Conor Friedersdorf
@conor64
Omni-American, staff writer at The Atlantic, founding editor of The Best of Journalism–subscribe here: https://thebestofjournalism.substack.com/subscribe
Under the new deal, the people of the Philippines will get to enjoy all the products that America produces with zero tax added, while American consumers will have to bear the costs of a new tax on goods from the Philippines. Trump's blunder leaves us worse off than free trade.
🚨President Trump announces a trade deal has been reached with the Philippines.
uh this is a pretty big narrative violation? 83% of Americans support giving medicine to developing nations 78% support giving them food and clothing 63% support economic development 61% support strengthening democracy close enough, welcome back liberal internationalism
Hypothesis: a culture is best when it works through dissatisfaction with the opposite sex (a perennial human condition) through film, novels, and standup comedy, while the nonfiction turn toward personal essays and memoir is suboptimal.
It is awful to see innocents anywhere, and specifically in Gaza, Syria, Venezuela, China, the Congo, and beyond, suffer. We will never be able to vote to stop every sovereign nation's unjust violence, but we can vote to create a refuge for threatened innocents. And we should.
It’s worse than “Gaza is being starved and destroyed and no one cares.” It’s that hundreds of millions *do* care and are powerless to stop it. We need a world where that can never happen, where the masses actually have political power.
Just went outside and sat on the hood of my car, can confirm that this "lifestyle" is still possible on one income.
America in the 1970s Probably afforded this lifestyle on one income
I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama gave a speech in front of pillars and Republicans mocked him for grandiosity and ego.
They came after the wrong man.
Which news outlets? Which scandals? Always so vague. So unfalsifiable.
I think it's quite possible that certain news outlets will simply close down rather than cover the emerging political scandals they existed to distract from, misrepresent etc
Transparency is good. We need much more of it from Trump, but credit where it's due, this should have been done years ago
Today, after nearly 60 years of questions surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are releasing 230,000 MLK assassination files, available now at archives.gov/mlk. The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination…
Stephen Colbert seems like a smart guy who lost interest in doing comedy. I think he should start a podcast where he does long, non-comedic interviews with interesting people.
Would you like to see see Stephen Colbert replace Bill Maher on HBO? Your thoughts?
I am curious too.
What's the state of Iran's nuclear program?
I love this genre of tweet that assumes *work itself* was somehow invented by capitalism. You do not want to be free from capitalism; you want to be independently wealthy!
You don’t hate Mondays.. you hate being exploited by capitalism
.@meghan_daum is a great interviewer. This should be interesting
Sept 3 in NYC, 6pm! Come see the inimitable Lionel Shriver and me at The Village Underground. Topics will include death, sex, real estate, dogs, incels, femcels, pronatalism, anti-natalism, human intelligence, and cultural stupidity. The full Catastrophe. eventbrite.com/e/meghan-daum-…
I legit don’t know who’s more skilled the guy measuring or the one cutting
Yes. Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking. Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.
I would love to read a general interest book about how pretty much every major world cuisine as we know it was completely reinvented over a period of 50-100 years in the wake of the Colombian exchange--chilis coming to India and China, tomatoes to Italy, etc. etc.
Just remember: Not a single European, much less any Italian, had eaten a tomato until the 16th century.
Excited for this one
Hardcovers have arrived! The attempt to memory hole 2020 has been something to see. Four years ago, I set out to write an honest account of the ideological convulsions that have beset American society from the election of the first black president in 2008 to the reelection of…
I’m watching a lot of people melt down over this. Am I really taking the pro–free speech side here? Shock upon shock. I am! The assertion seems to be that President Trump has just as much right to sue as any other citizen. But the idea that the President of the United States is…
BREAKING: Donald Trump sues Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, WSJ reporters for libel, court records show
I think @michaelbd notes an underappreciated point here: setting aside what the people who are caught deserve or don't in cases like this, *the spouses who were wronged* almost certainly don't want and don't deserve for this to be a national obsession
It’s a very weird event. They don’t deserve the universal infamy, and more importantly neither do their spouses deserve univeralized humiliation. I feel bad for them all. But, the way they were outed- basically a Coldplay Kiss Cam-was itself “innocent.” Which is what has…
You know that politics and resentment are playing an unhealthy role in your life when you find yourself rewatching old Stephen Colbert / Kamala Harris interviews and describing it as "fun."
Watching these two, now knowing they are in the footnote-of-history dumpster is actually fun. This is a classic.
It would be great to know if this is corroborated by FBI files. nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/…
