It's a Dry Heat

The numbers — both economic and polling — are not looking great for the GOP. So it’s not that big of a surprise that we’re seeing a concerted effort to reframe the midterms as a culture war. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The GOP’s Culture-War Hail Mary. “Last week, as the war with Iran dragged into its seventh month, gas prices shot up to an average of $4.50 a gallon, and polling showed President Trump about twice as far underwater with American voters as he was at this point in 2018, Republican senators determined that the time had come to discuss something else entirely: youth sports. ‘Girls’ sports are for girls. Boys’ sports are for boys,’ Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a news conference. With 32 days to go until the midterm elections, Republicans’ closing strategy is obvious: They’re going all-in on trans. (It seems to have worked for them before, after all. More on that in a minute.) In Texas, Republicans are running an unsettling AI-generated ad that shows the Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico dressed as Maria von Trapp and singing about girls with mustaches. A spot in Iowa accuses the Senate candidate Josh Turek of supporting ‘sex changes for kids.’ On X, former Representative Matt Gaetz offered a tidy summary of his party’s agenda: ‘I hate the war too,’ he told a concerned voter. ‘But the Democrats want to trans your kids.'” The messaging is stupid and cruel, and of course, none of this is really about changing gender, it’s about changing the subject.

+ The bad poll numbers won’t just make messaging more desperate and extreme. All the stops will be pulled out. And when you control all three branches of government, that’s a lot of stops. Is There Anything Kash Patel Won’t Do for Trump Before the Midterms? “In recent months, Patel has been briefed on the FBI’s ‘election integrity’ investigations in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and beyond. Officials told me their understanding is that many of the election-related investigation requests came directly from the White House, many times with the instruction that ‘this is a big deal for the president’ or ‘this is a push from 47.’ But all of that attention hasn’t yielded results. In meetings, Patel has expressed frustration that there have been no new findings, and instructed staff to ‘look harder’ or ‘look again,’ according to three people familiar with the conversations.”

“We used our names and news organization email addresses, following each state’s rules for starting private or microschools, a type of private school intended for just a few students. Experience running a school wasn’t needed. No one from any of the states asked us about our backgrounds or qualifications, though West Virginia did ask for proof of a high school diploma. No one questioned what we plan to teach or how we would measure whether students are learning. And yet we could enroll students in two states right now, if we wanted to. Arkansas even suggested ways our school could accept public money through the state’s voucher-style program.” ProPublica wanted to find out just how easy it is to start a private school. It was A) Easy B) Simple C) Effortless and D) All of the above. We’re Reporters, Not Teachers. We Were Able to Start Private Schools Anyway.

What to Doc: In appointing a special prosecutor in the Cornell rape case, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “I want the truth. How is this woman denied justice?” The sad truth is that women are not only often denied justice in many of these cases, they are also turned from victims of a crime into suspects in an investigation. If you haven’t seen it, this is the right time to watch the Center for Investigative Reporting’s excellent documentary Victim/Suspect on Netflix.

+ What to Wear: This probably means I’m a man of a certain age, but I love a good shacket. And my latest fave comes from Criquet.

+ What to Read (and watch, if you haven’t): “Twenty years after the beloved football and family drama premiered, Peter Berg, Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Taylor Kitsch and others look back on its legacy.” Friday Night Lights Oral History. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!

Surf’s Up: “Sea surface temperatures just hit a record high in a 2.4-million square mile region of the deep Pacific Ocean known as Niño 3.4, the key area scientists are tracking to measure the rapidly strengthening El Niño.” ‘Perfect storm’: El Niño goes off the charts. We’re already seeing flooding from high tides in my neck of the woods. And it’s even worse in SoCal. “In the coming days, sea levels off Southern California are expected to begin rising by half a foot or more and then stay elevated for months, as an enormous pulse of wave energy generated by El Niño travels up the coast, lifting the water as it goes.” A Kelvin Wave Is Heading Toward the California Coast, Bringing Trouble.

+ Telling Tales Out of School: “Outside a high school in Seine-St.-Denis, a working-class suburb north of Paris, a crowd of about 100 students milled in the street on Thursday afternoon, their shouts echoing through the towering apartment buildings. They were protesting overcrowded classrooms, crumbling facilities, and absent teachers.” Blockades, Fireworks and Tear Gas: Young Protesters Are Rattling France. And, fires, fury and hundreds of arrests as France gripped by student protests.

+ Traffick Jam: “Criminal gangs lure immigrants to Russia and Belarus on commercial flights and then send them to the border, Latvian officials said, with the backing of those countries. Officials said that the Russian and Belarusian governments sometimes even offered chartered flights to Moscow or Minsk for migrants and then provided transport to the forested frontiers bordering Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere.” NYT (Gift Article) on how Putin uses immigration as a weapon. A Front Line at the Border: How Russia Uses Migrants as Weapons Against Europe.

+ The Upside: Steven Rattner in the NYT (Gift Article): Six Charts That Show Just How Much We Need A.I.

+ Help Unwanted: U.S. added 29,000 jobs in September, missing forecasts by a wide margin.

+ Sauce Loss: “My mom grew up during the civil-rights movement in Shelby, Mississippi, a farming town that is now dead, and soon after she married my father, they moved 20 miles north to Clarksdale, a farming town that is now dying. She’s 79. The headlines she reads these days feel like dispatches from a time she thought would never return. Like a lot of progressive southerners, she’s had to watch the thing she counted on most, the flawed yet moral core of the United States, turn to ashes in the last years of her life. Sometimes the big losses are too much to process, and little things, such as losing a familiar taste, become mourners’ benches. (Also, those sandwiches were really good.) She asked me, her reporter son, to find out what had happened.” Wright Thompson in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Requiem for a Condiment.

“At The Yard, elementary school children play with hammers, saws and knives. They climb ladders, romp in mud and push each other around in secondhand wheelchairs. No parents are allowed. Adult staffers called ‘playworkers’ watch, but try to avoid telling kids to be careful unnecessarily.” WSJ (Gift Article): Don’t Call Me a Helicopter Parent. My Kid’s in a Junkyard Playing With a Saw.

+ Yung Lean and GENER8ION recreated their viral video “Storm” with a live performance at the VMAs. So great. As is this version from Laerskool Vredekloof Primary School.

+ MacArthur Foundation Announces 2026 ‘Genius Grant’ Winners.

+ “I will never do that. Honestly, I think it’s very sad to see some players promote it. Everybody does whatever they want, but without me.” Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama not interested in promoting betting sites. Talk about an outlier…

+ British chess prodigy, 11, is the youngest ever woman grandmaster.

+ My favorite baseball writer on my favorite baseball commentator (and baseball, in general). Grant Brisbee: Mike Krukow made Giants fans appreciate the future, even one without him behind the mic.

+ Hitting the sweet spot: bear treats itself to baked goods at Colorado farmers’ market. (The best thing about being a bear is that a glucose monitor can’t stick to fur.)

+ Barking beautiful: the 2026 Dog Photography awards.