The promise of GLP-1 drugs has always depended on people being able to afford them. These drugs still cost hundreds of dollars per month if you’re paying cash, at which point access becomes a privilege: The higher-income executive who wants to trim a few pounds might be able to afford them either way, but the low-income worker who needs the drug to lose significant weight might not be able to afford them — unless their health insurance covers it.

For a while, the trend lines for GLP-1 insurance coverage were positive. As of 2026, roughly two-thirds of private employer plans, which insure half of Americans, were covering GLP-1 medications for weight loss to treat obesity. Over the summer, Medicare launched a new $50-per-month prescription program. The US has struggled with an obesity epidemic for decades, but it looked like powerful drugs to treat it were finally starting to be more seamlessly integrated into the health system.

At least that’s how things appeared earlier this year. But now, private plans are pulling back from GLP-1 coverage. People are being left in the lurch, debating whether to try to pay for these drugs on their own or stop taking medicines they feel are making a real difference for their health.

The dilemma reveals one of the structural flaws in American healthcare. For working-age adults, your insurance depends on your job. Unfortunately, because people no longer stay at the same job for decades, there is not a strong financial incentive for employers to make investments that will benefit your health in the long term — but there is a strong incentive to minimize short-term costs as much as possible. It’s the kind of perverse rationale that could compel employer-sponsored health plans to stop covering a drug that, if taken over the full course of a person’s life, could help them not only lose weight but ultimately reduce their risk of heart disease, kidney disease and other chronic health problems, improving their health and saving all of us money as they get older.

“An employer or an insurer making coverage decisions doesn’t necessarily care if they’re saving Medicare money,” said Dan Sacks, a healthcare economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That’s a classic problem with the American health insurance system, and it’s certainly salient here.”

This mismatch between what’s good for people’s health and what’s good for the corporate bottom line has long been one of the underlying flaws in the US health system. Now access to GLP-1 drugs is shrinking just as these drugs were starting to make a real dent in the US obesity crisis. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Why employer-sponsored health plans are suddenly dropping GLP-1 coverage

From the beginning, insurance coverage was the big question hanging over GLP-1s and their potential to revolutionize US healthcare. But recently, it looked like we’d turned a corner.

When I attended the Aspen Ideas: Health festival over the summer, pharmaceutical reps seemed visibly relieved that GLP-1 coverage had been picking up among private insurers. In 2026, about two out of every three employer-sponsored plans were covering some of these drugs for weight management, up from about 20 percent just the year before.

“They’re recognizing that this is an investment in their workforce,” said Laura Steele, who leads the cardiometabolic health unit at Eli Lilly, which manufactures Zepbound and Foundayo. “Yes, there is a budget, and there is a benefit design that every employer has. That’s real. That’s not going away. But they’re also recognizing the overall cost that they’re experiencing by not dealing with this too.”

But as employers and private insurers make coverage decisions for next year, they are suddenly pulling back. At least 10 percent of employer plans that currently cover GLP-1s for weight loss say they are likely to discontinue coverage in 2027, according to one survey by the Business Group on Health — and that number may still increase. A Mercer survey of large employers found that 6 percent had dropped coverage in 2026 and another 5 percent were planning to in 2027 or actively considering it. A separate report from the Health Policy Commission in Massachusetts found that the number of commercially insured people in the state taking a GLP-1 drug had fallen by 50 percent between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 as private coverage started to drop off. 

Some of the biggest brands in the US are reportedly eliminating or reducing their coverage: PepsiCo, Starbucks, and Lowe’s among them. And their reasons are simple: It’s too expensive. The drugs still carry a high net price tag — $600 or more for a 30-day supply — and potential demand is high (two in every five American adults have obesity). 

When a lot of people start taking an expensive medication all at once, it’s going to raise costs for employer insurance plans — and they have to figure out how to adapt. Insurers set premiums at the start of each year, based on how many people are on the plan and how much healthcare they are expected to need. But if those estimates are off — say, if more people take an expensive GLP-1 drug than the insurer expected — they have to offset those costs somehow, and raising premiums the following year is a common solution. According to one estimate, premiums are projected to grow by 5 to 13 percent due to GLP-1 costs — and the burden of paying those higher premiums is likely to fall on the workers. The employer can also try to limit GLP-1 use by, for example, asking workers to pay more out of pocket for these drugs; according to Mercer, 27 percent of large US employers instituted some kind of utilization controls for GLP-1 drugs over the past year or plan to next year.

They also have the option to simply stop covering these drugs for weight loss altogether — and that’s the route more and more of them are deciding to take. The abrupt reversal has even caught economists like Sacks off guard.

“I was surprised that anyone would do an about-face because I thought they understood the trade-offs well,” Sacks said. “My guess is that it turned out to be more expensive than they anticipated: Take-up is higher, and possibly more people are sticking with it. That’s one reason that you might not want to continue to offer it.”

For employers, the short-term costs of covering a drug often outweigh the long-term benefits that medication may confer, at least from the employer’s POV. One analysis — notably produced by Blue Cross Blue Shield Kansas — concluded that covering GLP-1s for weight loss increased average employee health costs by $7,000 in the first year and another $4,200 in the second, largely due to the cost of the drugs themselves. And yet at the same time, there were no decreases in obesity-related medical events in that time period. Another study from Sacks and his colleagues at Indiana University and the University of South Carolina found that GLP-1 use did not lead to any cost savings over five years.

So in the short term, these employers are arguably making an economically rational decision — but one that may still come at their employees’ expense. “I’m completely screwed,” said one person on Reddit about Cigna’s plans to drop GLP-1 coverage for their own employees. They’re looking at at least $300 for one month’s supply at cash prices. 

They weren’t alone either: “I’m devastated,” said another person, commenting on Starbucks’s decision to stop covering GLP-1 drugs. They said they had an autoimmune condition that had made it difficult to lose weight — until this new class of medicines came along.

Where GLP-1 coverage goes from here

How could we end up here, where it makes good business sense for companies to make a decision that could potentially harm their workers’ health in the long term? It is at least in part a result of the haphazard way the US has ended up insuring people.

When employer-sponsored insurance started to arise in the mid-20th century, eventually becoming the primary way to cover the working-age population, people tended to stay at the same job for a long period of time. In theory, there was a synergy: Companies wanted their workers to stay productive, and so it was worth it for the company to invest in their long-term health via their insurance benefits. And research has found that people who stay with the same company — and the same insurance plan — tend to have better health than those who switch a lot.

But these days, people change jobs all the time or work various gigs to piece together an income. You probably don’t expect to stay at your job for 10 years — and your employer doesn’t expect you to either. Instead, they want to keep their own costs as low as possible in the short term. This leads them to cut GLP-1 coverage, even though doctors do believe that people could benefit tremendously long term from the weight loss these drugs help them achieve and all of its potential health benefits. 

“There are very real health benefits of these drugs,” Sacks told me. “The fact that we don’t find offsets or they’re even more expensive than we thought doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t cover them.”

In theory, the market is supposed to fix the price problem: Drug companies get a period of exclusivity for the drugs they develop, and then, once that time elapses, cheaper generic versions can come onto the market. But generic semaglutide won’t be available in the US until at least 2031 — and for some versions, the generic competitors aren’t going to debut until the 2040s. Offering GLP-1 coverage could become a competitive advantage for employers, a perk they can offer to entice potential workers as part of their benefits package.

Beyond that, though, the path to more affordable GLP-1s is not immediately obvious right now. A lot of people are already willing to pay cash for these drugs — and that may continue as long as people can afford to do it. But with inflation still steadily rising, these drugs could slip out of reach for more and more Americans.

The government could get involved, but, for now, the federal government’s negotiating authority only covers Medicare, not the private plans that are dropping coverage. Serious healthcare reform is probably off the table until at least 2028, and then only if Democrats win both Congress and the White House and decide to make a healthcare package their legislative priority.

But the lesson of these recent developments is that, at some point, the US may have to look seriously at the underlying problem creating this mess in the first place. A patchwork method of insuring people that privileges short-term cost-cutting over people’s long-term health isn’t a real healthcare system.

Searching for your next must-read? Our October 13, 2026 new books video explores the latest arrivals in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Young Adult fiction.

This week’s selection offers something for every kind of reader, from futuristic adventures and fantastical realms to terrifying tales, mysterious supernatural encounters, and captivating coming-of-age stories. Discover fresh additions to the world of speculative fiction and find new titles to spark your interest or earn a spot on your ever-growing reading list.

Subscribe to stay up to date with weekly new release roundups, exciting genre discoveries, and the latest in speculative fiction. Thanks for tuning in, and come back next week as we explore another batch of new Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Young Adult books!

Fishdraw is a single JavaScript file that generates drawings of fish. There’s an option to slow the animation down so you can watch it draw the fish line-by-line.

Former congressperson from the state of Florida and oft-accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz has long said he'd like to face his accusers. Two of them just sued him, alleging he participated in a sex-trafficking scheme.

After years of saying he'd like to confront his accusers, Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 have filed a lawsuit against Matt Gaetz, giving him the opportunity. — Read the rest

The post Trump's almost-attorney general Matt Gaetz is now a defendant in a sex-trafficking lawsuit appeared first on Boing Boing.

‘DOJ Cannot Run Roughshod Over Longstanding Laws’

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise! We are starting off with some good news for a change — and, potentially, the end of one of the Trump Justice Department’s egregious overreach campaigns. For now. 

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.

Facebook CEO and noted alien presence on Earth Mark Zuckerberg took one sip of Guinness and gave the world a face that Famous Campaigns immediately turned into a spec ad for the famous beer brand.

The inevitable billboard: three frames of Zuck trying to process the stout followed by "It's not for everyone. — Read the rest

The post Spec Guinness ad captures the brilliance of stout and lets Mark Zuckerberg be the punchline appeared first on Boing Boing.

Having just promised the American people that robots would not take over the country, Donald Trump announced he'd like a robot to do his job, so he can sit home and watch TV.

"You wouldn't know the difference," claimed Diaper Don, describing his replacement: Bender J. — Read the rest

The post Trump would like a robot Trump to campaign while human Trump watches Trump on TV appeared first on Boing Boing.

The great grey owl basically has a sound cone for a face, which helps it hunt down voles burrowing through snow in the winter.

The owl’s large facial ruff, formed of dense feathers, helps amplify sound and funnel it towards his ears. Through half a meter of snow, the sound of scampering feet is inaudible to us. But not to him. With the help of a special acoustic camera equipped with 60 highly sensitive microphones, we can see what the owl is hearing.

The footage in this video is amazing — and so is the owl’s sense of hearing. A YouTube commenter says “Cat software in Bird hardware. Bad news for the Rodents.” You can watch a short video on the science behind owl hunting techniques and watch the whole episode this is from about how animals use sound (but only in Canada, it seems…VPN works fine tho).

The only problem with this video is that now I want two hours of just closeup footage of the owl’s face and it flying directly towards the camera. Those eyes! And its mid-flight loaf-of-white-bread-shaped body! I would also like the owl to be my friend.

BTW, this clip is from a show called The Nature of Things, which is a CBC nature series that’s been going since 1960. A good thing to have on your radar if you’re looking for well-produced science & nature programs.

Tags: birds · nature · science · sound · video

How many shots are in the average movie? How does it compare to the past? “You might expect the editor to be the most important factor in the number of shots, but in fact, knowing who directed a film accounts for 70% of the variation in its cutting pace.”

Am 19. November 2026 wird Rockstar GTA 6 veröffentlichen und schon heute wurde der zugehörige Launch-Trailer in Umlauf gebracht. Die neuen Szenen stellen einmal mehr das kriminelle Pärchen Jason und Lucia ins Zentrum, das ihr im Wechsel spielen werdet.

Weiterlesen

For the past month, Texas state Rep. James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton had been competing on roughly equal footing in public attention. The two candidates in what is perhaps the country’s marquee Senate race were being searched for at about the same clip, which is what you would expect of a competitive contest in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide in decades. Then right-wing influencers invented a story that Talarico had secretly checked into an Ohio psychiatric facility, and the search traffic around the Democrat exploded. The lie collapsed with almost embarrassing speed, and the people who spread it now face potential legal exposure. 

But its political purpose was achieved anyway. By the time the story fell apart, the damage had already been done: A candidate’s health had become a national political spectacle, a social media feeding frenzy had swallowed the news cycle and a Republican politician facing serious questions about his own conduct had been handed a convenient distraction.

This is what Talarico calls the “rage economy.” At a CNN town hall on Wednesday, he described a system in which conspiracy theorists collect clicks, social media platform owners collect profits and the public gets angrier without becoming any better equipped to solve the country’s problems. The Talarico hoax shows exactly how MAGA media governs the information war. While we watched a fake scandal implode, a very real one centering on Paxton slipped by.

The episode began when Talarico spent nine days off the campaign trail recovering from a bout of the flu. There was never any genuine mystery about his whereabouts. He had appeared virtually at an event in early October to inform attendees that he had come down with the illness. But Paxton saw an opening and used it. The attorney general demanded “proof of life” and set up a tip line for information about his opponent’s whereabouts. He led a “Where is James Talarico?” chant at a rally. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “James TalaFREAKo” was “MISSING IN ACTION.”

MAGA influencers filled in the innuendo with the cruelest narrative. Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt claimed to have sources who said Talarico was in a psychiatric facility. By Sunday afternoon, the rumor had acquired its supposed smoking gun. Nick Sortor, a conservative influencer known for filming scuffles outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, and Rhein Amacher, a self-described “right-wing provocateur,” claimed that an employee at the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio, had confirmed that Talarico was discharged that evening. Sortor posted a short audio clip, and Elon Musk amplified the claim repeatedly from his account. Within hours, the story had spread across X with millions of views. According to the reporting cited in Talarico’s own account of the episode, 50 accounts pushed the claim within 20 minutes and those posts accumulated 9.3 million views. One account posted the same text 83 times in under two hours.

The problem was that the “proof” was not proof. The full recording, obtained by The Bulwark, revealed that the person on the phone repeatedly denied that anyone named James Talarico was in the hospital system. The candidate said he had never even been to Ohio. The timeline was equally impossible: Amacher said he made the calls on Saturday evening, but Talarico had already appeared at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Friday and attended a Kacey Musgraves concert the next day. He could not have been discharged from an Ohio psychiatric facility on Saturday because he was visibly back in Texas. By Sunday evening, the hospital itself issued a flat public denial that Talarico had never been a patient.

Naturally, the self-correcting mechanism of truth did not immediately penetrate the right-wing ecosystem. Musk had already supercharged the claim. The falsehood had been viewed millions of times before the correction arrived. Right-wing media figures like Megyn Kelly continued demanding answers even after the hospital issued its official rebuttal, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller kept conspiracy-posting long after The New York Times reviewed and reported on time-stamped security images proving Talarico was safely at his home in Austin during the disputed window of time.

The initial burst also illustrates how a relatively small number of high-profile accounts can set the agenda for a much larger audience. This is the difference between an information ecosystem that rewards accuracy and one that rewards attention. In the former, a claim becomes more credible as evidence accumulates. In the latter, a claim can become more influential simply because more people have seen it. The only people who benefit from a manufactured outrage are the people selling it and the politicians who can hide behind it.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

And hide is precisely what Paxton needed to do. On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that only days after being indicted for embezzlement, a fugitive donated $25,000 to the attorney general. The paper also reported that Paxton rang in 2025 at a New Year’s party in Dubai attended by two men federal prosecutors had indicted for allegedly embezzling millions from an Illinois hospital. One of those men was Anosh Ahmed, who according to records from the Texas Ethics Commission, gave Paxton $190,000 between 2022 and 2024. 

These are the kinds of facts that, in a normal campaign, would dominate the week. A sitting state attorney general taking money from people accused of looting a hospital is a story about who he works for — a man accused of being a criminal or the people of Texas. Instead, it was buried under a fabricated tale about his opponent’s mental health.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Paxton personally scripted the Ohio hoax. I am saying something that does not require a conspiracy at all. The right has built an incentive structure in which the people with the biggest megaphones are rewarded for flinging dirt and are never penalized when it turns out to be false. Paxton’s own conduct fits that structure like a glove. He fueled the “Talarico is missing” narrative from the stage and through his tip line. He benefited when the fog rolled in. The MAGA influencer ecosystem did the rest. Nobody had to give an order.

Consider also the broader pattern of the attacks on Talarico. A pro-Paxton super PAC ran an ad that placed the Democrat’s face on a cutout in a dress. Allies of Trump have spent months insinuating that Talarico is somehow insufficiently masculine, that he is “beta,” that he is unmarried and that questions about his sexuality are fair game. At a Wednesday rally for Paxton in Tyler, Texas, Vice President JD Vance openly suggested that Talarico is gay. Republicans have even attempted to other him through food, calling him a vegan. (He is not.) Taken together, the mental hospital hoax belongs to the same family of attacks. It is an attempt to make a candidate seem strange and unfit through innuendo because the substance of his message is hard to rebut. A candidate who talks about food and gas prices and community is difficult to caricature as a threat. So MAGA media built a caricature — Talafreako — instead.

Some of it deserves laughter. A man tricking a hospital receptionist is not exactly a criminal mastermind. But the stupidity is the tell, not the excuse. MAGA media do not need smart lies anymore. They need fast ones, repeated at volume across a captured platform and timed to drown out real reporting about real corruption. 

Earlier fiascos like Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt’s Jack Smith flop should have taught them caution. Instead the right has learned from Trump that there is no penalty for being wrong in public — as long as you are wrong at scale and never look back.

The post A viral Talarico hoax drowned out Paxton’s corruption story appeared first on Salon.com.

REBECCA MATTE has joined kt literary. She was previously at Bradford Literary Agency.

MEGAN LALLY is now repre­sented by Joanna Volpe of New Leaf Literary & Media. Lally’s “romantic gothic horror” To Death, We Dance and another title went to Vicki Lame at Wednesday Books at auction via Mandy Hubbard of Emerald City Literary Agency. UK rights sold to Pan Macmillan.

Death of the Author by NNEDI OKORAFOR and The Rush by BETH LEWIS are among the five titles shortlisted for the eighth annual Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award. The winner will be announced October 1, 2026 and receives a handmade glass bell and a cash prize of £2,000.

MARISSA LINGEN’s SF That Fatal Discontent sold to Ardyce Alspach at Union Square & Co via Kurestin Armada of Root Literary.

SARATOGA SCHAEFER sold Zeroth, “in which a chronically lonely artist signs up for an AI boyfriend beta test,” to Stephanie Manova at Podium Publishing via Amy Giuffrida of Belcastro Agency.

TAMSYN MUIR sold standalone fantasy Floralinda, “a subversive fairy tale blended with a desperate dungeon crawl” and expansion of novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, to Carl Engle-Laird at Tor Books via Jennifer Jackson of Donald Maass Literary Agency. UK rights sold to Tor UK.

AI JIANG sold dark fantasy Vessel Eater, “pitched as Mulan meets The Ghost Bride,” to Vi­engsamai Fetters at Erewhon via Danai Christopoulou of The Tobias Literary Agency.

MICHAEL F. FLYNN’s The Shipwrecks of Time, “in which a man who has stayed alive since the early Middle Ages will stop at no length to keep his immortality a secret,” went to Shahid Mahmud at Caezik SF & Fantasy.

Four books in DEVNEY PER­RY’s dystopian City of Saint series went to Susan Barnes at Bramble for eight figures at auction via Ge­organa Grinstead of The Seymour Agency. UK rights went to Gillian Green at Bramble UK for seven figures at auction.

WILL WIGHT’s Overworld went to Lindsey Hall at Tor in a pre-empt via Seth Fishman of The Gernert Company (NA).

J.S. MERESMAA’s short story collection Tears for the Sea, trans­lated by Greta Katz and Christina Saarinen, went to Wizard’s Tower.

SARAH BETH DURST sold “cozy fantasy” The Ninth Life of an Erstwhile Witch and the fifth and sixth books in the Spellshop series to Ali Fisher and Dianna Vega at Bramble for seven figures via Andrea Somberg at Harvey Klinger. UK rights sold to Gillian Green at Tor UK via Chris Scheina at Macmillan.

AR FREDERIKSEN sold “coast­al gothic horror novel” Portrait of Two Women and another book to Daniel Carpenter at Titan Books via Christine Goss of FinePrint Literary Management.

CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG sold A Charm for Mythical Beasts, “a cozy fantasy version of All Creatures Great and Small” to Julia Elliott at Voyager; Holmberg’s contemporary fantasy romance Willow Vane went to Bria Ragin at Delacorte, both via Hayley Nus­baum and Joseph Veltre of Gersh Agency.

EUGEN BACON sold short story collection Betwixt, Children of the Storm: Sauútiverse Stories, and “Norse murder mystery no­vella” Jintu to Nick Wells at Flame Tree Collections.

SHANNA MILES’s contempo­rary fantasy The Witch of Star Jasmine went to Elizabeth Agy­emang at 47North via John Cusick of Folio Literary Management.

J.D. SOUTHWELL’s Ezra and the Forbidden Scroll, first in a dystopian epic fantasy series, plus two more books sold to Kei­sha Mennefee at Honey Blossom Press.

ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX’s Fixed Stars, a re-imagining of Sylvia Plath’s life, went to Alexa Wejko at Soho Press via Michelle Brower of Trellis Literary Manage­ment.

SARAH DAY sold Moonchaser, “a courier’s discovery of a forsaken body leads to a remote mining settlement strained by murder, ambition, and secrets,” to Mark Teppo at Underland Press.

LEGION20’s Supreme Magus and two more titles went to Rhett Bruno at Aethon & Vault. Damian Wassel will edit.

JKSMANGA sold My Vampire System and two more titles to Rhett Bruno at Aethon & Vault. Damian Wassel will edit. JKS­Manga sold The God Slayer with L.E. GRAVES to Bruno at Aethon & Vault in a separate deal with two more books via M.H.F. Saint of Achilles Literary Agency.

ANNA SHOMSKY’s The Abbey of Saint Zosimos went to Kayla Mullinax Puga at Ooligan Press. Isabel Matthews will edit.

REBECCA F. KENNEY’s Rift­walker duet sold to Kelly Smith at Zaffre via Nicole Resciniti of Alliance Rights Agency on behalf of Allyson D’Antonio at Midnight Rose.

ANNE BISHOP’s third book in the Isle of Wyrd series went to Anne Sowards at Ace via Jennifer Jackson of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

ANDREA BARTZ sold specula­tive thriller Delete Your Account to Hilary Rubin Teeman at Bal­lantine via Alexandra Machinist of CAA.

DIANA PETERFREUND sold Ghost/Writer to Susan Barnes at Wildthorn with another title in a pre-empt via Kate Schafer Tester­man of kt literary.

MAX WALKER’s romantic fan­tasy Dating & Dragons went to Thaisheemarie Fantauzzi Pérez at Alcove Press via Kirsten Lang of Zeno Agency.

JAMES L. SUTTER’s Hearts Against the Machines, “a gay romance between a young medic and a newly paralyzed soldier in a field hospital for humanity’s doomed resistance after robots massacre civilization,” went to Marcy Harris at Alcove Press via Josh Adams of Adams Literary.

GRYFFIN MURPHY’s roman­tasy Ash’s Airborne Apothecary sold to Meg Hood at Bindery Books via Brent Taylor of TriadaUS Literary Agency.

CLAIRE WINN sold Shadecall­er, first in a romantic dystopian fantasy duology, and a second title to Amanda Ferreira and Stephanie Alleyne at Random House Canada via Kaitlyn Katsoupis of Belcastro Agency.

LEXI C. FOSS and ANNA FURY sold Rebel Bloodlines and an untitled book sold to Lizzie Poteet at Bantam Dell via Amy A. Collins of Talcott Notch Literary Services.

Brittany Ziegler writing as BRIT­TANY BADAHSS sold Salt Eden, “a selkie romantasy-eco thriller,” to Leah Wilson at Benbella Books via Amanda Elliott of Movable Type Management.

VICTORIA M. SORENSON sold An Immortal’s Grievance, “a gender-bent paranormal fantasy retelling of Dracula,” to Caroline Timmings at Alcove Press in a pre-empt via Liz Gettle of Myth Literary Agency (world).

E. CATHERINE TOBLER’s Sour Girl went to Tee Tate at City Owl Press via Jennie Goloboy of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

JENNIFER ASCIENZO’s The Golden Lord and The Butterfly Princess went to Tanya Anne Crosby at Primera.

ELIZABETH DEAR sold three books in the Shifter Guardians series to Sarah McCabe at Scarlett Press via Katie Reed of Katie Reed Literary.

ANASTASIA RYAN’s Ruin, first in the Daughters of the Black Tide trilogy, sold with two more titles to Meredith Wild at Page & Vine via Jess Gilbert of D4EO Literary Agency.

BREANNE RANDALL’s The Se­cret Society of Second Chance Magic went to Daniel Ehrenhaft at Blackstone Publishing via Natalie Lakosil of Looking Glass Literary & Media.

CHRISTINE WITCHER sold Congratulations, Your Fake Boy­friend Is Evil and another title to Kimberly Laws at Gallery via Brent Taylor while part of TriadaUS Liter­ary Agency.

AMALIE HOWARD’s The Eclipse in the Mirror and another book went to Liz Berry and Jillian Stein at Blue Box Press via Thao Le of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

JENNIFER NATALYA FINK sold A Mischief to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore at Bunny Presse via Amanda Annis of Trident Media Group.

CATRIONA WARD sold The Solitude, “a supernatural tale in which a personal assistant aboard a superyacht must try to survive the voyage as the affluent passengers are murdered one by one,” and another book to Kelly Lonesome at Nightfire via Robin Straus of Robin Straus Agency on behalf of Jenny Savill of Andrew Nurnberg Associates. UK rights went to Sophie Robinson at Night­fire UK via Jenny Savill of Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

MATS STRANDBERG’s “gothic folk horror” The Muse went to Michael Homler at St. Martin’s via Brittney Payer at Pan Macmillan on behalf of Elisabet Brannstrom of Grand Agency.

LUKE DUMAS sold Forever Home and Fury on the Waves to Loan Le at Atria via Maria Whelan of Mushens Entertainment.

BITTER KARELLA’s untitled gothic novel and another untitled campus novel sold to Angelica Chong at Run For It via Julie Gou­rinchas of Bell Lomax Moreton Agency.

MARIA TUREAUD’s Her Blood Is Ruin, pitched as reclaiming the folklore that inspired Dracula, to Elizabeth Trout at Kensington via Amy Giuffrida of Belcastro Agency.

M.I. MINAEVA’s Saint’s Hotel, “pitched as The Shining meets Silent Hill,” went to Bindery Books via Miriam Cortinovis of Ki Agency.

JEAN-BAPTISTE DEL AMO sold The Ravaged Night to Chris­topher Richards at Scribner via Laurence Laluyaux of Rogers, Coleridge & White.

JOSHUA BLACKWOOD sold Our Boy to Cassandra Thompson at Quill & Crow. Mathew Reyes will edit.

PHILIP FRACASSI sold short fiction collections Behold the Void, Beneath a Pale Sky, and No One is Safe to Alan Lastufka at Shortwave via Elizabeth Copps at Confluence Literary Agency.

ANIA AHLBORN sold supernat­ural novel Valerie to Ed Schlesing­er at Gallery via David Hale Smith of Inkwell Management.

STEVEN PATCHETT’s Flock for a Dead God went to Alex Woodroe at Tenebrous Press.

KRISTAL STITTLE sold The Devil’s Address to Alex Woodroe at Tenebrous Press.

CHRIS FORMANT and GARY M. KREBS’s Mortuary Tree, “where a scientist experimenting on combining human and plant DNA discovers an ancient ritual of burying humans inside hollowed trees to form a monstrous new hybrid species,” went to Anthony Ziccardi at Permuted Press.

TYLER JONES’s horror and supernatural short fiction col­lection Arson by Design sold to Mitch Hull at Rapture Trade via Elizabeth Copps of Confluence Literary Agency.

DAVID PEAK sold horror novel XLR8 to Benjamin DeVos at Apoc­alypse Party.

AIDEN THOMAS’s Remember Me, “a twist on Disney Pixar Coco for the Twisted Tales series,” went to Heather Knowles at Disney-Hyperion via Jennifer March Solo­way while part of Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

I.V. MARIE sold Cursed and Crowned, first in a romantic high fantasy duology for young adults and another title to Lydia Gregovic at Delacorte via Ariele Fredman and Gwen Beal of UTA. UK rights sold to Sarah Levison at Electric Monkey via Stephanie Thwaites of Curtis Brown UK.

ALEXIS AURIGEMMA’s fantasy Sisters of Sun and Shadow went to Tamara Grasty at Page Street Kids via Elizabeth Copps of Con­fluence Literary Agency. Kumari Pacheco will edit.

A.K. LIM sold YA fantasy Gar­den of Venom and another book to Hoda Agharazi at Mayhem Books via Emily Forney of BookEnds. UK rights went to Rebecca Hilsdon at Michael Joseph.

EMMA CLANCEY sold YA con­temporary fantasy This Blood Will Betray Us to Claire Stetzer at Amulet via Jim McCarthy of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

LOLA STVIL sold Rage of An­gels and at least one other book to Kwame Alexander at Kwame Alexander Books via Allison Rem­check of Stimola Literary Studio. Margaret Raymo will edit.

OLIVIA SUN’s paranormal fan­tasy We Rose from the Sea and another book went to Alvina Ling at Alvina Ling Books in a pre-empt via Gwen Beal of UTA.

SCOTT REINTGEN sold Tita­nos, an SF retelling of the Titanic, to Kate Prosswimmer at Margaret K. McElderry Books via Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency.

JULIA ALEXANDRA sold duol­ogy Hunt the Wild Night and Tame the Vengeful Dark to Eileen Rothschild at Wednesday Books via Ellen Goff of HG Literary.

HELEN COMERFORD’s The Cafe at the End of the World went to Amber Flame at Generous Press via Christabel McKinley of David Higham Associates. Elaina Ellis will edit. UK rights went to Bloomsbury UK Children’s.

SAYANTANI DASGUPTA’s Daughter of the Sun and another title went to Alexandra Cooper at Quill Tree via Brent Taylor while part of TriadaUS Literary Agency.

EMMA LORD sold MJ Loves Spider-Man to Brittany Rubiano at Random House Children’s via Luci­enne Diver of The Knight Agency.

RENA BLAKE sold debut novel Nostalgia, “in which a woman living in a world engineered to erase overstimulation discovers a forbidden word—nostalgia,” to Jen Monroe at Berkley at auction via Emma Leong of Janklow & Nesbit UK.

CONSTANTIN FLORIN BOS­NEAG’s debut, space opera House of Wolves went to Lawrence Knorr at Hellbender Books.

CORVIN A. DOUPAGNE’s de­but, “queer dark academia fantasy” The Academy of Macabre Arts went to Elana Gibson at Alcove Press via Rebecca Podos of Neigh­borhood Literary.

MICHELLE DENHAM’s debut Hell Princess and another book sold to Amy Baxter at Avon UK via Michelle Hauck of Storm Literary Agency.

S.H. CARE’s debut, romantasy The Edge of the Blade sold to Maxine Shen at Alcove Press via Laura Bennett of Liverpool Liter­ary Agency.

CLAIRE GAYLE and MIKE GAY­LE sold debut Not Quite Myself to Leah Mol at Park Row Books in a pre-empt via Amy Mitchell of United Agents on behalf of Ariella Feiner. UK rights went to Clare Gordon at HQ at auction.

CHRISTINA GONZALES sold debut Tongues, “a work of super­natural femgore and body horror,” to Ed Schlesinger at Gallery via Ron Eckel of CookeMcDermid.

JONATHAN MARX’s debut Bump in the Night went to Randall Lotowycz at Quirk Books.

SOPHIA ESCAJEDA sold debut Sins of Levaria to Jean Lowd at Creative James.

EMILY VALE’s debut Wild Thing went to Cassandra Thomp­son at Quill & Crow.

NATASHA MIHELL sold debut, “sapphic, gothic horrormance” Malivestra to Marcy Harris at Alcove Press via Clara Chuiton of The Rights Factory.

CLARE OGAWA sold debut This Town Will Eat You Alive to Dina Davis at Hanover Square Press in a pre-empt via Jenny Bent and James Mustelier of The Bent Agency.

ANNALEE NEWITZ sold no­vella Noodle Union, a sequel to Automatic Noodle, to Stephanie Stein at Tordotcom via Laurie Fox of Linda Chester Literary Agency.

CHERYL S. NTUMY, XAN VAN ROOYEN, and J. UMEH will edit Sauúti Love Songs for Nick Wells at Flame Tree Press via Bieke van Aggelen at African Literary Agency.

ELLEN DATLOW will edit an­thology Dark End of the Street, featuring Dana Cameron, Clay McLeod Chapman, Rachel Har­rison, Nick Mamatas, George Sandison, and others, for R.B. Wood at Ruadán via Merrilee Heifetz of Writers House. Datlow will also edit anthology Bad Sex for Tachyon Publications.

JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS and OLIVIE BLAKE will edit dark academia anthology Forbidden Knowledge, featuring authors such as Alix E. Harrow, Alexis Hen­derson, Ken Liu, and Emily Tesh, for David Pomerico at Voyager via Seth Fishman of The Gernert Company for Adams and Amelia Appel at TriadaUS Literary Agency for Blake.

THOMAS HA sold novella Sons of Nod to Avery Davis at Tordot­com via Michael Curry of Donald Maass Literary Agency. Ann Van­derMeer will edit.

KIRSTY THOMAS is now the Assistant Publisher of Uncanny Magazine.

SHELDON TEITELBAUM has been appointed senior editor of BC BookWorld.

Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer, reporting for The Washington Post (News+ link; Archive.today link):

A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member.

Tech giants Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount, the list shows. The Adelson family, one of the GOP’s largest donor dynasties, committed that sum as well, as did billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of telecommunications company Dish Network.

Absent from the list is Trump himself, who has said that he is helping to pay for the project. “It’s being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine,” he said last year, days after demolition began on the old East Wing.

The White House publicly identified 37 people, companies and foundations as donors last October, without revealing the amount of their individual gifts.

The list obtained by The Post, an internal spreadsheet used to track contributions for the fundraising effort, contains the source, date and amount of all 67 donations above $10,000 recorded as of late last month. It shows a total of $333 million from private donors, aligning with the administration’s public statements. Additional records, also internal to the fundraising effort, provide more detail about the donations and indicate that at least $77 million came from donors who requested anonymity.

In addition to being a shameful display of abject corruption, it’s also a shameful act of support for horrendous architecture. This entire edifice ought to be destroyed — I won’t vote for any Democratic candidate in the 2028 primary who doesn’t pledge to knock all this Trump cack to the ground in January 2029. That’s table stakes.

Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World. “The epic story of how a handful of surprisingly simple mathematical ideas have sparked today’s technological breakthroughs — from Netflix’s recommendation algorithm to medical imaging to AI…” Interesting!

A Quick Heads Up

For transparency reasons, I like peeling back the curtain on any changes we make to Morning Memo — but doing so always runs the risk of creating some confusion. So let me be really clear upfront: The change I’m about to mention doesn’t require you to do anything differently on your end.

Beginning next week, we’re going to be using a new email provider to send out Morning Memo each day. If you already receive Morning Memo by email, it will still come to you the same as usual, but it will come directly from TPM instead of from Substack. It might look a tad different in your inbox — and the email itself will look more like TPM — so I wanted you to be aware in advance.

You’ll still be able to read Morning Memo in the email version or on Substack or at TPM. Your choice.

We’re making this change because in this deeply fractured media world, we’re trying to build out the TPM ecosystem and not be overly reliant on outside platforms. Better to live and die on our own merits than be subject to the vagaries of third parties.

OK, let’s get to today’s news.

A Hugely Important Distinction

As I feared, the developing story on the Trump DOJ targeting actual ballots in Los Angeles County is creating some confusion.

I tried in yesterday’s Morning Memo to make clear that this was different in kind and degree from the Trump administration’s previous efforts to purge voter rolls in advance of the election. But the reactions I’ve seen since, both to what I wrote and in the larger coverage, suggest that’s still not coming across entirely clearly.

Ironically, the Trump DOJ turns out to be helpful in this regard because it’s now admitted to NBC News that this is in fact different from a purge of voter rolls: “A DOJ spokesperson said the department is asking California to sequester ballots, not change their voter list.”

Now, the Trump DOJ has its own reasons for making that distinction, among them trying to get around the federal statute that bars the mass purging of voter rolls in the 90 days before the election. But in this instance what the Trump DOJ is saying also happens to be true — and the truth is even more damning. Its election interference is no longer hypothetical; it’s happening now while real ballots are being cast.

Once you make the category distinction between voter rolls and actual ballots already cast or soon to be cast, the seriousness of the threat from the federal government becomes a lot more obvious. The Trump DOJ is demanding that a specific batch of ballots be sequestered and not counted until citizenship is confirmed — an additional step in the tabulation process not provided for by law and which experts say would lead to a rushed and sloppy process that likely to disenfranchise legal voters.

The threat is serious even if the Trump DOJ is unable to cite any lawful authority for its demand to California and even if there is no legal basis for it to order states to sequester ballots of people the Trump DOJ claims to have identified as “likely noncitizen voters.”

With that framework in mind, let’s run through the latest developments and the big questions still outstanding …

The Latest From California …

• READ: The Oct. 13 demand letter that acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter (the No. 2 official at DOJ!) sent to California Secretary ‌of State Shirley Weber.
• READ: McCotter sent a virtually identical letter to Dean Logan, the top election official in Los Angeles County.
• A “Sticky Note”!?! In a statement, Secretary ‌of State Weber revealed that the “password-protected thumb drive” containing the Trump DOJ’s list of “likely noncitizen voters” that McCotter references in his letters was accompanied by … wait for it … a sticky note with the password on it. Top notch information security going on there at the Trump DOJ.
• Say More About “Election Integrity”: Popping an unsecured thumb drive (see sticky note above) into a USB port in your election office is just not something election administrators not named Tina Peters would dream of doing. “We have not accessed the drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols,” Logan, the Los Angeles County election official, said in a statement. “We do not consider the device a secure medium.” This is not the first time that the “election integrity” crowd has revealed how little regard it has for actual secure processes and procedures.

JUST IN: Trump DOJ List Challenged in Court

This morning, the UCLA Voting Rights Project, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and a Los Angeles resident, sought a temporary restraining order to preempt the Trump DOJ’s actions in California.

The requested TRO, filed in an existing case in D.C. against Attorney General Todd Blanche and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, seeks to block the Trump DOJ from coercing California officials into using its purported list of “likely noncitizen voters” to withhold ballots from voters or to segregate and not count ballots already cast.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan did not immediately scheduled a hearing on the TRO but set a deadline of 5 p.m. ET Friday for the parties to file a proposed briefing schedule.

What We Still Don’t Know

The big outstanding questions include:

• How many people are on the Trump DOJ list? Since McCotter doesn’t say in his letters and California officials haven’t even opened the file, we don’t know how long the Trump DOJ’s list of “likely noncitizen voters” actually is. A DOJ spokesperson allowed to the LA Times that the number is “in the thousands.” That’s a pretty big range.
• Did all or just some California counties receive a similar letter from the Trump DOJ? Similar letters were mailed out to other California counties, CBS News reports, but it’s not clear if it went to all or just some of them.
• Has the Trump DOJ targeted other states with similar demand letters? While the thrust of the Trump DOJ’s election-chaos has been aimed at blue states, there are tight House races in red states, too, where chaos might serve to delegitimize election results unfavorable to the GOP. Also worth noting that red state officials might be cooperative and not as quick to go public as California officials were.

If you know of similar efforts by the Trump DOJ in other states, please get in touch with me via the encrypted methods here.

‘Amateur Hour at the Department of Justice’

UCLA election law expert Rick Hasen, in a not-so-succinct headline: “DOJ’s Threat Letter to California Voting Officials with a 48-Hour Deadline is Amateurish Political Theater Aimed at Sowing Chaos, Not to Mention a Demand That Likely Violates Federal Law and Election Security Practices”

The Retribution: Ilhan Omar Edition

The one-two punch of retributive investigations of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) by both the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice is looking worse the more that comes out:

• Denaturalization Is Trump’s Goal: The WSJ confirms that the investigation of Omar is “aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her.”
• Flashback: D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who touted her office’s role in the DOJ investigation of Omar during a Fox News appearance this week, was suspended by the same network in 2019, when she hosted a show there, for on-air comments about Omar: “Omar wears a hijab, which, according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested.” Pirro said at the time. “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
• Speech or Debate Clause: U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh of D.C. did in fact limit the scope of the search warrant for Omar’s D.C. home after a protracted back and forth, CNN reports. In doing so, Sharbaugh reportedly cited precedent that preserves the protections for member of Congress contained in the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Nonetheless, Omar’s phone was among the items seized during the search of her home, NBC News reports.

Trump: Execute the Leakers

News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

I ran across this post on Instagram by Bobby in Space (who posts about design and the psychology of place) and wanted to pull it onto the actual internet. Here are some snippets of his “5 hills I will die on as someone who studies the psychology of place”. I don’t think these are universal (e.g. people who live in rural areas likely prioritize other needs) or even necessarily the most important considerations (climate, sunlight, crime, schools), but they resonated with me.

1. Your 10-minute radius matters more than almost anything else about where you live: Think about what you can get to in ten minutes without making it a whole thing. I can get coffee, get groceries, go to a park, and go to a friend’s place.

This is the biggest thing that was missing for me living in rural VT for the past 10 years. My 10-minute radius required a car to access and even then was not teeming with options. My 10-minute radius here in Tokyo is, obviously, bonkers. It makes me so happy. A photo I took inside my 10-minute area a couple of weeks ago:

2. More space can give you a smaller life: This one I’ll actually argue about. Idk why we’re obsessed with getting more sq footage, but sometimes the bigger house means you spend way more time inside it. House, car, work, car, house. Meanwhile, someone in a tiny apartment might walk downstairs, grab coffee, run into someone they know, walk to dinner, stop at the park. Technically they have less space. Butttttt their actual life might be way bigger.

One of the things living in NYC taught me was how to treat the city as an extension of your home. I’m not sure people who live in rural and suburban areas think that way about the relationship between their homes and locations.

3. The best neighborhood amenity might literally just be other people outside. […] You don’t even need to talk to any of them. Just seeing other people out living their lives makes you feel like you’re part of something.

Yep. I have been so missing this in my life. My first few days here in Tokyo, I was craving being in huge crowds of humanity so much that I spent a lot of time in ultra-busy areas like Shinjuku and Shibuya.

4. Moving somewhere new will change you, just probably not in the way you think: trust me, I still tend to do this. I think that a new city can solve all my problems. But it will not. You’re still going to be you.

Haha, yeeeeep. Even a month into my travels, I have been disappointed to learn that my bad habits are still with me. Would really like to speak to the manager about that one…

5. Where your friends live should influence where you live way more than we admit: I don’t even feel the need to explain this one. Relationships are the most important thing you’ll do in your life. Go live near people that light you up

Even though it’s halfway across the world from where I’ve been living for the past 50+ years, I’ve seen more friends here in Japan in the past month than in the past 3 months in VT. It’s not going to be like that everywhere I go and I’m not near the most important folks in my life here, but it’s nice to have it while I’m here.

Tags: cities · travel

“Democrats have been way too timid and modest in their expectations in the past. There’s a real chance for something big happening with this election, and I’m kind of old. So why not see if you can if there’s anything you can do to help?”

That’s a quote from Steve Pajcic, who was a politician himself decades ago and appears to have made a bundle of money over the years and has become a fairly prodigious philanthropist. There’s a Times write-up of him today — that’s where the quote comes from — and it’s about his and his children’s decision to drop about $7 million late dollars in the longshot quartet of southeastern Senate contests in Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi and the no-longer-so-long-shot race in Kansas.

Teaser trailer for season three of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power. Maybe this isn’t the best show in the world, but I have been enjoying it. I thought s02 was better than s01 so at least the trajectory is promising.