Being emo is officially probable cause now

The latest edition of my (free) comics history newsletter is out! buttondown.com/howcomics/ar...

Exclusive: Ghislaine Maxwell was honored at a prestigious Clinton event years after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced www.cnn.com/2025/08/24/p...

Penn & Teller reinvented magic. And stayed together for 50 years. I spent a couple days with them to figure out the secret. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/a...

Terrific piece by @jackshafer.bsky.social about the many flavors and shades of Trump's corruption. Well informed by US history. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

An event in Buffalo to launch a "Protect Local Journalism" campaign was postponed because of death threats to a local journalist. The threats began after Pulitzer winner Adam Zyglis drew a cartoon that some people didn't like (you can see it in the next post) 1/2 www.instagram.com/p/DL8JF1nyLA...

Holy cow. CNN used to hold the No. 1 position with the NYT and the WashPost battling it out for No. 2. Now the Times is first, CNN second, and the Post is ... 17th. pressgazette.co.uk/media-audien...

Perhaps this signifies that after Trump departs he expects the country to revert from personalist rule to its previous status as a constitutional republic.

What's with this euphemistic language about Trump trying to "shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system" being repeated 2x by the NYT in 24 hours? And why call it a "bid" or "push"? Reality: He's using illegal tactics to try to *control* higher ed by dictating policies and personnel.

cc: @brianstelter.bsky.social @oliverdarcy.bsky.social @jackshafer.bsky.social @erikwemple.bsky.social

If missed, from me: at some point Trump is likely to try his "choke off federal funding until they surrender" racket on one or more of the fifty state governments. Here's what might happen then

They say this and then in two years your AI girlfriend will keep steering the dinner conservation toward Squarespace discount codes

Latest installment from my unpublished book

hey @jackshafer.bsky.social, come back ... 👇

The longstanding joke about xenotransplantation--it's the future and always will be--may soon lose all its punch. www.science.org/content/arti...

The New York Times has found at least two more fake citations in the MAHA report. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/w...

NEW: A far-right political activist with a history of anti-gay rhetoric and promoting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama was fired from a senior leadership role at the Kennedy Center after CNN asked about his past comments. www.cnn.com/2025/05/29/p...

After 20-plus years, I’m leaving my staff job at Slate. In an industry where steady employment is … unusual … I’m so grateful to have had a long tenure at a great place with great people 1/4

In a long monologue in the Oval Office beside Canadian PM Mark Carney this afternoon, the President appears to say the trade "deals" his team are working on are not deals in the traditional sense, as they will not have to be signed. This is really significant! More in thread.

we can save money on the flyover by telling him they are only using 'stealth planes'!

I'm fine with Trump's June military parade if he follows his two dolls and five pencils logic and downsizes it to one tank, one soldier, and one aircraft flyover.

Have we reached peak tattoo?

Actually, it's First Amendment behavior.

A senile king surrounded by rival factions of eunuchs

In retrospect, it continues to seem like a really bad decision by the New York Times to push out Paul Krugman, their longtime columnist who won his Nobel Prize in the economics of trade and geography right before we have 4 years where trade policy is the #1 crisis in the country.

"If universities are not willing to stand up for the free speech and academic freedom of their students and faculty, then what, if any, values do they stand for?"

Real trade wars have never been tried wapo.st/42oniEY

i have argued before that MAGA is recapitulating antebellum pro-slavery ideas about citizenship and bodily autonomy. one thing i am also thinking about, when it comes to the rendition of people to a foreign gulag, is the way it is reminiscent of the kidnapping of free blacks for sale into slavery

"Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, has this great line, which is like, 'How absurd it is that 500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for help dealing with 140 million Russians who can’t even handle 50 million Ukrainians?'” www.vanityfair.com/news/story/n...

GULF OF FEAR: This past week, when NASA astronauts returned to Earth, TV news networks avoided calling the body of water they splashed down in as the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, they performed linguistic gymnastics to stay out of Trump’s crosshairs. More in Status: www.status.news/p/gulf-of-me...

This reminds me of a rule that Austan Goolsbee (now Chicago Fed president, then an econ professor) once taught me. He called it the “pathological irony of crisis”: If you lose credibility, your statements begin to mean the opposite of what you say. www.axios.com/2025/03/20/t...

Tuesday, join @steveoneywriter to discuss ON AIR - the dramatic history of NPR, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents, & the rises and falls of brilliant and sometimes venal executives - w/ @jackshafer - 7PM @ CONN AVE - bit.ly/3DEzngP

I’ve returned to this @jackshafer.bsky.social story many times over the years but the phases of billionaire ownership may need an update for this era. slate.com/news-and-pol...

AP’s lawsuit names Taylor Budowich, Karoline Leavitt, and Susie Wiles as defendants. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

"He wants to be the mayor of the District of Columbia, the editor of The Associated Press Stylebook and the H.R. director for Corporate America." @peterbakernyt.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/u...

"How Elon Musk and the Right Are Trying to Recast Reporting as ‘Doxxing’" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/b...

This is the best thing to happen to the AP since UPI was sold to convicted felon Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

If selling journalism to governments becomes perceived as unethical because Trump says it is, the business is even more doomed than it already was www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

I’m used to this as a criminal defense attorney - constitutional rights get called technicalities all the time. I can no longer say I expect better from the NYT. This is pathetic.

[waking up to see thousands of people quoting the Rule of Goats] ok guessing this is not good

Executive orders aren't *necessarily* more than memos to the executive branch. If the president has discretion under the law, the order is specific, and the bureaucracy carries it out, an order can have huge consequences. But sometimes, it can have little to no effect. Or anywhere in between.

Innovation is overrated.

Trump says he won’t hire “people who worked with, or are endorsed by” a list of 11 people. 6 of the 11 are people he hired.

“One debacle after another…” Those are the first 4 words that @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social uses to describe Will Lewis’s first year as CEO of the Washington Post. www.npr.org/2025/01/15/n...

“We beg our reporters to never go to a White House press briefing…. That’s a good chunk of your day lost.” --@JimVandeHei www.vanityfair.com/news/story/a...

Our story on how Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and other tech execs are giving millions to Trump after years of insults and threats is on the front page of the Sunday @washingtonpost.com wapo.st/4gTuFui

1971-72. The Prototype for Weekend Update.

Breaking News: The Pentagon has repatriated a Tunisian prisoner who had been held at Guantanamo Bay from the day the prison opened, but never charged with a crime. His is a somewhat mysterious story. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/u...