The Week In Recommendations 2.5.25

Recs with a side of civic challenge: Call! Your! Senators!

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Civic challenge of the week:

Call your senators — or show up in person! — to make your outrage clear about Elon Musk’s unlawful takeover of the federal government. Even if your senators are Republicans, backlash from their voters is not meaningless. We should push every single person in the Senate to fight back.

Below is a sample script, adapted from the one Jess Craven posted on Instagram:

My name is [YOUR NAME], and I’m calling from [ZIP CODE]. I’m furious that Elon Musk, who was neither elected nor confirmed by Congress, has taken over the Treasury Department system. He’s also given a bunch of college kids access to our most sensitive financial information. This is an illegal takeover of the federal government, and it must be stopped. The Treasury is responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments for things like Social Security and Medicare. Millions of U.S. citizens depend on that money. It’s ours. [ADD PERSONAL ANECDOTE] I want the Senator to do whatever it takes to get Musk out of there. Protect our taxpayer dollars—and our constitution—at all costs. Thanks.

Indivisible is also a great resource for quick downloads on what is happening, who will be affected and how, and what to demand from your elected representatives.

You can reach the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. You can also look up your senators’ local office numbers to speak to their staff there, or show up in person.

Claire has been reading… 📖

God, I don’t even know. Definitely many Bluesky posts. My resolutions about not doomscrolling have fallen away quickly, which is both regrettable and, I think, necessary to some extent. Otherwise, I doubt I would have had any idea what was happening this weekend with Elon Musk’s blatantly unconstitutional power grab in D.C.

I do recommend following smaller outlets like Wired and The New Republic, which are reporting on what Trump and Musk are doing as well as framing it in helpfully clear terms, as well as independent journalists like Marisa Kabas (who runs a newsletter called The Handbasket).

Emma has been reading… 📖

Like Claire, I’ve been following Marisa Kabas’ excellent, independent political reporting over at The Handbasket, and trying to keep up with the news in general in a way that feels useful rather than overwhelming. (Mostly trying to avoid the sends-me-into-a-full-on-panic-attack-and-renders-me-catatonic type of news consumption). Not sure I’ve quite nailed the balance yet, but hey… guess I’ve got time to calibrate that!

I also really enjoyed Andi Zeisler’s analysis in the NYTimes of Sabrina Carpenter’s Lolita-esque aesthetic. She situates Carpenter within the tradition of raunchy vaudeville, observing that “‘Short n’ Sweet’ channels the spirit of brassy burlesque icons who understood that their real art wasn’t simply singing, dancing or acting; it was their unapologetic acknowledgment of their sexual selves, their refusal to ask either permission or forgiveness.”

Claire has been watching… 📺

Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” on Broadway — our first show since my five-year-old was born in 2019. Escola was just replaced in the role of Mary Todd Lincoln by Betty Gilpin, who is fabulous in the show’s campy rendering of the former First Lady as a cabaret obsessive who yearns for the freedom to perform “madcap medleys.” I am still sad that we missed Escola, who wrapped up their stint as Lincoln just a couple weeks ago. Not only did they write and originate the role (so it was literally made for them), I have always really enjoyed Escola as a performer. Also, I have to think that the character reads differently coming from a nonbinary actor, with a more explicit echo of drag performance. But the show doesn’t depend on Escola’s presence. It’s a short and explosively energetic show — just 80 minutes of theatrical smash cuts, punchlines and pratfalls — and my sides hurt from laughing by the end. It’s also… uh… divisive. The couple next to us was stone-faced throughout and rushed out the second lights came up. Their loss!

Emma has been watching… 📺

Umm… anything to help me briefly dissociate? (I kid, I kid. Kind of.) Truthfully, most of what I’ve been watching this week has been work-related: The first drop of “Love Is Blind” Season 8 screeners, a screener of the premiere of “Summer House” season 9, and “The Bachelor.”

Photo Credit: Netflix

But Adam and I did start season 1 of “Mo” on Netflix, a dark comedy about a Palestinian refugee descendant (his family’s asylum claim has been in bureaucratic purgatory for over twenty years) living in Houston. Comedian Mo Amer stars as the titular Mohammed “Mo” Najjar, and he created the series along with Ramy Youssef based loosely on his own experiences. The show’s second and final season was just released to critical acclaim, which bumped “Mo” up on our Netflix queue! And I’m so glad, because it’s sharply-written, very funny, and devastatingly real.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

“Scratch and Win,” a new limited series from GBH News – the same team (and podcast feed) that produced my previous recommendation “The Big Dig.” The new series is about government-sponsored lotteries and the popularity of scratch-off tickets, a form of gambling innovated in Massachusetts fifty years ago. I’m a bit of a grump about gambling, especially the widely available, instant-gratification varieties that seem to really feed addictive tendencies. (Don’t get me going on what the sudden ubiquity of sports gambling has done to men in this country, who seem to only watch sports now so that they can try to win weirdly specific bets on FanDuel.) Personally, I’m far too loss-averse to gamble; I prefer to get something definite and tangible in exchange for my impulse spending, like a nice sweater I could, in a pinch, resell for half of the purchase price. So I know very little about scratch-offs, and the first episode really sucked me in by delving into the psychology of playing the game along with the story of how the instant lotto was invented.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Sunday’s episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” which worked wonders on my deeply anxious heart, mind and body. I really needed Ezra’s reminders about the Trump administration’s utter incompetence as they take a wrecking ball to our government and democracy. It’s not that we shouldn’t be worried — we should be very worried — but what Ezra reminds us in this episode is that there is still time to mount a resistance.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A subscription to Wired, which has been doing outstanding reporting on Elon Musk and his band of DOGE bros who have gained full access to the federal payment system and blocked funding for HIV/AIDS relief around the globe. The subscription is extremely affordable and, I think, vital at this moment. Marisa Kabas has also been breaking stories over at her newsletter The Handbasket.

I’ve been incandescently angry over the poor coverage from outlets like the New York Times, though not entirely surprised. It’s extremely important that we read and financially support outlets that are risking lawsuits and retribution from the current administration by doing this kind of sharp, oppositional reporting.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I recently discovered the Australian brand Status Anxiety while wondering through Nolita with a couple friends. Apparently their Manhattan store, which carries the brand’s well-priced, high-quality leather bags as well as some other accessories (baseball caps, sunglasses) is their first U.S. outpost! I bought this cutie purse in Cocoa, and went back for one of their signature branded baseball caps. (Status Anxiety is just *such* a perfect name for a fashion brand.) I’m super impressed with the quality of their bags given that the vast majority of them fall in the $150 to $250 range, and have been thinking about this handbag since I was in the store. (I also discovered that if you sign up for their newsletter you can get 10% off your first purchase.)

Claire has been making… 🧶

Calls to my senators, demanding that they do everything in their power to block Trump’s appointees, shut down Senate business, and publicly call out Trump and Elon Musk’s unconstitutional power grab and gutting of federal agencies.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Calls to my senators! It’s really so easy! And cathartic! Just do it!

I’ve also been making lists of small things I still have to do before the wedding which is in — checks the calendar — approximately 2.5 weeks???

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