The Washington Note

(US Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and Senator Lindsey Graham at Doha Forum) Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) unexpectedly died last night from what his staff reported a “brief and sudden illness.” I knew Senator Graham, though we were more decent acquaintances than friends, and there were times when I was outraged by his positions — particularly his tendency to want to throw military force at nearly every national security challenge as a first impulse, and his turning two blind eyes...

Sign Up to The Washington Note First Name* Last Name* Email* Δ The Latest Video Note Steve Clemons Interviews Deepak Chopra At UC San Diego, Steve Clemons interviews the wellness guru to the stars Deepak Chopra at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific conference.

While I have been watching the fever over “Heated Rivalry” dramatically rise throughout many channels of social media (though I have yet to see the series — soon!), I have just re-read Gore Vidal’s “The City and the Pillar.” Published (somewhat miraculously given its explicit content) in 1948, this novel laid out nearly 80 years ago the tension of same sex, frustrated lust and attraction.

The Government Shutdown is about to end. Here is the Democratic thinking on direction, strategy, and who can tick off wins, and who loses (from their perspective): There will be a vote soon ending the shutdown. It will extend funding until January 31. It will include three small appropriations bills. It gives us a vote on the ACA. The good things: January 31 is a fine date. It lets the big appropriations bills get finished. The more approps bills we pass the better.

Anticipating that someone on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party would eventually ask about the independence, or lack thereof, of DeepSeek, which now as a generative AI platform seems to be spreading faster than Covid-19 did, I decided to ask both DeepSeek and ChatGPT the same question: Does the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party control the company that owns DeepSeek?

(Santa Claus in earlier, happier, less geo-economically stressful times, iStock photo) This holiday, for the first time ever, I am giving some presentations on the world’s geopolitical and geo-economic fault lines on the really terrific Regent Seven Seas Explorer traveling between Australia and New Zealand.

The debate around President Joe Biden’s ability to vigorously take on a second political battle with former President Donald Trump is over. President Biden, as he expresses in the note above, is withdrawing from the election and will focus on serving out his term. This was clearly an extremely difficult decision for a leader who has achieved so much for the country and has overcome much adversity in getting to the White House. Now as one Senator just told me, “let the games begin.”

What a magnificent ride my time at Semafor has been, building with Ben and Justin Smith and the high octane team members there a gleaming rocket of editorial ambition and excellence — in newsletters, editorial events, and powerful new networks. For two and a half years, I’ve puzzled each day about how to help make Semafor better and more desired than its peers, more impactful and necessary.

Big city. Little village. A bus driver in New York City near Columbia University beckoned and called to a man walking on the street whom he had just seen bludgeoned in the head to hurry and get on to his bus. He wanted to help him escape his attacker, a huge man who reportedly chased the bus and continued to harass the victim when he got off the bus two blocks later.

I am posting one of two documents that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer distributed on January 18, 2022 to some Democratic Senate colleagues preceding the debate on the Voting Rights Act of 2021. I’ll be writing more about these two documents but this first will be featured in an oped of mine that will run in The Hill.