Taylor Swift rollouts are the only things worthy of close reading in 2025

The news, in brief …

• “Liberation Day”: Newsom calls for special election to make good on redistricting threat

  The move comes amid a gerrymandering push by Donald Trump. Read more.

• “F**k that”: Hunter Biden responds to Melania Trump’s demand for an apology over Epstein story

  Facing a $1B defamation suit, Biden refused to walk back statements about Melania Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Read more.

• Baltimore mayor suggests Trump’s targeting “Black-led cities” for obviously racist reasons

  "We cannot overstate the racial undertones here,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Thursday. Read more.

• Man charged with felony for tossing sandwich at “fascists”

  The incident occurred after President Donald Trump deployed federal agents in a show of force in Washington, DC. Read more.

• Meta let its AI chatbot creep on young children

  Internal documents reviewed by Reuters show Meta’s AI guidelines permitted sexual conversations with minors. Read more.

Make me smarter …

Trump, Abbott and the GOP bring Orbán-style autocracy to Texas

As the Lone Star State's Democratic lawmakers resist, national Democrats should take a lesson. Read more.

No need to calm down

Watching Taylor Swift interviews with someone who is plugged in to the pop star’s whole deal can feel like popping on Rowdy Roddy Piper’s “They Live” sunglasses for a stroll around the music section at Target.

Underneath Swift’s inoffensive Top 40 hits is a whole world of encoded messages involving lyrical callbacks, color theory and numerology. Her meticulous eye for detail and love of Easter eggs loads her every public appearance down with meaning. Fan theories are formed in real time every time Swift repeats a number an inordinate amount of times or makes an off-hand remark.

I watched my Swiftie sister watch Taylor Swift’s album announcement on the “New Heights” podcast earlier this week. By the time the leisurely chat with her boyfriend and his brother ended, she was already digging into the significance of dates over a year away and checking in on bread-baking subreddits. It would all seem crazy if Swift hadn’t proven time and time again that she does think this deeply about her every move, rewarding the red-string brigade with dopamine rushes every time they twig a new way to make something Swift said add up to 87 or 13.

It’s enough to make you jealous.

There’s precious little in the United States’ orange era that rewards a deeper look. Donald Trump’s associations with Jeffrey Epstein are granted the aura of a conspiracy theory for the sake of soothing a litigious president, but his friendship with the notorious financier is all too well-known.

The people who claimed for years that Trump and his advisers were playing 5D chess are slow to speak now. In Trump’s second term, white supremacist advisers like Stephen Miller are free to act out their wildest dreams. Bumbling Cabinet officials are regularly outed in leaked text messages full of dunderhead emojis. The official name for the concentration camp in the Florida Everglades is Alligator Alcatraz. It’s all exactly as stupid and mean as it seems.

What do you think? Is there any point in trying to game out the deeper motivations of our conservative government? Should we all don hairshirts and build monasteries to the strains of Swift’s most boring album? Should we all just be happy that Swift is working with Swedes again? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

The GOP plot to gain 40 seats without winning any more votes

Party operatives think gerrymandering, a new Census and a friendly Supreme Court can help keep Republicans in power. Read more.

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