“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:

now that's a lede theatln.tc/0RjlWtBV

i've had 10,000 maniacs' "like the weather" stuck in my head for 11 days, AMA

If the AI bubble bursts, “it could put the dot-com crash to shame—and the tech giants and their Silicon Valley backers won’t be the only ones who suffer.” theatln.tc/TMZZuCv7

Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired.

[peeking out from behind my curtains while clutching my dark gray wardrobe] "is it hoodie season yet?"

Donald Trump is reportedly planning to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. @radiofreetom.bsky.social argues that the move is a stunt that could wind up embarrassing the Pentagon and costing millions. Read more: theatln.tc/r1lU6FWz

@radiofreetom.bsky.social: “If Trump thinks Moscow and Beijing will tremble when Hegseth orders the new stationery that says ‘War’ on it, he’s in for a surprise.”

@tombartlett.bsky.social: “Far from ending quickly, the outbreak in West Texas lasted from January to August and fed a measles surge that spread to 41 states—the country’s worst since 1992.”

“Trump expanded the counterterrorism campaign’s mission to a new part of the world, against a different kind of threat. And in doing so, he drew the military even deeper into crime fighting, work that has traditionally been outside its scope.”

@yair-rosenberg.bsky.social: “Carlson and his fellow travelers on the far right correctly identify the Second World War as a pivot point in America’s understanding of itself and its attitude toward its Jewish citizens.”

@michaelscherer.bsky.social: “This backbone of the Trump resistance has as much in common with political organizing and investigative reporting as it does with legal theory.” theatln.tc/SkSDr8u7

“Jewish college students are going south,” @rosehorowitch.bsky.social reports. “And selective colleges outside the Northeast, sensing an intensifying disdain for Ivy League schools among Jewish teens and their parents, are tripping over one another to recruit these students.”

@dgraham.bsky.social: “The debate in America is no longer about whether socialism can gain a foothold. It’s whether the socialism that dominates will be progressive or right-wing.”

@annielowrey.bsky.social: “Without admitting it, the White House is pursuing a multipronged strategy to raise prices, suppress consumption, freeze production, and lower productivity in the United States.”

I need to borrow $1900

“The threat posed by out-of-control protesters on the left and by the Trump administration on the right could have united these institutions. Instead, these threats have left them frustrated, embittered, and paralyzed by disagreement.”

“‘Normally, threats to public servants aren’t inspired from leadership of their own organization,’ another CDC staffer said in a group chat among current and former employees.” Good reporting on stage reaction to the CDC shooting:

@jonlemire.bsky.social: “The president had truly believed that his relationship with Putin would bring about a quick end to the conflict. But instead, Putin has taken advantage of Trump’s deference to him and has openly defied the president.”

@annielowrey.bsky.social: “Already, more than 4 million American children lack health coverage. Hundreds of thousands more might join them in a year or two.”

“Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.”

“Launching its carnival of murder, rape, and kidnapping, [Hamas] wagered that it could bait its enemy into moral blunders that would discredit it in the eyes of the world. That vision is now unfolding.” www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

I hope whoever grabbed one grabbed the other.

“Hours earlier, President Donald Trump had announced a huge new slate of tariffs, set to take effect next week. He’d been emboldened by the fact that the economy had remained strong until now despite economists’ warnings—a fact that turned out not to be a fact at all.”

“The more than $175 billion that Congress handed to the nation’s immigration enforcers when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is larger than the annual military budget of every country in the world except the United States and China.”

@dgraham.bsky.social: “Despite access to high-quality information about what’s going on in Gaza, he seems to really perk up only once it’s on the tube.”

@qjurecic.bsky.social: “The bureau is in the early stages of something like a radical deprofessionalization.”

@brianklaas.bsky.social: “The world’s worst dictators can rest assured that the next American diplomat to come knocking on their palace doors is more likely to be looking for property rights than human rights.”

“On Tuesday afternoon, ChatGPT encouraged me to cut my wrists.” Lila Shroff reports on how the chatbot was easily prompted to offer instructions for murder, self-mutilation, and devil worship: