Substacks
Pete Hegseth Shows His Hand Eli Lake

If you want to know what a post-woke military might look like, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon just gave America a preview.
At his nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pete Hegseth pledged that he would direct his secretary of the Navy to focus on rebuilding the fleet instead of climate change. His secretary of the Army would focus on making war more lethal and effective, instead of figuring out how to build tanks that don’t run on gasoline. And the standards for military promotion would be based on merit, not a person’s skin color, sexuality, or gender.
Hegseth said that under his leadership, he would take steps to reverse the Pentagon’s decision to fire tens of thousands of service members who refused to take the Covid vaccine. “In President Trump’s Defense Department they will be apologized to. They will be reinstituted with pay and rank,” the nominee said.
It was a contentious hearing, as Democrats attacked Hegseth for everything from allegations of his marital infidelity and sexual assault to his lack of experience managing an organization as large and complex as the Pentagon. But the Republicans made Hegseth out to be the real victim, and by the time the hearing ended, it seemed like a near lock that he’ll be confirmed.
Substacks
Nellie Bowles: The Triumph of the Plastic Straw Nellie Bowles

The biggest environmentalist craze of my generation started in 2011 with Vermont 9-year-old Milo Cress cooking up an arbitrary number for how many plastic straws Americans used daily. This 9-year-old figured it was so many. He says he called up straw manufacturers and calculated 500 million a day. Boom, big number, good number. The mainstream media was off to the races. That 500 million a day number was cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Suddenly the most important thing we could do for the environment—for our children!—was ban plastic straws.
States and cities passed laws against them. California banned them from restaurants outright in 2018. New York, in 2021, changed the law so the only straws on display were paper (you were allowed to ask for plastic). Official fact sheets from Ron DeSantis’s state of Florida instruct Floridians to “Skip the Straw,” citing the 500 million figure. Did anyone question the basis of this?
Substacks
February 12, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson
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It Pays to Be a Friend of Donald Trump Joe Nocera

Two dodgy Democrats had a great day on Monday—thanks to our new Republican president, Donald J. Trump.
The first, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, was granted a full pardon. Back in 2009, after he’d been charged with corruption, Blagojevich got himself booked on Trump’s show, Celebrity Apprentice. (You can see his appearance in these YouTube clips. He was fired, of course.) I don’t know if Blagojevich had a premonition that Trump might someday be in a position to help him, but it sure has turned out that way. Transforming himself from a high-profile Democratic governor to a big-time Trump supporter was the single best move he could have made.
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