Plus! Hello! For such a short week—Tuesday holidays, am I right?—there was definitely a lot of scary foreign policy stuff. Good thing that’s over, huh? TGIF! Here’s some weekend reading.
From Slate
- Dozens of states have announced they won’t comply with Trump’s sinister Election Integrity Commission’s request for data. Is that all part of the administration’s plan?
- One former federal prosecutor says the obstruction of justice case against Trump is already a slam dunk.
- Jamelle Bouie pours cold water on liberal impeachment fantasies.
- Seattle’s $15 minimum wage might be backfiring. Progressive activists don’t care.
- How John Roberts could overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling.
- HBO’s Game of Thrones omits a crucial part of George R.R. Martin’s vision: his obsession with soup.
Not From Slate
- A quiet, beautifully reported story about a Muslim doctor in a town of Trump voters. (Jamelle’s thoughts on the story are also worth your time.)
- Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian electoral meddling doesn’t stem from insecurity about his legitimacy—it’s an invitation to Putin to do it again.
- A smart, sad look at Instagram food culture.
- In a mini-boom of “What Democrats should do now” pieces, Mike Konczal’s stands out for not being terrible
- Here’s a proposal for a reformist agenda that would be popular and worthwhile if we had a functioning government to implement it.
From the Archive
In 2015, Jessica Winter wrote about being a little kid obsessed with Late Night With David Letterman and in doing so reminded us just how weird that show was:
The cramped and shabby set, where grizzled stagehands and rumpled young producers milled around uneasily at the margins, appeared to be a space created specifically for strange people cultivating solitary enthusiasms.
It’s a lovely tribute to oddball kids everywhere and a taste of what life was like for them before the internet. Things are less lonely for many such kids now, but as Jessica’s piece makes clear, we used to make a virtue of that loneliness, and it’s natural that we miss it a little. Thanks for your Slate Plus membership, which is a great help in these troubled times. See you next week.
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus
P.S. Would you mind answering a few questions about Slate, Slate Plus, and matters arising? It’ll only take a few minutes.
