Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
How Putin Got His Preferred U.S. Envoy: ‘Come Alone, No CIA’
Kremlin fueled rise of Trump’s friend Witkoff with prisoner release, sidelining career diplomats.
Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer and longtime golfing partner of Donald Trump, was just days into his job as the new president’s special envoy to the Middle East when he received a tantalizing message from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Vladimir Putin was interested in meeting Witkoff. ... There was just one thing: Witkoff would be expected to come alone, without any CIA handlers, diplomats or even an interpreter, a person familiar with the outreach said.
It is hard to pinpoint a moment in history when businessmen have held such direct sway over matters of war and peace. … This month, Witkoff concluded his sixth trip to Russia, talking with Putin for five hours through midnight. Witkoff has yet to visit Ukraine.
The emergence of Witkoff as envoy to the Kremlin is partly a story of Putin maneuvering to nudge aside America’s diplomats and clasp hands with its billionaires. It wasn’t a hard sell.
It’s a War: Inside ICE’s Media Machine
Messages reveal how the agency has raced to satisfy the White House by pumping out videos of confrontations and arrests.
For the Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs team, the nighttime operation across metro Houston in October was a gold mine.
An ICE video producer shadowed agents as they pulled over and handcuffed more than 120 suspected undocumented immigrants, then sent the footage to a private team chatroom.
Before officials could post the Houston video, they had to figure out how to frame it. Officials did not know if all the arrestees had criminal records, they wrote in the chats, undermining a slogan the team had worked to promote on social media: that ICE targeted the “Worst of the Worst.”
After some discussion, the team decided on a compromise. Instead of arguing they’d snared hardened criminals, officials wrote a caption saying the arrests showed the dangers of “illegal aliens … behind the wheel.”
The video was posted to ICE’s social media channels, where it has been viewed more than 1 million times in total.
Internal communications show how the ICE team has coordinated with the White House, working to satisfy Trump aides’ demands to “flood the airwaves,” as one official urged in the messages, with brash content showing immigrants being chased, grabbed and detained.
They also show federal officials mocking immigrants in crass terms and discussing video edits that might help legitimize the administration’s aggressive stance.
Stephen Miller: The U.S. Citizen Children of Immigrants Are a Problem
As it seeks to end birthright citizenship, the Trump administration is arguing that immigrants bring problems that extend for generations. The data shows otherwise.
When Stephen Miller, one of President Trump’s top advisers, makes the case for the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, he is focused not only on the actions of those who came to the United States from another country.
Increasingly, he blames their children as well.
“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” Mr. Miller said on Fox News this month, adding, “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation.”
The attack line comes as the administration is calling for the Supreme Court to uphold Mr. Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, the long-held principle that children born on American soil are automatically citizens.
While there is no legal basis to revoke U.S. citizenship from U.S.-born children and grandchildren of immigrants, Mr. Miller’s statements signal an even more aggressive effort to remake the country by shedding the recent arrivals and their offspring.
These Young Adults Make Good Money. But Life, They Say, Is Unaffordable.
Economists say that a typical middle-class family today is richer than one in the 1960s. Americans in their 20s and 30s don’t believe it.
A nerdy economics essay recently went viral. It asserted that the federal measure for the poverty line was woefully outdated and that for a family of four, the income needed today to function in American society was $140,000.
Economists derided the essay. They pointed out that the typical middle-class family today is actually much richer than its counterpart in the 1960s, when the poverty measure came about. And, they added, most Americans eat out, have smartphones and take flights, unimaginable luxuries generations ago.
President Trump has tried to dismiss the issue of affordability, saying in a speech last week that it was “a hoax” and “you don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter.”
But in interviews with Americans in their 20s and 30s, they said that the raw numbers did not come close to capturing the reality of their lives. They were all what economists regard as middle class, some making well over $63,360, the median for full-time, year-round workers.
They knew they were not poor. They could afford to buy eggs. But they are contending with an economy that has grown increasingly unequal in recent decades.
Whether realistic or foolhardy, their views seemed to reflect the quiet quitting of a long-held American expectation: that by working hard and acting responsibly, people can attain a life appreciably better than their parents’.
These Boomers Tried Caring for Parents. Now They’re Tidying Up to Spare Their Kids
Baby boomers and Gen Xers are taking steps to ensure their children aren’t left with the financial and emotional toll of caretaking.
Jocelyn Combs set up a filing box with her will and trust. She has designated who will have power of attorney, told friends and family where to find her passwords, and begun culling her possessions, save for mementos and other items she’s set aside for her daughter.
She also had an accessory dwelling unit built on her property in Pleasanton, California. A caregiver could live there, she said. Or she could, and rent out her house for extra income.
It’s all part of her aging plan, drawn from the often-overwhelming experience of caring for her own parents — who both lived into their 90s — and one legacy the 76-year-old is adamant about sparing her only child. Combs is still going through boxes of her parents’ belongings years later.
“It was brutal. The emotional toll, the financial toll, all of it,” Combs said. “I’m trying to set myself up to be less of a burden to my daughter.”
The Ritual Shaming of the Woman at the Coldplay Concert
Kristin Cabot was caught on camera with her boss at a concert. The video went viral. Soon she was drowning in the vitriol of strangers.
Kristin Cabot has come to believe that her silence no longer serves her. It made sense in the beginning, after she appeared on the Jumbotron, aghast, in the arms of her boss at a Coldplay concert on July 16, 2025, a moment that caused an international furor. The original TikTok received 100 million views within days.
Cabot retreated, trying to make things right with the people who mattered most: her two teenage kids; her employer, the tech company Astronomer; and her second husband, Andrew Cabot, from whom she was separated and negotiating a divorce settlement.
In the initial phase, all she could think was: Oh my God, I hurt people. I hurt good people.
Five months after the TikTok bomb became the defining disaster of her life, she described in her first interview since the concert what it feels like to be a punchline and a target.
She was doxxed, and for weeks received 500 or 600 calls a day. Paparazzi camped across the street from her house and cars slowly cruised her block, “like a parade,” she recalled. She received death threats: “Not 900. That showed up in People magazine. I got 50 or 60,” she told me.
Why Dogs Love You So Much, According to Science
Thousands of years of history have secured their status as man’s best friend – and there are ways to strengthen the bond even further.
What is it about dogs and their relationship to humans that has seen them dubbed “man’s best friend?”
According to the experts, it’s down to tens of thousands of years of shared history – not to mention their incredible ability to tune into our emotions. Here’s a brief explanation of just why dogs love their owners so much – and how to deepen your relationship with your hound.
Fundamentally, it’s like any other relationship. Dogs, like humans, are open to the idea of companionship and a relationship that works for both parties. But, as with humans, it’s about give and take, working out what works for you individually, as a couple, and as a family, and working together to accommodate that.
Good stuff today Bill. Thanks.
Great Free for All Friday articles today !! Thank you, Bill !