Weekend Jolt: A Publication the Likes of Which You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

WITH JUDSON BERGER

October 25 2025

A Publication the Likes of Which You Won't Find Anywhere Else

Dear Weekend Jolter,

Just so it doesn't seem like a surprise or that I'm pulling one over on you: This is one of those newsletters where I'm going to ask for money.

We understand that we're far from the only organization hitting your inbox with a request for donations. Many of them try to grab your attention with personalized subject lines and create a sense of existential urgency about the need to write them a check.

But I'd like to take a different tack and talk plainly about what makes this institution special.

Rich Lowry, my boss, often says in these appeals that if National Review didn't exist, no one would invent it. He's right: In today's traffic-chasing media environment, precious few publications provide anything like what you get here — which, yes, is why I'm asking if you will contribute anything you can for our webathon.

As Rich related in his kickoff, we've got our work cut out for us, calling out antisemitism from both sides, rising political violence from the left, and attacks on free markets and even the American Founding itself.

At NR, we're not about cheerleading, we're not about #resistance; we're about getting at the truth of the matter and standing for bedrock constitutional principles while we're at it (principles we didn't just discover when Donald Trump returned to office).

Take the work of Andy McCarthy. Every week, he's publishing must-read breakdowns of the country's biggest legal controversies — providing thoughtful, clinical analysis when it's needed most. With the DOJ's moves against Trump critics, for instance, Andy explained in detail why the James Comey indictment should be dismissed — but he also explained why the John Bolton indictment, political motivations and all, should be taken seriously.

We can do all this, without taking ourselves too seriously. Where else are you going to even approach the sheer outrageousness of a Jeff Blehar column, or the Borscht Belt–worthy one-liners of Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt (my personal favorite from this week, on the Louvre heist: "Unlike the Venus de Milo, these thieves were armed").

Oh yeah, and NR publishes national-conversation-changing political scoops. Just witness the fallout from Audrey Fahlberg's exclusive on Virginia Democratic AG nominee Jay Jones's violent text messages — a story that rocked, and may have reshaped, this year's elections.

All this, in addition to a magazine that, every month, takes a step back and delivers thoughtful commentary from the best and brightest writers in the conservative space today, complete with coverage of the arts and culture.

This is still a place, even in this polarized era, where writers are free and encouraged to disagree — about Trump, about conservatism, about political tactics or philosophy — out in the open. It's a place where respect for the written word obtains.

Mark Antonio Wright recently pointed out another important tradition, which is to seek out and develop young talent, some of whom then go out into the world to be "conservative subversives at mainstream press outfits, infecting newsrooms nationwide with a little bit of respect for free markets and love for the Constitution."

So if you value any or all of these aspects of this great institution, please give a lot or a little, or whatever amount is just right for you, to our webathon. We are grateful for your support and your readership.

NAME. RANK. LINK.

EDITORIALS

Do the ethical thing: Trump Should Drop His Damages Claim Against DOJ

It didn't take long: Hamas Is Already Violating the Peace Deal

On the Buenos Aires bet: Trump's Argentina Gamble

On the ballroom: No, Trump Isn't Destroying the White House

ARTICLES

Audrey Fahlberg: Newly Appointed Special Prosecutor 'Unable' to Take Jay Jones Reckless Driving Investigation

Haley Strack: Abigail Spanberger Thinks Virginia Parents Are 'Confused' About the Trans Issue

Noah Rothman: 'No Kings' Protesters Take What They Can Get

Fred Bauer: Nuking the Filibuster Would Be Political Folly

Brittany Bernstein: Oxford Union President-Elect Loses No Confidence Vote After Charlie Kirk Comments

Jeffrey Blehar: 'I Am Not a Secret Nazi' Is the New 'I Am Not a Witch'

Yuval Levin: Paul Ingrassia's Story Is Not That Exceptional

Abigail Anthony: Exclusive: Harvard Postpones Online Course on Transgender Health Care amid Legal Concerns

John Fund: California's New Class Divide

James Lynch: Republicans and Democrats Can't Agree on Anything — Except the AI Threat

Jim Geraghty: Trump Leaves His Mark on the White House, Literally

CAPITAL MATTERS

Brandon Smith looks at the coming fallout: As DEI Dies, Corporate America Faces Serious Risk

LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.

Brian Allen returns to the Boston Athenaeum after all these years, in advance of America's 250th: The Boston Athenaeum and Old North Church Make the Hub's Past Come Alive

Armond White and I can agree to disagree about Nebraska: Springsteen's Self-Mythologizing Home Movie

FROM THE NEW, DECEMBER 2025 ISSUE OF NR

Richard Brookhiser: NR's First 70 Years

Yuval Levin: Conservatives Are Not a Party

Charles C. W. Cooke: The Great Derangement

Wilfred Reilly: What Thomas Sowell Sees — and Sees Through

James Rosen: A Master Observer's Timeless Ridicule of Radicalism

Audrey Fahlberg: 'Decency on the Ballot' in Virginia's Elections

Sarah Schutte: On a Wing and a Prairie

CATCH UP ON HIGHLIGHTS IN THE TIME IT TAKES TO BREAK INTO THE LOUVRE

The new issue of NR is out, and it's an anniversary special. NR's actual 70th will be next month, but you can get a start on reading these wonderful pieces early, online. Richard Brookhiser does the honors and kicks things off:

"Always carry champagne," Napoleon Bonaparte, man about Europe, is supposed to have said. "In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it." What did National Review win and lose in our first 70 years?

The great victory was the defeat of Soviet communism. In August 1991, I was on my way to a vacation in Egypt when Soviet Communist Party hard-liners made their move to oust Mikhail Gorbachev. Only days later I opened my hotel door in Cairo to find a copy of that morning's International Herald Tribune with the headline, "communism collapses."

It had been, as the title of senior editor James Burnham's column on world events put it, a protracted conflict. A number of NR's earliest editors and writers had been engaged with communism long before the magazine was born. As a young man, Burnham was Trotsky's leading American disciple. Fellow columnist and book review editor Frank Meyer worked in Europe for Walter Ulbricht, future satrap of East Germany. Publisher Willi Schlamm and contributor Max Eastman each interviewed Lenin. Whittaker Chambers ran a Soviet spy ring in Washington, D.C. These men knew the beast from within. All had served it, all had broken with it. NR became their vessel for fighting it.

There were many losses along the way. Less than a year into NR's life, the Eisenhower administration acquiesced in Nikita Khrushchev's crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Burnham decided that rolling back the Soviet empire, a strategy he had urged in several books, was no longer viable. America was committed, willy-nilly, to containment. (Meyer disagreed.) When Richard Nixon made his opening to Mao's China, hoping to profit from the Sino-Soviet split, Bill Buckley went along as a reporter — an angry reporter. After Nixon praised Mao and other monsters at a celebratory feast, WFB wrote, "I would not have been surprised, that night, if he had lurched into a toast to Alger Hiss." The Seventies went downhill from there. The Vietnam War, erratically fought, concluded ignobly. Cuban troops patrolled the former Portuguese empire in Africa; Russian troops occupied Kabul; junior Castros ran Nicaragua. Moscow wielded penumbras of influence in the free world. Every American effort to counter Soviet weaponry aimed at Europe brought protesting crowds and op-eds warning of imminent nuclear holocaust.

Ronald Reagan, elected at the start of the next decade, told advisers he aimed at victory. He had come to his own conclusions about communism, from reading Chambers's Witness and encountering communist labor goons in Hollywood. His regular reading of NR, and his friendship with WFB, reinforced his convictions. Our cover story for the first issue of 1989 predicted "The Coming Crack-Up of Communism" (author, roving correspondent Radek Sikorski; cover, a framed, sepia-tinted photo of Lenin under smashed glass). Months later, the Soviet Union's Eastern European empire simply ended; two years later, the Soviet Union itself did.

NR's editorial provides some historical context for those White House renovations:

As a general matter, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a president making changes to the White House. Nor, for that matter, is there anything sinister about his approving complicated construction projects that involve the temporary removal of one of its walls. Over the years, presidents of both parties and of all leadership styles have done precisely this, and nobody has cared one whit. Some of those presidents, such as Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, used public money to pay for their modifications. Some, such as John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and Gerald Ford, raised private funds. In all cases, they left the White House in a different state than they found it; in no cases did that decision imply incipient fascism, betray an inappropriate sense of permanent ownership, or justify tears and outrage from the president's political critics.

The history of the White House is one of frequent revision. Started in 1792, the project was completed in 1800, at the tail end of John Adams's sole term. In 1814, during the War of 1812, it was so badly damaged by British soldiers after the Battle of Bladensburg that it required substantial rebuilding — a project that began in 1815 and ended in 1817, during the first Monroe administration. The South Portico was added in 1824, for James Monroe, and a balcony was added to it in 1948, for Harry Truman. The North Portico was added in 1830, for John Quincy Adams. Since then, various ancillary elements have been added or amended, either to make it more useful to the modern presidency or to satisfy the whims of the current occupant.

The famous West Wing of the building was constructed in 1902, during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, so that the executive offices that he and his staff used could be properly separated from the mansion's residential quarters. The Oval Office was added in 1909, during the administration of William Howard Taft, and then renovated and moved in 1934, during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. The East Wing was added in 1902, at the same time as the West Wing, and modernized during the Second World War to add a second story of offices and to help conceal the Presidential Emergency Operations Center/PEOC that had been built under it. The Executive Residence was completely gutted and reconstructed by President Truman between 1948 and 1952, after an architectural report found that it was unfit for purpose. . . .

There is nothing different — or even particularly interesting — about President Trump's decision to replace a bunch of 1940s-era East Wing office buildings with a ballroom. Nor is it unusual for this alteration to have been paid for with private funds. Certainly, one may quibble with President Trump's often gaudy design preferences. But, objectively, the White House lacks entertainment spaces, and the addition of a new facility will clearly help to alleviate that problem.

Speaking of scoops, here’s one from Abigail Anthony:

Harvard University Medical School has postponed an online course on transgender health care after National Review contacted the university to inquire about the legality of offering course fee waivers to transgender-identifying doctors while charging other medical professionals $650 to attend.

The medical school's website previously advertised fee waivers to "transgender" and "gender diverse" individuals interested in attending the accredited virtual course, titled "Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health."

But when National Review asked Harvard to comment on the legality of offering free access to an accredited course based on transgender identity, the medical school responded that the course has been postponed. The university had removed the description of the fee waivers from its website.

"The continuing education course 'Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health: A Core Course for the Whole Care Team,' which is offered and developed by the Fenway Institute and accredited by Harvard Medical School, has been postponed and will be rescheduled for later this academic year," Harvard Medical School's media team wrote in an email. "HMS [Harvard Medical School] remains committed to ensuring that the courses we accredit comply with applicable laws."

Before National Review reached out, the conference web page also advertised ten full-tuition scholarships for "students pursuing a career in LGBTQIA+ health care." Any mention of these full-tuition scholarships has also been removed from the website.

James Lynch identifies the one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on:

Republicans and Democrats who can't agree on much of anything these days — including how to keep the basic functions of the federal government up and running — seem to be finding common ground on how to approach an industry that's poised to dominate the American economy: artificial intelligence.

Citing an imperative to protect American workers and children from the predations of artificial intelligence, a bipartisan coalition is emerging to establish safeguards around the technology.

The AI safety movement is fast becoming a powerful force on the state and national levels with advocates spanning the entire political spectrum. Its growing political strength corresponds with polling data showing an overwhelming majority of Americans want policymakers to prioritize safety, even as AI boosters warn that any guardrails will inevitably slow innovation.

"A political realignment is happening right before our eyes. Poll after poll shows that Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support regulation of AI companies. A bipartisan coalition is coalescing around the urgent need to rein in Big Tech's unchecked power and ensure that AI is developed in a way that benefits our kids and our communities," said Michael Kleinman, head of U.S. policy at the Future of Life Institute, a nonpartisan think tank specializing in AI safety.

Earlier this year, during the legislative process for the GOP's tax and budget megabill, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) led the fight to kill a measure that would have prevented states from regulating AI in the immediate future. In a resounding 99-1 vote, the Senate defeated Senator Ted Cruz's (R., Texas) AI regulatory moratorium after intense pushback from conservative and liberal groups.

"Artificial intelligence is driving a new frontier of innovation, but it's also creating urgent risks for Americans from AI-generated child sexual abuse material to creators having their voices and likenesses replicated without their consent," Blackburn said in a statement.

CODA

In belated honor of the late John Lodge, please do ride into your weekend with some Moody Blues.

Thanks for reading.