Wrote this before yesterday but it gets at what undergirds that (and lots of other things in politics). "The internet universalized subjectivity instead of objectivity. … We have reverted from acting on what we *know* to acting on what we *think*."

"They use us to avoid addressing their own problems."

👇🎯

Even the oil companies have to sacrifice.

There was a fox in the driveway this morning so if anyone knows which omens are and are not auspicious, please let me know.

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Meanwhile, Trump is back to the battle he really cares about, the one where he feels like anything but an omnipotent tough guy.

I was hanging out with my kids today so I’ve been out of pocket but did they try to pipe-and-drape a SCIF?

Added a new feature to the newsletter: A weekly review of Trump’s time golfing and at his properties (including in relation to Obama, who he criticized often). www.howtoreadthisch.art/post-holiday...

And that was with a target known to have been behind the worst terror attack in U.S. history!

decided to go smell the rotten milk in the back of the Washington Post fridge... I don't even know what to say about this

Cringeocracy.

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

I don't think a lot of people read the administration's national security strategy document but it was essentially an effort to shoehorn Trump's contradictory and unfocused desires into a cohesive worldview. www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

Perhaps the best-known of this new crew was on X praising the administration for the lack of public information about the action.

One thing we can agree on: The new Pentagon press corps is covering every angle of this story. I feel very informed by all the news it's breaking.

So, uh, the newsletter is out? Got some last-minute updates this morning for obvious reasons. But *mostly* a decent channel-change on the day that I think you'll enjoy. www.howtoreadthisch.art/post-holiday...

Trump’s 2003 speed run has him giving a “Mission Accomplished” speech on Fox and Friends.

Trump on Democrats: "They should say 'great job.' They shouldn't say, 'Oh gee, maybe it's not constitutional.' You know, the same old stuff that we've been hearing for years and years and years."

How excited oil companies will be at this unexpected development!

Trump to Fox & Friends on the raid that captured Maduro: "I mean, I watched it literally l like I was watching a television show. If you would've seen the speed, the violence -- it was an amazing thing."

grim posthumous scenario i had not previously considered: you post a picture of the missile headed straight for you, and are memorialized by a bunch of random assholes complaining about alt text

A deluge of work on regime change after the 2003 invasion of Iraq yielded strong (and rare) agreement in IR: it doesn't work & has terrible consequences. @profdownes.bsky.social's book Catastrophic Success lays it out, but it's right there in the title. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Prediction markets aggregate t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶s̶d̶o̶m̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶r̶o̶w̶d̶s̶ insider trading (still informative in a way, but different mechanism) p(Barron) or another Trump-associated figure?

Reminder that 1) Trump didn’t run on a no-new-wars promise and 2) Republicans supported action in Venezuela even without rationalization. www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

How does launching air strikes and a commando raid fall under the remit of self defense for an arrest operation

Honestly it would be very funny if FIFA revoked the prize.

fwiw it’s been about six weeks since Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras who had been convicted of trafficking drugs into the US

[wakes up] “I’m sorry, what”

My weekly newsletter comes out in 12 hours and I regret to inform you that it is wildly overstuffed. I am making new charts for it as we speak. It's … a lot. It is also free. So sign up? Sure, yes. Do that. www.howtoreadthisch.art

uh no thank you

I was curious, so I looked it up. Trump's three cognitive exams were on 1/12/18, 9/13/23 and 4/11/25 — not, as he suggested today, recently. www.pbump.net/o/when-were-...

I also love America and believe in its stated values. And I understand that this pronouncement lands very differently when it comes from an organization that has intentionally been overhauled in order to curry favor with a jingoistic proto-fascist who says his opponents hate the country.

I was curious, so I looked it up. Trump's three cognitive exams were on 1/12/18, 9/13/23 and 4/11/25 — not, as he suggested today, recently. www.pbump.net/o/when-were-...

does he work *too* hard??

An illustration by Rama Duwaji, First Lady of New York City. www.ramaduwaji.com/illustration...

Not only did the NYC DOT make a video showing how they swap out the mayor’s name on road signs, they used Tribe as a soundtrack. The city is back.

Mayor Mamdani has nullified every executive order issued by Eric Adams after he struck his corrupt bargain with Trump to secure dismissal of the indictment against him.

the energy I’m bringing into 2026

This is a very accurate thread of the state of things

As I wrote in the newsletter, these cost numbers are not reliable. (This one, for example, is almost certainly way, way too high.) it costs money, but it’s not clear how much. www.howtoreadthisch.art/president-ho...

Beef will disappear

The last thing I wrote last year was about change and how people often fail to recognize that change is a constant instead of an aberration. www.pbump.net/o/the-more-t...

If you had told me a decade ago that, by 2026, fully 10% of online ads would be trying to sell me the top that serves as a low-level plot device in Inception, I’d have been skeptical.

Greg Kelly’s tweets have historically been so weird that I wrote a story for The Post evaluating if he was actually writing them. (He was.)

cant you though www.wsj.com/us-news/as-s...

Starting the year as you would expect: playing golf at a Trump Org property. www.pbump.net/o/an-officia...

Humans are funny. Winter arrives and we’re like, ugh, let’s have a bunch of celebrations. Then we have the celebrations and … we’re less than two weeks into winter.

In which I learned the president is taking 4x the recommended dose of aspirin, daily, because he wants to have nice, thin blood.