Quotes of the Week

Plus links to some of the best articles and essays.

Members of the U.S. House Progressive Caucus held a news conference on Thursday vowing to fire Elon Musk, saying President Trump has given the billionaire too much power over taxpayer money. | AP

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular” — Politico headline

• “After several years of breaking even, The Bulwark had its first profitable year in 2024 owing to a combination of paid Substack subscribers, podcast advertising, and YouTube monetization. The Substack, which currently has 76,000 paid subscribers, continues to grow at a rapid clip, amassing between 700 to 1,000 new paid subscribers about every day or two — an impressive number for a small newsroom.” — New York magazine’s Charlotte Klein

• “The way that the Trump administration is handling it — ‘we want the most qualified, we want the smartest, we want this, we want that’ — what you’re really saying is we want white dominance again. That’s what you’re really saying. You want white dominance!” — ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith

• “Just under two weeks ago, I underwent surgery to ensure that I would never have to navigate a pregnancy in Donald Trump’s America. I refuse to let my body be treated as currency by an administration that only sees value in my ability to procreate.” — Michigan state rep. Laurie Pohutsky

• “An obvious point: Elon Musk’s loyalties are to white South Africa and the Alternative fur Deutschland not to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States.” — Bill Kristol

• “The deep state is far preferable to the Trump state.” — Also Bill Kristol

• “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” — Elon Musk

• “A ballot must be signed in order to be counted, so it is important to sign your ballot. We cannot count votes that are illegible or not signed.” — Outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, speaking at the DNC Winter Meeting General Session; Democrats have sued in various jurisdictions to count unsigned mail-in ballots

• “Eight years ago four intel chiefs presented a document they knew to be bogus (the Steele Dossier) to the President-elect, leaked word of the meeting, and with help of Congress launched a new probe that paralyzed government for years. But sure, the coup is now.” — Matt Taibbi

• “The Trump administration is DEI for rich people.” — Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal

• “Sometimes science is wrong. We make progress. We build on the work. And we become more successful. And when you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward.” — Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan, speaking at the RFK Jr. confirmation hearing

• “I have serious concerns about institutionalizing a religious ceremony in the heart of our secular Capitol and about its ties to extremists who advocate for laws to kill all gay people.” — Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, regarding the National Prayer Breakfast, a bipartisan event started in 1953 that every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended

• “President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events.” — ESPN headline

• “Elon Musk crashes and breaks everything he buys — look at what happened when he bought Twitter. It just started crashing again!” — Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, speaking at the “Fire Elon Musk” press conference put on by progressive caucus members on Thursday; WSJ reported yesterday that Musk has actually made Twitter (X) profitable through an extreme focus on efficiency

• “We here in Illinois follow the law. They don’t seem to believe in that at the White House.” — Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who has vowed not to comply with federal immigration enforcement

• “What if Musk used the treasury payment system to fund something really dangerous—like, say, an unsecured laboratory conducting gain-of-function research on deadly viruses—and then was totally immune from dismissal because of civil service protections? That would be scary.” — Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium

• “Those who’ve benefited most from gender identity ideology are men, both trans-identified and not. Some have been rewarded for having a cross-dressing kink by access to all spaces previously reserved for women. Others have parlayed their delicious new victim status into an excuse to threaten, assault and harass women. Non-trans-identified leftybros have found a magnificent platform from which to display their own impeccably progressive credentials, by jeering and sneering at the needs of women and girls, all while patting themselves on the back for giving away rights that aren’t theirs.” — J.K. Rowling

• “Every movement needs a scrappy little dyke, and I am that person!” — Democratic Rep. Becca Balint, speaking at Tuesday’s rally in front of the Treasury Department

• “Shut down the city. We are at war!” — Democratic Rep. LaMonica R. McIver

• “Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire. This is America, this is not your trashy cyber truck.” — Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley

• “Let me tell you something, Mr. Trump. You gonna learn a few lessons from us, and and I’ll be the first one. You and your little friend off of Twitter. Y’all about to find out.” — Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett

• “This has been a reality from day one of MAGA. From day one of MAGA, if you are a public person and you oppose MAGA, you’re going to face threats and harassment at a scale that, you know, we’ve really not experienced much in modern America politics.” — David French

• “We ran a presidential election. If we were playing in a Super Bowl, we started our seventh string quarterback. That’s what happened.” — Democratic strategist James Carville

• “There is some of racism on the right. Nobody denies that. But for some reason the Democrats have no self-regulation of saying things about white people or men where if you changed a few words around it would sound like Rwandan radio during the genocide.” — Zaid Jilani

If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today or 12ft.io.

• Rolling Stone: “‘He Had No Fear’: Ryan Wedding’s Path From Olympic Athlete to Drug Lord”

• Outside: “The True Story of the Yarnell Hill Fire”

• The New York Times: “How My Trip to Quit Sugar Became a Journey Into Hell”

• The New York Times: “The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá”

• Atavist: “Island of Secrets”

• The Guardian: “A flooded quarry, a mysterious millionaire and the dream of a new Atlantis”

• Vanity Fair: “‘The Clock Is Ticking’: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades”

• The Atlantic: “The Perfect Man Who Wasn’t”