@russellberman.bsky.social: “Even if the GOP’s gerrymandering advantage nets the party a few additional seats, Democrats will have a narrower gap to overcome next year than they did eight years ago.”

New! Show! From @cwarzel.bsky.social! Go get it:

“Get used to these kinds of subscriptions, regardless of what kind of car you drive.”

@radiofreetom.bsky.social: “Of course, another possibility is that Trump’s announcement means nothing.”

@ashleyrparker.bsky.social on Rahm Emanuel? Click:

@gcaw.bsky.social: “Right now the 20-point plan is in effect halted while Trump’s deputies make efforts to determine which of its deficiencies are remediable. It’s not clear when the plan will be implemented, who will implement it, or how.”

“A centaur goes in circles if the human half doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

When the president of the United States decides to demolish the East Wing of the White House to construct a ballroom, all that stucco and molding and wood has to go somewhere. So Nancy Walecki tried to find it.

@qjurecic.bsky.social: “The extravagance of Trump’s attempted theft may itself be part of the point. The goal is not just dictatorial power, but the ostentatious performance of dictatorial power.”

great read from @kait.bsky.social trying to solve the conundrum of why America's most exciting train keeps hitting people:

NEW: More than a third of the recruits at ICE's training academy are failing the personal-fitness test, @nickmiroff.bsky.social reports. “It’s pathetic,” one career ICE official told Miroff.

@anneapplebaum.bsky.social: “Protests can only create enthusiasm, spread goodwill, and inspire people to dedicate time and energy to real political change. And the people who created the sewage video knew that too.”

@shaneharris.bsky.social: “Donald Trump has derided NATO as an obsolete bunch of freeloaders for so long, it can be easy to forget that the transatlantic alliance remains the most powerful combined military force on Earth. And right now, it’s really acting like it.”

Phenomenal Riyadh dispatch from @helenlewis.bsky.social: “By the end of the night, I was, somewhat unexpectedly, annoyed on behalf of the kingdom. You drop six or seven figures to fly in Louis C.K., and he won’t even write some new material? Disrespectful.”

@nickmiroff.bsky.social from Chicago: “I realized that no one from the federal government had gone to the building after the raid to check on the elderly Americans who lived there, to see if any of them needed help, or to apologize for handcuffing them in the middle of the night.”

Robert Worth: “It is impossible to spend more than a few minutes near the front line without being confronted by Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability: lack of soldiers. Yet I came away from a recent trip to Ukraine believing that the country may actually be able to achieve its military goals.”

Take a wild ride with @matteowong.bsky.social as he tours the NYC subways looking at the defaced Friend posters with the Friend founder who says he loves it all:

@yair-rosenberg.bsky.social: “Trump successfully bullied Netanyahu—and if this latest round of talks is going to get results, he’ll need to do more of it.”

Despite a huge boost in funds, ICE’s buildup stalled over the summer. Good new reporting from @nickmiroff.bsky.social:

@annielowrey.bsky.social: “The shutdown won’t cause a nationwide recession, provided it is over soon. But it could certainly worsen some smaller ones already gathering force.”

@isaacstanleybecker.bsky.social went to Portland: “What I’ve found is an atmosphere that is more like a carnival than combat.”

@nancyayoussef.bsky.social: “The U.S. military’s policy of opening the Pentagon to the press was never a favor to the journalists who cover the military, but rather an obligation to a country that asks its sons and daughters to volunteer for service.”

Searching for a McDonald's play place has led me into the black hole of "online McDonald's reviews"

“James Comey’s rights and liberties are not the only ones at risk today.”

@adamserwer.bsky.social: “These cascading acts of cowardice from the people best positioned to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grabs have made Trump seem exponentially more powerful than he actually is.”

“At the rate things are going today, we should be far less worried about what foreign governments could do with our social-media information than about how our own government might abuse it.”

“Alaa waited until the bombing stopped, and then resumed her lesson.”

love that Dashiell Hammett made this list:

“Viewing Zionism historically helps reveal it not as a caricatured monolith but as a national movement like so many others—one that encompasses a complex past, competing ideas, and a future whose possibilities have not yet been exhausted.”

H.R. McMaster to Jeffrey Goldberg: Donald Trump “is a bit different now.” bit.ly/46a5DUE “He has a deeper sense of aggrievement, some of which is justified ... and I think he has been convinced, really, by some of the people around him, that his own staff was kind of the deep state.” #TAF25

David Letterman to Jeffrey Goldberg on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension: “You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian—a criminal—administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.” Watch here: bit.ly/4n0Uv2p

David Letterman on his career mocking presidents: “Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy—not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.” Watch more: bit.ly/4n0Uv2p

David Letterman to Jeffrey Goldberg on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension: “You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian—a criminal—administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.” #TAF25 bit.ly/4n0Uv2p

Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension from late-night is a chilling precedent that could have deep consequences if it isn’t swiftly undone, David Sims argues:

NEW: @jonlemire.bsky.social: “As Kamala Harris rushed to pick a running mate last year, her ‘first choice’ was her close friend Pete Buttigieg, but she decided that it would be ‘too big of a risk’ for a Black woman to run with a gay man.”

@annielowrey.bsky.social: “If and when America’s bill comes due, comfortable pencil-pushers might be the last people paying reliable, predictable sums to the tax man.”

This article, its structure, and especially its hall-of-fame kicker should all be taught in writing classes:

“Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.”

@skornhaber.bsky.social: “If we are, as is frequently said, living in an era of extraordinary political violence, it cannot be understood as separate from the rising cultural hunger to reach out and touch—or do much worse to—the people on our screens.”

“That makes drone warfare seem abstract and impersonal, but the opposite is true. Unlike artillerymen, drone pilots single out individuals, sometimes seeing the panic on their faces before striking. Killing this way is as intimate as it is efficient. It is a game we may never stop playing.”

“The dictionary business was crumbling,” he said. “So ride it ’til the wheels fall off. And the wheels fell off.”

How do you prove your citizenship? ICE won’t say.

“We give them all A’s, and they give us all fives.”

@dkthomp.bsky.social: “The White House is not doing ‘state capitalism’ so much as it’s doing ‘step-on-a-rake capitalism’—a tragicomic bungling of economic growth that fails to advance the very objectives it claims to prioritize.”

All I knew is that I was fucking taken. No one told me what I was there for. I thought no one knew––that I was literally gonna just disappear in there and never see my fucking kids again.”

“My father used to say that living in Venezuela was like driving a car that you know is not being maintained. For now, the car works fine, but one day it will break down. And when it does, the moment to repair the car will have passed.”

Jane Austen. Spike Lee. MrBeast. “Modern Family.” The Atlantic’s new AI Watchdog search tool lets you see which creative works tech companies may have used to train their generative-AI models: https://theatln.tc/vQSlfiyC

“His team didn’t get it,” Kamala Harris writes in an exclusive excerpt of her forthcoming book, “107 Days”:

NEW: Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection in 2024 “wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition,” Kamala Harris writes in her forthcoming memoir. “It should have been more than a personal decision.”

William Parker, who says that children taking Tylenol causes autism, has spoken with the health secretary five times in the past month, @tombartlett.bsky.social reports: