As it was in his first term, Donald Trump’s presidency seems to be good for the business of the New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/b...

Among the lessons of last night: any political party that tries to convince itself the American people in this decade are okay with 3% inflation is in for a world of hurt.

Before you take seriously any argument about whether it matters if Mamdani’s ends up with a majority tonight, remember that Trump won 49.8% of the vote last year.

Most of the NYC polls were right, with Mamdani winning his share of the undecided. But Trump’s endorsement does seem to have moved some votes from Sliwa to Cuomo, lowering the margin of Mamdani’s victory.

An extraordinary conversation about Google and the news business. Worth reading in full. www.codastory.com/authoritaria...

Dick Cheney was, in notable respects, a sort of conservative analogue to Lyndon Johnson: a complicated figure of great commitment and accomplishment, and impressive public service, with his legacy deeply marred by a mistaken commitment to a war in the wrong place and time.

One night recently, I got a Signal message Would I be interested in seeing an internal Trump admin memo? I said yes (duh). Then, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. The memo shows how the VA is making access to health coverage header for just one group: Male vets w/ breast cancer….

A timely reminder from @wsj.com that the most serious threat of anti-Semitism in the US comes, once again, from the right www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

The LA Times, whose owner wants to foist a half billion stake on the public, lost more than $20 million in the first half of this year. www.thewrap.com/la-times-pat...

A journalism cautionary tale for the ages www.semafor.com/article/10/2...

A very tough but fair piece from the general counsel of @newyorker.com on the ignominy of Paul Weiss. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Here is the Reagan talk on tariffs from 1987 that is in the news this morning. The general observations, starting at just before the 2:00 mark, are a devastating critique of Trump’s current approach. He’d be horrified if the American people watched this. youtube.com/watch?v=5t5Q...

Seems like a good day to repost this column from four years ago. If the explosion in sports gambling is finally-- as was inevitable-- turning into a major scandal, can problems for the press be far behind? dicktofel.substack.com/p/the-press-...

New study from Press Forward on how to promote journalism has lessons and limits. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

Hey folks! A little bit of news from me. I'll be starting a new program at the @harvardkennedy.bsky.social @shorensteinctr.bsky.social in January focusing on how we can support and bolster the independent media that is so crucial to our democracy. shorensteincenter.org/article/inde...

“Finally, it is important for our students, and as many of our fellow citizens as we can engage, to better grasp how the evident decline in trust in the arena of public health came to pass.” bsky.app/profile/dick...

What I will be teaching about this afternoon @hsph.harvard.edu www.statnews.com/2025/10/21/p...

The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer. @nicolefoy.bsky.social

LA Times digital subscriptions last year brought in a little over $31 million. Comparable figure for NY Times: More than $1.25 billion. ca-times-cdn.platform.californiatimes.com/c8/d0/ce8f13...

“In my view (and not mine alone), they have become the quality chain in the nation,” writes @dicktofel.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

Most newspaper chains are sellers, but Hearst has made two big purchases this year in Texas. What’s up? This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

Will Trump’s attempt to strong arm voters in another country work better in Argentina than it did in Canada? He’s bet $20 billion in US taxpayer money that it will.

Poynter launches public editor project to serve news audiences in Indianapolis. www.poynter.org/news-release...

As the press finally finds its collective voice to oppose Pentagon censorship, an argument about what’s most importantly at stake. dicktofel.substack.com/p/freedom-of...

Here’s an important @propublica.org story about 3 members of the Cabinet that JD Vance (almost certainly falsely) claims not to have read. Read it yourself to find out why he might want to lie about that. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Trump’s government has voluntarily ended its own ability to track unemployment, inflation and disease. That does nothing to stop problems from emerging. It just leaves us unprepared when they do.

Oops wapo.st/48Iuil5

Freedom of the Press Isn’t Just a Legal Issue by @dicktofel.bsky.social Why constitutional values are even more important than case law dicktofel.substack.com/p/freedom-of...

NEW: A surprise move by the Trump administration could result in hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers losing their food assistance benefits as soon as November — disrupting one of the country’s oldest safety net programs months earlier than expected. nysfocus.com/2025/10/09/t...

In his new substack, @dicktofel.bsky.social believes the entire White House press corps "should have refused to go places from which AP was banned." "It is a sorry statement that our nation’s TV comics have shown more solidarity in the face of Trump’s censorship than have its leading newspapers."

An important @dicktofel.bsky.social reminder that U.S. constitutional law is the U.S. people—it is the law that is constitutive of us. So don’t expect courts to “save” us from ourselves. Do stand for right values (such as press freedom), moral substance, and making better choices.

Why protecting free speech and a free press is most importantly a question of what we value. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

Re-upping this as Bari Weiss, with experience only as an opinion journalist, becomes editor-in-chief of CBS News dicktofel.substack.com/p/cbs-news-a...

Aaron Judge batting .444 in the postseason, with an OPS over 1, and almost identical to his career regular season OPS. It isn’t his fault.

In which a Wall Street Journal columnist explains why the economic approaches of Trump and Mamdani are actually similar. www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

New edit page editor of WaPo says the quiet part out loud: the paper’s readers are “overwhelmingly liberal” and “overwhelmingly located in just a few blue states.” He’s not interested in those who subscribed as a form of protest and looking to broaden readership. www.foxnews.com/media/editor...

How far have the football Giants fallen? Albany TV is showing Buffalo (more than twice as far away) game instead.

Helpful antidote from Nikole Hannah-Jones to the normalizing of Charlie Kirk’s most repulsive views, including a devastating subtweet of Ezra Klein www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

The fight here is more nearly between NPR and some of its leading member stations, more than with CPB (which is going out of business). Key: “privately executives for CPB and PBS distanced themselves from NPR and Maher.” www.npr.org/2025/09/27/n...

Naming a museum of capitalism after Mike Milken is like naming a museum of literature after Clifford Irving, or an art museum after Elmyr de Hory www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/b...

Was happy to talk to @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social about Trump’s crony capitalism www.npr.org/2025/09/26/g...

Whatever any of us may think of how Jim Comey handled things in October 2016, I have known him for 40 years and he would never have lied to or obstructed Congress. These charges are a disgrace to our nation and a fundamental attack on the rule of law.

Two guys who both ran news organizations but aren’t journalists, share our respect for great reporting and talk about the world we’re in right now. I hope you'll listen to my conversation with @dicktofel.bsky.social. open.substack.com/pub/edwineis...

We hear a lot about how people get news these days, but we need to take the changes more seriously— and to do things about it. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

4 50-home run seasons without steroids: Babe Ruth Aaron Judge nobody else 2 50-home run seasons after age 30 without steroids: Babe Ruth Aaron Judge nobody else

In considering anyone’s demands that someone donate to Charlie Kirk’s organization, remember that Kirk repeatedly insisted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should never have been passed, and that Martin Luther King Jr was unworthy of honor. There is more, but that seems like enough.

That is not a denial.

Remember Trump’s first term surgeon general? He just posted this on the other place, “ICYMI” www.autismspeaks.org/science-news...

This is an outrage— Hegseth forbidding the reporting of admittedly unclassified info without his permission. But I am not sure it is or should be framed as a legal problem. Could it be time for the independent press to pull its reporters and cameras out of the Pentagon unless this move is withdrawn?

I agree that it is important to remember Charlie Kirk. He deserved to live. I am very sorry he was killed, and mourn for his family. If you want to remember him also for his views, here is one sampling: youtube.com/watch?v=6oVc...