Omni-American, staff writer at The Atlantic, founding editor of The Best of Journalism–subscribe here: thebestofjournalism.substack…
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
This is grotesque behavior. Joe Biden was an American president. Xi is a communist dictator, and the head of a foreign state. Our internal divisions are not fair game in this context.
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
Unfortunately for Republicans, the situation is very easy to describe:
1. Trump won a cost-of-living election
2. Then he publicly announced a plan to raise the price of imports
3. Then he even-more-publicly started a war that raised the price of gas
4. Meanwhile, he got rich on crypto scams, while engaging in downright Pynchonian misadventures with the reflecting pool and ballroom, which sent the unmistakeable signal that "I care more about random bullshit than America's money problems ... and also I'm not even good at executing on the random bullshit"
For the midterms, I think corruption/self-dealing is issue 1b behind cost of living as 1a.
It's not just that people feel things are unaffordable for themselves, they think those in power are helping rich friends get richer.
From our latest "America in Focus" focus group...
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
Trump approval (ages 18-29 only)
Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 76%
——
Net Approval
🟡 Feb 2025: (-7)
🟤 Oct 2025: (-26)
🔴 Sep 2026: (-57)
——
Generic Ballot
🟦 DEM: 73%
🟥 GOP: 21%
Emerson (A) | 9/21-22 | LV
🇺🇸 NATIONAL POLL By Emerson (A)
Pres. Trump
Approve: 39% (-1)
Disapprove: 58% (+1)
——
Generic Ballot
🟦 Democrats: 53% (+2)
🟥 Republicans: 42% (-1)
🔵 Indie: Dem 60-31%
🔵 Hispanic: Dem 64-31%
——
9/21-22 | LV | recalled: Harris 49-46
emersoncollegepolling.com/se…
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
One of the best stories I have ever ever read. Sharing it today because there must be someone out there who hasn't read it yet. Trust me on this one: theatlantic.com/magazine/202…
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
Also new today: I joined the great @PostOpinions columnist @asymmetricinfo to discuss what the heck has been happening on the right: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
I have many thoughts on the Nikole Hannah-Jones story, especially having attended the kind of schools she sent her daughter to, but if we're looking for takeaways, here's a simple one. When an expert in education so thoroughly demonstrates a jarring and near complete lack of expertise in the act of getting an education for her own daughter, we should stop taking advice from her on curriculum, instruction, and all other fads disguised as wisdom she offers. That seems like the least we could do. Her daughter's personal struggle, which is indeed sympathetic, wasn't much of a teachable moment for her, as she doesn't seem to have updated any of her priors (and actually fudges funding facts, so as not to disrupt the narrative of under-resourced schools). But it should be a teachable moment for us, about the outsized influence of a scholar who claims to know better than anyone what her daughter would be up against in the school to which she chose to send her, but was inexplicably surprised and left her daughter completely unprepared for it.
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Extravagant corruption and failure and its consequences:
Brutal new poll for Republicans from @EchelonInsights:
Only 34% of Rs consider themselves primarily a supporter of Trump, versus 56% who say they're a supporter of the GOP.
That number has completely reversed compared to January 2025 (59% Trump, 36% GOP)
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
Look, there's no point in suggesting that his rhetoric is repellent and immoral; he doesn't care. What's far worse is that he doesn't care that it's actively *harmful*. Instead, his need to preen comes above all else.
🚨🇻🇪 NEW: President Trump says “to the victor, belongs the spoils” regarding Venezuela’s oil
“It was a war, but it’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made”
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now.
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Americans should both work to improve the education that the least well off get as much as possible and also secure the best possible education for every individual because if everyone was educated as badly as the least well educated child that would be bad for everyone.
I notice none of Nikole Hannah-Jones' critics try to answer to the basic question she wrestled with, which is: Why should my daughter get to go to a better school than other people's kids just because I work for the New York Times?
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
Good. I don't care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat, he should not presume the right to push the press around like this.
BREAKING: TV pool will not be providing coverage of presidential events until further notice b/c of CNN's ban, pool chair and FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton said.
It's effectively a boycott by the fellow members — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX:
washingtonpost.com/business/…
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If you take a high school junior who is failing all his academic subjects and disrupting all his classes and move him to an alternative program that helps him identify a talent for cooking or plumbing or video editing or any marketable talent I don't see that as giving up on him!
There are a lot of kids we should give up on in certain areas. We do need a much more broader education system but some kids can become much more specialized in trades, music, or sports which should then be their primary education.
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I don't want the public school system to give up on students who persistently render others unable to learn by misbehaving—I want a system that removes them from normal classrooms and puts them in special settings with teachers specially trained to meet their distinct needs
So what do these pundits want? Actual “no excuses” policies will literally lead to some kids being expelled and “left behind.” Moreover, those kids’ outcomes shoudn’t be held against the teachers or the schools, since they by definition aren’t in school to learn.
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I'd add that leaving disruptive, consistently misbehaving kids in normal classrooms *is* failing them and leaving them behind — they obviously aren't excelling academically in them if they're acting out often enough to negatively affect the learning of others. Allowing that is failing them
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I agree that concentrated poverty is a challenge. But the piece very much cuts against the notion that there's "nothing teachers can do." They can e.g. grade the math homework and supervise the children at lunch.
But in this case, the _real_ problem that neither side seems willing to admit (though Hannah-Jones does come close in her essay) is concentrated poverty, which IS about money. The real problem is there's nothing teachers can do when concentrated poverty is so high.
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As sympathetic as I am to principals and teachers, if you run a school that routinely fails to supervise young kids at lunch, or that neglects to review a student's math work for errors, *you should be fired.* That no one demands this or imagines it possible is a problem.
The real takeaway from the Nikole Hannah-Jones article is that teachers and administrators are failing black and Latino kids, and that New York City (and other cities, presumably) has to stop sitting on its hands and take action to meaningfully change this.
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And while I agree with NHJ that residential segregation is bad, rooted in historic racism, and part of the story here, neither segregation nor lack of resources is the reason that principals and teachers who fail utterly in what are widely considered basic duties to students just... keep their jobs and doom cohort after cohort to incompetently administered educations
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Conor Friedersdorf retweeted
He did the opposite of all these things.
I’m proud to endorse President Trump because I believe he will stop the censorship of free speech in America, stop the weaponization of our Law Enforcement and Justice Department against everyday Americans, and walk us back from the brink of nuclear armageddon.
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