Thursday, April 6, 2017

Read: some people to keep you informed.

Do you want to know what's going on in the world and in American politics?  It can be difficult to know who to read and trust, since there's a lot of reporters and pundits who engage in wild speculation or who lack the deep knowledge necessary to provide context.  I follow all these people on Twitter, but you can also just read them directly or subscribe with an RSS reader like Feedly.

A great source for legal matters (especially the Muslim ban) as well as LGBT issues is Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed (@chrisgeidner).  His assessment of legal arguments and proceedings is first-rate.

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman (@MaggieNYT) (often with Glenn Thrush) is an excellent and relentless reporter on the White House in general, particularly the internal dynamics and Trump's thinking.  I read everything she writes, without exception.

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post (@daveweigel) spent years covering libertarian and conservative groups, and as a result he has a great handle on their thinking and that of other movement groups -- without losing his superbly cynical insight into their goals or what's likely to actually happen.

I also read Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) and Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) of 538, who give an invaluable look at demographics and the numbers behind elections.  Before the election, their site got a lot of criticism from the left for giving Trump a 33% chance of winning the presidency (even though the numbers didn't lie and her lead in the electoral college was more tenuous than it appeared).  After the election, the right criticized them for not predicting the outcome (even though they predicted a 3% popular vote victory for Hillary, which turned out to be exactly right).  Spot on and solid analysis.

For much the same reason, I also read Nate Cohn of The New York Times (@nate_cohn).  He analyzes a lot of electoral data as well, and provides good commentary on likely possibilities.

More broadly, I try to keep in touch with general events by reading my local paper, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, as well as whatever comes my way from Twitter recommendations or the like.

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