The US ran a war game during Trump 1.0 to assess what Maduro’s fall might unleash. It found that chaos and violence would likely erupt as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control. @michaelcrowley.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

Jack Smith in newly released testimony: "Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power." @glennthrush.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/u...

A compelling graphic look at all the ways that Trump and his family and friends have been monetizing the White House in his second term to enrich themselves more than any presidential clan has ever done before. @lazarogamio.bsky.social Amy Schoenfeld Walker www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Trump takes 325 mg of aspirin a day, four times the common low dose of 81 mg, because "they say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart." www.wsj.com/us-news/as-s...

Trump says he "saved" the Kennedy Center which allies cited to rename it after him without Congress. But ratings for the annual honors were way down, ticket sales have fallen, musicians are pulling out and shows are being canceled. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

Newly released emails raise serious questions about whether the Justice Department misled a judge by telling him that local prosecutors had acted alone in charging Abrego Garcia. @alanfeuer.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/n...

Trump abandons for now efforts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles after Supreme Court decision. The Guard is still deployed in Washington, New Orleans and Memphis. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

All kind of giants in politics, culture and society died in 2025, including Dick Cheney, Pope Francis,Diane Keaton, Frank Gehry, Jane Goodall, George Foreman, Charlie Kirk and Rob Reiner. But the @nytimes.com obituary that got the most page views: Val Kilmer. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...

The man arrested on charges of placing two pipe bombs the night before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, felt he needed to "speak up" after beginning to suspect that the 2020 election had been "tampered with," authorities say. @alanfeuer.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/u...

Trump, meeting with Zelensky, once again says he trusts that Putin really does want to make peace even as Russian forces pound Ukraine and Moscow rejects concessions. "I believe him," Trump says. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

US launches strikes against the Islamic State in Nigeria, Trump announces, the latest American military campaign against a nonstate adversary — in this case, Islamic jihadis who the president asserts have been slaughtering Christians. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/u...

For two weeks, Russia has been pounding Odesa, the largest port in Ukraine, repeatedly hitting it with drones and missiles in the city’s worst shelling through almost four years of war. Some residents have been without power, heat or water. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/w...

Trump's friends-and-family approach to clemency has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million and some have been offered success fees as high as $6 million, per @rebeccaballhaus.bsky.social Josh Dawsey @cryanbarber.bsky.social www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Tragic news from Ben Sasse, who shares that he was diagnosed last week with stage-four pancreatic cancer and "am gonna die." Writing online, he says he is "not going down without a fight," adding that "the process of dying is still something to be lived." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Supreme Court bars Trump from deploying National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials, signaling that the justices are likely to immediately block similar deployments in other American cities. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

How did DOGE disrupt so much but save so little? In DOGE’s published list of canceled contracts and grants, the 13 largest were all incorrect. Of the 40 biggest claims on DOGE’s list, only 12 appeared accurate, per @nytimes.com analysis. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Trump administration orders nearly 30 ambassadors around the world to return to the US, a move that would leave a large gap in the diplomatic corps even as Trump says he wants to resolve conflicts through diplomacy. @ewong.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/u...

The economy grew at a vigorous 4.3% annualized rate in the third quarter despite the uncertainty created by tariffs and widespread concerns about affordability among households. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...

In both pageantry and policy, Trump has established a new, more audacious version of the imperial presidency that goes far beyond even the one associated with Richard Nixon, for whom the term was popularized half a century ago. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/u...

Democrats didn't talk much about "affordability" when Biden was in office, but now it's become their go-to word and even Republicans have adopted it. Members of Congress now use the word 10 times as much in their email than last year. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/u...

And here is the version in the @washingtonpost.com by the great Adam Bernstein, who lucky for us now works at the @nytimes.com. He quotes Doug Brinkley calling Lou the "fountainhead of Reaganalia whose books on the president have never been transcended." www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

RIP Lou Cannon, the legendary White House reporter and Reagan biographer whose multiple books set the gold standard and remain the most textured and sophisticated portraits of our 40th president. He was also endlessly supportive of those who followed him. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/b...

When Trump came back to office, Putin studied psychological profiles of his circle and decided he wanted to deal with Witkoff not Kellogg. A year later, Kellogg is out and Witkoff, who Trump says "knew nothing" about Russia, has been to Russia six times. www.wsj.com/world/putin-...

Of 107 democracies studied by @pewresearch.org, only one other country uses the same redistricting approach as the US, that is, single-member districts drawn mainly by state legislatures: the Federated States of Micronesia, with a population of around 100,000. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

When Trump visited Mount Vernon in 2018, he couldn't understand why George Washington didn't name it after himself. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.” Reupping this prescient piece from @politico.com which seems pretty relevant today. www.politico.com/story/2019/0...

Wasting no time, the Trump administration begins adding his name to the Kennedy Center building, ignoring the understanding that it would require an act of Congress. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

In Washington these days, the word often whispered by Republicans and shouted by Democrats and Never Trumpers is “unhinged.” Trump's own top aide calls it an "alcoholic's personality." This was a week that Trump's uninhibited second term was on display. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

Watching Trump try to sell the country on his economy, @sbg1.bsky.social recalls the TV pitchman for Crazy Eddie, the New York electronics store of her youth, with his rat-a-tat delivery, breathless hype and memorably absurdist slogans. (“His prices are INSAAAANE!”) www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

It all might make more sense if he actually were drinking. But Trump, with his "alcoholic's personality," seems even less inhibited in a way that has many in Washington shaking their heads and wondering if the leader of the free world has lost it. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

A look at some of the many falsehoods and exaggerations in Trump's televised address to the nation, by Linda Qiu www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Hegseth has had no problem releasing videos of strikes on boats -- except the one that shows the second strike that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of a smashed vessel. That one, he says, is too "top secret" to release. @sangernyt.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Job growth Feb-Nov 2024: 1.57 million Job growth Feb-Nov 2025: 499,000 data.bls.gov/dataViewer/v...

During 11 interviews with Chris Whipple over Trump’s first year back in office, published today in @vanityfair.com, Susie Wiles opened up about the president, the people around him and their internal fights. Here are five takeaways. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...

Employers added just 64,000 jobs last month and unemployment ticked up to 4.6%, the highest since September 2021, in the latest warning signs for the health of the labor market. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

Check out the full story, posted in two parts: www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t... and www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...

And she acknowledges that Trump will have to go to Congress if he launches "land strikes" on Venezuela and indicates that regime changes is the goal. "He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle," she says of Trump.

She says Trump "has an alcoholic’s personality," Vance is "a conspiracy theorist" whose conversion to Trump was "sort of political" and Musk is "an avowed ketamine" user and "an odd, odd duck" whose actions weren't always "rational" and left her "aghast."

Lots of other news in this profile in @VanityFair. She acknowledges that "the president is wrong" when he accuses Bill Clinton of visiting Jeffrey Epstein's private island and says that Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" in her initial handling of the Epstein files.

Susie Wiles tells Chris Whipple that she had a "loose agreement" with Trump to end the "score settling" after 90 days, but acknowledges that prosecutions of his enemies has been driven in part by the president's desire for retribution. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...

Nick Reiner has been arrested following the murder of his parents Rob and Michelle Reiner and is being held in $4 million bail. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

Authorities release the man detained after the Brown University shooting spree, meaning the killer is still at large. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

We were last in Australia in September and one theme we heard was concern over a surge of antisemitic attacks on the Jewish community there. The massacre at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach is a shocking culmination of what many had feared. For the latest: www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

Trump's "strong approval" rating among those who call themselves MAGA Republicans has dropped from 78% to 70% in latest @nbcnews.com poll and the share of Republicans who identify as MAGA has fallen from 57% to 50%. www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

"Trump is still Trump, but what a difference it is, nonetheless, to go from a President who felt it necessary to deny that he had said 'shithole countries' to one who, eight years later, is celebrating the fact that he said it," writes @sbg1.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

How the Tates rose from a fringe corner of the internet to become a cause célèbre on the right and managed to win release from Romania after years of forging alliances with Trump's advisers and family. Blockbuster story by Megan Twohey and @bellakwai.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/u...

Maria Machado escaped Venezuela wearing a wig and disguise, slipping through 10 military checkpoints and boarding a wooden skiff. Then her team says they contacted US forces to make sure they wouldn't mistake her boat for drug smugglers and blow her up. www.wsj.com/world/americ...

Rubio has four jobs and is chief diplomat at a time of war in Ukraine, a fragile ceasefire in Gaza and growing conflict with Venezuela. But he's made time to wade into the fraught politics of State Department typefaces @michaelcrowley.bsky.social @haleaziz.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/u...

"American households are nearing the end of the year feeling a lot more dour about the economy than they did at the beginning, even as they keep spending," reports Chao Deng www.wsj.com/economy/cons...

Only 12 survivors of Pearl Harbor are still alive — all centenarians — and this year none was able to make the pilgrimage to Hawaii to mark today's commemoration. @audreymcavoy.bsky.social apnews.com/article/pear...

His advisers warned that there would be "chaos" at the border unless he took a range of actions. But Biden and his top aides did not act on recommendations. A deep look at how Biden failed to head off the immigration crisis that beset his presidency @cflav.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/u...