Personal news: Excited and honored to share that next week I start
@TheAtlantic
as a senior editor, overseeing the magazine’s Family section and coverage of how we live. Am so looking forward to meeting all my wonderful new colleagues.
My
@PostOpinions
colleague
@ccaryl
's searing indictment of Putin: "From this day forward, Ukrainians will redouble their efforts to join the West. You can deny their nationhood all you want — but you will never succeed in telling Ukrainians who they are."
To expose abortion bans for what they are, “let's call them what they are: forced-birth laws, or government-mandated childbirth,”
@KateManning10
writes
@PostOpinions
. This “centers the pregnant woman in the law—her suffering, the toll on her body.”
🧵This visual
@PostOpinions
Essay by
@crampell
is absolutely bonkers (and brilliant) and everyone should read it and see it. And maybe weep. cc:
@IRSnews
Enjoyed working with
@AndrewYang
to turn his thoughts into a
@PostOpinions
op-ed. “Boys and men,” he writes, are too often framed “as the problem themselves rather than as people requiring help.”
🧵Bibi Bahrami, subject of the Oscar-nominated short doc “Stranger at the Gate,” describes in
@PostOpinions
how a would-be murderer came to her mosque—and changed his mind. FREE link 👇
@TheAcademy
@Malala
Must read:
@BillieJeanKing
on her 1971 abortion and why overturning Roe would be disastrous. "My life’s work has been about equality for all,” she writes
@PostOpinions
. “Nothing did more to advance women’s economic status than the right to abortion."
🧵One of the things I appreciate about
@MJGerson
as a columnist is his willingness to be candid about the way his thinking has shifted over time—as he is in this
@PostOpinions
op-ed.
“I’m gonna light the next generation’s torch. But I’m gonna hold on to my torch because if I pass my torch to you, that leaves me in the dark.”
@MadisonSiriusXM
in candid convo with
@KarenAttiah
@PostOpinions
An educator lost his job after reading 2nd-graders a book called “I Need a New Butt!” I’d like to schedule a Zoom for him to read MY kids a book about butts. We can return the favor by offering our rendition of “Vegetables in Underwear.”
@ThePlumLineGS
🧵When a
@PostOpinions
colleague shared the news about this high school paper in Nebraska being shut down, I reached out to Marcus Pennell, a former newspaper staffer, to see if he’d like to write about it. I am so grateful he said yes. FREE gift link 👇
"A society with limits on wealth will have to develop new aspirations." What a terrific, thought-provoking, conversation-starting debut by
@ChristineEmba
@TheAtlantic
.
Wrote a tribute to community colleges for
@PostOpinions
. Wouldn’t be who/what/where I am today without
@CityCollegeofSF
and especially
@Juan_Reporter
, who said: "A lot of people want to be writers. Fewer want to be editors; you could be a good one."
🧵I happen to know that
@MJGerson
poured heart and soul into this magnificent
@PostOpinions
Essay. I urge you to give it a good read—or to listen to Mike’s eloquent audio recording. This is a FREE link, good for two weeks, so please share widely.
🧵My
@PostOpinions
colleague
@AlyssaRosenberg
has published three columns in three days, all on utterly wrenching subjects. I think we're both ready to go lie down now. Today:
Paul Farmer
@PIH
died today.
@PostOpinions
has a moving tribute from
@johngreen
: “He was deeply committed to the belief that all human lives had dignity. ... He lived this belief for his entire career.”
Some families are "turning to risky recipes for homemade formula, or diluting formula to make it last longer even though it might not provide the nutrition babies need," one source told
@AlyssaRosenberg
@PostOpinions
.
🧵Working closely with
@MJGerson
@PostOpinions
over the past year and a half was such a huge privilege. In this beautiful tribute,
@karentumulty
captures some of what made him great.
Ahead of Jan. 6,
@AnnTelnaes
+
@codingyan
offer a comprehensive interactive tableau
@PostOpinions
about the complicit GOP players who’ve yet to be held to account. Even if you’ve followed the news closely, it’s quite something to see it all in one place.
“When the Spotsylvania school board decides my students’ experiences aren’t worthy of the shelves, this sends a message that their words, their lives, aren’t worthy of the page,” Gina Opdycke Terry writes
@PostOpinions
When he saw “Everything Everywhere,”
@originalspin
writes
@PostOpinions
, it felt “like a handwritten message made out to me, tied to a rock and thrown through my childhood bedroom window.”
Biden is urging states to pay people $100 to get vaccinated. Outrageous,
@BDUTT
writes
@PostOpinions
: “The cash-rich Western countries that have not set vaccine mandates are displaying the worst sort of White privilege and unacceptable self-indulgence”
“It was about my constitutional rights. It was about history. It was about injustices that I personally witnessed every day.” The great
@michele_norris
presents Claudette Colvin telling her story in her own words
@PostOpinions
.
For writers, teachers, students and really anyone who's had an opinion about something and thought it could make a publishable piece for
@PostOpinions
: Please share! This is free to access for all readers.
"Look at the intense pressure the soccer team itself is under,"
@jrezaian
writes
@PostOpinions
. "It’s clear players will face repercussions when they return to Iran for any hint that they side with protesters"—yet they keep taking those risks.
I told my colleague
@kwoodsome
: Her piece is one of the best I’ve edited since being hired by
@PostOpinions
. Brave. True. And an urgent call for news orgs to make processing trauma part of the regular cycle of covering tough stories.
1. Was wonderful working with
@M2Pham
on this nuanced, and alarming, op-ed for
@PostOpinions
. “Almost anyone with first-generation immigrants in their family can tell you about the uncle or auntie who has been manipulated by misinformation.”
In his stirring
@PostOpinions
Essay,
@MJGersonMike
argues that there is a better path forward for conservative Christians. Please read and share with your faith (or other) communities—or listen to the audio version, featuring Mike’s own eloquent rendition.
The great Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky once said that “history doesn’t teach anyone anything — it only punishes for lessons not learnt.” It won’t be long before Putin finds out just how true these words really are. Thank you,
@washingtonpost
,
@PostOpinions
,
@jenduende
.
My
@PostOpinions
colleague
@jrezaian
is on FIRE over this awful story: “As a journalist who has not only seen this movie before but starred in it, I think my colleagues are perpetrating journalistic malpractice.”
During edits,
@MJGerson
told me that he saw this
@PostOpinions
Essay as “a kind of summary statement”—a culmination of years thinking and writing on “the proper role of religion in politics.”
My
@PostOpinions
colleague
@michele_norris
wants "a world where young people, regardless of color, or sexual orientation, or station in life, can follow their dreams without running into a counselor who will 'guide' them toward a lower altitude." Amen.
The cruel, brutal approach to politics is “disturbing at any time,"
@MJGerson
writes. "But now it has fastened itself upon an object, a project. ... This is not a joke. This is not a myth. This is not a drill."
🧵Grateful to
@jack_turban
, who responded in a flash when I asked if he could help
@PostOpinions
debunk misinformation being spread in Texas about health care for trans kids.
🧵“I am going to talk about my bladder.” And you should read *every word* of this powerful
@PostOpinions
op-ed by
@KateManning10
. Here is a FREE link, good for 14 days. Was thrilled to work with her on this.
"We don’t want the government to interfere with people’s lives, ever, except the minor degree to which someone’s life is interfered with by having to carry a fetus to term inside themself"—needed laughs from
@petridishes
, on a case that makes one cry
🧵In developing the Post Pandemic series, I was determined to find someone who could write about long covid. Am deeply grateful to
@MillerMadeline
@HarperCollins
for summoning the energy to tell her story
@PostOpinions
. (FREE link)
Here’s an idea,
@lyzl
writes
@PostOpinions
: “Maybe instead of discouraging divorce and pressuring people to marry for financial security, we should make a more equitable society.”
Enjoyed working with
@paragkhanna
on this
@PostOpinions
op-ed about how the U.S. should direct infrastructure spending to climate-resilient places — and encourage more intentional climate migration
Was thrilled to work with
@VanessaRiley
to bring this piece into the world. The museum's curators "dare to acknowledge the truth. This should be applauded," she writes.
“One of the most beautiful things I have seen. I dare you not to cry.” Come for the primal scream about the state of our politics, stay + scroll down for the clip of Jim and
@Derek_Redmond
that
@KarenAttiah
@PostOpinions
(and I) can’t watch without 😭.
🧵Devastating, by
@sbasijrasikh
@PostOpinions
, on the Taliban barring women from Afghan universities: “The men of the Taliban sit comfortably in Kabul and take aim with their weapons and casually blast the balloons of our hopes out of the sky, one by one.”
🧵I asked Jeff Yang
@originalspin
: Have anything you want to say about “Everything Everywhere”? I’m so glad his response was an enthusiastic “would love to!” (FREE link👇 — please share this fantastic thing widely!)
KBJ “chose to bring the sometimes rickety confidence of a working woman’s psyche into a hearing room dominated by men who probably never figured out the schedules for snack week,”
@michele_norris
writes
@PostOpinions
.
🧵How to visualize 1 million:
@salvesergio
and
@codingyan
@PostOpinions
plotted covid-19's damage over more than two years and compared the continuing death toll with the tolls from previous historical catastrophes.
“The trouble started when I changed five letters in my first name.” Don’t miss 18-year-old Marcus Pennell's audio recording of his great
@PostOpinions
op-ed; just click on the player within this article. (FREE link, good for 2 weeks.)
🧵“At its core,”
@briancalley
writes
@PostOpinions
, the use of restraint and seclusion “is a civil rights violation. It needs to be treated like the emergency it is.” FREE link, please share widely. 👇
Test your knowledge of historical documents with this fun/hilarious/surprisingly tricky quiz by
@petridishes
@PostOpinions
. Bonus: For a limited time ... no paywall! Go, play, share your score with friends!
“My impulse to make things good, and to make good things better, is almost ungovernable”—a quote from Robert Gottlieb that has always resonated, from this
@parisreview
interview w/
@LarissaMacFarqu
.
"Writing is creating something to send out into the world; dancing is creating yourself."
@liviecampbell
beautifully articulates something
@lithub
that will probably feel v. familiar to writer/dancer types
“While flattered by the Investigative Committee’s assessment of my influence,”
@vkaramurza
writes
@PostOpinions
of the charges against him, “I must admit that Putin has done a far better job” of making Russia look bad “than I ever could.”
🧵“I really want to interview
@AlinejadMasih
about her hair.”
@AlyssaRosenberg
@PostOpinions
came to us with this idea not long ago, and the result is this intimate interview. FREE link, pls share widely.
🧵Samuel Alito’s draft Roe opinion is full misogynist legal theory,
@JillHasday
writes
@PostOpinions
, and it’s time American jurisprudence left all that behind.
1. Christiane Calixte is a high school junior who has *actually* learned about critical race theory (in a school workshop), and she’s here to report for
@PostOpinions
that anti-CRT activists have it all wrong.
1. Looking at today’s
@PostOpinions
page, I’m seeing so many pieces—on the side of human rights and against authoritarianism—that would have made Fred Hiatt proud.
Folks:
@washingtonpost
has dropped its website paywall from now until Friday. Which means you can access everything on the site FREE—including, e.g., this
@PostOpinions
delight by the authors of And Tango Makes Three. Come on in, the water's fine...
"Consent was always the floor—it never should have been the ceiling." Be sure to make time for this
@PostOpinions
essay by
@ChristineEmba
, excerpted from her new, fabulously titled book: "Rethinking Sex: A Provocation."
“I didn’t foresee its blockbuster success,”
@originalspin
writes
@PostOpinions
. “It was too strange, I thought; too different, obscure and absurd. Yes, it made perfect sense to me — but I’m a freak.”
"Black people’s hairstyles can change — but our hair is a foundational part of who we are." Thanks to
@ToellaPliakas
for coming to
@PostOpinions
with this excellent op-ed.
“Drug use plagues the city, and the courts struggle under the weight of young people’s encounters with the legal system,” Neil Meyer writes
@PostOpinions
. “About 1 in 3 Uvalde children live in poverty.”
1. “Book bans are canaries in coal mines — indicators of the direction in which a society is moving.” It was a dream working on this
@PostOpinions
op-ed with
@azarnafisi
, who sees danger ahead if recent trends are not met with resistance.
“There was unquestionably a learned helplessness at the bottom of my doubt” about this film’s success,
@originalspin
writes
@PostOpinions
. “A predisposition to assume that…Asian Americans would always be next and never now.”
🧵I’m a huge fan of the philosopher
@kate_manne
’s new book, UNSHRINKING, and delighted to publish her excellent op-ed
@PostOpinions
, on the discrimination fat people often face from doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. FREE link👇
“If being ‘woke’ means knowing the full story of your community and country, including the systemic racism that still shapes them,”
@MJGerson
writes, “then every thinking adult should be.”
“We haven’t really created a generation of unflinching girls,”
@mattiekahn
argues
@PostOpinions
. “With our broken world, we’ve scared them into action.” Non-paywalled link.👇
“After several miscarriages, I was overjoyed to become the mother of three kids,”
@KateManning10
writes
@PostOpinions
. “But the pain and risk of childbirth—motherhood itself—were things I chose. They were not inflicted on me by some guys in a statehouse.”
My
@PostOpinions
colleague
@PerryBaconJr
—who in recent days has written about journalistic both-sides-ism and what's ailing Bidenism—is going to be doing Q&A's with readers every Thursday at noon ET and you should totally talk to him:
I ❤️ this, by
@elcush
, and learned so much. But this might be the fact that delighted me most: Bees “do a little dance when they find good pollen and want to tell their friends about it.” Consider this post my little dance telling you to read this piece.
Sexual exploration can be positive and healthy,
@stephmurrayyyy
writes, but that's not what's going on when an “acceptance of sexual variety has morphed into an expectation of sexual violence”:
🧵Remember all those people who were doubted when they reported irregular periods after covid shots? Big new study backing them up just came out (link in thread). Reupping
@KateClancy
@PostOpinions
—on the failure to listen. FREE link👇
This column by
@MJGerson
for
@PostOpinions
is the one I want to send to all my family members/acquaintances who’ve likewise “bristled” at suggestions that it's important to tell a fuller story of America
Loved, loved, loved meeting
@AaditiLele
in person today, after working with her on her excellent
@PostOpinions
op-ed.👇 I have this hunch that someday I’ll be working *for* her. h/t
@kwoodsome
📷
“Though Jackson talked about ‘balance’ in her mea culpa, we would do well to shift away from that language,”
@michele_norris
writes
@PostOpinions
. “Balance is unrealistic. It’s just a cruel invitation to failure.”
“A society that truly values breastfeeding would assume some of the costs associated with nursing, rather than pretending they don’t exist,”
@AlyssaRosenberg
writes
@PostOpinions
.
🧵The conservative writer in question here isn’t special in slinging casual abuse. But he provides *excellent* fodder for
@RuthMarcus
@PostOpinions
to take him down. Don’t miss this one—a FREE link, good for 2 wks. Please share widely.
For
@nytimesbooks
I review the latest novel by William T. Vollmann, in which he writes on bigotry, idolatry, gender fluidity, vulnerability, consent, resilience and love—at length.
Girls’ “activism isn’t naive,”
@mattiekahn
writes
@PostOpinions
. “It’s the reasoned result of the stomach-churning awareness that girls can’t count on someone else to save them.”
1. So fun working with
@ATometich
on this great piece for
@PostOpinions
, about the 15 years she spent writing as the restaurant critic “Jean Le Boeuf”—and how it affected her sense of identity.