MIT refuses to accept White House terms for funding, other schools still mulling reut.rs/471tkNZ

As a group, District Judges (from across the ideological spectrum!) performing as well as just about anyone right now in defending democratic liberty.

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

Michigan Avenue right now.

Best movie I have seen in years.

“No self-respecting university could ever accept something like this,” said Lee Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar and former Columbia University president. “Trying to protect conservative ideas against being ‘belittled’ — that’s about as violative of the First Amendment interests as you can get.”

A WILD ONE: A man broke his leg during an arrest by ICE at a car wash south of L.A. ICE has held him under 24/7 guard at a hospital, registering him under a pseudonym, for *37 days* without telling him why. A judge has ordered his immediate release. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: Supreme Court will allow Lisa Cook to remain on federal reserve board for now, ruling that the government’s application for a stay is deferred pending oral argument in January 2026

i think this is it

The State of Illinois is closely monitoring the federal deployments in the Village of Broadview. Public safety is always my top priority, and the Illinois State Police remains in close communication with the Broadview Police Department to monitor and maintain public safety.

BREAKING NYT:   Trump just fired a U.S. attorney who insisted on following a court order.   Michele Beckwith, the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento, was fired hours after she reminded a Border Patrol chief to abide by court-ordered restrictions on immigration raids.

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

This is really bad. It won’t get the popular opposition the Kimmel incident did, but it’s way more sweeping and authoritarian. This is an effort to bring the full force of government down on any and all opposition to this administration. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

This is the playbook, folks. If you're not paying attention now and doing something about it, then you're going to have to sit down the rest of your life because democracy is being taken away. Do not be quiet in this moment.

I love Severance and want to see brilliant Adam Scott win an Emmy, but I am so on board with everything The Pitt is putting down, especially at a moment when public health and medical science are being politicized to terrifying effects. And Noah Wyle’s performance was virtuosic.

Tramell Tillman won the #Emmy for Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Seth Milchick in “Severance,” becoming the first Black man ever to win in the category. Stay updated on the ceremony with our live blog: nymag.visitlink.me/vPi_E0

“Thank you Bridget Everett. You changed my life.” Jeff Hiller wins for the #Emmy Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in “Somebody Somewhere.” Follow along for live updates from the 2025 Emmy Awards: nymag.visitlink.me/vPi_E0.

More people in DC than in Wyoming or Vermont. Coming up on Alaska and North Dakota. Per capita, we pay more federal income tax than any of the states. (Incl NY, CA, CT, etc.) Voice in Congress: Zero. Have never before felt as much DC-specific patriotism—across race and class—as now.

I love Pips.

Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival

AUTHORS!! 📣 If AI trained itself on your book, you can be part of A class action lawsuit now. More here: lithub.com/did-anthropi... Spread the word, please!!

I wonder if any university admins have thought even a little bit about what it looks like to unleash LLM chatbots—as a university-purchased, -promoted, and -legitimized “educational” enterprise technology— on a student population in the grips of a well-documented college mental health crisis

The hits keep coming. “The departments that won’t be accepting Ph.D. students now include art history, cinema and media studies, classics, comparative literature, East Asian languages and civilizations, English language and literature, Germanic studies, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies…”

“Chicago has long helped to keep alive tiny fields & esoteric areas of humanistic study…Without the university’s support, and the continued training of grad students who can keep these bodies of knowledge going, entire spheres of human learning might eventually blink out.” #HigherEd @theatlantic.com

So far, the main businesses that have been financially benefited from AI have been the producers of blue books www.wsj.com/business/cha...

While riding the B or Q trains between Dekalb Ave station and the Manhattan Bridge, you may catch a glimpse of "Masstransiscope," a public art installation by Bill Brand. It was added to the #NYCsubway system in 1980.

Breaking News: The Trump administration ordered construction to stop on a $4 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that has already mostly been built.

Remembering Starling Lawrence (1943 - 2025), legendary editor of David Ignatius, Sebastian Junger, and Michael Lewis. wwnorton.com/remembering-...

Just spent 5.5 hrs with the doc “My Undesirable Friends,” and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. For now, a quip: a 23-yr-old Russian journo whose bf has been unjustly jailed reads aloud a cruel Insta reply: “I hope if I become a political prisoner, I won’t make it my entire personality.”

Bookstore owners/bookseller friends, tell me how your store came to be, please.

I wrote about My Undesirable Friends, a spellbinding and deeply unsettling account of democracy dying in real time, even if you can still get a matcha latte.

New Yorkers: One of the best things you'll see all year. Everyone else: I'm praying it comes to you ASAP. MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS — PART 1: LAST AIR IN MOSCOW, now playing at Film Forum and hopefully a whole lot of other places soon www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...

MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I — LAST AIR IN MOSCOW is the documentary of the year, maybe the movie of the year. For @rollingstone.com, I spoke to filmmaker Julia Loktev, who in 2021 went to Russia to chronicle young independent journalists, only to witness Putin's crackdown in horrifying real time.

"Evil is not eternal, and truth will surely win." On dissidence, despair, and defiant hope in Julia Loktev's extraordinary five-part documentary, MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I — LAST AIR IN MOSCOW. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART 1 - LAST AIR IN MOSCOW, an accidental front-row seat to the shutdown of Russian independent journalism as Putin's invasion of Ukraine begins, may be the best movie of 2025. It lands in NYC tomorrow. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/m...

I highly recommend MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS, which is showing at Film Forum this week: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/m...

The worst single-day crime spree in modern Washington history, of course, took place on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump issued no order to the National Guard to intervene -- Mike Pence did -- and later pardoned the perpetrators.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

Talking to an AI fan at a party recently I was like “it lies, it uses stolen goods, it’s an energy disaster, it’s bad for humanity” and he kept being like “that may be true BUT if i give ChatGPT a photo of my smoke detector then ChatGPT can find me the user manual for my smoke detector”

Hello! This fall I am working with the excellent folks at American Short Fiction as part of their MFA for all online program (alongside the wonderful Tommy Orange and Kevin Wilson). You can study with one or all of us or even 2/3rds. americanshortfiction.org/mfa-for-all/

in other news

“I managed to pass the course… but I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I had written an essay by myself, which was my favorite activity. This was the catalyst for me to stop using the app.”

A very interesting moment in the latest Ezra Klein podcast with Jesse Jenkins and Jane Flegal. I've been thinking about this for a long time... The special report on 1.5C never said that 1.5C was a magical threshold. It said that 1.5C was much better than 2C... 1/

Same! Join us and support @thecity.nyc

I waste a lot of time browsing Zillow and don't understand the American preference for larger generic home (3k - 10k sq feet) instead of smaller home with beautiful architecture (1.5 - 3k sq feet)

And, uh, some personal news: This is also my last column for The Post. I was offered and accepted a buyout. To answer one possible next question, I'm not sure what's next save taking some time off. If you want, you can enter your email at pbump.net and I'll let you know when I figure it out!

Some professional news: After more than a decade of columnizing at The Washington Post, I'm taking the buyout. This is my last column. It is my advice to any other lucky pundits who land a perch like this -- with 11 principles I've aspired to, even if I haven't always achieved them: wapo.st/3TU2fGw