General strike
Weekend reads for April 26, 2025
Hello, friends and readers! And happy Saturday (and congratulations on making it through another week)!
And what a week it’s been. The Trump regime continued its assault on America’s people and institutions, “deporting” 2-year-old U.S. citizens and arresting state judges on dubious charges. And the chaos continued, with the Secretary of Defense doing his best to jeopardize national security and the President conducting imaginary trade negotiations, making sure kids are trained in cheating, if not reading and writing, attempting to dismantle the Civil Rights Act of 1964, among other indignities.
But we might look back on this week as the moment the idea of a general strike went mainstream. Unexpectedly, center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks shifted the Overton window well leftward with a call for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to stop the Trump regime’s “multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men.” That someone in his position would write or talk about such a thing isn’t just a surprise — it’s permission for everyone else.
And while nobody can say whether such an uprising will occur or the shape it might take, people are indeed thinking and talking seriously about it — and as the labor leader Sara Nelson told us this week, that’s a very significant first step.
As we do for our supporting subscribers each weekend, we’ve gathered below the very best essays, reviews, and interviews we’ve come across this week. As always, we hope you make some space today for reflection and that these readings give you food for thought.
So don’t doomscroll — bloomscroll! Look for the ideas that take you deeper and let you understand the moment. Don’t just give in to the endless stream of bad-news updates. We’re here to help.
Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:
How giving up on inspiration let the right win the culture war — for now
What happens when politics adopts the rules of pro wrestling
Why bird brains are so different from our own, and how understanding them changes what we know about intelligence
A guide to repeating conservative success
Why universities found spines, while law firms folded
How shady landlords built the Tren de Aragua boogeyman
What the pro-democracy movement looks like in rural America
You won’t want to miss any of it. Thank you so much to our supporting subscribers for making this newsletter possible. If you haven’t yet joined our community, why not become part of this, and help us build the future of independent media today?
Solidarity, courage, and action
This week on our live show, both former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and labor leader Sara Nelson captured exactly what’s at stake in this moment and what needs to be done to beat the Trump regime. Both laid out in detail the challenges Americans face right now from an administration that’s bent on (as Reich put it) bullying us into submission, dismantling the institutions that keep us all safe and healthy, and the laws that keep us free and able to plan for the future. And they were both just as clear about what needs to happen to beat back those challenges.
For Reich, it’s about the people coming together and demonstrating to one another (providing the social proof that messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio has talked to us about so many times) that they’re willing be out in the streets regularly — finding the solidarity that’s so far been missing in American life, and turning it into courage. And a movement.
It's got to be regular. It's got to be expected. It's got to be national. And it's got to be in such a way that the press begins to pay the kind of attention it needs to pay.
Solidarity. is necessary for courage.I mean, people are not gonna be courageous unless they feel that they are embraced. I mean, there are certain wonderful people who will be courageous regardless, but most people are gonna be courageous if they feel like their neighbors and their friends and their communities are courageous. So the solidarity is often a precursor and a prerequisite to the kind of courage we need.
I have called and others have called as well for a kind of general strike. I mean, even David Brooks is calling for a national upheaval.
For Nelson (who was the first national labor leader in the modern era to begin calling for a general strike, back in 2019, and continues to do so today) finding that courage is about calling back to shared values, the issues that so directly affect all working people — and making clear demands that draw on the legacy of the labor movement that fought for the basic protections the Trump regime is trying to strip away.
Let's plug in together and figure out how we can define that we're fighting for public safety, that we're fighting for social security, that we are fighting for due process. These are fundamental values that we have together. that have nothing to do with political positions, but have everything to do with the idea that this country gives everyone the opportunity to do better. And that means all of us doing better.
Somebody said the other day, America first didn't mean America alone. And we've got even David Brooks calling for an uprising. So this is a moment, actually, where we can find a lot of commonality together in the fight with the basic principles that we hold true that people fought and died for.
Tools for making sense of it all
During our ask-me-anything call-in show yesterday, several of you asked about the best ways to keep track of what’s being lost in the Trump regime’s attack on American institutions, and in particular, what DOGE’s chaotic cuts are doing to agencies. So we put together a list of places to start.
Center for American Progress offers a tool to look at the state-by-state impact of the Trump regime’s cuts.
MuskWatch lets you take a detailed look at DOGE’s cancelled contracts.
For those who are in a betting mood, gamble-on-anything site Polymarket offers a feed for DOGE tracking, also based on public data on DOGE’s contract cancellations.
And for an interesting snapshot, AP did a case study on how DOGE cuts have affected Kansas City, Missouri
Ever wonder what tax dollars were doing to improve public health? Our Health ROI has the inside scoop on what we’re at risk of losing now.
If you only follow national papers and social feeds, you’ll miss a lot of what’s happening on the ground. News from the States gives you a window into local journalism.
And now, your Weekend Reads
Is the culture war over?
Liberals alarmed by the rise of conservative mouthpieces often point to billionaire-supported, aggressively anti-woke propaganda like The Daily Wire and PragerU. But calls for building left-wing outlets to parallel such media target the wrong enemy. The fight isn’t between PragerU and some imagined progressive alternative; or if it is, liberals are aiming too low. The real battle for eyeballs is between content identifiably produced by real people and the pink slime churned out by mainstream entertainment. A lefty version of The Daily Wire, properly funded by lefty billionaires (if enough of them exist?), might compete politically, but the real challenge is pulling audiences away from the numbness induced by MrBeast and the hype families. [The New Republic]
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