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Michael Leibel

@michaelleibel.com
3.8K followers 1.1K following 301 posts

senior editor for @theatlantic.com | opinions are my own and bad | UNC 2014

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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 29/08/2026
“There’s but a hair’s breadth between slop and goop.”
theatlantic.com
Gwyneth Paltrow Is Very Sorry to Postpone Her Dinner
Is controversy not all the more reason to take a conversation alfresco?
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 30/05/2026
I can’t believe it. Both the Canes and Knicks in their finals. Wow.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 03/05/2026
There should be more horses involved in journalism
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 27/04/2026
Delivered - I always type it as “delievered”
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 19/04/2026
They should allow Gary, Ron and Keith to drink in the booth
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Michael Scherer @michaelscherer.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
The FBI Director Is MIA
Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.
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Adrienne LaFrance @adriennelaf.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
This is a big one. Stellar reporting from Sarah Fitzpatrick. To call it a must-read is an understatement: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job
The FBI director has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 15/04/2026
(Squids in Chapel Hill)
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 15/04/2026
Since hush puppies count as bread I have a vastly different (and under-researched) answer than @caity.bsky.social here
theatlantic.com
I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America
Thirteen thousand miles. Infinite contenders. One beautiful loaf.
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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
oh no he’s got Mr Marbury www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
theatlantic.com
I Am Here to Watch the Birthright-Citizenship Arguments, but Not in a Threatening Way
Can’t a president go watch his justices?
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Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Cash hasn't killed caring or quality in college ball. My latest after that stunner of a @ncaa.bsky.social Sweet 16, looking forward to #FinalFour www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
College Basketball Is Not Dead
Nostalgists worried that giving players more rights would ruin the game. This year’s NCAA tournament is proving them wrong.
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Adrienne LaFrance @adriennelaf.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I will read everything Cullen Murphy writes, obviously, and this one is particularly lovely. Not to be missed: www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
What Tracy Kidder Stood For
His deep, immersive writing had moral stakes and changed people’s lives.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 01/04/2026
"For all of the economic evolutions in the NCAA, the qualities of a championship team haven’t changed," @sallyjenx.bsky.social writes
theatlantic.com
The Lesson of a Thrilling March Madness
Nostalgists worried that giving athletes more rights would ruin college sports. This year’s NCAA basketball tournament is proving them wrong.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 31/03/2026
Pain
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Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 31/03/2026
Tottenham Hotspur owners Daniel Levy and Joe Lewis turned a mid-table football team into a European heavyweight. Now the partnership is collapsing spectacularly — just as the club faces being dumped from the Premier League. Read more: bloom.bg/4bVPG5Z 📷: AMA/Corbis via Getty Images
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 27/03/2026
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
The Evidence That God Exists
Searching for scientific proof for faith misunderstands faith.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 27/03/2026
My favorite comment on Elizabeth Bruenig's latest Atlantic story: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Comment from user amcclory says: "I remember the exact moment when I received incontrovertible proof that there is no God. It was Game 6 of the 1993 NBA finals. My beloved Phoenix Suns lost the first two games of that series to Michael Jordan's two-time champion Chicago Bulls. Somehow, the Suns improbably won two out of three games in Chicago, staving off elimination, and bringing the series back to Phoenix. They were cruising to victory in Game 6, only to have John Paxon drain a three-pointer to take the lead in the last 4 seconds of the game. With that dagger three, the Suns season and all possibility of the existence of a loving, powerful deity came to an end."
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 22/03/2026
MARCH
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 20/03/2026
The wisdom of the 5:30 am diaper package. Take note, UNC Athletics.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 17/03/2026
I would pay thousands of dollars a year (think very low thousands) for access to the mobile Bloomberg Professional app
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 17/03/2026
After working at Bloomberg for eight years, it's been very difficult to adjust to a Terminal-less world. News alerts and stock-watching just feel different. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/bloo...
wsj.com
Finance Bros to Tech Bros: Don’t Mess With My Bloomberg Terminal
Some spend more time with the computer system than they do with their spouse. So when techies declared it “cooked,” it was war.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 17/03/2026
“The pattern is everywhere: Condition people to rely on the system. Erode their vigilance. Then, when something breaks, point to the terms of service and blame them for not paying attention.”
theatlantic.com
My Self-Driving Car Crash
The Tesla was driving perfectly—until it wasn’t.
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McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Last year, The Atlantic gave me $10,000 to gamble with. What started as a journalistic gimmick turned into something more... unnerving. My cover story on the online betting boom that's warping sports, culture, politics, and the psyches of millions of young men: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 11/03/2026
In which @elcush.bsky.social explains why scarcity is in demand for companies (and uses variations of the word “drop” 23 times in doing so):
theatlantic.com
The Highly Exclusive Way That Everybody Shops Now
When everything’s a drop, what’s the point of a drop?
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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 10/03/2026
Exclusive: HSI, a branch of DHS that usually investigates drug cartels and human-trafficking networks, is probing the 2020 election results in Arizona, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Nick Miroff report.
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Arizona Is Now at the Center of Election Investigations
Both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are probing the results of the 2020 election in Arizona.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Wrote about the central lie of prediction markets. How they are the perfect technology for a low-trust society, simultaneously exploiting and reifying an environment in which believing the motives behind any person or action becomes harder. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
The Central Lie of Prediction Markets
Polymarket and Kalshi promise the wisdom of the crowds. They deliver something very different.
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Tim O’Brien @timobrien.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Trump is burning through missile stockpiles as if the inventories were endless. And they aren’t. And China and Russia are watching. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
bloomberg.com
The US Has Enough Missiles for This War But Not the Next One
The decline of missile stockpiles, which spurred the Department of Defense’s arm-twisting in January for Lockheed Martin Corp. and RTX Corp. to boost production, is worsening by the day.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 21/02/2026
While he was detained at Dilley for over four months, 13-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he felt as if he would “never get out.” “I just ask that you don’t forget about us,” he told ProPublica in a video call.
propublica.org
The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center
ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 16/02/2026
This is actually a fun all-star game
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 14/02/2026
Normalize Heelys
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 11/02/2026
Testing something www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
theatlantic.com
The Democrats Aren’t Built for This
They say they want to save democracy. First they’ll need to get out of their own way.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 10/02/2026
This @tyrangiel.bsky.social story has everything: the importance of the BLS, the one tech leader that worried CEOs will talk with candidly, and the deepest challenge AI poses outside of jobs
theatlantic.com
America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs
Does anyone have a plan for what happens next?
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
This is a great piece by my colleague spencer on the bad bunny helftimeshow but of course there’s never been a more divisive idea in American history than all of us being American, we fought a civil war over it and Trump is nothing if not manifest opposition to it www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
‘Together, We Are America’
Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive. They were totally wrong.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 09/02/2026
The Bad Bunny halftime show immediately chased by the AI slop Svedka ad was incredible whiplash
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Jason Kirk @jasonkirk.fyi · 09/02/2026
Only one who got the ball into the end zone was Bad Bunny
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 28/01/2026
Starting him young
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 27/01/2026
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
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Nick Miroff @nickmiroff.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
BREAKING Greg Bovino has been removed as Border Patrol "commander at large" and will return to El Centro Calif, where he is expected to retire soon. A stunning turnaround after Pretti killing. Bovino's traveling blue city crackdown is over www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
Gregory Bovino Gets Demoted
The Border Patrol chief was the public face of a traveling immigration crackdown on cities governed by Democrats.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 26/01/2026
Hell yeah
Caption that says “Axios CEO Jim VandeHei shares the blunt…”
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 26/01/2026
Incredible paragraph in Robert F. Worth's excellent reporting from Minneapolis: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
Text that says: Inside the schools, many administrators have been making their own preparations over the past year. Amanda Bauer, a teacher at a Minneapolis elementary school that has a large portion of immigrant students, told me that administrators informed parents last fall about their emergency plans for ICE raids by phone or in person, because they were already concerned about leaving email chains that could be mined by a hostile government.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 23/01/2026
I’m at the hospital I’m at the cafeteria I’m at the combination hospital and cafeteria
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CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
We have a goalie fight! Sergei Bobrovsky skates all the way down to challenge Alex Nedeljkovic (h/t @msmambo.bsky.social)
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Clint Smith @clintsmithiii.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
In December, I traveled to Montgomery to visit the Legacy Museum, which traces the story of Black America from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. I wanted to understand how the museum & its affiliated sites were operating in a moment where so much of the history they present is under attack.
theatlantic.com
The Power of Private Museums
The Equal Justice Initiative’s historical sites in Montgomery, Alabama, show what’s possible when history isn’t subject to federal funding cuts or executive orders.
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 19/01/2026
Caleb Williams makes a play that no one has ever seen before every two-three weeks
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CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
They named him Owen because the Bears were 0-2 when he was born... WHAT 😂
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 18/01/2026
Oh you did it nice
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 18/01/2026
@jonbois.bsky.social you know what to do
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Michael Leibel @michaelleibel.com · 13/01/2026
“If audiences haven’t been enjoying sex scenes, well, maybe that’s because most sex scenes haven’t been doing their job.”
theatlantic.com
A Romance That Actually Takes Sex Seriously
Heated Rivalry understands how relationships develop through physicality.
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Federal Reserve @federalreserve.gov · 12/01/2026
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...
youtube.com
Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell
YouTube video by Federal Reserve
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