Mary-Kim Arnold | 김 미 진

A New York Times headline and sub-headline that reads: The Trade Adviser Who Hates Trade Once sidelined, President Trump’s counselor Peter Navarro has returned to Washington and quickly upended the global trading system.

This headline construction could apply to nearly anyone in the Trump 2.0 administration.

"The EPA Head Who Hates the Environment."
"The HHS Secretary Who Hates Science-Based Medicine."
"The Education Sec. Who Hates Education."
"The President Who Hates Democracy."

The nihilism is a throughline.

I have an essay I’m not sure if I should try to publish somewhere or use to start my blog. I can’t believe I chose this year to start sharing writing again.

100 Days of Creative Resistance launched today, with R. O. Kwon. Even if you haven’t signed up, you can read Kwon’s post here:

mailchi.mp/c5a285e83b27...

@writingco-lab.bsky.social

What Happened When the Far-Right Took Over This Community College The takeover of North Idaho College reveals the Far-Right’s blueprint for destroying higher education.

This is an excellent longer read that shows the power of university boards and the way a few key people can change the direction of an entire institution and their local area

www.teenvogue.com/story/north-...

Colm Tóibín · In LA: LA on Fire A new fire started in Hollywood. It might have looked as though we were now surrounded on three sides by fires, but it...

‘On Tuesday when Gary Indiana’s library came to Los Angeles, it rested for a while in the appointed house in Altadena. If it had come a day later, there would have been no address to deliver to.’

Colm Tóibín on the LA fires:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is a fascinating turn of events

“There is a kind of happiness that comes from trying to be a consistent person, and sometimes that is the only obtainable goal, to try.” —Sarah Schulman, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, out spring 2025.

Gillian Welch + David Rawlings in Boston tonight was incandescent. A way to think about staying true to your practice. Grateful, buoyed. Hold your creative community close and let them carry you.

There's a corner of me I
cannot touch (I return to).
My friends
get bloody lonely
there or mad. I,
with myself too. After
that

I make them lonelier
somehow.

—Wong May, A Letter From Last Year
from A Bad Girl's Book of Animals (1969)

my son this morning: “Gladiator II: Maximus Fills Out the FAFSA”

you are the best. miss you.

❤️

It’s not like people suddenly became cruel since Trump won. It’s that their cruelty has become rewarded and celebrated and normalized at every turn, expected even. The relentlessness of it, even just a couple of weeks in.