I've spent the past year talking to James Murdoch about his father's "twisted" behavior, the mind games at the family-counseling retreat, and the war over Rupert's media empire. You can read our April cover story now: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read this already. Now that I've had some time to breathe, I want to highlight a few of the things I learned while reporting this story...

I spent this spring reporting in Europe, where elected leaders and diplomats are watching the U.S. election with a sense of dread bordering on panic about the prospect of Trump’s return. One word came up repeatedly in my interviews: existential.

My story: theatlantic.com/international/… Inside the German Foreign Ministry, sources told me, contingency plans are being drawn up for Trump's return. They're also planning for a scenario in which the outcome of the election is uncertain and widespread political violence breaks out in the U.S. theatlantic.com/international/…

Incredible: 64% of Republicans say Donald Trump is a "person of faith." Only 34% say Mitt Romney is. deseret.com/2024/1/3/23982…
In case you're curious, here's a piece I wrote in 2020 about how Donald Trump talks about faith in private: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

I sat in on a series of focus groups to see what Republican primary voters think of Mike Pence. It was absolutely brutal. My story: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… Some quotes I jotted down when Mike Pence came up in the focus groups:

“He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him”

“He has alienated every Republican…It’s over. It’s retirement time"

“He just needs to go away”
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Brutal. The alt-weekly in Colorado Springs—which recently combined with several sister publications—discovered $300K in "unaccounted-for debt" and had to lay off about half its staff. They started a GoFundMe to raise $250K 3 days ago. They've raised $540. gofundme.com/f/save-sixty35… This gets at one of the most discouraging things I heard from local reporters while writing this piece in 2021. People in their markets still read and relied on their work, but few were interested in rallying to save the local paper from extinction. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

A fascinating (and kind of hilarious) finding in this Pew survey: Mormons are among the least popular religious groups in America. They are also the only group that expresses a net favorable opinion of *every other group,* including Muslims and atheists. pewresearch.org/religion/2023/… Mormons: You probably don't like us, but we like you!

My theory is that a large and growing number of prominent conservatives (politicians, media personalities, etc.) are incapable of even feigning fluency in fiscal policy because they've been talking about culture war stuff nonstop for like eight years.

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1635360187317100544

The culture war stuff was always there, obviously. But the biggest voices on the right in 2009-2012 also had their talking points down on regulation, the financial sector, spending, deficits, jobs, etc. Now the instinct is to pivot immediately to... dunking on DEI?

Faced with the prospect of a 2024 dominated by Trump and uncertain that he can actually be beaten in the primaries, many Republicans are quietly praying for something to happen that will make him go away.

My latest, on the GOP's deus ex machina dream:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi… In conversations with more than a dozen GOP officials and strategists, I heard a number of hopeful hypotheticals: Maybe Trump will get indicted. Maybe he'll get bored and quit. Maybe he'll die. One thing I didn't hear: Eagerness to directly confront him.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Add corporate speech to the list of issues that almost everyone has switched sides on over the last ten years.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… "Now it’s Democrats who—feeling a bit adrift, having lost control of the courts and seemingly unable to pass meaningful federal legislation—take solace in the idea that corporations are people, nothing more than avatars of their employees and customers." theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Text messages show that Mike Lee was not only advising the Trump White House on how to overturn the 2020 election results, but was specifically championing Sydney Powell, the lawyer in Trump's orbit with the most deranged conspiracy theories. sltrib.com/news/politics/… Mike Lee texted Mark Meadows on Nov. 7, “Sydney Powell is saying she needs to get in to see the president, but she’s being kept away from him. Apparently she has a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play. Can you help her get in?” sltrib.com/news/politics/…

A nice shout-out here from Barack Obama for my reporting on Alden Global Capital. (You can read his answer to @JeffreyGoldberg's follow-up question—and the rest of their conversation—here: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…) It's been heartening to hear from a range of political leaders and lawmakers (from both parties) in the months since @TheAtlantic published my story on Alden. There's genuine alarm at what companies like Alden are doing, and the downstream civic consequences.

When @TheAtlantic published my piece about Mormonism last year, one of the parts that elicited the biggest response from fellow Latter-day Saints was my experience with the Book of Mormon Musical 1/ theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… I write in the piece about how I felt compelled to be a good sport about the whole thing, and only later realized where that instinct came from. Many Latter-day Saints (and readers from other minority religions) told me they related. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Good piece by @GrahamDavidA on the ambitious Republican men who act much stupider than they are in a condescending bid to become what they believe their voters want. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Worth noting that this is not an exclusively Trump-era phenomenon. Consider the case of Bobby Jindal, who @GrahamDavidA begins his piece with:

Alden Capital just announced an offer to buy Lee Enterprises, which operates local newspapers in Buffalo, Omaha, St. Louis, and many other cities. What will happen to those papers if Alden takes over? Look to their record.

My recent cover story: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… In its letter to Lee's board, Alden touts its "commitment to the newspaper industry" & "desire to support local newspapers over the long term." union-bulletin.com/alden-global-c…

Read on to see what Alden's "desire to support local newspapers over the long term" looks like in practice.

Ryan Smith Has a Pitch: I profiled the new owner of the Utah Jazz, an ambitious 43-year-old tech billionaire who wants to rebrand his team—and its home state. Not everyone is on board.

My story for @DeseretMagazine: deseret.com/utah/2021/11/1… One thing I found interesting about @RyanQualtrics was his strong aversion to the reflexive haterism that so many Utahns practice. “This is the only place I’ve ever seen where people will choose to live here and have a bad attitude about it," he told me. deseret.com/utah/2021/11/1…

Inside the plot to take down Mike Lee. My story on the unusual coalition in Utah working to unseat the former Trump critic turned Trump acolyte: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… Mike Lee has never been a favorite of the Utah establishment, but frustration with him spiked during the Trump years—especially as he picked fights that appeared to put him in conflict with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Inside Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund that's gutting local newspapers across the country—and could be coming to your town next. My cover story for the November issue of @TheAtlantic: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… You probably feel like you already know why local news is dying. Craigslist killed the classifieds, Google/Facebook swallowed the ad market, and hapless newspapers failed to adapt to the internet. There's truth to all that—but the Alden story is different. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

The market for anti-Biden books is ice cold. My latest story, on the state of the conservative publishing industry: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… “In the past, it’s been like taking candy from a baby to write a book about the Democratic president,” one frustrated conservative editor told me. Now? “Nobody is trying.” theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Conservatives want to weaponize his bitterness. Liberals are inviting him over for dinner. And a generation of jurisprudence could come down to an unnerving question: Is Brett Kavanaugh out for revenge?

My new profile, in the June issue of The Atlantic: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… Friends told me Kavanaugh still privately seethes over his confirmation: “I assume when he’s lying in bed at night, it’s hard not to think about it,” one told me. “He was really angry at Democrats for what they did to him and his family," another said. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

In the early weeks of the pandemic, I wrote about what then seemed like a strange new phenomenon: Conservatives turning COVID restrictions into a new front in the culture war. 1/ theatlantic.com/politics/archi… Today, with millions of Americans getting vaccinated daily, @emmaogreen expertly captures another phenomenon: Liberals signaling their own political identities with extreme COVID caution—in many cases going well beyond public health recommendations. 2/ theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Early on in the pandemic, I started a new tradition with my kids where every Saturday morning we'd go out for donuts and hold a "music appreciation" class on the drive, focusing on a different band/artist each week. My kids are pretty young so this was not like an intensive education. I tried to keep it fun, choosing just a few catchy/accessible songs for each artist. (My selfish motivation was that I desperately needed a break from Kidz Bop.)