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Zachary B. Wolf

@zbyronwolf.bsky.social
176 followers 32 following 111 posts

I write a newsletter for @cnn. Sign up! www.cnn.com/whatmatters

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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
On the one hand, Alito and Thomas vote with Trump on just about everything. But arguably the biggest favor either could do him is retire tomorrow. Doesn't seem like they will.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Congress made it illegal for private companies to use the polygraph. They did that for a reason.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Like. Right?
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In the wikipedia page on presidential pets, Trump and Polk are the only two with "none" listed, tho Andrew Johnson is only cited for feeding mice in his room. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...
en.wikipedia.org
United States presidential pets - Wikipedia
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Reading back over Trump's second inaugural is nuts. "My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That's what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier." www.cnn.com/interactive/...
cnn.com
Donald Trump's second inaugural speech, annotated and fact checked
Read a line-by-line analysis of President Donald Trump's inaugural address
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The bald eagle didn't beat the goose. The sub jokes didn't land either time. Trolling the cadet backfired. "Rather than making any visible efforts to end the trade war with Canada, American leaders are trying — and sometimes failing — to own the Canucks. www.cnn.com/newsletters/...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Christine Brennan smartly wonders -- is Trump going to get involved with the gymnastics scoring at the Olympics? www.cnn.com/newsletters/...
cnn.com
It’s actually incredible that it took this long for President Donald Trump to inject himself into the World Cup drama.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Happy 250, America! We read the Declaration with Trump in mind. It’s worth doing! Some of it is completely inapplicable. A shocking amount echoes. bit.ly/3SFdeq2
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Alito's "medieval" complaint about birthright citizenship is an incredible turn for a textualist movement that usually likes to talk about taking the Constitution as literally as possible. From yesterday's What Matters newsletter - www.cnn.com/newsletters/...
cnn.com
While the overriding story of the Supreme Court in recent years has been its deference to President Donald Trump in the furtherance of executive authority, Tuesday was a big exception to that rule.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Both things can be true. The Supreme Court did give Trump new power Monday. At the same time, he’s running out of time to use it. And despite his efforts to stack commissions and put supporters across the government, institutional guardrails still exist. www.cnn.com/newsletters/...
cnn.com
On the one hand, President Donald Trump is consolidating power with help from the Supreme Court.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
What would country would make for the most awkward Trump trophy presentation: He made war on one country, tried to influence elections, imposed tariffs, called countries shit holes, hell holes, has made all of Europe squirm, cut off foreign aid... www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: Trump will present the World Cup trophy. It could be VERY awkward | CNN Politics
The president has launched a war with nation in the tournament, and a war of words with many others.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Re: the impending birthright decision. The conventional wisdom is Trump will lose. That may be. But I don't think anyone expected the Court to go as far giving presidents super immunity as he asked them to.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
The weaponization fund almost feels like a red herring for giving the Trump family and businesses a free pass on taxes. @audiecornish.bsky.social #groupchat
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
It "will not be long" before the Iran war is over Trump said today. He says that a lot. www.cnn.com/2026/05/09/p...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Trump's talking about killing the Iranian civilization and two successive Fox News shows have found extensive time to talk instead about Gavin Newsom's wife.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
On the one had, there's a pattern. On the other, the threats are getting more existential from a guy who has individual power to launch nuclear weapons.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Hegseth in his 2020 book "American Crusade": “So-called tolerance smells like surrender to Islamists, because it is. Jesus did tell us to turn the other cheek, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t advising a secretary of defense at the time." www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: Pete Hegseth wanted an ‘American Crusade.’ Now he’s leading a war in the Middle East | CNN Politics
In the war the US launched on the Islamic Republic, the US secretary of war, as he prefers to be called, likes to talk about how the Christian God is on his side.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
You don't have to look very hard to see appeals to White nationalism in Trump administration policy. It's a much larger issue than DHS recruiting posters. I talked about my story from the What Matters newsletter on Inside Politics. And if you don't believe me, read the full story.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
White House adviser Stephen Miller said the 1965 Immigration Act ruined the country, ultimately causing low test scores, high health care costs and skyrocketing debt. Mark Updegrove from LBJ library told me the law is actually a major piece of Civil Rights legislation www.cnn.com/2025/12/11/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: The Civil Rights law that Stephen Miller says ruined America | CNN Politics
Trump’s key aide thinks the country was better off with strict quotas that sought to preserve the racial makeup of the country in the 1920s and so favored immigrants from Western and Northern Europe o...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I was going to say the US has a history of not naming things for living people, but then I realized the Donald Trump Institute of Peace is in line with the George Bush Center for Intelligence.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
In the strange and troll-ey world of social media, that also means it got the WH message out to a lot of new people.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Note: A first and second strike (double tap?) were built into the Yemen attack Hegseth shared with everyone over Signal back in April. www.cnn.com/interactive/...
cnn.com
Annotating the Trump administration's Yemen war plans from their Signal group chat
Read a line-by-line analysis of the war plans shared over a Signal group chat, with additional reporting and context from CNN national security reporters.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
VP Vance and Speaker Johnson are doing everything they can to say the words "Chuck" and "Schumer" in every shutdown-related sentence. He's their new Pelosi.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
If govt. shutdowns only exist because of a 1980 memo by Jimmy Carter's AG Benjamin Civiletti. Ultimate Trump flex would be have Bondi simply write a new memo.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
If you're the next Democratic president in, say, 2029... do you go ahead and fire all the Trump people who were installed in independent agencies or do you try to return to normal with his people?
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
What may be most apparent in this speech is Trump's complete disregard for all of the world except the US and Europe, and his fear of what's happening to Western 'heritage.' The language is not even coded. www.cnn.com/2025/09/23/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: Trump’s ‘your countries are going to hell’ speech, annotated | CNN Politics
In a just-about hourlong address to the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump insulted the organization repeatedly.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Madison's first draft of the #freespeech clause was more expansive: "The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable."
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
What is Lisa Murkowski even thinking? “You're roadkill in the middle” - great interview by @audiecornish.bsky.social ... youtu.be/CLVqlJOTlNE?...
youtu.be
'You're roadkill in the middle': Murkowski on centrism in the Trump era | The Assignment
YouTube video by CNN
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Anyone who takes the time to look will find the immigration crackdown right next to them. That’s what I found — at two degrees of separation — when I heard from a friend that her child’s special needs aide’s father.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Hmm. What do you think they’re going for with this?
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Shocked to learn, researching this story, that 2 million Americans got polygraphs from their employers until Congress largely outlawed their use in the private sector in 1988. Still in use for government workers, however, and the Trump administration is leaning in. www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/p...
cnn.com
The Trump administration revives an old intimidation tactic: the polygraph machine | CNN Politics
When President Ronald Reagan’s White House threatened thousands of government officials with polygraph exams, supposedly to protect classified data (but probably also to control press leaks), his Secr...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
I called @markupdegrove.bsky.social about Trump rolling back diversity initiatives and he said the issue is much larger than that. “This is certainly the biggest rollback of civil rights since Reconstruction." More from our talk in #whatmatters lnkd.in/eGUJnF_2
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Musk has built a dark conspiracy theory around social security. www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: Elon Musk’s paranoid conspiracy theory about Social Security, explained | CNN Politics
Pinned to the top of Elon Musk’s X account is a six-minute clip of his recent three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Lucy with the football; Trump with the tariffs. (some of them, anyway)
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
It's the doodle of mice. www.cnn.com/2025/03/04/s...
cnn.com
Genetically engineered woolly mouse is a step toward resurrecting extinct mammoth, company says | CNN
Scientists working to bring back the woolly mammoth have created genetically engineered mice that they say have several features of the extinct ice age giant.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Mexico exports to US were roughly 30% of its GDP. Canada exports to US were roughly 20% of its GDP. US exports to Canada were about 1% of US GDP. US exports to Mexico were about 1% of its GDP. www.cnn.com/2025/03/04/a...
cnn.com
Trump’s tariffs could plunge Mexico and Canada into a recession | CNN
US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico could severely impact the economies of both countries, potentially slowing down production of certain goods, raising prices on products and spa...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Clearly Trump feels a kinship with Putin.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Trump keeps saying he and Putin went through the Russia investigation “together.” He’s said it a few times. It sticks out. And Trump calls the investigation into Russian election interference a “hoax”.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Regarding the rare earth minerals in Ukraine… www.cnn.com/2025/02/27/e...
cnn.com
Inside a struggling Ukraine mine, Trump’s mineral deal dreams meet war-torn reality | CNN
From this beleaguered titanium mine, it’s hard to see how Ukraine could repay the half a trillion dollars that President Donald Trump has suggested they might give the US under a moonshot rare earth m...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Medicaid covers more than 20% of Americans -
cnn.com
Analysis: What is Medicaid and why is it a Republican target for cuts? | CNN Politics
It might be hard to get super interested in the back and forth of the budget bills bouncing around Capitol Hill, but they could have huge consequences for Americans’ everyday lives.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
"...The child was unvaccinated and had been hospitalized in Lubbock...This is the first US measles death since 2015, when a woman in Washington state died."
cnn.com
Child in West Texas is first US measles death in a decade | CNN
The first measles death in the growing outbreak in West Texas was a school-aged child.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
'...we've got to live in the real world here...' x.com/zbyronwolf/s...
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Dead people are a frequent bogeyman... social security, government workers, etc... www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/p...
cnn.com
Analysis: Elon Musk sees dead people | CNN Politics
To hear President Donald Trump and Elon Musk tell it, the dead steal elections. They get fraudulent Social Security checks. And now, apparently, dead people are working for the government too.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Trump keeps saying the US has spent $350 billion in #ukraine. Where does he get this figure? The actual amount is much less. And Europe has spent more, not less, than the US, at least according to the Kiel Institute. www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-a...
ifw-kiel.de
Ukraine Support Tracker - A Database of Military, Financial and Humanitarian Aid to Ukraine
The Ukraine Support Tracker lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid promised by governments to Ukraine.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Very male-centric Cabinet from this angle.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
#5thingsididlastweek 1 Dissected claim Social Security pays to millions 100+ - no evidence 2 Reread Mueller Report re: Trump Russia shift 3 Watched WH Black History event as WH declared war on diversity 4 Listed DOGE cuts outside DC 5 Listened 2 Musk bio. Asperger’s blamed for no empathy
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
I’m interested in who at DOGE will read millions of these emails. AI? Or is this pretense? www.cnn.com/2025/02/22/p...
cnn.com
Federal employees told to justify jobs in email or Musk says they face dismissal | CNN Politics
Federal workers began receiving emails Saturday asking them to explain what work they did last week, as Elon Musk announced that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
We sent our climate change guy to the Daytona 500. @billweircnn.bsky.social www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/s...
cnn.com
See the first-ever electric race car that could be NASCAR’s future | CNN
CNN’s Bill Weir gets an up close look at an all-electric race car that could help NASCAR fulfill their stated goal of being net zero by 2035.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 25/04/2024
Donald Trump's lawyers cut George Washington off when they cited Washington's Farewell Address to argue in favor of presidential immunity. Washington used the address to announce would leave office. Trump wants immunity for trying to cling to power.
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Zachary B. Wolf @zbyronwolf.bsky.social · 26/03/2024
What if the Saudi wealth fund bought up a bunch of DJT stock?
cnn.com
Analysis: Trump’s DJT stock creates a unique new ethical nightmare | CNN Politics
The newly public company trading on the Nasdaq with the ticker “DJT” has one dominant shareholder: Donald John Trump, the cash-strapped former president of the United States.
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