"She along with hundreds of other recruiters around the country, had been offering something else: protection from the government she served." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/u...

Appeals court judges chosen by President Trump in his first term have voted overwhelmingly in his favor when his administration’s actions have been challenged in court in his current term, clearing the way for his policies, a New York Times analysis shows.

NEW: Federal prosecutors have opened up a criminal investigation into Fed chair Powell over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the project www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u... @nytimes.com

NEW: Trump’s ‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in His Favor President Trump promised to fill the appeals courts with “my judges.” They have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. 🎁 > www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...

The higher the court, the likelier Trump was to win rulings in 2025: District courts: 25% Appeals courts: 51% Supreme Court: 88%

I had an anecdotal sense that Trump’s appellate court nominees were backing him up, but I didn’t realize it was so extreme.

Big article by @schwartzesque.bsky.social out in the Times this morning . . .

Trump's appellate judges have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. How often they ruled for him in 2025: Trump appointees: 92% Other Republican appointees: 68% Democratic appointees: 27% @schwartzesque.bsky.social Emma Schartz www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...

Latest: We’ve updated our tracker with more dead from the Dec. 30 boat strikes in the Eastern Pacific. The U.S. military has acknowledged that 8 people were seen jumping overboard during the attack, and are presumed dead following an unsuccessful Coast Guard search. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Ten years since David Bowie died, and the algo has served up the tribute I wrote at the time (headline very much not mine) mostly about 12/13 year old me buying a reissue of Ziggy Stardust ... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

my X feed has been completely taken over by Stoic Dude Life Tips

say what you will about the Internet, but there are some very interesting piano-based covers of My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" out there

With all that is going on in the world, it might be easy to overlook that the D.C. Circuit appears to have changed its Special Panel (aka Motions Panel) so that it's no longer in place for a month. I think this change is both really important and really good. (A quick courts 🧵 . . . )

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A scorched boat washed ashore on a remote beach in Colombia. Then mangled bodies. And then empty packets, a few with marijuana traces. We matched the physical and digital evidence to a U.S. airstrike — and found a fishing community terrified to go to sea. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/w...

Some got pardons. Some got jobs. Some got access. They all benefited. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life The Minnesota Speaker’s closest friends and family open up for the first time. Read @stephenrodrick.bsky.social's exclusive: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

I have nothing but nice things to say about this "Invasion of the Cow Snatchers" game that involves magnets, plastic discs, walls, and a grid

welp

Awestruck by the performances of Chris Elliott and Joe Pesci in “Home Alone”

Under Trump, the SEC has eased up on more than 60% of the crypto cases that were ongoing when he took office in January. Many of the firms that benefited from the leniency had financial ties to the Trump family. The SEC is no longer pursuing any cases against crypto firms with Trump ties.

the people of this great republic yearn for locomotive transport

NEW: Judge Emil Bove Faces Ethics Complaint for Attending Trump Rally 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/u...

And yet…not all writing endures. In this painting from c1490, we see a man taking down notes on a wax tablet. You can see the metal stylus he uses has a “rake” at one end for erasing once he needs to re-use the wax.

Microwaving the frog is faster than boiling the frog, but the subsequent backlash may interfere with scaling up

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

How the war on terror and the war on drugs merged in the Caribbean, during the Obama presidency -- www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

David Sacks, Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House, Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/t...

Some useful thoughts here ... www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/b... "To say that someone has “lied,” an active verb, or has told a “lie,” a more passive, distancing noun, is to say that the person intended to deceive."

ICYMI -- We looked at the Trump admin's Supreme Court filing arguing for the legality of deploying the National Guard to Chicago. Turns out it has a bunch of factual errors... w/ Devon Lum, Christoph Koettl, Ainara Tiefenthäler 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...

Tremendous and important reporting by NYT Visual Investigations team shows that Trump administration made false or misleading statements to US Supreme Court as it attempted to federal justify intervention in Chicago. Accountability matters. (Free link) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...

So this thing was full of errors. The Trump administration claimed the police were slow to protect federal agents on Oct. 4, but videos and audio show its rationale conflates hours of events involving a shooting, a protest, a car crash and a police radio call. 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...

A Trump administration request to the Supreme Court to deploy troops in Chicago contains factual errors, mischaracterizing the responsiveness of local police and the actions of protesters, our Visual Investigations team found. nyti.ms/43T7qfn

🚨🚨🚨 NEWS >>>

what

NEW: The Federalist Society Is Torn Between Its Legal Philosophy and Trump’s Demands 🎁 Read to the end for Leonard Leo's take on Trump, and revelations about a bespoke judicial meme... www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/u...

fwiw, when the district court judge in this same case blocked trump from deploying the guard in chicago, she based her reasoning in part on several instances in which a grand jury declined to indict protestors whom ice/cbp claimed attacked them

From the Trump administration's filing at the Supreme Court:

The Trump admin's case to the Supreme Court that the situation in Chicago justifies a National Guard deployment rests partly on the actions of two motorists. Now, prosecutors have moved to dropped charges against them. Julie Bosman reports... www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

"I got a call from the general counsel at the F.B.I. about changing exceptions to the gift rules because his boss, Kash Patel, felt like he should be able to accept more expensive gifts. I reminded him that his client was not Mr. Patel, but the United States."

Didn’t realize that moral bankruptcy can also be “restructured”

Semi-coherent, typo-filled emails could be a symptom of poor literacy. But in many cases, they are a flex by someone who wants to display how busy and important they are.

Old enough to remember when folks were looking at old emails and speculating about what "pizza" might be code for

CNN: In a major break, Britain has stopped sharing some intelligence about suspected drug trafficking with the US over America's deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean. The UK does not want to be complicit in the military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal. edition.cnn.com/2025/11/11/p...

Mark Wolf, a federal judge, said he had stepped down and warned of an “existential threat to democracy” by President Trump, whom he accused of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries”🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...

Federal Judge, Warning of ‘Existential Threat’ to Democracy, Resigns Free gift link >> www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...

Our reporters interviewed 40 of the men the Trump administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador: They described being beaten, sexually assaulted by guards and driven to the brink of suicide. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...