A new era, true believers, meeting the press
WEEKEND READS for November 8, 2025
Happy Saturday, Ink readers!
A year into the second Trump era, it’s been the most hopeful week in a while. In this past Tuesday’s elections, with a cross-country Democratic sweep — from Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City to the passage of Proposition 50 in California — voters sent a definitive message in that they’d had enough of the MAGA program. Is it a new era? Will it set the stage for a more dramatic turnaround in 2026? Might it inspire the long-delayed Democratic reckoning? That all remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we invite you to read some of the week’s most intriguing, challenging, and even infuriating writing, collected here for our supporting subscribers, in today’s edition of Weekend Reads.
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True believers
It was normal and understandable that I would be scared and abashed. Nobody gave me any guidance (that I can recall) about how to behave around them or how to think about them. All I knew was that my mother felt strongly that they should feel welcome in our house, and I didn’t feel that way, and I felt bad about it.
I was 6 years old.
And I was not the vice president of the United States. [America Magazine]