Monday: Three Morning Takes
lies from an american / am i old and out of touch? / “violence intervention” (wait, not like that)
PW Daily
Sep 22, 2025
Lies from an American
Last week, Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor who runs the #1 independent politics newsletter on Substack, Letters from an American, sent a note to her 2.7 million subscribers claiming “the radical right” is distorting the truth about the Kirk assassination, and that the shooter was “not someone on the left.” She was wrong: by all accounts, the shooter was a deranged leftist, meaning Heather just committed the unforgivable sin of misinformation (worse than hate speech, I heard), though she’ll never admit it because she doesn’t have to! This woman makes *checks notes* at least $5m/year ruling a kingdom of batty iPad boomers who parrot her ideas that “America’s best days are behind us” (real quote) and that Trump’s win was an evil oligarchical coup. Idea: If your newsletter’s audience is the size of Chicago’s population, hire a fact-checker (and please stop radicalizing my mom, Heather).
Am I old and out of touch?
Earlier this month, a Senate subcommittee convened for “AI’ve Got a Plan,” a review of the admin's plan for cutting AI regulatory burdens, including an anti-innovation “patchwork of state regulations.” The hearing also coincided with the debut of Teddy Cruz’s SANDBOX Act, legislation that would allow AI developers to avoid federal regulations via 2-year waivers, and while most talk was standard fare (China, jobs, chips), things got spicier after one senator asked about LLM’s training on “woke” data like Wikipedia, which — thanks to a certain media company — we now know suffers from massive ideological capture. As I watched wrinkled Democrat Senators counter with amusing takes like “Gronk [sic] has been found to consistently produce antisemetic hate speech… clearly not woke!”, I realized while I’m personally not capable of determining the right path for the regulatory future of American AI, I sure know who is: technologically illiterate lifelong bureaucrat octogenarians in Washington.
“Violence intervention” (wait, not like that)
As Illinois Governor JB “XXL” Pritzker continues his clash with Trump over crime in Chicago and a potential National Guard deployment, online sleuths recently discovered an… interesting photo on the Governor’s official website. In it, XXL is seen posing with Kellen McMiller, a “community violence intervention worker,” who apparently isn’t doing his job so well on account of he himself is currently facing charges for murder. Yes folks, our little “violence intervention worker” here was apparently involved in a smash-and-grab burglary of a Louis Vuitton store this month, where thieves stole $700,000 in merchandise and sped away into an oncoming vehicle, killing the driver. Now, Pritzker has since taken down the photo, but a humble observation: if you can’t take a random photo with someone currently tasked with “violence intervention” in Chicago… without running the risk of featuring a literal murderer… maybe it’s time to give the National Guard a crack?
