John McQuaid

But for some reason political reporters are operating on the assumption that politics is suspended and will be for the foreseeable future

By any conventional reading of polls/public opinion, Trump is in serious political trouble, and the fact that he's just ignoring that is making things worse for him, and us all

Trump, Feeling Emboldened, Pushes Agenda Into Higher Gear Recent moves by the president reflect a commander in chief who has seemingly faced little resistance to his agenda.

“Trump moves boldly forward” (a headline we’ve been seeing for months already) seems like a serious misreading of the current political situation
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Universities Must Defend Their Independence by Rejecting Trump's "Compact" The Trump administration has proffered a “compact” to universities that would require them to surrender their independence and academic freedom. How many First Amendment violations can we identify in ...

New from me at Cato: I go through the numerous and massive First Amendment and academic-freedom violations of Trump's proffered "compact" with universities and then talk about the mechanism by which it would be enforced, by way of what I describe as a "retroactive push-button guillotine."

What Holly Hunter's character Jane in "Broadcast News" (based on Susan Zirinsky, later head of CBS News) would do in a single conversation with Bari Weiss, that's what we're all about to see play out

Licht was appointed in 2022 and left in 2023, yet it feels like an eon ago.

Have people forgotten Chris Licht's tenure at CNN? He was an experienced TV executive (unlike Bari Weiss), appointed by David Zaslav, who tried to move coverage to the "ideological center." It didn't go well
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Not an expert on this stuff but I have the sense that no one backing Weiss understands that what she has done her whole career, opinion-based news-flavored content, is distinct from news reporting.

‼️ literally. I know I've written about this before (most recently, when the Court gave our Social Security data to Big Balls) but it bears repeating imo that the theoretical purpose of emergency shadow docket relief is to prevent serious, imminent real world harm

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/big-b...

The shadow docket decisions lash them closely to Trump and pit them against a majority of the public (and the judiciary itself) in a much more salient, understandable, and, if Ds choose, politically exploitable way than ever before with the Roberts court

Seems like the 6, like the Trump White House, operate on the assumption that they are, and will continue to be, completely insulated from public opinion. Maybe. But the risks of that bet are increasing.

Trump Offered Universities an Invitation for a Deal. Some See a Trap.

There is an entire PhD dissertation waiting to be written on the NYT's use of the word "some" and the fuzzy, conditional space it opens up around facts – and why that appears so important to its self-conception as a journalistic institution. Also throw in "experts"
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Meme-maker didn't get the memo about calling it the "Democrat Party"

"Some experts say" really can do whatever a journalist wants

What. The. Fuck.

But Leo, in remarks that appeared both careful and bold, urged Catholics not to view the senator — or any political figure — through a single-issue lens. “I think it’s important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, in 40 years of service in the United States Senate,” the pope, a Chicago-area native, told reporters, responding to a question from EWTN News. “I understand the difficulty and the tensions,” he said. “But I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to the teachings of the church.” More pointedly, the pope said, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

What Pope Leo says here isn't necessarily unexpected, but it's a new experience to hear an American Pope speaking knowledgeably about US politics
www.politico.com/live-updates...

Interesting how this closely parallels the NYT's own struggles with Trumpism, from the post-2016 "how did we miss this?!!" freakout followed by endless rust belt diner safaris, now culminating in the current "some experts say extrajudicial killings may be illegal" state of denial

OpenAI's new Sora video generator to require copyright holders to opt out, WSJ reports OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora generator that creates videos featuring copyrighted material, unless right holders opt out of having their work appear, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

this is not gonna go down well

www.reuters.com/technology/o...

This was Biden's problem. Kind of analogous to his Israel stance. He saw political arrangements that had been manageable for his whole career break down, but – at that moment, still in power, where he could have made a big difference – he could not bring himself to abandon them.

A political necessity for a return to democratic governance. One problem is, the (now clearly and manifestly false) idea of SCOTUS as an institution above/outside of politics, and thus not something that can be attacked/changed, still has a hold on a lot of Democratic politicians and the news media

Things are really bad. But a lot of the caving to Trump, and the rampant despair over it, seems predicated on the wrongheaded idea that politics in America – driven by public opinion as expressed through elections, protests, boycotts and other means – just spontaneously ceased to exist on January 20

Somebody over on The Hellsite asked me which institutions are still standing in the face of Trump's blitzkrieg. Here's my partial answer, please LMK if I'm missing anything:

A median of 61% across the 35 countries surveyed say it is very important that the media are able to report the news without state or government censorship in their country. A median of 23% say this is somewhat important; 11% say it’s not too or not at all important. Majorities of adults in Canada (77%) and the U.S. (67%) believe having freedom of the press is very important in their country. In Europe, the shares saying freedom of the press is very important range from 56% in Poland to 89% in Greece. Majorities across all countries in the region hold this view. In the Asia-Pacific region, varying shares say it’s very important that the media can report the news without censorship. About four-in-ten hold this view in Bangladesh, India and Singapore, compared with about six-in-ten in Australia. Shares in other Asia-Pacific countries fall in between.

Is it important that the media can report the news without government censorship?
In the United States, 92% say it is important.
www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/...

When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900 The world is in a “wave of autocratization.” Yet, recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocratization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces “U-Turn” as ...

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy”

V-Dem data

There is weirdly evanescent quality to Kirk sanctification. It's a highly online phenomenon mostly untethered from public opinion that has also become focused (by Trump himself) around Trump personal vendettas. So many people are probably still saying, "who was Charlie Kirk and why should I care?"

Disney Didn't Expect What Happened After Jimmy Kimmel's Cancellation - & Is Scrambling To Fix It Now it's scrambling.

1/ I tend to be skeptical of boycotts but 👀 this whole story about the internal and external pressure Disney is facing after suspending Kimmel.

I would compare the situation facing Disney to something like what Target has faced this year after ending its DEIA efforts.

Why unsigned newspaper editorials no longer work - Poynter The Boston Globe’s response to Charlie Kirk’s murder highlighted how anonymous editorials can sound hollow and out of touch

When local newspapers were widely read, unsigned editorials resonated (positively or negatively) in communities.
Now the form is increasingly ossified and unreadable – and unable to meet the moment
www.poynter.org/commentary/2...

It's a form of refuge-seeking, and now there is more need for refuge than ever, and not seeking it is more important than ever.

But also different for the NYT, which has less to fear? it's just how they roll, it's baked into the institutional identity as being above it all/"not liberal"

The Enshittification of Things