"If it’s between them, I’m going to say this: Trump was hilarious. He was hilarious ... I would say, it’s kind of up in the air." That's Arlando Monk, a Black entrepreneur from the Milwaukee area. What separates him from you? First, he's currently undecided on a presidential race between Trump and Biden. Second, unlike most of us, his vote will really matter. A starkly divided country and the increasingly bizarro world of the electoral college has placed the outcomes of presidential elections into the hands of a remarkably few people. "'It’s now getting to the point where you are probably talking about 400,000 people in three or four states. That is what it is getting down to,' said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns since 1980. 'It does mean that more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.'" Before you get too envious of the relative handful of voters who will decide the future of American democracy, consider that campaigns have more money than ever and much of that cash is being spent to target these critical voters. "Technology has improved to allow candidates to target only the individuals they need to reach, sometimes even distinguishing between members of the same household." This is not necessarily a new story, but like every other political trend in America, it's getting more extreme. WaPo (Gift Article): Small segment of voters will wield outsize power in 2024 presidential race. "The electoral college was supposed to moderate the passions of what Alexander Hamilton called the 'general mass,' which he worried could fall prey to candidates with 'talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity.'" (Little arts of popularitysounds like a wordy way to describe a tweet...)

2

Testing Our Immune System

"The extraordinary request is an attempt by Smith to keep the election subversion trial – currently scheduled for early March – on track. Smith is asking the Supreme Court to take the rare step of skipping a federal appeals court and quickly decide a fundamental issue of the case against Trump." Does being an ex-president give Donald Trump any immunity from criminal prosecution? Jack Smith wants to skip all the appeals courts and hear an answer straight from SCOTUS. Special counsel goes directly to Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump has immunity from prosecution. (The fact that his out-in-the-open crimes haven't dented his support is infinitely sad.)

3

Murder Was the Case That They Gave Me

"In Tulsa, two men attempted to steal some copper wire from a radio tower and accidentally electrocuted themselves. One of them died and the other was charged with first-degree murder while recovering from his burns in the hospital; the girlfriend of the deceased was also charged with murder, for having driven them to the tower." Those murder charges may sound a little crazy, but it turns out they're not that unusual in America. Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker: Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away. "A draconian legal doctrine called felony murder has put thousands of Americans—disproportionately young and Black—in prison."

4

A Developing Story

"Fifty years ago, eight Americans set off for South America to climb Aconcagua, one of the world’s mightiest mountains. Things quickly went wrong. Two climbers died. Their bodies were left behind. Now, a camera belonging to one of the deceased climbers has emerged from a receding glacier near the summit, and one of mountaineering’s most enduring mysteries has been given air and light." The always excellent John Branch in the NYT (Gift Article): Ghosts on the Glacier.

5

Extra, Extra

Will America Show Its Metal? "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address U.S. military officers at the National Defense University on Monday as part of a last-minute push to convince Congress to provide more money for weapons before funding runs out." And from The Atlantic (Gift Article): We Only Need Some Metal Things: "'I really hope that people in the U.S. can understand that this is not only war for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Yuriy Matsarsky, the private, said. 'It’s really war for democracy, it’s war for a better world, it’s war against dictatorship, it’s war against modern fascism.' Ukrainians are not asking other countries to send troops, he added. 'We only need some metal things to save Ukraine.'" (Meanwhile, "lawyers for Alexey Navalny said Monday they have lost contact with the jailed Russian opposition leader, who was believed to be imprisoned in a penal colony about 150 miles east of Moscow, and his whereabouts are unknown.")

+ Bibi's Bet: "Even as the Israeli military obtained battle plans for a Hamas invasion and analysts observed significant terrorism exercises just over the border in Gaza, the payments continued. For years, Israeli intelligence officers even escorted a Qatari official into Gaza, where he doled out money from suitcases filled with millions of dollars." NYT (Gift Article): ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan that Propped Up Hamas. Here's the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.

+ Prez Dispenser: Following last week's Congressional hearings on antisemitism, Penn's president Liz Magill resigned. Will Harvard's president be next? As Harvard President Faces Pressure to Resign, Some Faculty Show Support.

+ The Cesspool: Elon Musk didn't just allow Alex Jones back onto his platform, he welcomed him with a live chat. Elon Musk allows controversial conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on X.

+ Travel Ban: "The family of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year old woman whose September 2022 killing sparked countrywide protests in Iran, has been prohibited from traveling to France to collect a human rights award in her name." Iran blocks Mahsa Amini's family from collecting a human rights prize in her name.

+ Moves Like Bagger: "Nearly one in seven shoppers admitted to having purposely stolen items at self-checkout, with nearly half of those saying they would do it again." Dollar General is having its own self-checkout reckoning.

+ Career Criminal: "It feels like a script you’d find on the over-piled desk of some harried Hollywood agent: MAGA-style Republican, while toiling for years as a U.S. diplomat and ambassador, secretly leads a double life, allegedly spying for the Cuban government for more than four decades — completely undetected. Except that if true, the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a career foreign service officer accused of serving as an agent of the Cuban regime since 1981, have real-life — and dangerous — implications. After Rocha was indicted on Monday on espionage charges, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, 'This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.'" Politico: The Too-Weird-to-Be-Fiction Story of Cuba’s Spying Ambassador. Talk about playing the long game; the Cuban intel agency may have started working with Rocha as early as 1973...

6

Bottom of the News

"The US Defence Department earns $100m/year operating slot machines used by soldiers on their bases ... Some corrupt Mexican police are now using card terminals to make collecting bribes at traffic stops more convenient ... Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies in the US in 2022. Eight of them were by romance novelist Colleen Hoover ... The average US fridge uses 3–5 times more electricity than an entire human being consumes in Nigeria." These and other interesting tidbits can be found in Tom Whitwell's, 52 things I learned in 2023.