Losing My Perspicacity, November 7, 2025

Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me.

A LOT of things happened in the news cycle yesterday, and while I don’t mean to turn this site into a strictly legal newsletter, that’s definitely where the bulk of my time has been spent the last two weeks.

Before we delve into the court cases, I wanted to share this headline from an actual column that appeared in The New York Times, and to which a woman apparently contributed. First, take a look at the original headline, which you can see here:

Hurr durr, dID wOmEN rUIn ThE wORkPlACe?

Imagine using that as a headline in 2025, even on a piece written by noted idiot Ross Douthat. The Times apparently employs at least one person with a head on their shoulders, because they changed the headline and abstract later in the day. Changing up headlines and subheads is a common practice in the never-ending pursuit of clicks, but I’m giving the Grey Lady the benefit of the doubt here.

I love that the change shifts the blame to only certain kinds of women — us mouthy broads who don’t know our place. After all, conservatives have no beef with the tradwives. Alas, as a woman who worked in sports media for a decade and who was, far more often than not, the only woman in the room, allow me to assure you that women did not ruin anyone’s workplace, and only overgrown asshat frat boys think so.

This piece, of course, led to plenty of discussion about unsubscribing to the NYT, which I will admit to having done over and over since the hiring of Brett Stephens in 2017. I’ve also been very vocal about unsubscribing from the Washington Post, and I think everyone else should, too.

But what got my hackles up today was some rando who posted on Bluesky, “You're not very principled if you're working for the NYT at this point. Or at least, it's the wrong damn principles.”

This is the point at which I lost my mind on social media. Is someone actually saying that Jamelle Bouie, Lydia Polgren, Jodi Kantor, and many more of the rank-and-file journalists who work for the Times are unprincipled? That’s outrageous.

I have some experience with this. In the Spring of 2020, as COVID hit and sports shut down one by one (I was on the air when the Big East tournament was called at halftime and Fred Hoiberg looked like he was going to die in the middle of a Big Ten tourney game), I lost my sports talk radio show, which I spent years working towards. At the time, I had two kids in college who needed money for rent and food, and not working was simply not an option for me. So I took a job at Deadspin, one of the few outlets that was hiring, and I’ve been called a “scab” ever since, despite my good standing in my local union. Hell, I was even on the bargaining team and the labor management committee. Yet plenty of people didn’t like Jim Spanfeller, so I was a jerk for working for him.

If I had to guess, I would say that most of the hardworking reporters at the NYT would rather not have intellectual dullards like Douthat and Stephens writing for their paper, either. And I’m reasonably sure no one wants to work for AG Sulzberger any more than they want to work for Jeff Bezos, Alden Capital, or Patrick Soon-Shiong. But jobs don’t grow on trees, and our industry has been decimated over the last 15 years. The day I walked out of the newsroom at Deadspin was the last day I got a paycheck. That was 18 months and hundreds of job applications ago.

The thing that really enrages me about the “you shouldn’t work for X outlet because X person is bad” is the sheer privilege of thinking everyone is in a position to go months without a paycheck or health insurance. And, by the way, where are these morally virtuous owners we’re all supposed to work for, anyway? Most outlets have been bought up by billionaires who are cutting resources and staff left and right. Sure, we’d all love to work for Pro Publica, Mother Jones, or The 19th, but there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of people competing for those jobs.

Oh, and did I mention that Condé Nast, fresh off gutting Teen Vogue, fired more reporters yesterday?

NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS News also had mass layoffs in October. News media is imploding all around us, and journalists are the ones caught in the crossfire and left to fend for themselves.

I think there should be a standing question to anyone who insists that journalists should quit their jobs on principle. It’s this: How many indie publications and newsletters do you financially support?

That, my friends, is how we change the industry. Stop clicking on articles from the big legacy outlets that are beholden to venture capitalists and morally bankrupt millionaires. Instead, give your clicks (and your money) to smaller outlets and individual reporters who are doing the actual work of informing the public, rather than chasing advertising dollars or political approval.

Today: Rhode Island Judge gives Trump administration an earful about SNAP benefits; Judge Sara Ellis tries to rein in ICE in Chicago; One picture captures Trump’s ethos perfectly; and The High Note.

Here we go:

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Judge John McConnell brings the boom

As you probably know, there are two federal cases currently underway regarding SNAP benefits: one, brought by 26 states, is before Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, and a second, brought by a coalition of nonprofits, is before Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island. I’ve been following both, and I have to admit that I’ve rarely been as entertained during a court hearing as I was today.

I did a full-on live-posting of the hearing here, if you’re the kind of nerd who enjoys the nitty-gritty of legalese. And after the TRO was issued, I highlighted the key points in a thread here. But here’s the TL; DR version of what happened:

Defendants (the USDA/Trump administration) have been claiming for weeks that they can’t fully fund SNAP because 1) Congress didn’t appropriate funds for it, and 2) they can’t do anything with Congress shut down. Last week, Judge McConnell told the feds to do one of two things: Figure out how to get partial payments to SNAP recipients by November 5, or pay full SNAP benefits for November. The feds rolled in, banging on about how they’ve done everything they could, and claiming it’s the fault of the states that no one is getting their benefits.

That’s when Judge McConnell walked everyone through the math, told the feds they didn’t try to do shit (paraphrasing), and used Trump’s social media posts in his justification for issuing the TRO. Here are a few of the highlights from Judge McConnell’s order:

• “One cannot champion the public interest while simultaneously adopting policies that frustrate it.”

• “USDA provided no explanation as to why the contingency funds could not be used even though the agency had previously acknowledged in 2019, during the first Trump administration, that such funds could be used during a government shutdown.”

• “The Defendants overlook the fundamental point that compliance is achieved when Americans are fed, not when the federal government shifts the administrative burden of disbursing funds onto the States—especially when there is still no clear disbursement date in sight.”

• “Again, the Court finds it astounding that the Defendants would even choose to go down this path if they were aware of all the difficulties and delays that such partial payment of SNAP benefits would entail. What then of the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the SNAP program? Nowhere in its decision did USDA consider the increased harm that will befall these recipients if they are forced to go without food for ‘a few weeks to up to several months.’”

• “This Court is not naïve to the administration’s true motivations. Far from being concerned with Child Nutrition funding, these statements make clear that the administration is withholding full SNAP benefits for political purposes. Such “unjustifiable partisanship” has infected the USDA’s decision-making, rendering it arbitrary and capricious.”

Honestly, the whole order is a complete mic drop, and so was the hearing. Judge McConnell didn’t even give the feds a chance to respond. He just smacked them down, said, “Court is adjourned,” and turned off his camera. I nearly stood and applauded in my living room.

The upshot is that Judge McConnell ordered the USDA to fully fund SNAP for November immediately. And of course, even though Trump said he would be “honored” to release SNAP funds with guidance from the court, the USDA immediately appealed.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, in Chicago…

Judge Sara Ellis’s much-anticipated preliminary injunction (which comes after a TRO and a full hearing) against ICE and CBP came down in Chicago Headline Club v. Noem. While Ellis was understandably defiant and emotional (she began her ruling from the bench by reading Carl Sandburg’s iconic poem “Chicago”), and she ticked all the boxes when it came to calling DHS’s version of events “not credible,” I’m not sure how much of a difference this case will make, in the end. The Sun-Times’s Jon Seidel did a great live-posting of the ruling.

While the language in Ellis’s preliminary injunction is broader and stronger than in the TRO, I don’t believe it goes far enough, particularly when you have people like CBP head Greg Bovino and Commander Kristopher Hewson, who are convinced they aren’t doing anything wrong, in charge.

For example, let’s look at the language regarding “riot control weapons.” The original TRO prohibited ICE/CBP from using riot weapons on those “who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of law enforcement officers or others.” The language in today’s preliminary injunction, however, prohibits those same officers from using riot weapons “on any Class member, unless such force is objectively necessary to stop the person from causing an immediate threat of physical harm to another person.”

If I’m Greg Bovino or another bad actor who thinks I’m entirely in the right, what’s the difference between my determination that a protestor “poses an immediate threat to my safety” and a protestor on whom “such force is objectively necessary to stop … from causing an immediate threat of physical harm to another person?”

I’m not sure there is a difference. Bovino admitted that he’s never seen a protester whom he didn’t consider a threat, and we’ve seen ICE tossing middle-aged women around with abandon. The clips of Bovino’s deposition proved that he longs for some kind of Minority Report pre-crime division, where he can brutalize people based on what he thinks they want to do.

So when Plaintiffs march back into court next week with a dozen more violations of the preliminary injunction, what comes next? No one knows. And that’s not on Judge Ellis. Our legal system was primarily established on the assumption that the government acts in good faith, and that’s simply not the case here.

The Oval Office is wild

By now, you’ve probably seen this video of this dude passing out in the Oval Office:

I have so many questions. Why did RFK Jr high-tail it out of there like a wanted man? How are there three Karoline Leavitts in the room? What would your first thought be if you came to and found Dr. Oz hovering over you?

Apparently, as the communications teams was ushering everyone out of the Oval Office, the Getty photog, Andrew Harnik, slow-walked his exit, and he managed to snap the photo of a lifetime.

There is an unconscious man three feet from him, and Trump manages to look annoyed that all the focus has shifted to someone else. It’s possibly the most ethos-revealing photo I’ve ever seen.

This moment managed to overshadow every other bizarre thing that happened in that presser, including Dr. Oz telling us he’s hoping for more babies by the midterms (does he think babies vote?) and Trump asking the head of Novo-Nordisk for a piece of his company.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Today is a day for celebration, my friends! Yesterday, our heroic sandwich-thrower, Sean Dunn, was freed by a jury from the shackles of fascism!

And there was much rejoicing throughout the land. Long may he reign.

And finally, let’s give some props to Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), who did this outside Speaker Mike Johnson’s office yesterday:

Now we just need 434 more of her.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend!

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.