Molly Ball

MOLLY NEWS: I'm leaving the WSJ to work on a book about the realignment! Here's the announcement:

A 2024 story about the guy who will now be the GOP nominee in Tony Gonzales's district.

James Merrill, poet I love, born 100 years ago today.

“Last May, Mr. Patel attended a secret national security conference at an exclusive resort outside London, and invited Ms. Wilkins to join him at a group dinner with King Charles III at Windsor Castle. The Royalty and Specialist Protection service balked at fetching her from the airport, so the F.B.I. scrambled tactical agents and an embassy vehicle, according to a person with knowledge of the plan.” Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Seeks Fame and Fortune, Escorted by an F.B.I. SWAT Team nytimes.com/2026/02/28/us/…

Btw I highly recommend you read @hannah_natanson insightful personal essay about what her year was like. At a time of distrust in media and a decline in media literacy, Hannah's essay pulls back the curtain and captures what it takes to do journalism. washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/…

Trump claims a tough policeman told him his sex life is better and his wife no longer treats him like a dog thanks to the stock market under President Trump.

Reporter: Did you decide on who to endorse in the primary? Trump: Pretty much Reporter: Can you tell us? Trump: No

Had no idea how prolific a shagger John Maynard Keynes was

One of several responses I got from Crockett’s spokesperson on Tuesday denying the incident took place, joking “Is Elaine in the room with us now?” We reported on this anyway later that day. And the Atlantic just published audio of the incident… theatlantic.com/politics/2026/…

Every time I see this photo on TV from the house oversight files it’s hilarious how the fact that Jimmy Buffett is in the photo just goes totally unmentioned

"The Post is severely diminished without Book World because the two have always enhanced each other. That makes this decision, this move of ending Book World not just tragic but bizarre to me. Book World was never ancillary to the mission of the Washington Post." -- @CarlosNYT

@_rotimia You cannot look me in the eye and tell me your need for rice is not at least 2x your need for computer

Tfw your immigrant mother just sends you a bag of rice unprompted double the size of your computer

Unintentionally telling bc most of the House Repubs voting to shoot down Trump’s Canada tariffs either can’t be fired bc they quit (Bacon + Newhouse) were drawn out of a seat bc of Dem retribution for Trump’s redraw gambit (Kiley) or are total free agents bc Trump is already out for them (Massie) So I guess he can primary Fitz and hand Dems a competitive seat in PA, making it that much harder to hold the majority That’s just about the recourse here

the architect who designed the U.S. Capitol sought permission to try to resurrect George Washington by performing a tracheotomy on his frozen corpse and giving him a transfusion with lamb's blood

Becca Rothfeld for @NewYorker on the death of our book section, and the heartbreaking truth of what it means. lnkd.in/gUrRYtyA

the funniest thing about this race is that during the one debate they had they stayed exceedingly polite face to face. very millennial energy. scared to have a phone call but in the dms its gloves off

In 2016, Chinese auto-glass maker Fuyao took over a former GM plant outside Dayton OH, w/ millions in state incentives. Obama's film company made a big doc about it, "American Factory." In 2024, Fuyao came under federal scrutiny for trafficking low-wage foreign workers to the area. Now, domestic rivals are shutting down, unable to match Fuyao prices. "The Chinese government is systematically weakening our economy from within our own borders." Fascinating @gavinbade piece: wsj.com/business/tarif…

@samstein @willsommer Fantastic piece.

THE CLAVICULAR PROFILE you all wanted, courtesy of the reporter best suited to deliver it: the fame-mogging, cortisol-spiked @willsommer thebulwark.com/p/clavicular-l…

Fun fact: The Offspring had no idea that Georgian figure skaters Davis/Smolkin had chosen "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" for their rhythm dance music until a reporter (yours truly) contacted them last fall for comment.

Re: Non-citizens voting in American elections. This has been a persistent allegation over the past 30 years (maybe longer?). But especially so since the 2020 election. From Donald Trump to Rudy Giuliani to Elon Musk. The common refrain from election defenders has been that there's no evidence of a material number of illegal immigrants voting. Specifically, there have been very, very few prosecutions of such actions. While true, I never found that satisfactory. After all, just because something isn't identified or prosecuted doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But happily, in recent years a few states and jurisdictions have made affirmative investigations to identify any non-citizen registrants and voters. Two examples from the past two weeks: In Utah, @DeidreHenderson and her team at the Utah state election office recently combed through the states 2,069,640 active registered voters. They affirmatively looked for non-citizens. They used both state and federal databases and resources. They found 1. And that 1, while registered, had never actually voted. They are still investigating 486 voter files. Report here: drive.google.com/file/d/102Ecq5… In Michigan, Macomb County clerk @tonyforlini1 recently announced that he had reason to believe that he had 15 non-citizens on the county's voter rolls of approximately 750,000. Secretary of State @JocelynBenson investigated those 15. Her office found: - 3 of the 15 are U.S. citizens - 4 of the 15 had already been removed from state voter rolls - 4 are non-citizens. Of those, only 1 had voted in a past election (2018). - 4 are under further investigation. News story here: votebeat.org/michigan/2026/… A few takeaways from these two investigations: - No system is perfect, and there are people who either make a mistake of commit a crime. But the percentages above are very, very, very small. - This is logical. It seems fanciful that somebody would risk his status in the United States, the land of economic opportunity, for the ability to be one more vote out of millions in a state. - I know this might not be satisfying to people, but the net effect of the very limited non-citizens voting could be a wash. There's no evidence to suggest that fraudsters only vote for Republican or Democratic candidates. - "Voter integrity" measures are often predicated on diminished voter confidence in certain populations. But it's often the sponsors of these measures who are the ones sowing the seeds of doubt in elections. Consider Macomb County clerk Anthony Forlini. He rushed to say that he had 15 non-citizens on his county's voter rolls. But why didn't he first contact the Michigan Secretary of State? Why didn't he first use every tool at his disposal to test the validity of his concern? We know why. Because sadly, offering half-truths, or sometimes outright lies, about election administration is good politics in certain quarters. In 2019, that was an effective get-rich-quick scheme for Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Since 2020, it's been an effective tool in Republican primaries (Forlini is currently running as a Republican for Michigan Secretary of State). The good news is that we are getting more and more affirmative investigations into the presence of non-citizens on voter rolls. And the best news is that these investigations so far confirm that it is very, very rare.