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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

The “Review-Driven” Book Is Not a Thing

There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the Washington Post closing its book section, but the impact on book sales should be low on the list (if it’s on the list at all, tbh). Longtime book publicist Kathleen Schmidt unpacks the decline of the “review-driven” book and points to newsletters and podcasts as central components of publicity campaigns and word-of-mouth recommendations in the new media landscape. A couple additional thoughts on this:

• Authors’ and publishers’ attachment to reviews isn’t just about sales. It might not even be primarily about sales; it’s about prestige and author care. Historically, positive reviews in big mainstream outlets have provided authors with ego boosts and publishers with a piece of evidence to show their authors that they are indeed working to publicize their books.
• Newsletters and podcasts don’t currently have the aura of prestige of a WaPo review, but there’s no reason that they can’t or shouldn’t. Publishers and publicists would be wise to invest in reframing and redefining prestige and high-value placements for their authors.
• Email and podcasts are two of the last remaining forms of media that allow consumers direct access to content not mediated by algorithms. You sign up for a newsletter or click “follow” on a podcast, and you see everything it publishes. That matters.
• Web traffic is declining and will continue to decline. Having run a media company that produces web content, newsletters, and podcasts for nearly 15 years, I can tell you that if you want a piece of web content to be high-value and wide-reaching, you have to support it with newsletter distribution.
• Similarly, a podcast conversation about an idea or issue is likely to reach thousands (likely, tens of thousands) more audience members than a standalone piece of web content.

Indeed, Book Riot thinks of our content as newsletter- and podcast-first; what you see on the website flows from those sources because they are where the largest and most reliable audiences are.

That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

Having myself weighed in with the take that Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is “cold, wet, and surprising slimy,” I second every emotion in Constance Grady’s review at Vox, which likens the film more to a Nicholas Sparks book than Emily Brontë’s beloved novel. Here’s the money shot, pun absolutely intended:

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“No adaptation must be absolutely faithful to its source text in order to be good, but it has to do something. It has to have an energy, a source of tension, a reason to exist. But having excised the tension of Brontë’s novel from her film, Fennell replaces it with absolutely nothing. Instead, you are asked only to watch beautiful people engage in mild BDSM play upon the beautiful moors, and then die through no fault of their own.”

Books for Avid Toni Morrison Fans

Multiple reasons to celebrate Toni Morrison this week, as she was born 95 years ago today, and Namwali Serpell’s excellent book of criticism, On Morrison, pubbed yesterday. Whatever your approach to fandom, we’ve got a book about Morrison’s work for you.

The post Book Reviews Don’t Drive Sales appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The Ellisons may be MAGA- friendly, but there’s low odds they’re in this to kill CNN, as I will explain in a bit. Meanwhile, the likely scenario under the Netflix deal, according to my Wall Street sources, is far worse for the CNN rank-and-file: The cable channel, which still generates cash, will be spun off as part of a public company answering to public shareholders. Not fun, given the debt on its balance sheet and demands to show a profit.

Even worse, Wall Street executives say the network will ultimately be spun out of that spin­out and sold — likely to a rapacious private equity firm that sees news as a nuisance, opting to slash and burn to generate ever-bigger profits so it can eventually sell what’s left to somebody else.

Consider, for a moment, what the Ellisons are offering. Unlike Netflix, they’re buying not just the streaming and studio business, but the cable properties as well. People who work for the father-and-son duo say they want to grow cable as part of a global, integrated media empire that sells both CNN and CBS in cable packages.

CNN staffers are said to particularly loathe the idea they would be working for Bari Weiss, who runs CBS for the Ellisons and has moved the Tiffany Network to a more friendly posture to conservatives (aka the 77 million people who just voted for Donald Trump whom you want as viewers).

But Weiss is hardly channeling hard-line MAGA at CBS, and the Ellisons’ partner in the pursuit of WBD, RedBird Capital, is run by savvy veteran media banker Gerry Cardinale. He employs a handful of journalists, including former CNN anchor Chris Wallace and longtime CNN chief Jeff Zucker. Wallace, I understand, will play a key role in CNN’s future if Paramount Skydance prevails.

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Indeed, it’s CBS that could be moving its news-gathering operations to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, I am told. It will be the Tiffany Network’s cash-strapped news operation that needs to downsize the most as they combine operations, which makes sense if you compare the numbers of both networks.

CNN churns out an estimated $500 million to $600 million in annual cash flow, I am told. (WBD doesn’t break out its financials; this is an estimate from an ex-senior exec.) That’s pretty darn good considering the network’s third-place ratings among the cable news giants, and it shows there’s a business here because cable news carriers believe it has an audience.

Ellisons wouldn’t kill it

It’s also why the Ellisons wouldn’t kill it as the many inside the network fear despite the fact cash flow has been halved from just five years ago. There will be cuts and those dreaded synergies that bankers talk about, but that’s a far better future than CNN being at the mercy of some PE bean counter.

No matter how much shade is thrown at Larry Ellison’s backstop of his son’s hostile offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, the Oracle co-founder is still worth more than $240 billion and will use it to invest in a business where CNN won’t be a nuisance but the tip of the spear in Paramount’s news operations.

And if you’re at CNN and worried about the Ellisons’ political motives (Larry was an early Trump supporter), I don’t think they’ll be Trump patsies. Based on recent comments by the president (he said they weren’t such great friends), neither does he.

Suffice to say, lots of paranoia here, and real proof that many journalists need to spend some time taking finance 101: Netflix in “winning” the monthslong WBD bake-off is just buying WBD’s Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max streaming service, while CNN and WBD’s other cable properties are spun out to the wilderness as a publicly traded company with an estimated $15 billion to $18 billion of debt.

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That’s right: A news company with lots of debt answering daily (based on its stock price) and quarterly (based on its earnings) to analysts and investors demanding a return in a business that’s declining because of cord cutting and more.

CNN has been busy slashing costs in recent years, but this means cuts will get steeper to make the numbers work given the trajectory of rising  debt service payments while cash flow from the cable properties is ­going in the opposite direction.

For the record, I’m not gloating over CNN’s uncertain future. True, I work at a competitor, Fox News, along with my duties at The Post, but I’m a journalist who believes the business needs to survive because you can’t have a functioning democracy without it. Trump rips the network’s political commentators, but CNN’s news product is formidable, with bureaus around the world reporting 24/7.

Journalism writ large is a tough business, so if you’re in it like I am, you better hope for an owner who doesn’t see news as a nuisance.

The post CNN staffers are reportedly loathing a potential Paramount Skydance takeover — but don’t expect the Ellisons to kill the news agency appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The wily CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery has sold the media giant for $72 billion — more than doubling its value in a matter of months. He may get even more, depending on whom you talk to, capping one of the more momentous executive comeback ­stories in recent years.

Before we get into why the cake isn’t quite baked on WBD’s future, let’s consider what just went down with Zaslav’s mosh-pit-style bidding war, how he set some of the biggest media moguls against each other, ramping up the sale price of his company to levels no one thought possible.

When all this began in September, WBD’s stock was in the toilet, trading at around $12 a share, just above its one-year low of $7.50. That’s when Paramount Skydance saw value where no one did, except maybe Zaslav; they offered $23.50 — or around $56 billion — for all of WBD, its studio, the HBO Max streaming service, as well as cable channels CNN, HBO and Discovery.

It was thought to be a done deal. Paramount Skydance’s deep-pocketed owners, Dav­id and Larry Ellison, promised WBD shareholders all cash for an asset that was teetering, and a regulatory glide path through the Trump administration given the elder Ellison’s close friendship with President Trump.

Not quite. Zas­lav is a protégé of two of the best CEOs in recent history, Jack Welch and cable pioneer John Malone. That put him in line to become CEO of newly created Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal engineered by Malone, formed after the AT&T spinoff of Warner Media in 2022.

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Money-losing assets

Warner’s assets included a major studio that lost money, an unprofitable streaming service, and old media cable channels like HBO, CNN, TNT and the Food Network. Zaslav was saddled with billions in debt. He took heat cratering shareholder value while paying himself millions.

Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation, sits in the Oval Office of the White House as President Donald Trump signs an executive order, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Washington. AP

What the market and media naysayers didn’t appreciate is that he was scaling down a bloated operation and improving the Warner studio — it became the first to surpass $4 billion in revenues in 2025. He was also building up his streaming service, finally settling on a name, HBO Max, which is now the ­industry’s third largest.

To his credit, David Ellison saw that potential early on — even as he was in the throes of trying to buy Paramount from the initially reluctant Redstone family, and then maneuvering through the odd maze of the Trump administration’s regulatory apparatus.

He saw that he could combine CBS with CNN, bail out Paramount’s feeble streaming network with HBO Max, and supplement Paramount’s studio with Warner’s, gaining tons of intellectual property with some of the most iconic programming in recent history, such as “The Sopranos,” “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones.”

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Nearly the moment David and Larry swooped in with an initial offer for all of WBD three months ago, the larger bidding war was on. As the Post first reported, Zas began pitching a sale of some or all of the company to Amazon, Apple and others. In the end, he settled on a bidding contest among Comcast, Paramount Skydance and Netflix. Zas, as he’s known in media and Wall Street circles, set his price target at $30 a share and deal participants scoffed: Who would pay $30 a share for something that traded at around $7 just a few months ago?

Misplaced confidence

The Ellisons appeared particularly confident they could underbid since the Trump administration, as we reported, wanted WBD in the Ellisons’ hands. Trump and Larry Ellison are friends, Larry being a long time MAGA supporter. Plus the deal seemed the cleanest of all the bidders without much overlap to present antitrust worries.

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on October 9, 2025. AFP via Getty Images

Trump was also said to like the idea of the Ellisons controlling CNN, which he considers anti-MAGA. DOJ Antitrust sent out word it didn’t like all those streaming customers — Netflix’s 300 million plus another 100 million of HBO Max — in one company.

But the bids kept growing. Netflix’s Ted Sarandos was sold on Zas­lav’s pitch to supplement his streaming empire with a top-flight studio that can produce namebrand, home-grown content. Now lusting for a deal, Sarandos met with Trump and developed a friendship he and Zaslav believe will mollify the regulatory hurdles. Comcast kept bidding up as well as its chief, Brian Roberts — despite his fraught relationship with Trump for owning the MAGA-hating MS NOW — tried to smooth things over with big gifts to build the new White House ballroom.

The Ellisons recently came in at $30 a share; Netflix sealed the deal at $30.75.

The Ellisons hate losing and are planning a counterattack; they might bid even more or go hostile, arguing their all-cash offer is higher than Netfix’s cash and stock even if its total price beats theirs by 75 cents.

How’s that for creating shareholder value?

The post Warner Bros. Discovery CEO’s bidding war destroyed the initial confidence of the Ellisons — but don’t count them out just yet appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Fanny Howe didn’t want to write her last book, Manimal Woe. I know because I was her editor.

Fanny had intended to publish a pamphlet of legal writings by her father, civil rights scholar Mark DeWolfe Howe, hoping it would be of some use to law students. She brought this proposal to Askold Melnyczuk because they were good friends, and because it was unlikely any publisher other than Arrowsmith Press would entertain the idea. Out of personal and professional kindness (or maybe an avoidance of legal papers) Askold gave me the opportunity to work with her.

Fanny and I were not strangers when she began the book. I had been to her home many times over the years for tea and discussions about writing and god and the state of the world. At gatherings she was the modest lynchpin. I had never known anyone so unassuming carry so much respect with so little hubris.

I had never known anyone so unassuming carry so much respect with so little hubris.

When I finally read the thin file of her father’s papers, there wasn’t quite enough to fill even a pamphlet. There were a few reasonable opinion drafts, a couple of speeches with a Q&A transcribed, and one very excellent and complete essay on civil rights. Was there anything more? Well, said Fanny, I do have some letters.

There were two-hundred pages of letters, dated 1957 to 1966, all sent to Fanny whenever she was away from home. As letters from fathers go, these were wonderful. Besides the usual weather report and family gossip, Fanny’s father was consistently supportive of her writing, urging her not to rush through life too quickly, offering gentle advice in tough times without pretending to know it all, full of that Howe family wit and humor. In some letters he would express his feelings by projecting onto the drama between the family dog whom he’d named Sorrow and the cat he’d named Anger. He even wrote a proud letter addressed to Fanny’s pseudonym, Della Field, when (for the money) she wrote a romance novel entitled Vietnam Nurse. In short, he was an empathetic and curious father who loved his daughter. The final line of the final letter, dated March 2, 1966, read, “I’ve done my best to say my say.” Less than a year later he would die suddenly of a heart attack. She was 26 years old when he passed.

When Fanny spoke of her father (measured as she was at the age of 80) there was still clearly an open wound. In a 2008 essay for Poetry Magazine, she wrote: “My father worked for social justice and was eviscerated. I think when he died he had had enough. (Heart attacks can be a kind of suicide.) …For me his absence opened a door into a future as vertiginous as a long fall.” The essay is well written, but dark through and through. The figures depicted are lonely and fearful. The weather is cold and grim. The times chaotic and depreciating. And the death of her father feels (as it does to many who lose a parent) like an intent to abandon. She writes truly and piercingly, but it’s not an intimate portrait. Her sweetest words for him were: “I didn’t like grown-ups with the exception of my father…”

But now we had these letters from him, and the delight we both felt in reading and discussing them was purely joyful and fun and intimate. There wasn’t a full book there, and Fanny wasn’t interested in publishing them, but something was starting to brew in her. I asked, “where are your letters back to him?” She waved me off, “I don’t know, I probably lost them…”

Whole pages of gold would appear and disappear from day to day. It was like watching the Marsh Wren weaving and refining their many nests. To witness Fanny working was perhaps the greatest editorial privilege of my life.

Shortly thereafter began the pandemic of 2020. From a small island off the coast of Massachusetts she wrote: “I just hope the people who died wanted to die.” And later: “I am forbidden from going near a store. So I am forced to stare blankly into the past, and hope to conjure up the form of an indignant book in the midst of plague.” And on another day: “I hope you are happy wherever you are, the day is so magnificent with wind in it.”

Good, so she was working on the book. All the better that it was indignant.

We spoke periodically in those isolation days. Her father’s voice kept us company. Fanny went in search of the book, it had to be more than personal, she wanted to honor him but also the work he had done. I hadn’t seen any writing yet, and often this means that an author (even one as seasoned as Fanny) has some task they are trying to avoid. One day I cautiously made my suggestion: “Fanny, I think you need to reply to your father’s letters.” Through the screen I saw her look down at the floor like an embarrassed young woman. “Oh, I can’t do that, no,” she said. There was no discussion, no explanation.

Some weeks later an email arrived entitled Here. “You will at once see it is strange and collage-ist. Mistakes you will note I am sure. But now you see the idea. I will proceed accordingly, imagining it being called The Letter, or Manimal Woe.” Attached were nine sparse pages that began:

Dear Daddy, don’t worry, I know you’re dead.

Over the next few months we spoke every week or two. I think on this particular book she wanted company. After forty pages I convinced her to use a shared google document, and so I got to witness what few people ever see: a book being written in real time by a master. Fanny was dedicated, but not precious about her words. Whole pages of gold would appear and disappear from day to day. It was like watching the Marsh Wren weaving and refining their many nests. To witness Fanny working was perhaps the greatest editorial privilege of my life.

What was she trying to accomplish with this book? It is unusual in every way. Once I wrote to her that it most resembled the Bible, another book that is a scramble of family and poetry and law and politics and lament. But she also suspected (or even hoped) this would be the last book she would write, and was keenly aware of what that really meant. I think Fanny understood that to make peace with the end of her life she would need first to make peace with her father’s death.

From Manimal Woe:

“One reason death is so perplexing is that it’s not what you think it is. Death comes before the wind stops blowing.”

And also:

“I wasn’t surprised by the news. I had been dreaming that he was dying. I will say that this coincidence increased my belief in a hidden order. An implicate order.”

And:

“Years after he disappeared, I am trying to trace the unfolding of his life and time. And two things more — not so simple — I want to think about his pursuits, and to know that he died when his work was complete and he could do no more.”

Towards the end of our process she wrote me an email (or a poem) entitled Epiphany:

I felt I should try at least to articulate the thought that came to me,
which was about my father’s quest through legal studies the same
as my quest through experience. That we (and so many others) are
running in the same race that can only succeed with equality of the
runners and freedom to go where they wanted.  In other words, we
are not as bad as we seem when we are running, but when we give
up and despair, we fall to the side, we are over.

I came to this by simultaneously reading religious texts and one wonderful
scientist on infinite potential.

If only I could express it.

I think, when the writing was done, she knew that she had expressed it through what was not revealed. Fanny wrote a relieved message to me once the book was bound and printed, but it began with a sentence I didn’t understand at the time: “Today my father died.” By this I now think she meant that in finishing the book she could release him from her accusation that his heart attack was a suicide, to forgive him for the sin he never committed but that she’d clung to for so long.

“About the death of the parents,” she wrote to me, “I can only say it is glassy, prismatic, unspeakable, impossible. It would be good to ask each one questions now, about their childhood, parents, etc. There are surely things you don’t know, they would matter then later.” I was not one of her children, of whom she spoke often and always with pride and admiration, but I was incredibly lucky to have asked her so many questions.

And once, after the book was done, I wrote to ask her (casually) if she believed in an afterlife. I am still waiting for an answer.

Together, Fanny and I learned that when you don’t get an answer from the dead, you should write them a letter. So I will do my best:

Dear Fanny, don’t worry, I know you’re dead.

You did not want to write your last book, but you needed to. To know that your work was complete and you could do no more. To know that your work is still doing and doing. That writing is a form of suicide, and a form of immortality.

Dear Fanny, you’ll forgive me for stealing your lines, just like you taught me. I’m sorry for the essay I always promised and never finished. I offer you this one instead. You are finally joined with nature and god and the eternal physics of the soul, the wind hasn’t stopped blowing for you, the red and wilding cosmos pulse your song. From where you are (there and here) you have the best vantage from which to read. Reading is best as a necromantic art. I’ve left many of your books unread until now.

Dear Fanny, don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you much longer. You told me not long ago that you didn’t miss writing, that the urge had left you with a soft departure. On the last page of your book you wrote: “In the end I always turn back to the heartbeat of poetry — it’s healthiest when it’s irregular.” I don’t know how to end this letter. We’ve all done our best to say our say. But you always managed to say it best.

The post Dear Fanny, Don’t Worry, I Know You’re Dead ‹ appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Shoppers, understandably, are still freaking out in the grocery aisles, most recently over egg prices. Meanwhile, economists, politicos and pundits continue to sweat allegedly “sticky” categories for goods and services and rising wages – especially after January’s Consumer Price Index accelerated. 

They are all fighting the last war. How about you and your stock portfolio?

Yes, inflation has hammered households since 2021 and it has been horrific. The CPI ended January 23.4% above December 2019 – and that understates many shoppers’ experience – including yours, probably. It’s also true that the end of a military war doesn’t mean the destruction is somehow reversed.

Shoppers, understandably, are still freaking out in the grocery aisles, most recently over egg prices. AFP via Getty Images

The latter, unfortunately, is also the case with inflation. Prices and inflation are different. Inflation is the speed of rising prices — now 3% versus a year ago based on CPI. Prices overall don’t fall. Select categories may, but broadly falling prices – aka deflation – well, developed nations don’t do that. Why?

Real, deep deflation means depression – an even deadlier war. Reversing CPI’s post-pandemic rise means approximating 1929 – 1933’s deflation or the early 1920s’ post-World War I downturn. Is that really what you want? Didn’t think so. Winning the inflation war was never about lowering prices, but rather slowing their advance.

Last November, I detailed the reasons the Federal Reserve wants 2% ongoing annual inflation. Since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, CPI irregularly cooled to January’s 3.0%. Despite all the yakking about acceleration, that’s 0.1% above December. A statistical blip. These measures aren’t that exact anyway.

Meanwhile, December’s “personal consumption expenditures price index,” the broader gauge the Fed actually targets, was 2.6% versus a year ago. Pundits shrieked that it was “stuck” above the 2% target, hyping every worrisome wiggle. But no evidence exists – none, zero, zip – that the Fed can fine-tune anything precisely.

December’s “personal consumption expenditures price index,” the broader gauge the Fed actually targets, was 2.6% versus a year ago.

Weirdly, “stubborn shelter” inflates CPI. But it’s mostly from the fictitious “owner’s equivalent rent” calculation – what goofball government statisticians guesstimate homeowners would pay to rent their own homes. No one pays this.

Excluding shelter, December CPI was 1.9% versus last year —including bird-flu-spiked eggs. The Fed doesn’t want it much lower. So, don’t expect it. But the “war” is over.

Since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, CPI irregularly cooled to January’s 3%. Excluding shelter, December CPI was 1.9% versus last year —including bird-flu-spiked eggs.

Inflation is simply a case of too much money chasing too few goods and services. It comes with a time lag – money supply growth rate exceeding GDP growth rate – and it’s always caused by the Fed, which never, ever takes responsibility.

During 2020’s COVID chaos, the Fed stupidly, bizarrely ballooned money supply. M4, the broadest gauge, soared 30.9% year over year in June 2020. M2, narrower, hit 26.6% in February 2021. Later, prices galloped.

The Fed has slowed down, now growing the money supply at 3.4% and 3.9%, respectively – below most years since the 1980s. Subtract from them about 2% annual GDP growth and you will see inflation ahead below 2%.

During 2020’s COVID chaos, the Fed stupidly, bizarrely ballooned money supply. M4, the broadest gauge, soared 30.9% year over year in June 2020. M2, narrower, hit 26.6% in February 2021.

Worried about wage growth? I detailed last August exactly why it isn’t ever inflationary and can’t ever be. I won’t rehash that now – it was a whole long column, you can look it up. But economists, politicos and pundits seemingly never, ever learn. 

How about President Trump’s tariffs? Again, the key here is that tariffs don’t affect money supply. Tariffs can make some prices rise – although far less and smaller than most think. Mainly, tariffs boost some prices while forcing others to fall. Tariffs channel demand, creating winners and losers. 

Inflation is simply a case of too much money chasing too few goods and services. It comes with a time lag, and it’s always caused by the Fed, which never, ever takes responsibility. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, above. Getty Images

Yes, tariffs are poor economic policy. But inflation isn’t why. Think of all that inflation we didn’t get with Trump’s first term tariffs. 

So what’s the underappreciated, non-inflated truth for investors? Hate to burst some bubbles here, but market forecasting requires seeing something big that others don’t. Huffing and puffing about inflation alongside an army of “experts” won’t help.

The inflation war is over, full stop. Be bullish.

Ken Fisher is the founder and executive chairman of Fisher Investments, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and regular columnist in 21 countries globally.

The post Why the ‘war on inflation’ is over — even though the ‘experts’ don’t get it appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Owners of electric cars in Vermont recently got a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles with some bad news. Starting Jan. 1 they would have to pay $178 a year to register their cars, twice as much as owners of vehicles with internal combustion engines.

In imposing the higher fee, Vermont became the latest state to make people pay a premium for driving electric. At least 39 states charge such annual fees, including $50 in Hawaii and $200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s up from no states a few years ago.

Now, as President Trump rolls back Biden administration measures to promote electric vehicles, Republicans in Congress are considering imposing a national fee to bolster the fund used to finance roads and bridges, a fund that is in dire shape.

The fees are an attempt to make up for declining revenue from gasoline taxes that electric cars, for obvious reasons, don’t pay. They’re an example of how governments are struggling to adjust to technological upheaval in the auto industry.

Environmentalists and consumer groups agree that electric vehicle owners should help pay for road maintenance and construction. But they worry that Republicans, who control Congress, would set the fee at extremely high levels to punish electric vehicle owners, who tend to be liberals.

That has already happened in Texas and other states, said Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports who focuses on transportation and energy.

“E.V. owners should contribute to paying for the roads that they use,” he said. But, he added, “in some cases, states are implementing fees that are pretty punitive to E.V. drivers, significantly more than what the owner of a gas vehicle would pay.”

Flat fees are also unfair to low-income drivers or people who don’t drive very much, making it even harder for them to buy cars that pollute less, Mr. Harto and others said. Federal and state gasoline and diesel taxes are levied per gallon, so that people who drive more — or own gas guzzlers — automatically pay more.

The main reason that revenue from fuel taxes has declined is that internal combustion engines have become much more efficient, while political leaders have been reluctant to raise fuel taxes to keep up with inflation.

The federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not been increased since 1993. The Highway Trust Fund, which finances transportation projects from proceeds of that tax, could become insolvent by 2027 without new sources of funding, analysts say. A list of tax and spending policies that Republicans in Congress are considering includes imposing fees on electric vehicles to help replenish the Highway Trust Fund.

There are 5.4 million electric vehicles on U.S. roads, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group. But that is roughly 2 percent of the total and not the main cause of revenue gaps.

“Lawmakers are finding a convenient scapegoat, and penalizing the cleanest vehicles on the road while ignoring the real cause of the shortfall,” said Max Baumhefner, director for electric vehicle infrastructure at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Some of the highest electric vehicle fees are in states that usually elect Republicans, like Texas, Wyoming and Ohio, all of which charge $200 a year on top of the regular registration fee.

Robert Nichols, a Republican state senator in Texas who sponsored legislation in 2023 establishing a fee, said that the amount was determined by analyzing how much the average owner of a gasoline vehicle pays.

“It’s not an anti-E.V. thing. We’ve got Tesla right here in Texas and we’re very proud,” he said, referring to the electric car maker, which has its headquarters and a factory in Austin. “But everybody needs to pay for the road.”

Texas is among the states singled out by Consumer Reports for overcharging electric vehicle drivers. The organization cites Texas’ relatively low gas tax of 20 cents a gallon, well below the national average of about 50 cents.

Mr. Nichols acknowledged that lawmakers were reluctant to raise taxes on drivers of gasoline cars. “Nobody wants that on their tombstone: ‘Raised the gas tax,’” he said.

But increasingly electric vehicle fees are not just a red state phenomenon. Washington, which charges $150, is as progressive as any blue state. And in Vermont, lawmakers passed a fee law last year because they were concerned that growing numbers of electric vehicles posed a risk to state finances, said Patrick Murphy, state policy director at the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

“Legislators recognized that we are nearing the tipping point where E.V. adoption has become mainstream in Vermont,” he said.

Electric vehicles accounted for 12 percent of new car sales in Vermont last year, above the national average of 8 percent. Mr. Murphy noted that fees collected from electric vehicle owners are earmarked for infrastructure like chargers. At $89 a year above the standard registration fee, Vermont’s fee is also at the low end of what states charge.

People on both sides of the debate agree that a fairer system would charge electric vehicle owners per mile driven. But doing that is complicated. Some states are experimenting with technology that tracks mileage and bills owners accordingly. But the systems are expensive and raise privacy issues.

A flat fee is “not perfect,” Mr. Nichols, the Texas legislator, acknowledged. “But it makes a big step forward. It’s fair without setting up a huge bureaucracy.”

Some states, including Iowa, Georgia and Kentucky, tax electric vehicle chargers. But that system misses a lot of cars. Most people charge at home, using public chargers only occasionally.

States that don’t charge electric cars higher fees include Alaska, Arizona, New York and Massachusetts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In 2026, Vermont plans to be among the first states to try to charge electric vehicle owners based on how much they drive.

That will be relatively easy in Vermont, Mr. Murphy said, because officials already collect odometer readings when owners bring their cars in for annual safety checks. That’s not the case in many states.

Even a system that tracks mileage has flaws. It taxes owners for trips in other states, and does not collect revenue from out-of-state visitors.

“The whole approach we have had is to keep things as simple as possible in the beginning, to get something in place where all vehicles are paying something for our infrastructure,” Mr. Murphy said, “and then to evolve over time to continually make it a fairer system.”

The post E.V. Owners Don’t Pay Gas Taxes. So, Many States Are Charging Them Fees. appeared first on Our Story Insight.

In the fall months, it’s all about dark academia. Give me a creepy school. Give me suspicious students. Give me teachers with secret agendas. I’m looking for a book with all the vibes of a perfect crisp fall day during back-to-school season. But while dark academia is a genre that is really known for the vibes, we need more than a feeling to get us through a whole book, right?

What happens when a library bans Banned Books Week? Well, if you’re Sierra Benjamin, a longtime staff member at the Flathead County Library (MT), you sit outside the library on your days off with a stack of banned books and a sign that says “Banned Books Week is BANNED in your public library!” The library director, Teri Dugan, said that Sierra is allowed to do what she likes in her free time, and that because the library has a number of materials that patrons can check out at any point, they “‘didn’t see a need to necessarily highlight [Banned Books Week].’” Well, maybe they should, because Flathead County has had a few issues with banned and challenged books over the last few years.

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I ADORE memoirs of all kinds. Memoir in essays, graphic memoirs, multi-model memoirs—I love them all. Every year, I try to keep track of the new memoirs coming out. I read as many as I can, and I find new favorites every year.

My favorites aren’t always the buzziest books, and I can’t help but think readers might be missing out. Here are a few of the hidden gems that deserve all the love.

I may be hurtling toward 40, but I still love a middle grade adventure story. There are so many good ones out there, it’s not a surprise. Middle grade adventure novels are special, and so many readers will remember a high-stakes, action-packed adventure story that they read as a child which gripped them at the time and has stayed with them ever since. When you’re a kid, so much of your life is scheduled and decided by the adults around you, so it makes sense that stories where children head off on their own, out into the unknown, and have fantastic adventures with new friends, have always appealed to young readers.

Back in 2021 and 2022, I wrote a lot about how book bans weren’t about the books specifically. They’re about the ways those books can be used as a tool to do a lot more damage and they’re one arm of a many-tentacled approach in the march toward authoritarianism. Book removals allow erasure of entire swaths of people—marginalized people specifically—and book challenges and subsequent book bans are a convenient tool for destabilizing and defunding public institutions like schools and libraries.

The argument is straightforward: if you would not have purchased the “inappropriate” material in the first place, then you would not need to spend all of this money on the process of reviewing the material. Taxpayer money is at stake and poorly stewarded from start to finish. It’s a circular argument.

The post Don’t Miss These Hidden Gem Memoirs appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Speaking at an all-hands meeting for AWS, unit CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he has spoken with support the new policy, which takes effect in January, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

Those who do not wish to comply can quit, he indicated.

“If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around,” said Garman.

AWS CEO Matt Garman said nine out of 10 workers he has spoken with support the new policy, which takes effect in January. Amazon Web Services

“When we want to really, really innovate on interesting products, I have not seen an ability for us to do that when we’re not in-person.”

The policy has upset many of Amazon’s employees who say it wastes time with commuting and the benefits of working from the office are not supported by independent data.

Amazon has been enforcing a three-day in-office policy, but CEO Andy Jassy said last month the retailer would move to five days to “invent, collaborate and be connected.”

Some employees who had not been previously compliant were told they were “voluntarily resigning” and were locked out of company systems.

The policy has upset many of Amazon’s employees who say it wastes time with commuting and the benefits of working from the office are not supported by independent data. AFP via Getty Images

Amazon, the world’s second-largest private employer behind Walmart, has taken a harder line on returning to office than many of its technology peers such as Google, Meta and Microsoft who have two- to three-day in-office policies.

“I’m actually quite excited about this change,” said Garman. “I know not everyone is,” he said, noting it’s too hard to accomplish the company’s goals with only the mandatory current three days of in-office work.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

Garman said under the three-day policy, “we didn’t really accomplish anything, like we didn’t get to work together and learn from each other.”

In particular, Garman said the company’s leadership principles, which dictate how Amazon ought to operate, were too difficult to adhere to under the current policy.

“You can’t internalize them by reading them on the website, you really have to experience them day-to-day,” he said.

One, “disagree and commit” — which is understood to mean that employees can express grievances but then should dive into a project as outlined by leaders — is not ideal for remote work, Garman said.

“I don’t know if you guys have tried to disagree via a Chime call,” he said, referring to the company’s internal messaging and calling function. “It’s very hard.”

The post Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if you don’t want to return to office appeared first on Our Story Insight.