Some people are worried about freedom of speech online in the UK. Just wait till you hear about the Six Acts of 1819.

Next week: French politics are very divisive at the moment. But it’s not as bad as the 1790s.

Very strange Economist leader. Not sure ‘bad things also happened in the 18th and 19th centuries’ is an especially reassuring argument. America has coped with worse things than Donald Trump economist.com/leaders/2026...

This is an unwise effort at trans-Atlanticism. Generally the government should be *ignoring* the Trump regime. Relied on to support some policy positions (even when Musk is involved), Trump cronies simply pollute other policies where UK government credibility matters.

If I'm not mistaken, this means that @jamellebouie.net has won the major public engagement prizes from APSA and AHA within a six-month period! And he more than deserves them both! Mazel tov to Jamelle!

Editorial in the National Catholic Reporter: "The vice president's comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel."

A reminder - before Trump, MAGA, Musk and Fox rewrote history - that this is what the entire country agreed had happened five years ago today:

1. Hundreds of corps that pledged to stop donating to members of Congress who voted to overturn the election on 1/6/21 have broken their promise over the last 5 years But we've identified 10 promise keepers: Farmers Airbnb Expedia Nike Clorox Eversource Energy Holland & Hart Qurate Whirlpool Lyft

No 10: Take Note! @primeministeruk.bsky.social

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." -- James Baldwin

I voted for donald trump for his compassion, mein kampf had some good ideas (I'm jewish btw), and I think michelle obama would be a great president zoomers doing their part to keep the median voter as incoherent as possible

How pleasingly ironic it would be for the British Broadcasting Corporation to remind Americans what the First Amendment is all about. The BBC may be about to lose a director general, but it still has a spine. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

Democratic-led jurisdictions should join the party by naming municipal dumps, sewage plants, toxic-waste cleanup sites etc after him too. Over to you, @gavinnewsom.bsky.social.

“It’s time to recognise these companies are acting like political actors. That means it’s time to treat them like political actors, too. We need more transparency… We should also ask more questions about infrastructure dependence.”

Bad move Dems. Bad.

One small way to try to re-establish social trust would be to transparently disclose *in this very column* that you hung out with Jeffrey Epstein. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...

This NYT story failed the reader by not digging deeper. One subject dropped out of college after one year (five years ago) and lists "Windows" as his skillset. Story should be: young conservatives who blame immigrants for their personal failures and whose lives won't be improved w/ fewer immigrants

if you had the political will to do it you could defang the senate just by passing a set of rules that holds that everything passed by the House is deemed as passed by the Senate. (i might add an option for the Senate to take up legislation if supported by 60 senators)

Trump threatened Indiana Republicans that if they didn't do what he wanted, he'd block all federal funds to their state but they ignored his threats and told him to pound sand. Take notes, college presidents.

Bloomberg: The FIFA of the legal profession.

Democrats would be crazy not to make this comment super-famous tomorrow when the Senate debates health care. Republicans don’t want you to be cared for as a patient when you’re sick. They think of you as a “consumer”—and tough luck if you don’t have the money for the care you need.

Incredible that Rubio’s major acts as Secretary of State have been (i) sentencing hundreds of thousands of children to death, (ii) betraying Ukraine and Europe to the Russians and (iii) changing a font.

Thank you Sean Duffy this is exactly what we were missing to make airports more pleasant and enjoyable 😍

We literally found the stupidest people in the country and put them in charge.

One problem of mainstream legal journalism is treating constitutional subversions as horserace political coverage. I don't know how to fix it, other than to urge news organizations to ... not do that.

This would make a great comedy. World Cup matches are moved from New York and Los Angeles to small-town Texas and the foreign visitors and MAGA locals have all sorts of awkward interactions as they learn to enjoy the games amid madcap hijinks.

Props to The New York Times for publishing:

The Utah Supreme Court is forcing Utah Republican lawmakers to comply with an anti-gerrymandering law that voters passed in 2018. In a wild coincidence, Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox is suddenly VERY enthusiastic about adding justices to the Utah Supreme Court

Hey @channel4news.bsky.social it’s not just ‘some Democrats’ arguing that a second strike by the U.S. at “drug dealers” was a war crime. Military officials have agreed. Not everything in the world is he-said-she-said partisan conflict.

Faced with so much competition, it is remarkable what an excellent job Markwayne Mullin always does at proving he is the stupidest person in the Capitol.

USE HEADPHONES

Let's not confuse the people giving the stupid orders with the people who have to deal with following them, who are often good and decent people.

May I reinforce this, please, with the observation that betting on political events supercharges these tendencies? Not going to happen, but root-and-branch regulation reform of gambling is needed—perhaps when a scandal blows up. Unlikely, but one can hope.

Welcome to the loophole.

Seriously poor judgment by abbey personnel, but the apology makes my heart warm: “She also invited Linsey and Daniel back to the abbey to have tea and cake at the Cellarium cafe.”

BBC Under Attack: Pot and Kettle Special The new Private Eye is out now.

Hi, Jean. My friend is a Nigerian prince who needs to urgently retrieve $1,000,000 from an abandoned trust from his father. If you can wire $5,000 today, you will be entitled to 35% of the trust. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

May I remind us how to respond to a litigation threat by Trump?

The buried lede right at the bottom is that basically all the criticism is coming from hard-right political figures with an anti-BBC axe to grind and all the serious journalists - including those often considered Tory-leaning like Robinson and Boulton - think it's all full of shit.

This is outrageous. It’s like CBS settling the suit by Trump. Are we watching the backlash against this stuff in the U.S.? (Google “Jimmy Kimmel” for details.)

Robert Saunders is one of the best…

It is both ethically wrong & fundamentally anti-democratic for one man to command this much wealth and power. States spent centuries trying to tame the power of over-mighty subjects. The rise of the global barons is not compatible with democracy as we've understood it. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What this order makes clear is that plaintiffs can collect a mountain of animus, the district court can write extensively about the record, and the Supreme Court will just go “nuh uh.”

Political strategists spend a lot of time trying to get their attack lines into the headlines. Serious news outlets should not be playing along - whichever party benefits. The whole "he said - she said" model is just a total repudiation of what journalism should be.

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

We've got you 👍

it's time for journos to start asking Johnson meta questions "Speaker, on 5 occasions last week you said 'I haven't seen it' when asked about news events w/big implications for public policy. Do you ever read the news, and do you agree it's problematic for the Speaker to be so woefully uninformed?"