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ONE OF MY proudest achievements in a long career in journalism and business was my last act as a leader: turning over power of the communication firm I had led for five years to a younger, far more capable president.

That planned transition three years ago came to mind when I read Derek Thompson’s essay on leadership rooted in his research of succession failures — from Marcus Aurelius to Bob Iger and Bill Belichick.

“Strong leaders often fail to do the most important thing in leadership, which is to plan for a successor who can extend their time-bound term into a longer legacy. They have a tendency to make themselves indispensable and irreplaceable—and then prove themselves right by handing the reins to a leader who fails to replace them,” Thompson writes.

On why so many leaders fail their ultimate test, he boils his research down to two sentences: “For centuries, powerful leadership has often been structurally incompatible with succession, because of the tendency of strong leaders to stay in power too long and hollow out the organizations they lead. Modern institutions, despite their considerable efforts to solve this ancient problem, have discovered several ways to make it worse.”

Thompson’s essay, which you really need to read in full, draws from Aurelius’ belief that change is not a curse, but a cause, “and in obedience to her all things are now done well, and from eternity have been done in like form, and will be such to time without end.” Thompson’s kicker:

Change, change, change: It might be the most common theme of the emperor’s meditations, although accepting its inevitability and necessity might be the hardest challenge, especially for those who fear the finality of their own power. The Aurelius Trap is many things, but it is at bottom the failure to accept that our institutions, our companies, and our political parties must, like all things, become something else in order to live.

Three years ago, the traditional PR and public affairs firm Truscott Rossman changed leaders from me to Allie Walker. On March 10, 2023, I wrote:

The last act of a good leader is to make room for a great leader. This is one of the many things I learned studying leadership as a political journalist, and a lesson I put into practice upon leaving journalism five years ago to join Truscott Rossman.

In the spring of 2018, co-founder and owner John Truscott agreed to my five-year goals as president of his integrated communications firm:

1. Double the firm’s revenue by growing our Detroit practice, installing project management practices, and demanding greater excellence in client services.

2. Identify and nurture a new generation of leadership at TR.

Done and done. Starting today, I will be TR’s senior advisor with my time focused exclusively on business development and client services. My management and leadership responsibilities will go to Allie Walker, who as my vice president has steadily assumed more and more of my duties, essentially running the firm day-to-day for 18 months as we prepared for today’s formal transition.

Allie is now our president. You can read the announcement here.. She is a gifted leader and strategist, a home-grown talent from Traverse City, Mich., who excelled in Washington during her Congressional and corporate communications gigs. TR couldn’t be in better hands.

This development comes at a time when Baby Boomers are clinging to power in Washington and throughout most of American life. It’s time we let go, change things up a bit, put our experience and wisdom to new uses in what author Arthur C. Brooks calls “the second curve of life.”

What has Allie done with the firm? She has changed it, dramatically, and made it better, launching a content studio called Say More; hiring a team of Millennial leaders including an expert on artificial intelligence and digital communications, Ryan Gajewski; implementing rigorous project management protocols along with other systemic changes to improve client services; and make tighter connections between the company’s values to its services. She’s done this alongside our remarkable owner, John Truscott, a good-to-great leader in his own right, focused now on his transition plan.

Change. Change. Change. It’s a good thing if you get in front of it.

FIGHTING FOMO: Thompson’s essay was first flagged in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed these stories:

• U.S. intelligence gets a new leader.

• President Trump head fakes again on Iran.

• A spine-tingling cosmic coincidence involving love and baseball.

• How AI unearthed a treasured piece of art.

• Why we have China to thank for holding the price of oil to $100 a barrel.

• Boomer writer Joe Klein writes about boomer presidents and his generation’s failures.

• Trump’s plan to drawdown on NATO.

Paid subscribers are what keeps Convulsions cooking, which is why I created the daily MRI just for them. Consider joining! I can’t do this without you.

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PRESIDENT TRUMP promised voters in 2024 he would vanquish inflation on Day One of his presidency. Instead, he increased the cost of living with reckless tariffs and an unauthorized war in Iran – and now he’s overtly, unabashedly pro-inflation.

“You know what I really love?” he declared today. “I love the inflation.”

With new consumer price index data showing the annual inflation rate at 4.2%, a three-year high, Trump said he’s not worried. “You know why?” he told reporters, launching into a long, rambling defense of the war before finishing his thought: “When the war is over, it’s coming down, it’s going to come down like a rock.”

Dude loves inflation. What a kick in the gut that must be to American voters struggling to pay their bills and wondering why their president is doubling down on his astonishing May quote – “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

This can’t be good news for Republicans up for election in November, given that voters rank the economy as a top concern — and have given Trump low marks on that issue.

Trump is counting on the gullibility of voters. Today, he tried to raise hopes with talk of a secret military operation to ferry oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the primary shipping channel for 20% of the world’s global oil supply that has been effectively closed by his war since late February. The truth is the operation is not a secret and it’s barely made a dent in gas prices.

What else does Trump love?

Just last week, the president said of the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund he awarded himself, “I love it. I think it’s so important.”

And he once again threw his loving arms around the mob he incited to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, injuring more than 150 officers in an attempt to steal the presidential election from Joe Biden. He wants to direct slush fund payouts to these criminals, who’ve already been granted presidential pardons. “These are great people that were destroyed, their families have been destroyed,” he said, adding, “They went there with love.”

Here’s the thing about our president: He also loves the lie.

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TURNS OUT it matters when the president of the United States calls his country a disaster, fabricates allegations of election fraud, and tramples on democratic institutions, a new poll suggests.

President Trump’s rhetoric and policies are eroding Americans’ pride in their nation, their commitment to democracy, and their faith in the American dream. History will judge these as his ultimate disgrace.

Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016, the year President Trump was first elected in a campaign that cast him as the sole savior from “an American carnage.”

While the poll’s authors don’t draw a direct line between Trump’s presidency and these depressing results, I do. It’s unmistakable, unavoidable. And while the Democratic Party isn’t helping matters, Trump’s two terms in office brought these numbers down.

Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.’s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.

Young adults are much less likely than older Americans to believe the U.S. is exceptional or to see democracy as critical to the American identity.

About 4 in 10, 44%, of U.S. adults under 30 say there are other countries better than the U.S., compared with 22% of U.S. adults ages 60 and older.

Fewer, too, see democracy as a key element of the U.S.’s identity. Only about half of Americans under 30 believe this, compared with 81% of those 60 and older.

Fleshing out the data, the AP talked to voters. Derricka Wall, 24, of Chickasaw, Alabama, said democracy is not the problem. “It’s the people that are actually being put in office that is the problem.”

Wall said the people who established the government with co-equal branches thought they were erecting safeguards to keep any one person or group from attaining too much power. But she believes they didn’t foresee how easily those guardrails would crumble if the people in the system stopped enforcing them.

“I feel like they would actually roll out of their graves,” she said. “I feel they would be very disappointed in us.”

Kent Stage, 62 and a retired senior enlisted man in the Army, is a registered Republican in Indiana. “I’ll trust the ambulance-chasing lawyer and a shady used car salesman before I trust the politician,” he told AP.

The survey also finds widespread cynicism about America as the land of opportunity. About half of U.S. adults, 51%, say the American Dream — the idea that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead — once held true but does not anymore. About one-third say it “still holds true” while 15% say it never held true.

Jack Hermanson, a 27-year-old software developer in Denver, said his belief in the American Dream changed when he saw his engineer husband struggle to find a job. “That really shattered my impression that if you work hard, you get what you deserve,” Hermanson said.

Only 22% of Americans under 30 say the American Dream still holds true, compared with 46% of Americans ages 60 and older.

FIGHTING FOMO: This item first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed these stories:

• How Trump’s disregard for women impacts his government.

• Two reasons why later-born siblings face more challenges than first-borns.

• The price Earl “The Pearl” Monroe paid for his Hall of Fame career.

• An “AI Lab Rat” offers tips to surviving the tech revolution.

• What the downing of two U.S. pilots might mean for the U.S. war on Iran.

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TRUMP IS FULL OF ... love.

Love for the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund he awarded himself, backing away only after voters and some GOP lawmakers objected to the self-dealing scheme, which still includes immunity from IRS investigations.

“I love it,” Trump said of the fund Wednesday. “I think it’s so important.”

Love for the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” defacing the halls of Congress, and attacking and injuring more than 150 officers in an attempt to steal the presidential election from Joe Biden. He wants to direct slush fund payouts to these criminals, who’ve already been granted presidential pardons. “These are great people that were destroyed, their families have been destroyed,” he lied, adding, “They went there with love.”

He loves only himself.

TODD BLANCHE is Trump’s personal criminal attorney, which makes him the exact wrong person to properly and independently serve as the people’s lawyer — attorney general.

But after a tryout as interim AG, Blanche will soon be nominated by Trump for the full-time job. It’s a horrible idea, and now that GOP lawmakers are getting a taste for defying their unpopular party leader, the nomination will face headwinds for Senate confirmation. Two issues, according to The Washington Post:

• Some Republican senators are raising questions about recent comments in which they believed Blanche, like Trump, excused J6 violence.

• Blanche faced open revolt from some portions of the GOP Senate caucus for his unsuccessful defense of the $1.7 billion slush fund.

FIGHTING FOMO: These items first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed these stories:

• Trump’s cynical (and bloody) escape hatch from Iran.

• The latest trend in alcohol: Canned cocktails.

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I VISITED BRIEFLY last night with Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who reminded me of a time when America’s chief executives treated journalists not as enemies but as irritating necessities in a nation governed by the First Amendment.

Their joint appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids was off record, as was a meet-and-greet beforehand, so I can’t share their conversation. But I can tell you this from my knowledge of, and experiences with, both former presidents: They’re alarmed by President Trump’s disregard for the media’s role in a democracy.

I covered both of their presidencies for The Associated Press, along with the final four years of Clinton’s governorship in Arkansas, and while I tried to be as objective as humanly possible, I pissed them both off at times. They told me so to my face. But they never insulted me, never bullied me, and never punished me. Clinton and Bush treated me and my family with respect, because they understood that political journalists and politicians are distant cousins in the institutions of democracy.

Which is why it was so jarring to hear on my long ride home from the event that the White House Correspondents’ Association — an organization I once helped lead — is bowing again to Trump. At the request of, and in honor of, a president who defiles the First Amendment, degrades reporters, and designs to make the White House and Pentagon press corps his propaganda arms, the WHCA has rescheduled its annual dinner for July 24 after a shooting disrupted the first one.

My plea to my former colleagues: Don’t go. Stay home. Your jobs are hard enough without debasing yourselves. I made the same case shortly before the first dinner in April.

WTF, folks?

This man mocks you, sues you, and targets you for prosecution. He calls the truths you’ve dedicated your lives to reporting “fake news” and orders devastating budget cuts to your colleagues at NPR, PBS and Voice of America.

In the last year, he banned the AP from the Oval Office and took over the rotating press pool. His Defense secretary Pete Hegseth imposed draconian restrictions that drove dozens of news outlets out of the Pentagon. His FCC commissioner Brendan Carr threatens broadcasters with their licenses for covering the administration truthfully. His Justice Department pursued charges against two reporters covering an ICE protest, and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter in hopes of punishing public servants who spoke to her about public service. He called one of your colleagues “ugly,” another “piggy” and routinely ducks your questions by attacking your news outlets and industry.

And you’re having dinner with this man?

After watching two former adversaries discuss democracy and civility with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, I wonder whether a dying business model and the rise of Trumpism might signal the end of independent journalism in America. If there’s going to be another 250 years of the our democratic experiment, the answer better be no.

FIGHTING FOMO: This item first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed these stories:

• Trump abandons his slush fund scheme, but not his free pass on IRS investigations.

• A shady real estate guy from Michigan takes over U.S. intelligence.

• Trump eyes a massive patronage ploy for federal grants.

• A Jan. 6, 2020, insurrectionist lands an important Pentagon job.

• CBS fires Scott Pelley’s from “60 Minutes” for criticizing his new bosses.

• A Pride Month poll on gay marriage show support high but flattening.

• How Bill Gates’ image-shaping machine imploded.

Paid subscribers are what keeps Convulsions cooking, which is why I created the daily MRI just for them. Join us!

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I VISITED BRIEFLY last night with Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who reminded me of a time when America’s chief executives treated journalists not as enemies but as irritating necessities in a nation governed by the First Amendment.

Their joint appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids was off record, as was a meet-and-greet beforehand, so I can’t share their conversation. But I can tell you this from my knowledge of, and experiences with, both former presidents: They’re alarmed by President Trump’s disregard for the media’s role in a democracy.

I covered both of their presidencies for The Associated Press, along with the final four years of Clinton’s governorship in Arkansas, and while I tried to be as objective as humanly possible, I pissed them both off at times. They told me so to my face. But they never insulted me, never bullied me, and never punished me. Clinton and Bush treated me and my family with respect, because they understood that political journalists and politicians are distant cousins in the institutions of democracy.

Which is why it was so jarring to hear on my long ride home from the event that the White House Correspondents’ Association — an organization I once helped lead — is bowing again to Trump. At the request of, and in honor of, a president who defiles the First Amendment, degrades reporters, and designs to make the White House and Pentagon press corps his propaganda arms, the WHCA has rescheduled its annual dinner for July 24 after a shooting disrupted the first one.

My plea to my former colleagues: Don’t go. Stay home. Your jobs are hard enough without debasing yourselves. I made the same case shortly before the first dinner in April.

WTF, folks?

This man mocks you, sues you, and targets you for prosecution. He calls the truths you’ve dedicated your lives to reporting “fake news” and orders devastating budget cuts to your colleagues at NPR, PBS and Voice of America.

In the last year, he banned the AP from the Oval Office and took over the rotating press pool. His Defense secretary Pete Hegseth imposed draconian restrictions that drove dozens of news outlets out of the Pentagon. His FCC commissioner Brendan Carr threatens broadcasters with their licenses for covering the administration truthfully. His Justice Department pursued charges against two reporters covering an ICE protest, and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter in hopes of punishing public servants who spoke to her about public service. He called one of your colleagues “ugly,” another “piggy” and routinely ducks your questions by attacking your news outlets and industry.

And you’re having dinner with this man?

After watching two former adversaries discuss democracy and civility with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, I wonder whether a dying business model and the rise of Trumpism might signal the end of independent journalism in America. If there’s going to be another 250 years of the our democratic experiment, the answer better be no.

FIGHTING FOMO: This item first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed these stories:

• Trump abandons his slush fund scheme, but not his free pass on IRS investigations.

• A shady real estate guy from Michigan takes over U.S. intelligence.

• Trump eyes a massive patronage ploy for federal grants.

• A Jan. 6, 2020, insurrectionist lands an important Pentagon job.

• CBS fires Scott Pelley’s from “60 Minutes” for criticizing his new bosses.

• A Pride Month poll on gay marriage show support high but flattening.

• How Bill Gates’ image-shaping machine imploded.

Paid subscribers are what keeps Convulsions cooking, which is why I created the daily MRI just for them. Join us!

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FOR YEARS, as a longtime Washington journalist now back home in Michigan, I’ve given political consultants and journalists the same answer to their questions about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s White House ambitions: “Maybe she runs, but she may be normal enough not to want it.”

I dusted off the response Thursday when an Associated Press editor texted me Whitmer’s response to a reporter’s question about the 2028 presidential election. Michigan’s governor said: “There will be a robust group of people running for president. I will not be one of them in 2028. I can tell you that.”

My reply to the AP editor: “I believe her.”

Hours later, Whitmer backtracked. “You know, I never thought I would run for governor, so I guess I should know better than to say any of it. Never say never,” Whitmer said. This time, she was on stage at a Michigan policy conference in an interview with an insurance company CEO.

“At this juncture, I’ve got nothing to announce.”

I still believe her. Whitmer doesn’t know if she will run, but likely won’t and doesn’t want to close out her options, which could include a spot on the ticket or in the Cabinet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she stays in the state. She loves Michigan (there’s so much to love, people) and the state loves her back (she is one of the nation’s most popular governors).

The truth is, Whitmer’s presidential prospects depend less on her ambition than the Democratic Party’s direction. She has led Michigan for two terms, a centrist Democrat in a swing state. After spending much of her first term fighting President Trump over pandemic safeguards, Whitmer developed a working relationship with the president that benefited her state.

The fights made her a darling of the Left. The pragmatism did not: A photo of Whitmer hiding her face behind a folder during an Oval Office event became an unflattering meme in the political circles that count most in Democratic presidential jockeying. There may be no backtracking from it.

FIGHTING FOMO: The Whitmer story first appeared in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Unless you’re a paid subscriber to Convulsions, you also missed stories on:

• The Fed fixing to raise interest rates

• Trump losing his grip on white working-class voters

• Rupert Murdoch’s 50-year-old cultural and communications hinge point

• United States and Iran edging closer to a peace deal. Maybe.

• Peggy Noonan’s life’s lessons: “After the warmth, work.”

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JILL BIDEN SAYS says she feared her husband was suffering a stroke as she watched then-President Joe Biden stumble through a career-ending debate performance in 2024 that helped put Trump back in office. “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” the former first lady told CBS News in an interview scheduled to air Sunday.

I call BS.

First, anybody with eyes and an open mind saw Joe Biden “like that” — rambling, mumbling, shuffling, physically and mentally declining — before and after the debate. Lying eyes belonged only to professional Democrats and Biden’s family, people making bank on his power.

Second, if the president’s wife had thought he was having a stroke, Joe Biden would have been rushed to a hospital that night, thoroughly examined, kept for observation, and forced to disclose the medical scare to the public.

None of that happened, which means she’s lying. Or it did happen, which means she’s part of a massive conspiracy to cover up the stroke scare. I’ll give Team Biden the benefit of the doubt and say she’s lying.

Third, the former first lady is selling her book and is desperate for coverage.

Her book tour will be a sad reminder of the 2024 election campaign, when the country was denied an open Democratic presidential primary that could have elevated a stronger candidate than Biden and kept the disastrous Trump out of office.

SPEAKING OF TRUMP: “I don’t care about the midterms,” the president declared Wednesday to the painful chagrin of GOP politicians who do.

At a superficial level, it might be refreshing to hear a commander in chief put his national security agenda ahead of his political interests. That’s the spin Trump put on his response to Iran seeking a one-sided peace deal to end his highly unpopular war.

“They thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,’” Trump said at a meeting of his sycophantic Cabinet. “I don’t care about the midterms.”

But he does care about his sagging war-time approval ratings, and he will care about a Democratic Congress investigating him in 2027, should his Iranian gambit lead to a GOP route in November.

Furthermore, his “I-don’t-care-about-the-midterms” bromide might sound to war-weary Americans like be doesn’t care about them. It wasn’t that long ago when Trump tried to make the same national security argument and instead uncorked this truth bomb:

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

Still a most-fitting epitaph for the Trump presidency: “I don’t think about anybody.”

A CIVIL JURY heard the evidence gathered by E. Jean Carroll’s legal team in 2023 and ruled that Trump sexually abused the former magazine editor the mid-1990s. If those jurors happen to hear the latest development in the case, they might conclude that Trump is assaulting Carroll again.

The Department of Justice — weaponized against Trump’s political rivals and led by the attorney who defensed him in the rape trial — has opened a criminal investigation into whether Carroll committed perjury in civil lawsuits against Trump, multiple news outlets report.

Carroll may or may not have lied at the trial. We don’t know. But we do know there are appropriate venues to make that case, starting with the civil court that handled Trump’s trial, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has Trump’s appeal at hand.

The exact wrong place for Trump to litigate Carroll’s conduct is with his FBI and DOJ.

CITING THE LAW and common sense, the head of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing tried to block Trump’s audacious bid to place his portrait on a $250 bill and was punished, forcibly reassigned to a lesser role inside the Treasury Department.

“The buck stopped here,” Patricia “Patty” Solimene wrote in an email to colleagues the day after her April 27 reassignment. Clever dig.

No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat appeared on a 5-cent note, The Washington Post reports. Legislation to put Trump’s face on the $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year and languished.

And yet Trump’s political appointees at Treasury are still demanding that the printing bureau execute Trump’s personally approved bill design, according to the Post.

It’s maddening to watch a wartime president who promised to put America first instead put so much time into placing his face and name on so many things — a ballroom, an arch, multiple federal buildings, White House walls, and U.S. coins and currency.

IRAN FIRED four one-way attack drones at American and commercial ships early today. American F/A-18, F-16 and F-35 jet fighters shot down the drones, The Wall Street Journal reports, then the F/A-18s hit the ground-control unit before it could launch a fifth drone.

The cease fire isn’t holding.

Iran is far more prepared to retain its nuclear program than Trump told the American public.

Thanks to Trump’s blunderous war, Iran now holds a negotiating card it did not possess before the conflict: The Strait of Hormuz, and through that waterway, the health of the U.S. economy.

Trump’s choices are all-out war, a bad peace deal, or this ugly status quo. Unfortunately, we can’t wind the clock back to President Obama’s term and make America’s position on Iran greater again.

Today’s newsletter is a rare free sample of the daily “Morning Read-In, exclusive to Convulsions’ paid subscribers. In today’s news environment, don’t you want a daily MRI?

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ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE can write as well as I’ve ever written, because it knows — and owns — everything I’ve ever written.

But it doesn’t write as well as I can today, because AI doesn’t know or own what I’ve yet to create.

That’s my informed conclusion, which I’ll support with a humorous story (later in this column) and with studies cited today by education analyst Rebecca Winthrop in a New York Times op-ed. From her piece:

As a researcher studying A.I.’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas — what we call creative thinking. This seems to be especially true for students. A.I.’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories.

The erosion of creative thinking means young people will struggle to navigate uncertainty. Workers will strain to adapt to a shifting labor market. And society will miss out on the new ideas that can solve complex problems and enhance lives.

Winthrop, who led the Brookings Institute’s global task force on artificial intelligence, cites eight years of studies by Georgetown University neuroscientist Adam Green. In one study, Green and his team examined personal statements from more than 370,000 college-bound applicants, and found that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas.

Later, Green’s team found that human-written essays offered up to eight times more new ideas than those produced by AI. In a third study, they found AI-assisted essays had more interesting vocabulary and were rated more enjoyable to read, but the underlying story lines were more homogenous. “Distinctive and offbeat ideas — with surprising characters or unusual settings — are often shunted to the side when A.I. is involved,” Winthrop reports.

When teenagers write their own essays, the work reflects their thoughts and personalities, their attempts to make meaning of their experiences. When we search for words, we are sifting through the same brain networks that form connections between ideas. A student who writes, “I’ll always think of learning to swim when I see a kite flying,” is connecting unique personal experiences in her life, which until recently, is a clear signal of truly creative thinking.

Let me tell you about the time AI disrupted my world view. A couple of years ago, Truscott Rossman, the Michigan-based communications firm where I work, hired an expert on new media and artificial intelligence. A few weeks into the job, my new boss, Ryan Gajewski, joined me on a business development call, taking notes as I led the conversation with a potential new client.

The next day, he sent me a multi-page business proposal. It nailed our strategy. It spelled out our tactics. With clear, concise, and compelling language, Ryan crafted a great argument for hiring Truscott Rossman and made this 40-year veteran of the Writing Business more than a little jealous.

I populated the margins with praise. “Great nut” … “Perfect active verb” … “Nice alliteration” … “Great writing.” A few days later, he politely messaged me: “Do you want to know how I wrote the proposal?” A generation younger than I am, Ryan might have been afraid to offend me with the question. I wasn’t offended; I was intrigued.

Knowing his background, I accurately guessed that he had used ChatGPT to help shape his notes into a super sales document. I asked him to show me how he did it. We jumped on a video call where he fed into ChatGPT:

• His notes, which had been recorded, transcribed, and curated by AI.

• A couple of our firm’s past business proposals.

• Some public documents from the company we were trying to recruit.

• His own edits and strategic flourishes.

“That’s amazing,” I told Ryan, our Chief Strategy Officer. “Thanks for your time. I need to adapt or die.”

“Wait a minute,” Ryan replied in a whisper, almost apologetically. “Do you want to know my fourth prompt?”

“Um, OK …”

“I asked it to write like Ron Fournier,” Ryan said, adding that in addition to that author-specific prompt, he fed ChatGPT an example of one of my own business proposals.

That’s the moment the scales fell from my eyes, when I realized that AI had scraped thousands of my stories from the internet — offered free to the public by my previous employers, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, and two book publishing companies — then learned from them, fed them into Ryan’s AI agent, and wrote the business development proposal in my voice. Looking back, I realize that my praise for Ryan’s writing was intellectual masturbation.

But for as well as Ryan’s proposal was written, it lacked something. Or actually, it lacked everything I’ve learned about communications, business, and life its own self since the bulk of my AI-scraped articles were written. It was, using Winthrop’s point, a homogeneous version of my old self. Not the best, wisest, constantly growing, most creative, version of myself today.

The lesson here is not that AI is all powerful or all evil. It’s a tool, a leap in technological evolution that can enhance our creativity if we’re bold enough not to let AI consume it. We must embrace this new technology, adapt, and innovate.

And yes, I wrote this whole column by myself.

FIGHT FOMO: While this newsletter is free, most of you are missing out on the daily “Morning Read-in” for paid subscribers. Today’s MRI featured Winthrop’s op-ed along with five others stories:

• Trump’s doctors are mum.

• Texas Republicans do Democrats a favor and nominate Ken Paxton.

• How a magazine writer lost his wife, his best friend, his house, and half his money in 20 minutes.

• Ford Motor’s non-auto revenue driver.

• How Trump is erasing history around the Jan. 6 attacks.

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HE SLEEPS in meetings. His mind wanders. His speech slurs. His hands are bruised, his legs swollen. He’s prone to angry outbursts. He turns 80 in a few weeks.

And today Trump undergoes his third scheduled medical checkup in 13 months, which is a lot.

White House spokespeople say Trump is in “excellent health,” but they lie for a living.

As recently as Friday, the president bragged about his cognitive scores but that could be a tell: The tests he touts are typically administered to detect and track dementia.

There is, of course, a long history of U.S. presidents lying or deflecting about their health problems. That doesn’t make it right.

Grover Cleveland had secret surgery on a cancerous tumor, even as his secretary of war denied rumors of the procedure.

William McKinley suffered from eye problems and nearly died of pneumonia as his spokesman called rumors of the president’s poor health “foolish stories.”

Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. It was covered up by a litany of officials including his wife, Edith, who effectively ran the government for the remaining 17 months of his presidency.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a victim of polio, largely hid his confinement to a wheelchair with the help of his staff and an obliging press corps.

Dwight Eisenhower was hospitalized with a heart attack. His press team initially told reporters he had an upset stomach.

Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline was evident to the country but denied by the president and his staff until it was too late. It took a disastrous debate performance for Democratic leaders to force Biden out of his re-election campaign. The unforced error helped put Trump back in the White House.

If history is a guide, you’ll hear Trump brag about his health today. He might invoke the laughable diagnosis of former White House physician Ronny Jackson, who once told Trump he was healthier than Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom were at least 15 years younger than Trump when first sworn into office. Bush and Obama also exercised routinely, unlike Trump who feasts on fast food and considers golf his only workout.

“I just care that he was my doctor and he said I’m the healthiest human being he’s ever — Ronny, am I healthier than these guys back here?” Trump said in 2016, standing in front of the U.S. Naval Academy’s football team.

“Yes sir,” Jackson replied.

“All right,” Trump said. “See, this is why I like him.”

FIGHT FOMO: While this newsletter is free, most of you are missing out on the daily “Morning Read-in” for paid subscribers. Today’s MRI featured the president’s checkup along with four others stories:

• Trump waffles on Iran.

• Iran fires back.

• Pope Leo XIV channels Pope Leo XIII on artificial intelligence.

• College-educated men are working shorting hours and spending more time with their families

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I love the “Late Show.” I hate how President Trump bullied CBS into cancelling it. As a modest tribute, I’m submitting here to the Questionert.

What’s the best sandwich?

The hot dogs at Lafayette Coney in Detroit. I’ll die on this hill.

What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out?

Stuffed under mattresses, crammed into plastic bins, and tucked inside dresser drawers are hundreds of yellowed, dog-eared newspaper clips from around the world with my Associated Press byline. I tell myself they’re for my grandkids, but none of my Gen Alpha progeny will ever appreciate what it was like to thumb through a newspaper.

What is the scariest animal?

A cornered black bear with her cubs. I now spend half my life in the woods of northern Michigan, where these ladies roam.

Apples or oranges?

Oranges. You can’t make orange juice with an apple.

Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey. My father used to direct traffic at the Red Wings games and would take me and my brothers to the Olympia arena, leave us outside the locker room, and go do his thing. No matter how many times we asked for his autograph, Mr. Howe smiled and signed. One time, he handed me the autographed paper and kept my pen.

“Can I have my pen back, Mr. Howe?”

“Sure kid.” With a wry grin, he handed me my pen and took back the paper.

“Can I have the autograph back?”

“Sure kid.”

One of the greatest hockey players ever was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.

What do you think happens when we die?

I don’t know, but I’m curious to find out: As a long-time journalist, I consider death to be the ultimate reporting trip.

If I can, I’ll let you know what I learn.

Favorite action movie?

“Die Hard,” because I think Lori would say it’s her favorite. We’ve had great times watching it together.

Also, it’s a Christmas movie.

Favorite smell?

A baby napping on my chest.

Least favorite smell?

A baby pooping on my chest. (But the juice is worth the squeeze.)

Exercise: worth it?

Yes. This question makes me miss my pickup basketball game in D.C. Hi, gang!

Flat or sparkling?

Flat. Water isn’t supposed to sparkle.

Most used app on your phone?

I looked it up: Safari, followed by YouTube, Outlook, and Substack — all used most often between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. That’s when I’m researching and writing the “Morning Read-In” for paid subscribers at Convulsions.

You get one song to listen to for the rest of their life: What is it?

“Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” for two reasons:

• Willie Nelson is my favorite singer/songwriter by a country-music mile and this song captures his killer writing chops, his whisky-caramel voice, and his distinctive jazz-infused guitar playing.

• At a college party, “Angel Flying to Close to the Ground” gave me the courage to ask Lori to dance with me. Our first dance. It led to our first date and every blessing in my life ever since.

It was a Halloween party. I was dressed like a White Castle hamburger. Lori, like the angel she is.

What number am I thinking of?

Three. Colbert disclosed last night that this was always the number he was thinking.

Describe the rest of your life in 5 words.

Enjoy today. Love my people.

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IT WAS BAD enough when President Trump gave himself a taxpayer-fueled $1.7 billion slush fund to settle his frivolous lawsuit with the IRS. But now we learn that the sweetheart deal he cut with an agency he controls comes with a stay-out-of-jail card.

As part of the resolution to his suit over the leak of his tax returns, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons, and the Trump organization’s current tax examinations, according to a one-page document posted to the Justice Department’s website.

Trump has literally put himself above the law, exaggerating the damage done to him and pressuring the IRS to give him a free pass on all past —and possibly future — wrongdoing.

It’s a blank check for corruption.

It moves the United States closer to a permanent kleptocracy — a form of government in which the empowered systematically use their offices to enrich themselves — unless you’re naive enough to think that precedents like this won’t be copied by future Democratic and Republican administrations.

The document is signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s private attorney. Outrageous. It is a separate addendum to the original settlement announced Monday, and was quietly added to the Justice Department website on Tuesday.

Oh, and remember: Trump repeatedly promised voters he would release his tax records. So the leaker (an IRS contractor) simply kept Trump’s promise.

Why do I call Trump’s IRS lawsuit frivolous? After the presiding judge questioned whether Trump could legally sue an agency he controls, IRS lawyers prepared to fight the suit, according to this New York Times story:

I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.

No lawyers from the Justice Department ever appeared in court to respond to the suit or disputed any of Mr. Trump’s claims, which demanded at least $10 billion from the I.R.S. for not doing enough to prevent the leak of his tax information.

Forbidding the IRS from fighting, Trump reached into taxpayers’ pockets for $1.7 billion that he can spend virtually anyway he wants: The slush fund will be overseen by a board he controls.

The settlement designates the money to people Trump claims were unfairly treated by Biden’s Department of Justice. Some suspect money will go to the Jan. 6 rioters who attempted to overthrow the democratically elected Biden administration in 2021. Or to people ensnared in Trump’s multiple criminal investigations.

My gut: Most of the money goes directly to Trump and his family because that’s the pattern he set during multiple feather-nesting schemes — from his personalized smart phones to the ethically dubious stock trades and cryptocurrency investments.

In January, the Times editorial board calculated the size of Trump’s gift: $1.4 billion.

President Trump has never been a man to ask what he can do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing the limits of what his country can do for him.

He has poured his energy and creativity into the exploitation of the presidency — into finding out just how much money people, corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes of bending the power of the government to the service of their interests.

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

He is the most corrupt president in our nation’s 250-year history.

I’m not naive: Corruption in politics is as old as politics, and both major U.S. parties are steeped in it. But rather than oppose kleptocracy, as they claim to do, MAGA voters defend it, rationalize it, and even applaud it.

Where is their outrage?

FIGHT FOMO: While this newsletter is free, unless you’re a paid subscriber you’re missing out on the “Morning Read-in.” Today’s MRI feature the IRS slush fund scandal along with four others stories:

• Rep. Thomas Massie’s defeat exposes MAGA’s true intentions.

• Sen. Bill Cassidy is a coward.

• Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are “mean girls” to Trump.

• Hacky sack is back and it’s making Gen Xers feel young again.

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EBOLA IS BACK and efforts to curb the lethal outbreak are undermined by the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid.

The Washington Post calls it “a fast-moving epidemic in a conflict-ridden region, involving a strain with no approved vaccine, at a moment when the global health infrastructure built after past Ebola crises has been weakened by funding cuts and political upheaval.”

While this is the 17th Ebola outbreak since 1976 for the Congo, the current strain has no cure or treatments. The fatality rate is 25% to 50% and the manner of death can be horrifying. According to the World Health Organization:

Some patients may develop internal and external bleeding, including blood in vomit and feces, bleeding from the nose, gums and vagina. Bleeding at the sites where needles have punctured the skin can also occur.

The impact on the central nervous system can result in confusion, irritability and aggression.

The United States has played a central role in confronting past outbreaks, but the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development and steep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Trump are hampering U.S. assistance today.

“This is the most striking example so far of how much the dissolution of USAID and destruction of CDC’s role around the world is threatening our national security,” Stephanie Psaki, who was U.S. coordinator for global health security in the Biden administration, told The Post.

In past outbreaks, money and logistics were deployed from USAID and CDC. Expert teams were sent to outbreak zones from the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters or through assignments from the WHO, where they were embedded.

But, thanks to Trump and his GOP allies, the USAID no longer exists, CDC global health programs are far smaller, and the U.S. withdrew from the WHO, depriving it of support from its largest donor and forcing layoffs.

In the first days of an Ebola outbreak in 2014, I wrote a column for the National Journal that question the Obama administration’s leadership.

In short, the United States faces crises of leadership and trust. Which, to me, is the scariest thing about the Ebola outbreak. I'm far less worried about the disease striking me or my loved ones than I am about what this incident says about the nation's ability to survive a true cataclysm. Whether the next existential event is Ebola or ISIS or any of the countless 21st-century horrors, we are only as strong as our institutions—and our trust in them.

But, happily, my fears were misplaced. Obama and his Ebola czar, Ronald Klain, helped mobilize the global response. “Our leaders got their acts together,” I wrote three months later. “President Obama and congressional Republicans, along with the public and private health sectors, deserve credit for positive steps taken since the Ebola crisis's unacceptable start.”

Klain said Obama deserves credit for ignoring the clamor for a West African quarantine, a step that might have helped the White House politically but that scientists said would have made it harder to fight Ebola at its roots.

He also praised congressional Republicans, particularly outgoing Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who chaired the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees health care funding. After losing is Senate bid, Kingston helped steer the aid bill through the House while a lame duck. “He busted his butt,” Klain said.

Finally, Klain said the public and private health care systems deserve huge praise for treating and containing Ebola. “They took up the challenge very aggressively,” he said.

Policy ahead of politics? Bipartisanship? Competent bureaucracies? Klain attributed the Ebola rebound to “the classic American attitude of people holding up their hands and saying, ‘I’m willing to do it.’ "

A decade later, another president engineered steep cuts to foreign aid while spending billions of dollars on a foreign war. Playing a dangerous game of catchup, Trump’s State Department just committed $13 million to help contain the outbreak. The money will help track the spread of the virus, expand testing, educate the public, safely bury victims and care for infected patients. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what Trump cut.

And, begging Klain’s pardon, it’s the classic American attitude of people balling up their fists and saying, “Let somebody else do it.”

FOMO: This free newsletter was drawn from one item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” The daily pre-dawn MRI is exclusive to paid subscribers — and today’s stories also included:

• How Trump blinked again on Iran.

• Another day in America, another deadly hate crime

• How a lack of competition is killing Congress.

• Mark Fuhrman’s passing

• Trump pillaging the IRS

• Jonathan Lemire on Trump’s physical and mental decline.

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IN A BRAZEN ACT of self-dealing, President Trump personally benefitted from more than 3,600 stock trades between January and April 2026, according to his financial disclosures, buying heavily into the price dip caused by the start of the Iran war — a war he launched and knew was coming before any other traders.

The cumulative value of the trades ranged from at $220 million to $750 million, Yahoo Finance reports, as federal ethics disclosures require only broad estimates.

If he’s not technically guilty of insider trading, Trump is morally and ethically conflicted. A functional Congress would investigate.

• The filings do not specify whether Trump directed the trades. His personal assets and business empire are actively run and managed by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, but that is a distinction without a difference.

• Many of the stocks involved companies regulated by Trump or who have financial ties to his government. One of many examples: Trump purchased $500,000 to $1 million worth of Nvidia stock on Jan. 6, a week before the Commerce Department officially approved the sale of some Nvidia chips to China.

• Trump’s investment in stocks rose sharply in the runup to his war. Do you believe in coincidences?

U.S. presidents are not banned from trading financial markets. That needs to change. But no president has ever leveraged the presidency for profit as much as Trump. Harry Truman refused to lend his name to any business, even in retirement. Richard Nixon had his brother’s phone tapped out of feared that he was trying to profit from the presidency. George W. Bush sold his stock holdings before taking office.

Trump took a different path. While Americans struggled to pay for groceries and rent, the president tripled his overall fortune since 2024 — from $2.4 billion at the start of his second term to $6.3 billion as of April 2026, according to Forbes, driven mostly by business ventures tied directly to his political power.

Trump added $1.4 billion over the past year, leveraging the presidency for profit. His cryptocurrency ventures, stalled out before the election, exploded after his victory, adding an estimated $1.8 billion to his fortune overall. Another $500 million came in court, where Trump’s legal team succeeded in eliminating a half-billion judgement against him. His once-dormant licensing business surged $400 million, as foreign developers clamored to do business with an American president. Why isn’t he up by more? The value of his shares in Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, decreased $1.3 billion since last year, as the venture bleeds money. Still, with most of Trump’s second term remaining, don’t be surprised if billions more head his way.

The next windfall may come with a raid of the IRS, an agency Trump both controls and is suing for $10 billion. The Guardian reports:

There is growing concern Donald Trump’s massive $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service may soon be settled by his own administration – an unprecedented, self-dealing maneuver for a US president, in which billions of taxpayer dollars could be transferred to the president or his allies.

Trump may agree to drop his lawsuit in exchange for the launch of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate people he says were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to reports by ABC News and the New York Times.

Among other people, more than 1,500 January 6 rioters would be eligible to receive compensation from the fund, ABC said. The treasury department’s Judgment Fund, a pool of taxpayer funds reserved to pay out court judgments and settlements, would allegedly become the vehicle for Trump’s self-styled victim compensation fund.

As a presidential candidate, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. As president, he has deepened the Beltway bog and is channeling the money into his bank accounts.

FOMO ALERT: This newsletter is an expansion of an item in today’s “Morning Read-In.” If you’re not a paid subscriber, you also missed these pre-dawn stories:

• How the U.S., Israel, and Iran seem set to escalate their war.

• MAGA’s distortion of faith’s role in public life.

• Why teen-age drinking is on the decline.

• The appalling numbers behind Trump’s deportation orgy.

• The Trump administration’s fixation with the superficial and artificial.

• Why I love the “Weekend Update” joke swap.

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“I DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYBODY.” With those words, President Trump immortalized his tone-deaf focus on war with Iran, his lack of empathy for inflation-ravaged Americans, and his narcissistic slouch through life.

With the cost of living rising and moods souring, the president was asked Tuesday whether Americans’ financial situation was motivating him to make a deal with Iran. Trump replied, “Not even a little bit.”

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

That’s a remarkable confession from a man who vowed in his election campaign to tame inflation and avoid foreign wars. He did not campaign on Iran. Indeed, in his first term he scuttled a nuclear deal with Tehran and unleashed the nation’s nuclear enrichment program.

“I DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYBODY.” That now-immortal quote explains why Trump would pursue runaway war spending when the U.S. debt is larger than the GDP and social safety net programs are getting slashed.

Jay Hurst, the Pentagon comptroller, told Congress on Tuesday the cost of the war had risen by an astonishing $4 billion since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified on Capitol Hill just two weeks ago, when he estimated it had cost $25 billion.

In a striking show of arrogance, Hegseth himself ducked questions about how much money would be needed to finance the war — or even when he would request it — even as Republicans and Democrats demanded details.

“We’ve seen gas, diesel and home heating oil prices go up” because of the war, complained Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is fighting for her political life in November’s congressional elections.

“I DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYBODY.” So says the man who didn’t think anybody would notice that his war and tariff policies are fueling inflation.

Prices rose 0.6% on a monthly basis, driving the annual rate to 3.8%, the highest since May 2023, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Paychecks grew 3.6% from April of last year. Prices rose more.

Trump doesn’t care.

TRUMP SAYS, “I don’t think about anybody.” Americans reply, “We know.” According to a devastating new CNN poll:

• 77% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in their own community.

• Two-thirds of Americans say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country.

• Trump’s approval rating is 30% on the economy, a career low.

• Democrats are more trusted than the GOP to handle central economic issues.

• A majority of Republicans disapprove of his handling of gas prices.

FIGHT FOMO: These four items were featured first in today’s “Morning Read-In.” Other stories in today’s MRI:

• Trump and Hegseth lied about Iran’s war-making capabilities.

• FBI Director: I’m a drunk but so are you.

• A gay right activist dies.

• How much do Americans hate AI data centers?

• Corpus Christi is running out of water and so might your city.

• The Wall Street Journal lifts the veil on Trump’s late-night social media habit.

• How the Iran war may be pushing the United States closer to an autocracy.

• Democratic operative William Galston considers a five-party political system for the United States.

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FOR ALL THE stories that might be written about the plight of immigrants under President Trump’s xenophobic rule, I dare you to find a more compelling take than Chris Stapleton playing Willie Nelson’s “Living in the Promiseland,” accompanied by Willie’s harmonica player, Mickey Rafael, on Stephen Colbert’s show Wednesday.

Stapleton’s voice sears. Rafael’s harmonica weeps.

This verse alone should shame any Christian who supports Trump’s whites-only immigration policies:

Give us our daily bread/

We have no shoes to wear/

No place to call our home/

Only this cross to bear/

We are the multitudes/

Lend us a helping hand/

Is there no love anymore/

Living in the Promiseland

HERE’S A MORE traditional story on what Trump has wrought:

Immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the United States in exponentially higher numbers under the Trump administration, mostly from the austere confines of federal detention centers where they increasingly face prolonged stays.

The Washington Post cites data from the Vera Institute of Justice to report that immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, at least seven times as high as the number seen in the last 15 months of the Biden administration.

These orders are granted to immigrants who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the U.S. Our nation of immigrants is now so intentionally and cruelly unwelcoming that people are abandoning their rights to stay.

The shift is one of the most striking data points to emerge from Trump’s mass deportation campaign and appears to be part of his broader effort to purge millions of immigrants from the U.S. Officials have promoted the option on social media and in posters plastered in detention centers and courts. Immigration attorneys say the spike reflects the mounting strain on people who are facing long stints in detention as they await a hearing in immigration court, where it has become increasingly difficult to win asylum.

“LIVING IN THE PROMISELAND” was written by David Lynn Jones and released by Nelson sung in 1986. In the opening two stanzas, we are reminded that American once stood for something better:

Give us your tired and weak
And we will make them strong
Bring us your foreign songs
And we will sing along
Leave us your broken dreams
We'll give them time to mend
There's still a lot of love
Living in the Promiseland

Living in the Promiseland
Our dreams are made of steel
The prayer of every man
Is to know how freedom feels
There is a winding road
Across the shifting sand
And room for everyone
Living in the Promiseland

BUT NOW WE are a broken nation that destroys dreams. In the New York Times today, there’s a story about a crisis in American education driven by a decline in students. “Fewer students means less funding, which is tied to enrollment numbers. Many districts are now facing painful budget cuts — and heated conversations about whether to close schools,” the Times reports.

Several factors are affecting enrollment. For cities, housing costs and other expenses are driving some families out. The recent crackdown on immigration means fewer children are arriving from other countries, a demographic that had buoyed enrollment nationwide.

While fertility rates are the biggest factor for lower student enrollment, Trump’s immigrant purge has exacerbated the crisis. It’s one of the multiple consequences, along with the loss of vital workers in small businesses and on U.S. farms, the brain drain in higher education, the collapse of America’s moral authority in the world, and the incalculable cultural loss to this once-great melting pot.

So they came from a distant isle
Nameless woman
Faithless child, like a bad dream
Until there was no room at all
No place to run, and no place to fall

TWO DAYS AGO, the Times posted a story that lifted the mask on Trump’s motivation.

President Trump has instituted the most dramatic retrenchment of the country’s refugee program in decades, largely walling off the United States to anyone fleeing war and persecution.

But Mr. Trump has made one notable carve out: Since last year, Afrikaners, the white minority from South Africa, have had the rare ability to seek refugee status.

The whites-only immigration policy is so popular with the MAGA base that Trump is considering expanding it. Trump claims Afrikaners face racial persecution, an assertion strongly disputed by South African officials and common sense.

Mr. Trump moved last year to upend the refugee program to effectively prioritize white people. The president suspended refugee admissions for every country besides South Africa early in the year and in October lowered the ceiling of refugee admissions to just 7,500 for this fiscal year, down from the cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration in 2024. The limited number of slots were reserved for Afrikaners, who are primarily of Dutch descent, as well as some other South African minorities.

At the same time, administration officials have discussed sending Afghan refugees who are seeking entry to the United States after assisting the American war effort in their country to the Democratic Republic of Congo. And the administration has been scrutinizing some refugees who have resettled in the United States but have not yet applied for their green cards.

Mr. Trump’s changes have had a dramatic effect.

The United States let in just 6,069 refugees for the fiscal year through the end of April, closely approaching the annual cap, according to government data released earlier this week. Three were from Afghanistan; the rest were from South Africa. In comparison, just over 100,000 refugees were admitted to the United States in fiscal year 2024.

I READ THESE stories today with Stapleton’s voice ringing in my ears. You should, too. What was an immigrants’ anthem 40 years ago rings today like a protest song.

Living in the Promiseland
Our dreams are made of steel
The prayer of every man
Is to know how freedom feels
There is a winding road
Across the shifting sand
And room for everyone
Living in the Promiseland

EDITORIAL CARTOONS, like music, often tell a story better than words. I shared these three cartoons with my paid subscribers this morning on “The Morning Read-In,” along with the first look at today’s top stories.

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AS A WHITE HOUSE reporter and Chief of Bureau for The Associated Press in Washington, I was a Gatekeeper of information about the nation’s capital from 1993-2010. On any given story, there were maybe three dozen reporters and their editors who essentially decided what people should know about the federal government. The Washington press corps operated with a certain arrogance and responsibility: If we don’t write about it, you won’t hear about it. We’ll uncover truths and suppress lies.

It was an imperfect system – reporters are as flawed as any human beings and their editors overwhelmingly came in one flavor: white middle-aged men. But the system had the comfort of clarity. Until, with sudden and brutal technological disruption, it didn’t.

The internet changed everything. Powers exclusively held by an elite few since the beginning of civilization were atomized and amplified by the web, placed in the hands of anybody with a computer connection. The radical connectivity of modern technology is the ultimate democratization of information.

Now anybody can publish news and opinions on platforms that are read and watched by millions of other people, a right reserved just a few years ago to “professionals” like me. Now every American can be a Gatekeeper, which means nobody is.

We’ve seen this dynamic playout in virtually every other social institution: politics, economics, religion, education, sports, entertainment, law enforcement, national security, healthcare, the judicial system, science, and even family life. Meant to bind civilization together, institutions hold power over individuals by setting behavioral expectations, providing stability through shared and predictable norms. Setting the rules were the people atop those institutions: Politicians, economists, preachers, teachers, celebrities, police chiefs, generals, doctors, judges, scientists, and parents. In recent years, these institutional stewards have been stripped of their powers, often for good reason.

In one of my first columns on this platform, “We The Lemmings” I argued the demise of the Gatekeeper has returned humanity to its tribal roots. “This post isn’t just about Trump,” I wrote.

At its core, this post is about the people who follow liars, the lemmings who fall in line and fall for leaders who lie to them – people who, for the empty promise of safety, economic security, and retribution against those who aggrieve them, swear allegiance to false Gods and their falsehoods.

In other words, this post is about you.

You and everybody you know – in fact, every human on earth – is instinctually wired to lie and to be lied to. From the moment the serpent deceived Eve about the apple, and Eve deceived Adam, two competing truths marked the DNA of humankind: We are liars. We are dupes.

This paradox informed the evolution of the human species. Small tribes living in caves, large herds of primitive hunters tracking prey, and later, tens of thousands of citizens packed into primordial cities all were led by people, mostly men, who practiced what I call “liarship” – wielding power through lies and with the blind fealty of their followers.

Life was hard and lifespans were short for most of human history. There was no time for negotiations or consensus building. Power was seized by the strongest man, inherited by the next royal in line or claimed in the name of a god, and with leadership came the ability to declare a community’s collective truths. The chiefs, kings and popes of antiquity were society’s first-generation Gatekeepers.

These liars and their dupes sacrificed virgins on stone altars, burnt heretics alive, drowned suspected witches, committed genocide, enslaved nations, constructed vanity monuments with slave labor, and waged wars, raping and pillaging for personal profit, power and glory.

Grim stuff. While I didn’t predict a return to the dark ages, I did say Trump’s style of liarship is likely to outlive him — that a world without Gatekeepers would be unruly, if not unrulable.

While I’m not prepared to abandon that theory, I am open to sunnier possibilities like the one posited by . In his compelling March 19 essay on Substack, Smith argues that AI could be the next Walter Cronkite, providing society a shared set of fact for the first time since the dawn of the internet.

He starts with some history you’ve seen me share here:

This is, of course, not the first time that new media technologies have opened up opportunities for divisive entrepreneurs to use hate and fear to boost their careers. Consider Charles Coughlin, a right-wing radio host in the 1930s, who called for an end to democracy and labeled Hitler a “hero”. Coughlin, whose ideas are recognizably similar to those of Fuentes or Tucker Carlson today, used a new media technology (radio) and a constant stream of negativity to break into the public consciousness and establish himself as an influencer.

Why did the Charles Coughlins give way to the staid, centrist Big Media of the mid-20th century? Monopoly power. Big newspapers gradually built local monopolies that made it hard for upstarts to break in using sensationalism (as they had done in earlier decades). Limited spectrum availability insulated broadcast TV stations and radio stations from competition.

The era of big newspapers and information Gatekeepers is gone, replaced by the toxic connectivity of 21st century social media. But Smith says AI might bring us back to the future.

Let’s unpack this a little. If I’m a Democrat, and I talk to other people about politics, it’s likely I’m talking to other Democrats. This is even more likely on social media than in real life — some of my neighbors and coworkers might be Republicans, but on X or Bluesky I can just seek out other Democrats. Those other Democrats also mostly talk to other Democrats, and so on. So an echo chamber builds, where people’s ideas get reinforced and polarized. If I do interact with a Republican online, it’s probably in an adversarial context — I’m shouting at them or being shouted at, which just tends to harden me in my Democratic views.

But when I talk to an AI, it’s a different story. The AI’s opinions and beliefs come from its training data, and that data comes from both Democrats and Republicans. Instead of getting the average of my social circle, I’m getting something closer to the average of the country. If AI has any persuasive power at all, it’ll end up pulling me towards the middle.

And AI does have persuasive power. Chen et al. (2026) find that recent LLMs are more persuasive than campaign advertisements. Hackenburg et al. (2025) also find substantial persuasive capabilities.

So LLMs are a natural source of moderation — when people talk to AI, they are indirectly being persuaded by the opinions of a bunch of people who disagree with them. This also means that LLMs are censoring the tails of the idea distribution. AI is trained on the output of a much broader group of people than the extremist shouters who tend to grab attention on social media; it will naturally tend to side with the silent majority in most cases.

From his lips to Digital Cronkite’s ears. My concern is that AI is developed by humans for humans, and now that we have the freedom to choose, most people will gravitate toward AI agent that confirm their biases.

Cronkite’s famous signoff, “That’s the way it is,” long surrendered to “that’s the way you want it to be.” Can we ever go back?

ANOTHER DEEPER THINKER than me, Ezra Klein, isn’t buying into claims that artificial intelligence will cause mass joblessness — at least not without more data. He finds hope in his theory on scarcity

“For most of human history,” he wrote in today’s The New York Times, “calories were scarce.”

Our energy went into finding or growing food. Agriculture steadily made food more plentiful and goods became scarce. Then goods were scarce; hand-me-down clothes were common and tools were expensive. Innovations in technology and manufacturing made goods cheaper. Then, technical knowledge became scarce: Doctors, lawyers and software engineers are paid high salaries because of the rarity of what they know. The fear is that A.I. will make knowledge plentiful; that it will turn the fruits of learning into a commodity as surely as manufacturing turned clothing into a commodity and industrial agriculture made strawberries commonplace.

But something is always scarce. People are looking at the economy as it exists and asking which tasks A.I. can do; they should be asking which jobs people won’t want A.I. doing, or which services A.I. will make us want more of.

OK, Ezra, I’m asking.

His response: Avoid careers where human labor will be disrupted by mass automation and gravitate toward more human roles.

The more automation there is, the more people value a human’s touch. Take coffee. It was once laborious to make espresso at home. Now, Nespresso machines are everywhere. Has that led to Starbucks closing and neighborhood coffee spots dropping their prices? Of course not. There are more baristas than ever. There are more coffee shops than ever. Coffee as a commodity led to more demand for coffee as an experience.

His kicker resonates with me:

When I am feeling optimistic about the world A.I. might make possible, I imagine a world in which we are richer than we are today and are encouraged to live more fundamentally human lives, doing more fundamentally human things. When I am feeling pessimistic, I imagine something like that same world, but the wealth will be hoarded and we will value a depth of human connection that we no longer know how to provide.

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WHILE DEMOCRATS FOCUS on winning elections in November driven by President Trump’s war-and-high-prices agenda, the Republican Party is cementing advantages that could last a generation or more. Three stories in today’s newspapers illustrate the point.

STORY #1

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that districts be drawn to ensure representation for minority voters.

“With that mandate now largely gone,” writes Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press, “Republican lawmakers across the country — and especially in the South — have a freer hand to eliminate Democratic-leaning districts and pad the total number of seats they can win to hold the U.S. House. There are more than a dozen such seats in Republican-controlled states.”

This is a political disaster for Democrats — and for black Americans who vote overwhelmingly against Republicans. While the ruling may be too late in the primary cycle to sway this year’s elections, it will reshape state legislatures and Congress for at least a generation.

The ruling is not a surprise. It’s an almost preordained consequence of Trump’s victories over weak Democratic candidates in 2016 and 2024 and the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with enough voters to win House and Senate majorities.

STORY #2

Democratic leaders are regretting their push in recent years to create nonpartisan redistricting commissions in Michigan, Virginia, Colorado, California and Washington State.

While the reform was good for democracy, it was no match for the GOP’s asymmetrical approach to politics.

“The independent commissions that … predated Mr. Trump’s rise, have complicated the party’s redistricting fight,” explains Reid Epstein for The New York Times. Those states are now off the table as Democrats look for maps they can rig in their favor to confront the GOP’s norm-busing gerrymandering.

“One of the lessons of the Trump era is a failure of imagination about how many norms they would break,” said Phil Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado who backed his state’s independent redistricting referendum in 2018 and is now supporting a ballot initiative to undo it. “You could say we should have been thinking ahead. We didn’t foresee this.”

Professional Democrats failed to foresee a lot.

Story #3

Connecting dots.

DOT #1: “The Apprentice” was a long-running TV show that Trump used to brand himself as a tough, savvy, and decisive leader. It was his launching pad to the presidency in our age of celebrity.

DOT #2: Amazon bought the “Melania” documentary at an inflated price to curry favor with the first lady and her husband.

CONNECTION: Amazon is considering an “Apprentice” reboot starring Donald Trump Jr. 

“Discussions are still in the early stages and Amazon hasn’t approached the Trump family, but if the show gets made, it would appear on Amazon’s Prime Video service,” The Wall Street Journal reports. 

Don’t laugh. You thought it was a joke when Trump ran 2016. If his comes to pass, the “Apprentice” reboot would be yet another example of how Trump has transformed the media ecosystem in favor of Republicans. It might even extend the Trump dynasty. 

THESE THREE STORIES come on the heels of one of the most important political analyses of the cycle: Democratic operative ’s sobering preview of the 2032 elections.

Why is 2032 keeping me up at night? Because as Americans move to warmer climates, somewhere between eight and twelve congressional seats will move from states Democrats traditionally win to states Republicans traditionally win. It will put whatever success we Democrats have this cycle at permanent risk. And it means that we can’t make everything—this election included—just about President Donald Trump.

Yes, Democrats have no bigger need this year than to win back the House in order to provide a critical check on the Trump administration. But what we also need to do this year is take advantage of the unique opportunity that Trump has given us to massively (dare I say bigly) expand the map and compete in places that even just two years ago were unthinkable. We need to think beyond this cycle.

Because if we don’t, we’re screwed.

His March 24 analysis of how demographic shifts will impact political maps and presidential races after the 2030 Census did not account for the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

Schale is right: Democrats need to wake up, smarten up, and start standing for something other than opposing Trump. The alternative is a political apocalypse.

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COLE TOMAS ALLEN, a 31-year-old California teacher and engineer, traveled by train from Los Angeles to Washington to carry out an attack on Trump administration officials at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, leaving behind a note that said he could no longer permit “a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

Those are among the chilling details released by federal law enforcement officials today. More details will come.

But you know what disturbs me the most about today’s news dump? The fact that Cole’s language mirrors so much of what we read and hear online from MAGA lovers and MAGA haters.

“Traitor”

“Blood”

“Crimes”

Everybody in that ballroom Saturday night needs to reflect on the words they use, the fights they pick, and the hatred they inspire -- Republicans, Democrats, and journalists.

All of us need to be more mindful of the blood on our hands.

President Trump is not mindful. Rather than take the high road and condemn all forms of hateful rhetoric, as any past president would have done, Trump lashed out at “60 Minutes” reporter Norah O’Donnell for reading Cole’s manifesto during their interview Sunday. She was seeking his reaction, as any fair-minded reporter must do.

“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people,” Trump spat, claiming inaccurately that he had been “totally exonerated.” He seethed at O’Donnell: “You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that. You’re a disgrace.”

When she asked whether there is something a president can do about political violence, he deflected: “I do think the hate speech of the Democrats is very dangerous.”

He should hear himself talk:

“Enemies of the people.”

“Very fine people on both sides.”

“Lock her up.”

“Punch him in the face.”

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution …”

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

And on it goes.

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Dear White House reporters:

Hello. It’s me. A few of you might remember my time on the beat for The Associated Press and The Atlantic. Or this letter I wrote you last spring, when President Trump sidelined The AP from White House coverage and started seeding the presidential press corps with MAGA propagandists. I asked you to resist Trump’s anti-media policies: “Why are you and your bosses putting up with this shit?”

A year later, with the First Amendment under direct assault from a man who doesn’t understand it, much less respect it, dozens of you and your corporate bosses are planning to honor Trump with his presence Saturday at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner celebrating freedom of the press.

WTF, folks?

This man mocks you, sues you, and targets you for prosecution. He calls the truths you’ve dedicated your lives to reporting “fake news” and orders devastating budget cuts to your colleagues at NPR, PBS and Voice of America.

In the last year, he banned the AP from the Oval Office and took over the rotating press pool. His Defense secretary Pete Hegseth imposed draconian restrictions that drove dozens of news outlets out of the Pentagon. His FCC commissioner Brendan Carr threatens broadcasters with their licenses for covering the administration truthfully. His Justice Department pursued charges against two reporters covering an ICE protest, and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter in hopes of punishing public servants who spoke to her about public service. He called one of your colleagues “ugly,” another “piggy” and routinely ducks your questions by attacking your news outlets and industry.

And you’re having dinner with this man?

Yes, I was a proud member of the WHCA for years and attended multiple WHCA dinners, but for as skeptically as I covered Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, I never considered them a threat to my work or my nation’s constitution. You can’t honestly say that about Trump.

This year, rather than upset the thin-skinned president by hiring a political satirist to entertain the dinner’s guests, as is tradition, the WHCA booked mentalist Oz Pearlman.

Really, folks?

Credit to The Guardian for inviting independent journalist Georgia Fort, who along with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, was charged with conspiracy and interfering with the rights of worshippers while covering an anti-ICE protest. Lemon refused to attend, telling The Wrap, “I’m not interested in dressing up in a tuxedo, sipping champagne, and pretending everything is normal with a president and a regime that spends every day attacking, undermining and trying to discredit journalists and journalism.”

The New York Times won’t be there, deciding years ago the dinner confirmed the public’s suspicions that reporters are too cozy with the government officials. HuffPost is blowing off his year’s dinner. “Trump’s second term is an affront to the free press,” said Editor-in-Chief Whitney Snyder. But most news organizations plan to be there.

I don’t get it.

Yes, the industry’s best reporters will be honored Saturday night with prizes for their work uncovering wrongdoing inside the Trump administration, and the dinner raises money for college scholarships. This is the good work of the WHCA. But why celebrate journalism alongside a man whose concept of news travels the narrow range between “Trump is a great president” to “Trump is the greatest president ever"? Why celebrate journalism with a man who hates it?

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