Welcome to Trumplessness

all the news you can stand to read

Welcome to Trumplessness: all the news you can stand to read. Wondering why this landed in your inbox? Here’s the deal:

What is this?

This is the first edition of Trumplessness, a newsletter (I know! What we all need is more email!) designed to deliver journalism *without* requiring a dive into the horrors du jour.

You’re receiving this email because at some point, I (Annie Saunders) acquired your email address.

Why are you doing this?

I was under the impression there were no more holes left in the market, but after the election, I discovered…a hole in the market. Lots of friends declared they were swearing off the news. These are individuals who want to read essays and investigations and, yes, even news, but they’d rather avoid the daily breaking bits as a way to hang onto the remaining shreds of their sanity. You should be able to read that piece about the IVF mixup everyone’s talking about without having to unpack a clown car of news about cabinet picks.

“Reading the news” is part of my day job, so curating a weekly set of Trump-free links is not a heavy lift for me. Servicey!

Don’t you think it’s important to be well-informed about current events?

Of course I do, but look where that got us.

So what’s this going to look like?

Every Thursday, I’ll email you a list of links to stories (I’m thinking three to 10 per week. We’ll see!) that I read the week prior and enjoyed or otherwise found compelling. This will not include any news centered around the man who was somehow elected to be the 47th president of the United States of America. I’ll use gift links to paywalled sites whenever I can.

To give you a sense of whether you want to welcome me into your inbox or smash that unsubscribe button, here are a few evergreen stories I read and loved this year. (Regular editions will include “new” news — stories published the week prior.) The next issue will land on January 9.

On pennies: You might not think you want to read a deep dive about why pennies are still in circulation in the U.S., but you would be incorrect. Caity Weaver, who writes for The New York Times Magazine but came up through Gawker, is a national treasure and one of my favorite writers. (Here’s another one from Weaver, a masterclass in punctuation use, about how Santa Fe annually lights a giant puppet ablaze.)

Scam awareness: This is a detailed tell-all about how a finance writer for The Cut put tens of thousands of actual cash dollars in a box and gave it to a scammer. That’s really all you need to know.

So itchy: Does this newsletter have a pro-Annie bias? Yes, yes it does. Still, this essay from Annie Lowrey over at The Atlantic is a deep exploration of itching and why, in Western medicine, at least, maddening sensations that are not pain are treated with little more than a shrug.

I read something amazing that’s not about Trump! Can I share it with you?

Yes! Maintaining our sanity is a group project. Please email: annie@trumplessness.com.

But what if something happens? Surely sometimes we should read the Headline News, right?

Oh, sure. However, that’s not the focus of this here newsletter.

But let’s say you need to read the breaking news. Where’s the sanest place for that? I’m not a fan of the feed-style updates many news outlets have adopted for reporting breaking news stories, and so help me god I refuse to ingest my news on Twitter or Bluesky or whateverthefuck. I’d much prefer to read a fully formed narrative after reporters collect a bunch of information. Where do I go for sober news and analysis of breaking events? Here’s a shortlist:

• Unpaywalled trustworthy news outlets:

  • The Associated Press

  • NPR

  • The Guardian

  • Al Jazeera

  • Reuters

• Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” newsletter. She often writes a clear-headed second-day analysis of a news event with critical historical context and lots of links to primary sources.

I still have questions.

Fire away: annie@trumplessness.com.

Thanks for reading. I hope to bring moments of zen (or, well, at least distraction) for the next four years. I’ll see you back here in a week!