Michael Wolff’s questionable explanation for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein

Michael Wolff’s questionable explanation for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein

David A. Graham writes: In her classic book The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm studied how the author Joe McGinniss buttered up the accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald—formally joining his legal-defense team and sending fawningly supportive letters after his conviction—only to turn around and publish a scathing book portraying him as a sociopath. Observing McGinniss’s approach, Malcolm draws a distinction between the reporting phase, when a journalist courts her subject, and the writing phase, when she betrays them. Many reporters…

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He’s called ‘Little Trump’ and he’s making enemies in the White House

He’s called ‘Little Trump’ and he’s making enemies in the White House

The Wall Street Journal reports: Bill Pulte marched into the Oval Office this summer and delivered one of his signature performances. Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, told the president he had identified leakers who were undermining the administration. He was carrying a “Ghostbusters”-style poster that featured pictures of administration officials and outside allies, outlined by red circles with lines through their faces, according to officials familiar with the meeting. For many in the West Wing, it was…

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Massive new dream database reveals clues about consciousness during sleep

Massive new dream database reveals clues about consciousness during sleep

PsyPost reports: An international collaboration of scientists has created the largest-ever public database of brain activity recordings and accompanying dream reports. In a first analysis of this resource, the researchers confirmed that dreaming is not exclusive to the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, finding that when conscious experiences occur in deeper sleep, the brain exhibits patterns of activity that more closely resemble wakefulness. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. For millennia, dreams have been a source…

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The historical significance of the Trump-Epstein scandal: the degradation of humanity

The historical significance of the Trump-Epstein scandal: the degradation of humanity

  In the thicket of daily news, it’s often hard to place events within a broad historical context. Indeed, during periods of rapid change the present can feel like it is perpetually erasing the past. We fixate on the now and the what next? and rather than becoming illuminated, get sucked into a black hole of actions stripped of meaning. For this reason, the perspective of a scholar such as Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American…

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Judges whose careers were all forged in the embers of Watergate have had it with Trump

Judges whose careers were all forged in the embers of Watergate have had it with Trump

Politico reports: When Donald Trump moved on his first day back in office to strip birthright citizenship from children born in the U.S. to some immigrant parents, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour called the newly inaugurated president a threat to the rule of law. Days after Trump mass-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants who attacked the Capitol, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth warned that for the first time in his career, “meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream.” And in September,…

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In the Epstein emails, no one is named more often than Trump himself

In the Epstein emails, no one is named more often than Trump himself

Miami Herald reports: Donald Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails over 1,000 times — the most cited person in the tranche released this week by the House Oversight Committee. Despite all the questions the emails have raised about his relationship with Epstein, Trump on Friday continued to fan the flames of the scandal. On his social media platform “Truth Social,” Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate some of the influential figures named in the emails. “I will…

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump’s Epstein focus

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump’s Epstein focus

Politico reports: Donald Trump says Marjorie Taylor Greene has lost her way. Greene disagrees. The Republican firebrand, once one of the president’s strongest Capitol Hill allies, says it’s the president who is off course. He shouldn’t be trying to stop the release of the Epstein files, when so many of his most ardent followers are struggling to pay the bills. “It’s insanely the wrong direction to go,” Greene told POLITICO. “The five-alarm fire is health care and affordability for Americans….

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U.S. Catholic bishops take stand against Trump immigration policy, winning praise at churches

U.S. Catholic bishops take stand against Trump immigration policy, winning praise at churches

The Los Angeles Times reports: For the first time in 12 years, U.S. Catholic bishops have issued a unified statement to support the country’s immigrants and oppose the Trump administration’s “indiscriminate mass deportations of people.” The move solidified their support for immigrants — long a vital part of the U.S. Catholic Church — amid a year of unprecedented upheaval. It also continues a long tradition of the church as an institution of support for those in the country illegally that…

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Firm tied to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem secretly got money from $220 million DHS ad contracts

Firm tied to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem secretly got money from $220 million DHS ad contracts

By Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.”  Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to…

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‘Big Short’ investor betting $1 billion against the AI bubble says Meta and Oracle’s accounting is hiding the brutal truth

‘Big Short’ investor betting $1 billion against the AI bubble says Meta and Oracle’s accounting is hiding the brutal truth

Fortune reports: “It’ll happen slowly, and then all at once.” That’s how Jim Morrow, founder and chief investment officer of Callodine Capital, describes the eventual – inevitable – unwinding of what he calls “the most crowded trade in history.” Of course, he isn’t just paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway—he’s talking about the AI race, and the trillion-dollar deals so overstretched they’re better described as knots than trades. And he’s not alone in sounding alarms. Michael Burry—the investor of Big Short fame who…

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‘I lost everything’: Venezuelans were rounded up in a dramatic midnight raid but never charged with a crime

‘I lost everything’: Venezuelans were rounded up in a dramatic midnight raid but never charged with a crime

By Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba This story was originally published by ProPublica On the night of the raid, heavily armed federal agents zip-tied Jhonny Manuel Caicedo Fereira’s hands behind his back, marched him out of his Chicago apartment building and put him against a wall to question him. As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited…

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Federal agents use tear gas against residents and local police in Chicago

Federal agents use tear gas against residents and local police in Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times reports: Federal agents deployed tear gas on the Far Southeast Side — sickening protesters and more than a dozen cops — despite a deputy Chicago police chief having told them his officers didn’t have gas masks and offering to clear a path so the agents could safely leave a chaotic scene, according to law enforcement sources. Angry residents had poured into the street to confront federal immigration agents near 105th Street and Avenue N in the East Side…

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More women than ever want to leave Trump’s America

More women than ever want to leave Trump’s America

The New Republic reports: A growing percentage of young women no longer see a future in the United States. Roughly 40 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 said that they would permanently move abroad if they were able to, according to a 2025 Gallup Poll. That included 45 percent of single women, and 41 percent of married women. It’s a stark difference from how young women felt when they were asked the same question a decade…

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How the shutdown of USAID has already killed hundreds of thousands of people

How the shutdown of USAID has already killed hundreds of thousands of people

  Atul Gawande writes: It was January, my final week in the outgoing Administration. In a few days, Donald Trump would be inaugurated as President. I had come to the United States Agency for International Development in early 2022, leaving my surgery practice and public-health research in Boston to lead the agency’s global-health efforts. Now I’d be returning to my previous life. I spent my last days at U.S.A.I.D. in meetings with our civil- and foreign-service leaders, thanking them. Their…

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