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This past weekend, as I prepared to board a flight from Toronto to New York City, I looked down at my phone to find two pieces of news. One was that the Senate was readying a deal to end the ongoing government shutdown. The other was that my flight was delayed.
I was lucky.

This morning, House Democrats released emails from the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that claim, among other things, that Donald Trump spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. Later in the day, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt if this was true—that Trump had spent hours at Epstein’s place with a sex-trafficking victim.
“These emails,” she replied, “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.

Early last year, Grant Smith received an alarmed message from his wife. She had gotten a text notification about a delayed package, clicked the link, and paid a fee. Then she realized that it was not, in fact, the United States Postal Service asking for her credit-card information—that she had no idea who had just collected her payment info. She quickly canceled the card.
The Smiths had been smished.

Nicolás Maduro sounded remarkably chipper last week for a man about to face off with a United States armada. In his weekly television show—an hour of Maduro as host, lecturer, and interviewee—the Venezuelan president welcomed a question about his foreign allies. He singled out one in particular: Russia.
“We are like this,” he gushed, interlocking his fingers to show the closeness of the bond. “More united than ever.”
“Russia,” the interviewer said—“that great power, right?”
Maduro nodded.

Updated with new questions at 4:05 p.m. ET on November 12, 2025.
The famed 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson was a lover of learning. As the dictionary maker once wrote, he dedicated his life “wholly to curiosity,” with the intent “to wander over the boundless regions of general knowledge.” (He was additionally a lover of getting bored and moving on, writing of how he “quitted every science at the first perception of disgust.” Respect.