Margaret Wappler

So good, all of it.

Did 50 burpees because Woke. What did you do to fight the scourge today?

A gorgeous gut-punch.

“What I Might Sing” “Last Friday, I was thinking of Whitney Houston, / and, because of you, I was thinking too of America.”

"What I Might Sing," a poem from my new book THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS (pub 10/7), is in the @newyorker.com. Preorder link for a signed copy book is in my pinned post.
@graywolfpress.bsky.social

Call me hysterical but this seems bad, very bad.

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

So glad ICE is in Chicago. The city is a lawless hell-scape. Blues musicians wrecking hundreds of police cars. High schoolers doing weird scientific sex experiments. Kids home alone during the holidays. Women killing their husbands and lovers and then SINGING about it sassily. This has to stop.

‘How Goes the Battle?’ | Lorrie Moore For those unfamiliar with the Canadian novelist Miriam Toews, her latest work—a fragmented, artfully strewn memoir titled A Truce That Is Not Peace—may

This review shifted my center of gravity a couple inches to the left. A banger. (Paywalled, but you can register to read for free. I renewed my sub for ten bucks just to finish reading it.)

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

“What kind of world / would let loose / a low orange moon / that shocks you / into being”  

— Maggie Nelson

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This poem appeared in Boston Review, 2015. Shared here with deep gratitude.

The governing party of the United States is shutting down the federal government to cover-up evidence the president sexually abused children so he can continue trying to implement dictatorship.

That's just a true statement about the world!

So sad to hear about Malcolm-Jamal Warner. He was a great friend to Luke Perry in a crucial time in Luke's life. He spoke to me for A Good Bad Boy and I was a tad bereft at the end of the interview to leave his wise and grounded company. Sending care to his incredible mother and all who loved him.

Miss Rachel continues to have more of a moral backbone than 99% of public figures

Help a great writer out on her birthday! It’s tough out there (nods in the general direction of publishing, journalism and everythingggg, duh).

Brad Pitt Is Fooling You The F1 press tour has been a carefully attuned charm offensive meant to obscure Pitt’s alleged violent behavior toward ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

I wrote about how Brad Pitt has effectively albeit transparently used F1: The Movie and its press tour to rehabilitate his image, in order to obscure the violent allegations about abuse toward Angelina Jolie & his current estrangement from his six kids, @vulture.com. www.vulture.com/article/brad...

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Every single one of the GOP cowards has blood on their hands.

The Worst Part of Trump’s Big Bill Is Getting Almost No Attention The Republican budget bill is stuffed with terrible policies, but Democrats have been largely silent on perhaps its most destructive component.

Well, seems like it's over. Trump will get his almost $200 billion more for immigration agents, weapons, surveillance tools, and huge detention expansion. This will entail at minimum another roughly 19,000 immigration agents across ICE and CBP, that will probably be shotgun-hired at lower standards

CALL CALL CALL YOUR REPS!

THE VOTE HASN'T HAPPENED YET, PEOPLE

here's the number: (202) 224-3121

Some good news about political polarization: It can change Nearly 200 residents representing the voting breakdown of a swing state found common ground on hot-button issues.

I know there's a ton of bad political news out there, but this kind of experiment makes me genuinely hopeful. I'd love to see a campaign afoot to do this in every state. www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Dachau in July 1933... reported in the New York Times

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...

My God. Please make sure everyone you know knows this.

The path is very clear: Republicans are creating a system to allow anybody—you, me, whoever—to have their citizenship revoked, sent to a prison camp in the Everglades, then exported to a labor camp in a third-world country. That entire pipeline could be in place in 24 hours.

Insane. This time is going to be such a dark stain on this country’s history.

I believe this is BORTAC, the Border Patrol's equivalent of SWAT. The guy who eventually shot the Uvalde killer was part of BORTAC. They're trained operators.

There is literally no justification to use BORTAC to round up day laborers. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

My local Home Depot got raided by America's secret police.

I hope once this jackass is gone, Pres AOC plants the wildest garden here. I mean, I want O’Keefe level of vaginal plants and the gayest Mapplethorpe orchids just everywhere.

"They were crying in fear. One of the agents at one point lifted up his shirt, which displayed the gun that he was carrying," Mukherjee said. "The 6-year-old boy was terrified to see the gun. He urinated on himself and wet all his clothing. No one offered him a change of clothing for many hours."

Things about mainstream publishing I wish more people knew:

1) The NY Times Bestseller List is a marketing list, not an accurate list of the best-selling books for that period.

🧵

We have rule of six lawyers in DC, not rule of law.

(To be clear, it's been that way forever.)