Happy eighth night, y’all. Happy Festival of Lights.

A favorite thread from last year: Some of the best art from different editions of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

NEW: Why the DNC killed off its "autopsy" of the 2024 election, and what party officials think of the decision. www.thebulwark.com/p/dnc-autops...

Rick Steves sees the world around him clearly—including the world right around where he lives.

I like the way Mann and Dostoevsky hold the reader by the hand at the end of the authors’ notes to The Magic Mountain and Brothers Karamazov

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: Here's Miles Davis with Paul Shaffer, Larry Carlton, and David Sanborn performing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" in 'Scooged.' See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=80zl...

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: Here's Miles Davis with Paul Shaffer, Larry Carlton, and David Sanborn performing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" in 'Scooged.' See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=80zl...

Rick Steves sees the world around him clearly—including the world right around where he lives.

"'Avatar: Fire and Ash' has a number of problems," writes @sonnybunch.bsky.social. For starters, "It’s a million hours long." www.thebulwark.com/p/avatar-fir...

There are so many great lines in 'Scrooged,' but this little throwaway—"I just want to say: Break a leg, everybody. I feel real weird about tonight"—gets me every time...

"'Twas the Night Before Christmas" turned 200 last year: It was first published in the Troy (N.Y.) 'Sentinel' on December 23, 1823. Since my family has an unusually large collection of copies, here is a 🧵 of the poem—with some of the best work of illustrators from the last two centuries.

"Is this a breakup episode?" @gtconway.bsky.social explains the legal news to @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social one last time.

Small towns used to be places you could buy everyday goods downtown. In other words, a reason to view as something like former cities which we don't fully understand or use as such today www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/that-old-s...

A favorite thread from last year: Some of the best art from different editions of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Proud Boy leader, J6 organizer, and recipient of Trump pardon Enrique Tarrio has been a bit more active on social media lately. Today he is promoting a woman who organized a Mein Kampf reading group and proudly identifies as a "white power" advocate of the US being a White Christian "ethnostate."

Amazing thread, all the way through:

“So, yes, a real reckoning with Epstein would mean a real re-thinking of questions of gender, wealth, and power. So be it. Real reckonings are uncomfortable. That’s what it means to come to a reckoning.” www.thebulwark.com/p/screw-it-l...

While a bunch of journalists were at the Kennedy Center taking pictures today, I asked the VP of Facilities and Operations at the Kennedy Center a direct question: “Matt, is this the first time that you’ve defaced a public building?“ Only at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com/p/q-and-a-de...

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Now Stefanik, all on the outs with Trump. It’s almost like he doesn’t respect women.

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: A seasonal jazz classic by Vince Guaraldi, with Jerry Granelli on drums and Fred Marshall on bass. See you around. youtu.be/Kn4Y3sHyfsg

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: A seasonal jazz classic by Vince Guaraldi, with Jerry Granelli on drums and Fred Marshall on bass. See you around. youtu.be/Kn4Y3sHyfsg

The Epstein file is the only thing Trump has ever taken his name off of

Good point:

One final update/correction, based on what I'm seeing in the most recent Getty pictures: The workers seem *not* to have removed the first "The" before JFK's name. So it now reads—very weirdly—"The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts."

That "Memorial" sure feels like Trump is tempting fate through bad grammar.

A little update: I guess we now know—from the words added, and from the "The" being removed—what the Kennedy Center will now say above its main doors: "The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts."

The "law" is what the people with guns say it is.

“That is the most insidious corruption…Trumpism gets its defenders to insist terrible things could never happen…Until Trump does the thing. At which point these same people insist the thing which could never happen must happen. That it is right, good and necessary.” open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

It's happening. Right now. www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-hung...

NEW: "And that, my friends, is the most insidious corruption of Trumpism...." www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-hung...

Kennedy Center rebranding concept:

You've probably heard the saying "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission." But Trump, of course, doesn't believe in forgiveness. We are witnessing his personal credo—"Grab 'em by the pussy; you can do anything"—turned into a political philosophy.

HOLY HELL, the Trump name is already going up on the Kennedy Center, right now. When I drove past it yesterday to grab a picture, I saw a Getty photographer taking some shots. That photographer—Heather Diehl—is back this morning, and she has been filing images of the Trump name going up.

@eggerdc.bsky.social: "We're only a year down, after all. Who knows how far his ambitions will reach in three more? Let’s get the big guy’s name on the moon." Welcome to Trumplandia. Read Morning Shots @thebulwark.com: www.thebulwark.com/p/screw-it-l...

NEW: "Screw it. Let's rename the moon." www.thebulwark.com/p/screw-it-l...

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: Goosebump-inducing instrumental version of "The Christmas Song" by Béla Fleck & the Flecktones. It's so, so good. See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Ag...

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: Goosebump-inducing instrumental version of "The Christmas Song" by Béla Fleck & the Flecktones. It's so, so good. See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Ag...

Federal agents breaking into worksites, chasing skilled laborers and bloodying them, trapping roofers outside in subzero temperatures—and yet the construction industry isn't making a peep. Our @crampell.bsky.social explains why: www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-is-w...

Nick Adams—Trump’s self-described alpha-male, Hooters-loving choice to serve as ambassador to Malaysia—has been pretty subdued on social media since Trump nominated him in July. But like any truly addicted poster, he hasn’t been able to quit—and his timeline is overflowing with testosterone again.

"Well buckle up, motherforkers, because it turns out that the unemployment rate does not just naturally sit at 3.5 percent. A bad president can blow up the economy and cause lots of people to lose their jobs. Which is exactly what this week’s numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed."

"'Everyone was just so exhausted and deflated and sad when we exited the [Senate] gallery,' one member of the community told me. 'It was a feeling of abandonment and confusion.'" 👇

"Radon, being colorless and odorless, is hard to detect without special equipment. Antisemitism, by contrast, is unsubtle and requires deliberate choices to unsee."

NEW: A bill restoring money for pediatric cancer therapies was defeated in the Senate. My colleague @samsteindc.bsky.social — who has covered this wrenching story ever since the funding was first removed at Elon Musk's behest last year — reports on why Bernie Sanders helped defeat the bill.

NEW: Not the flashiest campaign, but maybe the fashiest. www.thebulwark.com/p/meet-the-f...

@sarahlongwell25.bsky.social joins 'Deseret Voices' with @mckaycoppins.bsky.social to discuss how the GOP changed, why Trumpism broke the party, and what she calls the “Republican triangle of doom.”

I knew as soon as Trump took over the Kennedy Center board that the writing was on the wall (figuratively) and the writing would soon be on the wall (literally): that Trump would rename the Kennedy Center after himself. Here's what it looked like at 2:30 p.m. today from my car.

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: John Rutter conducts the Cambridge Singers in a carol by Peter Warlock (his setting of a Middle English carol/lullaby). See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXm6...

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: John Rutter conducts the Cambridge Singers in a carol by Peter Warlock (his setting of a Middle English carol/lullaby). See you around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXm6...