All Notes

A short note on the glaring contradiction in the first sentence of Anthropic’s evaluators announcement.

Was it misalignment?

This tweet thread about leaving Anthropic has gone viral. In brief, the poster, Jacob Coxon, left because he saw the extreme recklessness of 1) believing that AI can (or will) destroy humanity and 2) building it anyway.

Bill Gates wrote an essay where he talks about what AI is going to do to the world, and how we’re not doing enough to prepare for it.

We’ve got to stop calling AI companies “labs.” They’re companies wearing “lab” as sheep’s clothing.

There’s a story about The Beatles’ Yesterday that I love. From Wikipedia (condensed):

Nan Ransohoff argues that we’re at the dawn of the third wave of American philanthropy.

For me, as for many in my generation, the Iraq War was a defining political event. I was 19 and in my second year of college when the Bush Administration began to press its case, and the first political event I ever attended was an anti-Iraq War rally in downtown Chicago. Those of us opposed to the war saw in those…

How does a nation endure?

On July 4, I wrote about Ezra Klein’s conversation with Bryan Stevenson, and what it means to love America despite its faults.

Graham Platner is once again the political story of the week, this time for defeat rather than victory.

Happy Fourth of July.

The most unexpectedly fascinating class I took in law school was Federal Courts: when federal courts have jurisdiction, and which federal courts have jurisdiction. It didn’t leap off the page of the course catalogue; it looked like the kind of dry class you slog through because studying the law is unfortunately often…

Today, I read Helen Lewis’ discussion of “masculinism” in the Atlantic.

This week, two immigration decisions from the Supreme Court are in the headlines. There’s a third we shouldn’t miss.

In the early 2000s, a liberal in America had two go-to sources of televised relief from the presidency of George W. Bush. The first was the sanity-preserving satire of The Daily Show , and the second was the bittersweet escapism of The West Wing. I remember in the years right after college getting the DVDs of West…

Gary Shteyngart, in conversation with Ezra Klein:

In WSJ today: Hegseth announces a review of U.S. forces in Europe and threatens NATO cuts.

In the Economist today: “Scammers are preying on America’s illegal immigrants.”

Innovation demands integrity.

It’s Graham Platner’s turn to be the center of the nation’s attention. The tattoo, the texts, the posts.

Bernie Sanders wants the government to take shares of AI companies. Evidently, President Trump does too, as does Sam Altman.

Today is election day for the primaries in Illinois, and the end of my campaign for the Democratic nomination in my congressional district.

Anthropic is reportedly in a dispute with the Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the use of its models.

Here are two photos from January 24, 2026 - exactly one week ago as I write this.

I have a more substantive piece I’m going to write tomorrow, but had one I needed to get done this evening—admittedly with more anger than I usually bring to writing here.

I had other things I wanted to write about today, but Venezuela is the only thing to talk about. Trump’s distractions work because he doesn’t just say “look over there” - he does something genuinely terrible that means we have to look.

Just before Christmas, I had my worst phone call of this campaign.

“This is a cheap shot.”

On November 28, Northwestern caved to President Trump . The university was caught up in the administration’s campaign of intimidation against American universities , in this case leading to a freeze on nearly $800 million in federal funding. To end the freeze, Northwestern agreed to pay a ransom of $75 million as well…

Last week, the Trump Administration issued an executive order launching the “Genesis Mission.” In brief, it kicks off a national effort led by the Department of Energy to coordinate AI-driven scientific research across fields including advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and…

Below is an email I sent my family on November 5, 2008. It was a wonderful moment after eight bad years. May we all have another like it, and soon.

On Friday, ICE was in my neighborhood.

On Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7 PM CT, NWSOFA is holding a virtual candidate forum for candidates in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District. You can join here .

During this campaign, people frequently ask what Democrats in Congress can do to restrain the Trump Administration. It seems like we aren’t doing anything—yes, the government is shut down, but there are still troops and masked agents in our streets, intimidation of the President’s rivals, illegal tariffs choking our…

In February, just as the second Trump Administration was kicking off, I watched Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s State of the State address . It already seems like years have passed, but even in its first month the administration in Washington had started to turn America’s democracy inside out, and watching the…

There is nobody in America more outraged than me at this administration. It is an affront to my country at every level, from our loftiest founding principles to the daily safety and security of ordinary people. But I know that the way to defeat Trump is not by shouting the loudest. It’s by winning the votes of the…

This week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of senior military leaders to a meeting in Quantico so he could lecture them about setting and meeting higher standards .

The first time a federal judge asked, “Who’s here representing the United States,” and I said, “I am, your honor,” is a moment I will never forget. I was proud to represent my country, and to be part of the Department of Justice, an institution that has been a pillar of American democracy. That makes the disgraceful…

The first time I canvassed in an election was in 2002, as a freshman at the University of Chicago. I didn’t know much about the candidate, but I was 19, it was a year into George W. Bush’s first term, and I was eager to get involved however I could. The College Democrats assigned me a street corner and gave me a stack…

Abuse of presidential power takes many forms. Sometimes it looks like American troops in American streets , or CEOs presenting trophies to the President in the Oval Office .

I already did a post on this , but had to come back to it -

Last week, the CEO of Nvidia negotiated a deal with President Trump to get the licenses his company needs to export its chips to China. To bypass export controls, Nvidia and fellow chipmaker AMD will give a 15% cut of sales to the United States government.

Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. canceled $500 million in contracts and grants funding the development of mRNA vaccines . This follows a decision in May to revoke a $600 million contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine. The Secretary’s rationale—that mRNA…

On Friday, President Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer “after the bureau released monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring in July and large downward revisions to job growth in the previous two months.”

Andrew Yang, Christine Todd Whitman, and David Jolly are forming a new political party, Forward. The party brings together Yang's existing Forward Party with the Serve America Movement and Renew America Movement, led by Jolly and Whitman respectively.