Favorite People outside Turning Point USA’s headquarters commemorate the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 20, 2025, in Phoenix, Ariz. Photo: Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images Charlie Kirk will live forever — at least online. In the year since he was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University, the Turning Point USA founder has…
Favorite President Donald Trump’s Justice Department took the side of tech giant OpenAI in its court battle with The Intercept and other media companies over the company’s use of others’ creative work to train its artificial intelligence tools. In a federal court filing in New York, the Justice Department argued that the U.S. has a…
Favorite Fiction The Devotion of Suspect X, Keigo Higashino (2005)This is one of those books that stays with you long after you finish it. The hit from Japanese mystery writer Keigo Higashino, who died last month, puts a dark twist on a story about loyalty and the obligations that come with it. This was my…
Favorite Twenty-three years ago, I sat down in Metro Diner on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to pick the brain of an illustrious book editor about an ambitious project. It launched me on a life-changing odyssey. Not so long after that meeting, I sent Tom Engelhardt a draft of an article for his new website, a…
Favorite Dalton Eatherly, who goes by the moniker Chud the Builder, attends a hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse on May 21, 2026, in Clarksville, Tenn. Photo: Adin Parks/AP Photo The situation has only gotten worse for Dalton Eatherly, the race-baiting online pest better known as “Chud the Builder.” Earlier this spring, Eatherly was out on…
Favorite When Congressional Democrats rallied against President Donald Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte to serve as temporary director of national intelligence last week, they said he was an unqualified pick who would be too eager to use the job to undermine elections. Now some high-ranking Democrats are lining up to support another permanent appointee with…
Favorite The bitter Michigan Senate primary was heating up earlier this month when a mystery group bought $5 million in TV ads boosting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s preferred candidate in the Democratic race, Haley Stevens. The group had an anodyne name — the Center for Democratic Priorities — and no track record in…
Favorite Participants march with a MasterCard banner at NYC Pride March on June 30, 2024. This year, the company pulled its corporate sponsorship of NYC Pride. Photo: Hailstorm Visuals/Sipa USA via AP Images As Pride month kicks off under a hostile federal government that takes its cues from a homophobic and transphobic far-right movement, the…
Favorite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the bloated Pentagon budget is a thing of the past. He has welcomed the cost-cutting efforts of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency on social media, while making a major show of canceling $580 million in Defense Department contracts and grants. The “total cuts” to the…
Favorite Earlier this month, all of the employees at 18F, a unit of government technologists under the General Services Administration, awoke to a surprise. The entire department — which helps build, buy, and share technological products across government agencies — discovered they’d been placed on administrative leave. 18F, named after its headquarters at 18th and…
