut off her seatbelt, and pulled her out before arresting her.

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

A woman recording an ICE agent tells him "Shame on you." The agent responds, "Have you all not learned from the past couple of days?" "Learned what?" she asks Then he knocks her phone out of her hand

It’s really only when Republicans are in power that our major media institutions begin to pontificate on the glorious ambiguity of reality.

i think this professional liar is one of the most disgraceful people in media

failing to prosecute, convict, and imprison Bush administration officials for Iraq and bankers for the 2008 financial crisis has a LOT to do with how the world ended up in this place

If you are a Democrat who can’t bring himself to say “this is dumber than dog shit and also completely insane” please retire

Love that fiction writer is one of the few professions committed to reminding us that other people are real.

A local politician I already didn’t like putting me on an email list from which I can’t unsubscribe is… probably having the intended effect

I know some writers don't like this, but I do enjoy when readers email to note small factual errors. In this era, anyone paying that level of attention is good with me. (Just received a note that it's unlikely uncle Bob would undergo an "annual colonoscopy" - sorry, uncle Bob!)

yep. i can identify any number of structural issues but at the end of the day the basic problem is the republican party. this has been apparent for at least 20 years. it is also an incredibly unpopular observation to make among “serious” people.

I realize this will never happen, but during these press conferences, when he says something idiotic like the insane-asylum thing, I just wish somebody would respond, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

A year end plug of THE SLIP from Ron Charles 🥊🙏

One thing elected Democrats and elected Republicans have in common is that neither seem aware they’re in Congress.