THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 10.25.26 Issue Michael Steinberger on how California’s ultrarich are fighting against the world’s first billionaire tax; Charles Homans on who runs the Democratic party; Matthew Shaer on the director Sterlin Harjo; and more.
Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor, on her appeal to MAGA voters and her refusal to engage in the “culture wars.” By Lulu Garcia-Navarro
BARRON’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘HOW THE MIDTERMS COULD REMAKE MARKETS’ – A divided government would put some industries in the crosshairs. What to expect in AI, and beyond.
These pricey, complex strategies appeal to income-hungry and skittish investors—but some can cap your upside and leave you exposed to market downsides.
The U.S. government has ordered diplomats and other federal employees to leave Saudi Arabia. It is also drawing down staff at other missions in the region.
About 70,000 police and security officers, mobilized ahead of mass protests, will try to avert the arson and looting that shocked the country last weekend.
The military demolished buildings and erected roadblocks in Hebron, the biggest city in the territory, a day after Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers.
The United States once declared that Ukraine’s fight was the front line in a global battle for freedom. Now the Trump administration is sending money to Moscow.
What to expect in the midterms’ wake. By Jim Geraghty
All other things being equal, Donald Trump would rather have a Republican-controlled House and Senate than Democrats in charge of either.
But if the Democrats win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in November — which appears likely as of this writing — it may not change the dynamics of this presidency much at all. Trump already acts as if the primary purpose of the House is to applaud during his State of the Union address, and that’s when he has a largely compliant and loyal Republican majority. He has always preferred to do things through executive orders. Passing legislation is arduous and time-consuming and often requires compromise.
What’s a presidential library doing in the North Dakota badlands? By Judson Berger
Medora, N.D. — Spend enough time in Medora, an Old West outpost that leans into a Theodore Roosevelt theme with the approximate restraint of a Cracker Barrel decorator, and you’re bound to encounter the quote: “I never would have been president if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota.”
In Southern Africa, five countries unite around a shared vision: A connected landscape where communities and free-roaming wildlife can thrive. By Erin Waite
Photography by Gareth Bentley
Across Africa, large carnivores evolved to roam vast, interconnected landscapes that enable them to hunt prey, find mates, and maintain large territories. But today, those movements have become constrained as human settlements, agriculture, and infrastructure have spliced habitats into ever-smaller fragments. Increasingly isolated and funneled toward spaces inhabited by people, many of the continent’s iconic predators face mounting pressures from habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict, which have fueled alarming declines across populations.
One of the greatest opportunities to reverse this trend lies in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). Spanning 200,000 square miles across parts of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, KAZA is the world’s largest terrestrial transboundary conservation area. Here, significant numbers of lions, African wild dogs, leopards, cheetahs, and spotted hyenas still move freely across connected wetlands, savannas, grasslands, and forests—as well as through villages and community lands—helping to keep these important ecosystems in balance.
Stretching from coast to coast, grasslands cover nearly a third of the lower 48 states. Yet almost half of Americans know almost nothing about them, according to a new national survey released by the America’s Grasslands Coalition.
Grasslands—large expanses of land dominated by grasses, shrubs, and other flowering plants—are a source of clean water for millions of people in the US and play a vital role in supporting wildlife, storing carbon, sustaining food systems and rural livelihoods, and maintaining ecosystem balance. They currently cover nearly 1 million square miles of the US, roughly half of their historical range—and are continuing to disappear at an alarming rate. This decline, due to plow-up for row-crop agriculture, the spread of invasive plants, and development, threatens wildlife, fresh water, and climate resilience.
REASON MAGAZINE: The latest issue features… Nearly three years ago, Javier Milei became Argentina’s president, promising deep spending cuts, mass layoffs of government workers, and radical change. He’s made impressive progress, but the job isn’t finished.
How Milei Won
It took three ingredients: an offbeat candidate, a bombastic campaign, and a public hungry for something new. By Daniel Raisbeck
Rents, Internet Speeds, and Airfares: 3 Deregulation Success Stories From Milei’s Argentina
Javier Milei is showing the world how deregulation can slash prices and improve services.
Fortunately, we do better on overall economic freedom, despite losing ground.
Politicians may not like it, but the countries they misgovern compete with one another for businesses, people, and capital. To attract startups, entrepreneurs, and investors, governments have to offer attractive environments, or else lose out to friendlier nations. When it comes to tax competitiveness, a new report says that Estonia leads the way in first position, with the United States lagging at 17th.
Jorge Luis Borges Against the State
Freedom, literature, and politics in the work of Jorge Luis Borges By Alejandara M. Salinas
Five people were wounded in the attack, days before national elections, health workers said. The Israeli military said its soldiers had killed two assailants.
Mr. Eisenkot, an ex-military chief, is leading in the polls against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But his campaigning style is worrying supporters.
President Trump called Elon Musk, who owns the Starshield network, after officials in Ukraine reported that they found new limits on the use of military drones
The tax initiative is the most ambitious proposal that Dave Regan has ever qualified for the California ballot. Some Democrats hope it will be his final one.
The philosophies of AI and what they reveal about us.
We can’t predict the future of artificial intelligence, but we do know its origin: us. The models we use today were trained on unfathomably huge sums of human-generated text: our books and blogs, our science and myths, our jokes and lies. In the output of language models, we see glimpses of ourselves refracted through a strange new form of intelligence we’re only beginning to understand. This issue is an attempt to make sense of those refractions — to use philosophy to turn over hard questions until we start to see them more clearly.
AI will likely impact everything from the economy to the battlefield, but exactly how remains to be seen.
In November 2022, I took on a writing assignment that, looking back, may have had a bigger impact on my life than any other: interview ChatGPT. It was the first day that OpenAI’s tool was available to the public, and my goal was to try to make sense of the tech — and then help readers make sense of it — by asking it questions about itself.
In late 1956 hundreds of thousands of Hungarians joined an uprising against the country’s Moscow-oriented government. 70 years on, the revolution’s meaning is still unclear.
For much of its modern history state lotteries were seen as antithetical to Britain’s moral values. The introduction of the Premium Savings Bond in 1956 was a major shift in government policy. What had caused it?
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
