Here’s what I’ve found interesting: a book explores a nuclear war scenario that could happen today, Arizona exposes what Republicans want for women across the country, Biden should do a primetime address on abortion, Trump asks advisors for battle plans against Mexico, MAGA ties eclipses to conspiracies, what really matters in the 2024 election, understanding the digital threats pregnant people face post-Roe, prosecutors who frame innocent people deserve tougher punishments, five reasons journalists accept being lied to, and sharing the best of Grant Wahl.
#1
Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobsen, Dutton Books)
Since the early 1950s, the United States government has spent trillions of dollars preparing to fight a nuclear war, while also refining protocols meant to keep the U.S. government functioning after hundreds of millions of Americans become casualties of an apocalyptic-scale nuclear holocaust.
This scenario—of what the moments after an inbound nuclear missile launch could look like—is based on facts sourced from exclusive interviews with presidential advisors, cabinet members, nuclear weapons engineers, scientists, soldiers, airmen, special operators, Secret Service, emergency management experts, intelligence analysts, civil servants, and others who have worked on these macabre scenarios over decades.
Because the plans for General Nuclear War are among the most classified secrets held by the U.S. government, this book, and the scenario it postulates, takes the reader up to the razor’s edge of what can legally be known. Declassified documents—obfuscated for decades—fill in the details with terrifying clarity. Because the Pentagon is a top target for a strike by America’s nuclear-armed enemies, in the scenario that follows, Washington, D.C., gets hit first—with a 1-megaton thermonuclear bomb. “A Bolt out of the Blue attack against D.C. is what everyone in D.C. fears most,” says former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs Andrew Weber. “Bolt out of the Blue” is how U.S. Nuclear Command and Control refers to an “unwarned large [nuclear] attack.”
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
This is one of the most terrifying books I have read—and I urge everyone to join me in witnessing its terror. Jacobsen masterfully describes, minute by minute, what would happen once the United States detects a nuclear weapons launch.
The bottom line: in the realistic scenario Jacobsen outlines, it would only take around 72 minutes from the launch of the first ICBM for civilization to end. And, yeah, it could happen today.
I fear that many people do not see a nuclear war as a likely scenario in 2024. But the increased likelihood of a nuclear exchange is one of the reasons the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight for the past two years. That’s the closest the clock has been set to doomsday since its creation in 1947.
Jacobsen explains how a nuclear war will progress to armageddon once the principle of deterrence has failed. The incentives to use the weapons before they are destroyed overcome any inclination to wait and see or to prevent damage once early warning systems detect the first launches.
The United States, China, and Russia are spending more on nuclear weapons. Other nations, like North Korea, are expanding their capabilities. Iran could have nuclear weapons quickly if its leaders decide to take the last steps made possible by former President Donald Trump’s decision to scuttle the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Legendary Entertainment has optioned the book for a possible movie adaptation. I hope it happens. Our generations could use a The Day After-type of wake-up call.
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#2
Arizona’s Zombie Abortion Ban Is Back. It’s Every State’s Future If Trump Wins. (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)
The next time someone tells you they really worry about abortion rights, but that President Biden is just too old, please gently remind them that Joe Biden is not, in fact 160. That is the age of the law that will soon be sending abortion providers to prison in Arizona if they attempt to assist a victim of rape or incest. If edgy modernity is truly your thing, be afraid of Republican judges who are at war with modernity itself; they will gladly welcome the assistance of pro-choice voters whose apathy facilitates the rollback of women’s equal citizenship. And it’s now abundantly clear that we’re not rolling back the tape to the 1970s or to the 1920s. The project is to set your clocks back to the time when women didn’t even matter enough to have a vote.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Since Republican elected officials know they can’t win at the ballot box, reviving zombie laws banning reproductive health care through the judicial and regulatory processes is now a top forced-birth priority. What the Arizona Supreme Court did is just a first step in this process. If former President Donald Trump wins, he won’t need Congress to create a national ban—yes, even in blue states. The Comstock Act can do the work, and it could also extend to contraception. It will be easier to fight back if Biden is still in the White House. General elections are not about ideological perfection. They are binary choices, and I hope voters prioritize harm reduction if they can’t get excited about re-electing Biden.
#3
Biden should do a primetime address on abortion (Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket)
Despite being given an absolute slam dunk, homerun, touchdown of an electoral issue—as proven by numerous other elections—Biden has yet to definitively own it in a way that feels commensurate with its seriousness. The practicing Catholic president still treats abortion like a relative he was forced to invite to the party. And that needs to change.
Now is the time for Biden to put aside any personal misgivings and focus on the greater good. Now is the time for Biden to draw clear lines that say: “In a second Biden term, abortion will be legal in as much as the country as possible. In a second Trump term, it will be illegal for millions of Americans.”
The best part about this approach, for Biden at least, is that he doesn’t actually have to modulate his personal views at all. He’ll be able to distinguish himself from Trump just by stating facts backed up by history. Trump has no such history to fall onto, and quite the contrary: Despite his Wednesday assurances that he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban, no one in their right mind believes him. Abortion access is as safe with Trump as it would be with the ghost of Phyllis Schlafly.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I agree. I want President Biden to be clear about what is at stake. It’s obvious this issue makes him uncomfortable, but that is nothing compared to the lives being placed in jeopardy by Republican abortion bans. As Kabas explains, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to confuse voters about what he will do on this issue if he wins this November. Trump is trying to be a moderate. It would be political malfeasance for Biden and the Democrats to let him get away with that misdirection. Vice President Kamala Harris has done a great job traveling the country talking about these issues, and it should continue to be a priority for her election efforts. But the president needs to lead—especially since voters have demonstrated they are ready to follow on this issue.
#4
Trump Asks Advisers for ‘Battle Plans’ to ‘Attack Mexico’ if Reelected (Asawin Suebsaeng, Adam Rawnsley, Rolling Stone)
“‘Attacking Mexico,’ or whatever you’d like to call it, is something that President Trump has said he wants ‘battle plans’ drawn for,” says one of the sources. “He’s complained about missed opportunities of his first term, and there are a lot of people around him who want fewer missed opportunities in a second Trump presidency.”
Trump lieutenants have briefed him on several options that include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments on a sovereign U.S. partner and neighbor, the sources say. One such proposal that Trump has been briefed on this year is an October white paper from the Center for Renewing America, an increasingly influential think tank staffed largely by Trumpist wonks, MAGA loyalists, and veterans of his administration.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I think the fact that a presumptive party nominee for president is openly discussing plans to conduct unilateral military operations in an allied country should be a bigger deal. And it isn’t just Trump—many leading Republicans have also declared that Trump made a huge mistake by not forcing some kind of military action in Mexico during his first term. They want to try again. We are fortunate they are warning us of their intentions.
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#5
In MAGA World, Everything Happens for a Reason (Brian Klaas, The Atlantic)
A bridge was felled by a tragic error. Earth’s tectonic plates moved slightly underneath New Jersey. And on Monday, for four minutes, the sun went dark. These are mystifying events with rational explanations. Unfortunately, the MAGA movement has discovered its own hidden truth: that lying to people, coddling mass delusions, and insisting that political enemies are part of a secret plot is an effective strategy that converts ordinary supporters into zealous disciples. The only effective way to break the spell and bring people back to reality will be to disprove their most important prophecy, which takes place at the polls in November.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
The impact of this conspiracy theory dynamic continues to grow more intense. Is it the Biden Administration’s nefarious activities? Is God sending a message? Surely, these weird events are more than a mere coincidence. Klaas explains why it is so hard to counter these theories. After all, evolution gave us brains that try to create patterns, and we love a good story. When everything around us must be a part of a battle between good and evil, people want to believe they are fighting a villain and have the particular information required to be in the good group. Understanding these dynamics helps explain a bunch of what we see in today’s politics.
#6
This is pretty much all that matters (Craig Calcaterra, Cup of Coffee)
There is a view held by some that maybe we need everything to come crashing down in order to, eventually, achieve real progress. That the Democratic Party — which, contrary to Harwood’s words above, is really a center-right party with liberal social tendencies — cannot be reformed or coaxed into taking a more progressive path so only through some Great Reckoning or even via its destruction will we truly have a chance to improve the conditions of existence. I understand that sentiment and, as someone with a degree in political philosophy, I understand its theoretical and historical basis. Yet as a matter of American politics in the year 2024, I reject it as an utter fantasy held only by those who either (a) do not understand political realities and how our system would actually react to such a thing; (b) do not understand history; or (c) would not be the ones who truly suffered if such a thing came to pass and thus desire such an outcome from a place of profound privilege, whether or not they consciously appreciate it.
If Trump wins, the Democratic Party is not gonna see the democratic-socialist light, reject the things we want them to reject, and reform as some sort of progressive vanguard. It’s going to do what parties pushed to the brink of destruction have always done: rebrand and continue doing most of what it has always done but doing its best to co-opt the most popular ideas of the party which destroyed it. In our “Punish Biden” hypothetical, in 21st century America as it actually exists, a reformed-via-electoral-apocalypse Democratic Party would move further to the right and would abandon its most contentious positions and convictions which, by modern political definition, are those positions and convictions which are best-calculated to help or protect the most vulnerable among us. The only lesson our society would realistically choose to learn from Trump prevailing over a humbled and punished Biden is “we need to move to the right and stop supporting things which upset the people who put Trump in office.”
None of this is meant to tell you how to vote. All of us have a bright line issue or two on which we cannot and will not compromise and if Biden has crossed some line in that regard which makes it philosophically or morally untenable for you to support him, I respect that. But if that is the case, or if you are simply displeased with Biden and have notions of lodging a protest vote or not voting at all, I feel it is incumbent on you to explain, with at least a little actual detail, how the consequences of him losing in November are preferable to the alternative. How his losing would make any single thing better either in the short or long term and how it would not make things worse.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Cup of Coffee is one of my favorite newsletters because Calcaterra doesn’t just give me recaps of the previous day’s baseball games and news. That’s why I started following him online years ago. I love them! But what hooked me as a subscriber is what happens after he finishes with the baseball talk and shifts to other subjects. I frequently find his non-baseball analysis incredibly engaging since, despite living in Ohio, he approaches public policy from a skosh to my left. His point here is critical to understand as we enter the general election portion of the 2024 campaign. I heard similar accelerationist arguments from people in 2000 and 2016. But eight years of George W. Bush and four years of Donald Trump didn’t get us any closer to a socialist nirvana (we can start by taking a look at who is on the Supreme Court). General elections are not about our feelings. They are binary choices about where we are headed as a nation. I believe our priority should be doing whatever we can with our ballot to reduce the chances vulnerable people will be harmed.
#7
Two Years Post-Roe: A Better Understanding of Digital Threats (Daly Barnett, Electronic Frontier Foundation)
It’s been a long two years since the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Between May 2022 when the Supreme Court accidentally leaked the draft memo and the following June when the case was decided, there was a mad scramble to figure out what the impacts would be. Besides the obvious perils of stripping away half the country’s right to reproductive healthcare, digital surveillance and mass data collection caused a flurry of concerns.
Although many activists fighting for reproductive justice had been operating under assumptions of little to no legal protections for some time, the Dobbs decision was for most a sudden and scary revelation. Everyone implicated in that moment somewhat understood the stark difference between pre-Roe 1973 and post-Roe 2022; living under the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in human history presents a vastly different landscape of threats. Since 2022, some suspicions have been confirmed, new threats have emerged, and overall our risk assessment has grown smarter. Below, we cover the most pressing digital dangers facing people seeking reproductive care, and ways to combat them.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Understanding how the data our computers and phones generate is vital since red-state extremists are seeking to criminalize not just receiving reproductive health care services but also helping someone access them. A forced-birth District Attorney can weaponize a person’s Google search history or the direct messages a relative or friend sends to a person facing a healthcare crisis. Data brokers can share license plate information that could lead to investigations about why a person parked their out-of-state vehicle near a reproductive healthcare center. This article explains these dangers and offers suggestions for how people can protect themselves.
#8
Kansas prosecutor who framed innocent man surrenders law license, will soon be disbarred (Peggy Lowe, KCUR Public Radio)
Terra Morehead, a longtime county and federal prosecutor who helped police frame at least one innocent man, has agreed to surrender her law license and faces disbarment.
Morehead, who became notorious for skirting legal protections for defendants, agreed to surrender her license as part of an agreement with the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys. She is awaiting disbarment from the Kansas Supreme Court, according to court filings.
The documents also show that Morehead, who retired from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas last August, was the subject of a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The result of that probe is unknown.
Morehead’s conduct came under scrutiny during the exoneration of Lamonte McIntyre, who was convicted in 1994 of a double homicide when he was 17.
McIntyre was freed in 2017 after Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said his conviction was a “manifest injustice” and a judge dropped the case. McIntyre sued and was awarded $12.5 million in 2022 by the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County for the wrongful conviction.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
A person who falsely accuses another of a crime has committed a terrible act. We should have high expectations that prosecutors will not engage in such injustices and abuse the trust we grant them. So, a prosecutor misusing his or her authority to help convict an innocent person must face more significant consequences than retirement and disbarment. What prosecutor Terra Morehead did to Lamonte McIntyre should outrage all of us. She can’t only face a relative slap on the wrist.
#9
5 reasons journalists accept being lied to (Mark Jacob, Stop the Presses)
Journalists don’t punish liars enough.
Occasionally they push back on live TV, creating a few awkward moments, but by and large, they let liars state their lies and move on. Sometimes the journalists correct the lie later after their audience has absorbed the disinformation. It’s like pouring water on the ashes long after the fire is out.
Confrontation is hard for people – even for journalists. If they make their guests look bad, the guests might never come back on the show. Their press aides might stop providing anonymous quotes or tidbits of information that make the journalists look like they have the inside scoop.
For this reason and others, some journalists accept being lied to, and consider it a part of their job. They don’t get offended – or at least not offended enough to fight back. They become part of a cynical system. And they come up with all kinds of rationalizations for their failure to vigorously defend the truth.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I’ve previously argued that interviews of any elected official should begin with one question: is Joe Biden the duly elected president of the United States? The interview should end if the answer is anything besides “Yes.” If a person is going to lie about this fact, what else can we trust? I also think that journalists should expose any anonymous source if it turns out they used that protection to lie. Journalists should not accept being the conduit through which politicians launder their deceptions. Jacob, who agrees that journalists don’t punish liars enough, explains why they fail to hold them accountable. It is useful to understand these dynamics—even if they frustrate me daily.
Quick Pitches
- Coming in June: The Best of Grant Wahl (Céline Gounder, Fútbol with Grant Wahl)
Grant Wahl died while covering the 2022 Men’s World Cup. He was one of my favorite writers and, for a long while, one of the few American journalists who took men’s and women’s soccer seriously. Gounder, his widow, announced this collection of Wahl’s best writing. I am glad we get to celebrate his legacy. - Elon Musk’s Worst Predictions and Broken Promises of the Past 15 Years (Matt Novak, Gizmodo)
Yeah, he was not doing well even before he destroyed my favorite social network. - Inside the meetings that officially moved the A’s from Oakland to Sacramento (Tim Keown, ESPN)
I’m glad Oakland leaders finally told A’s owner John Fisher to get lost. I wish MLB owners would let one of the several Bay Area billionaires buy the team from him. We can add this travesty to Commissioner Rob Manfred’s legacy of failure. Perhaps we could get someone who actually enjoys the sport to succeed him at the end of his final term? - 17 astounding scientific mysteries that researchers can’t yet solve (Brian Resnick, Vox)
I take comfort in understanding that our scientists are still working to figure out some fundamental questions. - 5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (Scharon Harding, Ars Technica)
I remember starting my days a few decades ago by patiently trying to load information off of this kind of floppy disk. - Chocolate Might Never Be the Same (Yasmin Tayag, The Atlantic)
There have been three consecutive years of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa. Thanks to environmental challenges, some of which are connected to the climate emergency, this shortage may become the new normal.
The Closer
Craig Calcaterra, whom I quoted in today’s lineup, shared an image at the top of one of his recent newsletters that hit a bit close to home. I guess it’s time to get those 10,000 steps.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“Sport is agony. We agree to suffer endlessly in exchange for the mere possibility of sublime rapture. Sometimes we even get it.”—Joe Posnanski, Why We Love Baseball
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