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Today:
Ukraine Says It Won’t Give Up Land to Russia
NEWS | 29 November 2025
As long as he remains the nation’s president, Zelensky will not agree to give up land in exchange for peace, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, told me today in an exclusive interview. Russia has shown no willingness to back away from its demand for Ukrainian territory, including parts of the country that Russian forces do not control. Russia first seized parts of Ukraine in 2014, when it annexed Crimea in a swift and nearly bloodless land grab. The problem for Putin is that Ukraine still controls large parts of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Only a few questions were set aside in the negotiations for the presidents of Ukraine and the U.S. to decide, he added, including all points related to Ukrainian territory.

Top Stories:
A Terrible and Avoidable Tragedy in D.C.
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Commanders, in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the high-visibility mission in D.C., argued that this could put them in danger. Trump’s use of the military began as a so-called public-safety emergency, though crime was already down in D.C. before the deployment. The D.C. National Guard falls under the command of the federal government—unlike a state’s National Guard—so the district was an easy choice for Trump’s first target. But Trump’s use of the National Guard suggests that he thinks we are not at peace either. The National Guard is stranded somewhere on this battlefield of partisan politics.

World:
The Limits of the Year’s Most Heartbreaking Film
NEWS | 29 November 2025
As historical fiction, Hamnet has little else to work off: Archival records reveal only the basic facts about their relationship. Shakespeare married Agnes, also known as Anne, in 1582, when he was 18 years old and she 26. They had three children, first a daughter and then boy-and-girl twins; their son, Hamnet, died in 1596 of unknown causes. O’Farrell’s story is based upon a theory that the play Hamlet is a reflection of that grief—a secret poured into maybe the most famous dramatic work ever written. Their parents’ emotional connection, which initially powered the film, is largely set aside as they bear their children’s misery.

Current Events:
The Right Attitude to Gratitude
NEWS | 29 November 2025
But as with so many beautiful parts of life, gratitude is not something you can market like a drug or nutritional supplement: It happens to be completely free—but not so easy to attain. A second intervention, devised by the psychologist Martin Seligman, involves writing letters of gratitude to others, telling the recipient in each case specifically what you’re thankful to them for. In 2023, four researchers looked at the well-being effects of using social media to express gratitude to someone. Maybe the person you’re thanking is well known, maybe they’re completely unknown. Or I could think about the fact that you actually wanted to read this column about gratitude and might benefit from it.

News Flash:
Who Would Win?
NEWS | 29 November 2025
My son Elliott came across the Who Would Win? Then he said, “I’m not making fun of Betsy Ross.”From the beginning, it was to be a series, with the title Who Would Win? “It’s an interesting fact.” Which is why, I suppose, there is no Who Would Win? “A little girl wrote to me,” Pallotta said, “asking me to do a Who Would Win? And then she underlines, twice, Do not kill the bunny.”Elliott will not want to read and reread his Who Would Win?

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SPONSORED | 29 November 2025
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Latest:
How Alison Roman Does Thanksgiving
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Even if you don’t know Roman, it’s likely you’ve eaten one of her recipes, especially her megaviral one for caramelized-shallot pasta. I have my Thanksgiving menu, which is also the problem with doing Thanksgiving publicly, is that my personal Thanksgiving preferences don’t really change that much. I don’t know what that is—Roman: I don’t know what that is either. But I’m not making baby food; I’m making food that he can eat—which I feel like there’s a distinction there. Rosin: Yeah, yeah.

Breaking:
Peace Through Bungling
NEWS | 29 November 2025
There are two ways to interpret the Trump administration’s latest peace initiative in Ukraine. From Ukraine’s perspective, it will be a much worse deal than was possible in the first two years of the war. Trump erupted on Truth Social, “UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA. European states, which had not been consulted, balked and proposed their own 24-point peace plan. As for the Trump administration, it may crow or throw tantrums or stalk off in a huff.

Trending:
Why Trump Pushed for Peace—Again
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Last week, the White House embraced a 28-point “peace plan” stuffed with the Kremlin’s demands, and Trump gave Ukraine five days to accept it. Clearly, somebody convinced Trump that Ukraine is losing.”Before the Ukrainians received Trump’s latest ultimatum, they did not appear to be losing the war. “Trump is a game changer.”The meeting in New York marked a high point in the relationship between Trump and Zelensky. Any further delays would cost Ukraine more lives and territory, Driscoll said, and Trump wanted to take a new approach. At the same time, he will need to show Trump that Russia, not Ukraine, remains the obstacle to peace.

This Just In:
A Tragic Shooting in D.C.
NEWS | 29 November 2025
This afternoon, blocks from the White House, a man sneaked up on two West Virginia National Guardsmen and shot them in the head with a handgun. A motive has not been determined, but a recent Afghan immigrant named Rahmanullah Lakanwal is in custody, according to CBS News. The desire to speculate about motive is only human, but speculators beware: Why shoot a stranger in the head? After today’s shooting, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer called the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guardsmen to the streets of Washington a “political show” and asked “at what cost” this deployment was taking place. More likely, this alleged assailant is yet another case of a man motivated more by spleen than by brain.

Today:
Stranger Things Comes to an Exhausting End
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Stranger Things got there first. Matt and Ross Duffer, its genial creators, were able to sell Stranger Things as a sincere homage, a love letter to 1980s media born out of admiration, not a cynical cash grab in an era of supercuts and sequels. Read: Stranger Things isn’t TV. Read: Stranger Things won’t save NetflixWhen everyone is a fan favorite, no one is expendable, which is why the cast has sprawled out to such an unmanageable extent. If Stranger Things can locate more of that humanity in its last few episodes, it’ll be much easier to swallow everything else it’s trying to sell us.

Top Stories:
Why Does Steve Witkoff Keep Taking Russia’s Side?
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Steve Witkoff spoke with Yuri Ushakov, a Russian official, on October 14. Perhaps because Ushakov listened to Witkoff’s advice and persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to call Trump on October 16. Witkoff, a former real-estate developer, is supposed to be negotiating a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. That’s how we know Witkoff suggested to Ushakov that Putin call Trump. Not Ukraine, Russia.

World:
The Biggest Problem With Air Travel: Pajamas?
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants us to return to the golden age of air travel, when nobody got into a punching match for reclining a seat into someone else’s lap. There’s a video with footage of air travel seemingly from the 1960s? If somebody forced me to identify the problem with air travel today (this happened to lots of comics in the 1980s! No, the age of suits was not the golden age of air civility! Julius Caesar did get stabbed by a bunch of senators once, but that was unrelated to air travel.

Current Events:
The Racist, AI-Generated Future of Entertainment
NEWS | 29 November 2025
The Will Stancil Show’s racism, combined with its relatively high production quality, makes it a concerning sign of what might be ahead. Youcis has demonstrated that far-right creators can use AI to make good-enough entertainment, without needing to go through any gatekeeping institutions. Youcis told me that each Will Stancil Show episode costs $100 to $250 to animate. “Great to see that Black-studies degree put to work,” Cartoon Stancil observes. Creators are already making animated music videos and short-form online shows that reference and build on The Will Stancil Show.

News Flash:
The DOJ’s Cartels Memo Is Legal Quicksand
NEWS | 29 November 2025
Though they weren’t explicit, the Congress members seem likely to have been speaking about Trump’s assault on the Venezuelan cartels. A memo from the Justice Department argues yes on the legal grounds that the United States is in an armed conflict with the cartels. But in this case, the protective value of the OLC opinion may be no greater than the value of the paper it is written on. Part of being a lawyer is giving formal legal opinions to one’s clients. The OLC memo may be just such an opinion, as it seems to be based on fraudulent claims about the nature of drug trafficking from Venezuela.