Events

Former Deadspin editor David Roth examines the evidence in this year's White House Christmas decorations video: Even though Melania is also a cipher whose relationship to her powerful husband has for years seemed tragicomically ceremonial, her Christmas video delivers an insight into a crucial mystery of the Trump aesthetic: Why is all this always so shitty? How is it possible for something so fancified to feel so repellent and cheap? Again, in one sense, there’s just nothing there to find. Trump...

(Say it with me: "Under where?") Australia just hit a record temperature—for the whole country: The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reports preliminary data showing that for Dec. 18, the nationally averaged maximum temperature was 41.9°C. This beat the old record of 40.9°C, which had been set the day before. Before this heat event, the country’s hottest day was Jan. 7, 2013, which had an average high temperature of 40.3°C. Human-caused global climate change is making heat waves such as this one...

Yesterday, the House of Representatives impeached the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress: After 11 hours of fierce argument on the House floor between Democrats and Republicans over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine, lawmakers voted almost entirely along party lines to impeach him. Trump becomes the third president in U.S. history to face trial in the Senate — a proceeding that will determine whether he is removed from office less than one year before he stands for reelection. The...

With only two weeks left in the decade, it looks like the 2010s will end...bizarrely. More people have taken a look at the President's unhinged temper tantrum yesterday. I already mentioned that Aaron Blake annotated it. The Times fact-checked it. And Jennifer Rubin says "It is difficult to capture how bizarre and frightening the letter is simply by counting the utter falsehoods...or by quoting from the invective dripping from his pen." As for the impeachment itself, Josh Marshall keeps things simple...

The President of the United States threw another tantrum today, this time in the form of a six-page letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). It isn't exactly the Gettysburg Address: President Trump on Tuesday denounced what he called a “partisan impeachment crusade” being waged against him by Democrats, calling the effort to remove him an unconstitutional abuse of power and an “attempted coup” that would come back to haunt them at the ballot box next year. “I have no doubt the American people...

On Sunday HBO broadcast the season (and possibly series) finale of Watchmen, which I thought one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. New York Times media critic James Poniewozik agrees: It’s hard to overstate how risky, how primed for disaster, was the challenge that the creator, Damon Lindelof, signed up for. First, to adapt a notoriously hard-to-adapt subversive superhero comic. Then to lovingly, impishly subvert that subversion, extending the story backward and forwards in time. To do all that...

Kansas developer Larry Hall bought a missile silo and turned it into a 15-story apartment complex: Hall was able to buy the long since decommissioned silo for a fraction of its construction cost. He then spent $20m (£15m) transforming it into a cushy bolthole replete with a library, swimming pool, climbing wall, video arcade, shooting range, bar, cinema, and seven floors of private living space. Half floor units sell for $1.5m, full-floor units for $3m and penthouses for $4.5m, cash only. Fifty-five...

Paris has essentially shut down for the past 12 days as transport unions protest pension reform: Au onzième jour de mobilisation contre la réforme des retraites, le trafic restait fortement perturbé dans les transports publics, dimanche 15 décembre. A Paris, le trafic des métros était particulièrement compliqué, avec quatorze lignes complètement fermées. Dans le métro parisien, les lignes automatiques 1 et 14 fonctionnaient normalement, avec un risque de saturation, de même que les lignes Orlyval...

Jeremy Corbyn on Thursday presided over the worst election result of a major UK party since Arthur Henderson lost 235 seats to Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives in 1931. Today Corbyn wrote an op-ed in the Observer today that shows he never had the right stuff to become PM, and needs to go. "I take my share of responsibility," he says, not seeming to understand that the party leader bears complete responsibility for an election loss of this magnitude. He goes on: Writing in the Observer, the Labour leader...

At the moment, Elizabeth Warren has won more votes on her own in an election than anyone else running for the Democratic Party nomination. Here are some of the numbers: Warren, US Senate, 2012: 1,696,346Booker, US Senate, 2014: 1,043,866Bloomberg, New York Mayor, 2005: 753,090Biden, US Senate, 2008: 257,539Sanders, US Senate, 2012: 207,848Buttigieg, South Bend, Ind., Mayor, 2015: 8,515 Until she dropped out, Kamala Harris had won more votes than anyone else, with 7,542,753 voting for her in 2016 for US...