Gov Island, USA

The Plot Thins, Making Money While You Sleep

Find me 11,780 things to watch tonight other than Trump’s primetime address that will feature his latest lies about, and efforts to overturn, legitimate election results. Sorry, I’ve seen this show before. Nonstop. The show officially jumped the shark when Trump incited the January 6 insurrection, later pardoned its participants, and was never punished, but was instead rewarded with a second term, more support from sycophantic GOP officials, more power via the Supreme Court, and more election-denying enablers across the administration — and the country. But viewership remains strong and the production is sure as hell making more money than ever. So, the show must go on.

While efforts to find 11,780 votes in Georgia and the Jan 6 nightmare were among the worst episodes, the show started long before that. Trump’s attack on American democracy began, oddly, after he won the presidency. Weeks after his unlikely electoral victory, Trump argued that he would have won the popular vote as well, had the election not been rigged. Here’s his tweet from November 27, 2016: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” When thousands of Stop the Stealers gathered in front of the White House on January 6, it was a chapter of a story Trump had foreshadowed before he had even taken office. And, tonight we get another episode of America’s most damning reality show, Gov Island, USA. Same unbelievable storylines, but with more producers and showrunners, and a lot more people in on the plot. Even after all these years, the networks are still struggling to decide whether to air the lies live. You don’t have to struggle. Skip this rerun.

+ Just because I’m not watching doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. As Jim Himes (a great guy, and the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) explains in the NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Election Denial Has Never Been More Dangerous. “After the 2020 election, our intelligence community found ‘no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process.’ That assessment reflected a rigorous look at all available information and expert judgments by nonpartisan professionals. In fact, there’s been no evidence of successful interference in the tabulation of votes in any federal election since I have been on the intelligence committee, and I have seen no credible intelligence that the upcoming midterms will be different. Those are the facts. But ahead of this year’s midterms, Mr. Trump is setting the stage to undermine the confidence of the American people in our elections. He has packed his administration with election deniers and hired an acting director of national intelligence with zero national security experience and a history of abusing his position to target political opponents. The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has made his career chasing the president’s conspiracy theories, most recently with the devotion of massive resources to a sham investigation in Georgia.” (Jim, Jim, Jim. If you’re going to insist on including lines like “Those are the facts” in your script, this show will never be a hit...)

+ “The big change since 2020 is that people who mistrust election results are highly active, particularly in swing states. The even bigger change is that some of them have risen to positions of power in those states, where they can affect voter rolls, election machines, and county tallies. Nowhere is this more true than Georgia, where I recently visited to meet some of the election skeptics who are—wait for it—now helping run elections.” Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Election Deniers Are in Charge Now. (Consider that Trump cabinet nominees, including Jay Clayon just yesterday, refuse to say who won the 2020 election. And they get confirmed anyway. What should be disqualifying has become a prerequisite.)

+ The plot points are the same, but our protagonist faces an even more existential struggle. Why? Trump approval stuck in the 30s amid pessimism on Iran and economy, poll finds. I’m no script writer, but I’m pretty sure that means you can expect things to escalate.

2

Get While the Gettin’s Good

Why do so many individuals and organizations seem to be cool with the protagonist of today’s top story, even as he plots to damage democracy? Because, in a transactional system, short-term gains outweigh longterm risks. WSJ (Gift Article): The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term. “The president and his allies have built a network of groups financed by wealthy donors and businesses that is advancing his priorities with little public disclosure.”

+ It may not be pretty, but it works. Trump quietly clears the road for Musk’s Cybercab.

3

Golden Slumber

You may not be able to make money while you sleep. But that doesn’t mean no one is. In fact, your sleep has become big business. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Americans Are Exhausted. There’s a $3,000 Mattress Cover for That. “Buy a pricey Oura Ring or Apple Watch for sleep tracking? Of course. Fill our medicine cabinets with sleeping pills, potions, gummies and elixirs? Obviously. An $89 celeb-approved eyelash-protecting silk sleep mask? Sure. Sound machine? That’s plebe stuff. Real sleepmaxxers prefer Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds, practically a steal at around $100. Soon you can get your hands on a Kimba, an ‘AI-powered scent therapy’ machine, currently available for preorder; $299 will get you a bedside setup and six months of personalized scents. For big spenders, there’s a $3,000 body-temperature-regulating, manosphere-endorsed mattress cover. Some couples are willing to go even further, outfitting totally separate bedrooms.”

4

Missionary Man

“Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming ‘effeminate, and apologetic’; he insisted that what liberals really want is “soft men, and a weak military,” and he scolded ‘Pentagon pussies’ who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield. As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s ‘effectiveness’ in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos. The latest entry in this genre came earlier today, when Hegseth announced that he is requiring every service member over 30 to have their testosterone tested annually.” Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone. (How do you say you’re the worst lay ever without just actually saying you’re the worst lay ever…)

5

Extra, Extra

Get the Low Down: “The Food and Drug Administration approved a daily pill on Thursday that can lower cholesterol levels far below what can be achieved with statins, the cheap cholesterol-reducing pills.”

+ Board of Piece: “Even the envisaged pilot scheme – involving a temporary camp for a tiny fraction of Gaza’s 2 million displaced people, with a Palestinian administration, police and a small international security force – is not expected to take shape before the end of the year.” Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme. Meanwhile, the administration’s focus is definitely elsewhere in the region. Here’s the latest on the stepped-up fighting in Iran (and its neighbors).

+ The Young and the Wrested: “President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shook up his wartime government, drawing thousands into the streets Thursday across Ukraine to protest the ouster of his youthful defense minister — seen as an innovator of the country’s successful drone technology but who clashed with the traditional military establishment.” Mykhailo Fedorov is the tech-savvy leader behind many of Ukraine’s drone advances, and he’s very popular from Kiev to Silicon Valley. This is a story to watch. Zelenskyy fires Ukraine’s tech-savvy defense minister in government reshuffle.

+ Speech Recognition: “President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi.” (Do the people who predicted stories like this win anything?)

+ Trial and Jair: “President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose tariffs on Brazil — even though it is one of the few Latin American countries with which the US has a trade surplus — in response to what he said is the unfair prosecution of the former Brazilian president and his close ally, Jair Bolsonaro.” US slaps 25% tariffs on Brazil.

+ Houring Inferno: In what is part of a bigger story about trying to keep temporary, unconfirmed prosecutors in place, Trump fired a new US attorney in Seattle an hour after federal judges appointed him.

+ Backpact: “Mr. Conner and Mr. Newman began their efforts in 2018 with a few armfuls of backpacks. By 2026, they and almost 40 volunteers had distributed more than 180,000 packs to people living on the streets of Manhattan.” The couple, who died within a few days of each other, provided needed supplies, like socks and wet wipes, to people living on New York City’s streets.

6

Bottom of the News

Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal will face off in the World Cup finals on Sunday. But it’s hardly their first meeting. That came back in 2007, when Yamal was five months old (and probably already pretty good at soccer). And we have the (famous and once again viral) photo to prove it. The remarkable story of Lionel Messi’s meeting with a baby Lamine Yamal.