I feel that if Washingtonian figured out the answer to this question it should have been the cover story

“The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River.” The July 4 Texas flooding ripped our Kerr County home from its pillars, pulling us into the water and into the night. Then morning came.

A personal and absolutely devastating account of the Texas floods. It is as beautifully written as it is painful to read
www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

Sure this is going down really well at Langley

How Trump Shifted on Iran Under Pressure From Israel

NEW: How Trump Shifted on Iran Under Pressure From Israel www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/u...

A Desperate Haiti Turns to Erik Prince, Trump Ally, in Fight Against Gangs

NEW: Erik Prince has a contract to conduct lethal operations on behalf of Haiti’s government. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/u...

This Champions League match is a treat. Historic rivals Qatar and the UAE going at it

This is a real honor. I’m incredibly grateful and proud to be in such distinguished company.

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel Beatings, murder threats, harassment, vandalism, and the torching of homes: Jewish extremists have been committing these crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, with impunity. The au...

Ronen Bergman and @markmazzetti.bsky.social of The New York Times Magazine win the 2025 Hillman Prize for Magazine journalism for “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel.”

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.

Honored that the story I wrote with Ronen Bergman is the winner of the 2025 Hillman Prize for magazine journalism given by @sidneyhillman.bsky.social. Here is press release and original story
www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillman-priz...

Just astonishing that standing up to American aggression becomes the rallying cry for the newly elected leader of…Canada

Possible the US moves down in the first round and swaps a second round pick with UK

Astronomers Detect a Signature of Life on a Distant Planet Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

Do we tell them, or let them find out on their own?

Who’s In and Who’s Out at the Naval Academy’s Library? An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power.

“Memorializing the Holocaust” has been purged from the Naval Academy’s library. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” remain.
By @johnismay.bsky.social

But let’s be honest here. Is there really that much of a difference between Oliver Stone and Roger Stone?

We Are All Living in George Orwell’s World Now He is easy to quote, but what would the iconoclastic British socialist really have thought about politics today?

“So many references to “1984” have flooded the political conversation that it feels as if nearly half the electorate joined the same book group”
Matt Purdy, a legendary editor, has returned to writing at the right time.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

This story is at once completely bonkers and unbelievably scary

For Trump and Netanyahu, Similar Strategies With Similar Goals The American and Israeli leaders have been mirroring each other as they go to war with their own governments

“Mr. Netanyahu and President Trump are running the same playbook to achieve strikingly similar goals: to neuter the judiciary, dismantle a system of oversight that puts a check on their authority and discredit national security professionals they see as arrayed against them.”
New w/Patrick Kingsley

Intelligence Assessment Said to Contradict Trump on Venezuelan Gang To invoke wartime deportation powers, President Trump asserted that Venezuela’s government controls a gang. U.S. intelligence analysts think that is not true.

Important new reporting by @charliesavage.bsky.social and @julianbarnes.bsky.social

The JFK records page already crashed. God damn you, Ed Asner

Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Iwo Jima flag-raiser Pages celebrating Navajo code talkers and other minority service members were also erased.

When Johnny Cash sang at the White House in 1972, he played “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” as an f-you to Nixon.

The U.S. Doesn’t Have a Deep State. It Never Should. Theodore J. Singer had a career watching murky bureaucracies at work. His experience is a cautionary tale, he writes in a guest commentary.

“So here’s the point. If you really want to see what a deep state is, go look elsewhere. We don’t have one here at home. And we need to keep it that way.”
By Ted Singer, a former Middle East hand at CIA

Inside Ned’s, the private club for a new generation of D.C. cool kids The London-based franchise Ned’s Club aims for a modern take on Washington’s elite membership clubs.

Only in Washington would a new "younger and hipper" private club open and feature young and hip members like Howard Lutnick, Steve Mnuchin, and Kirsten Gillibrand

Trump’s Affinity for Putin Grows More Consequential Than Ever President Trump’s admiration for President Vladimir Putin of Russia has been endlessly dissected, but the American leader’s policy shifts since taking office again could have profound effects.

“What is Putin getting? He is getting more than he and other former K.G.B. officers ever dreamed of,” said @calderwalton.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/u...

Trump’s Affinity for Putin Grows More Consequential Than Ever President Trump’s admiration for President Vladimir Putin of Russia has been endlessly dissected, but the American leader’s policy shifts since taking office again could have profound effects.

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,”

The statement was a tell. The president sees common cause with Mr. Putin, a merging of interests forged through battles against those he believes are his and Mr. Putin’s mutual adversaries.

The More You Know…..

You don’t think a DOGE guy with the nickname Big Balls knows what’s he’s doing?

I hear DOGE is selling off that giant warehouse where they keep the arc of the covenant

Maybe it’s an accident. Or maybe it’s the ultimate troll for Macron to be calling it a “coalition of the willing.”

Far-Right Israeli Minister Visits Washington After Years of Being Shunned Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, had drawn rebukes from the Biden administration for his opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza and his support for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/w...

Maybe, just maybe, some of these DC-based newsletters should take a beat before coming out with an “account” of the Trump-Zelensky meeting based on a single anonymous White House source.