Even power needs a day off.
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Illustration by Rebekka Dunlap | Electric vehicles are surging toward the mainstream. In just the last nine months, automakers have sold 576,000 of them, a 70-percent jump over the same period last year. And those numbers will keep going up if Ford, General Motors and the Biden administration stick to their shared goal of electrifying half of all new cars by 2030. Which raises the question: Where will drivers charge up? That's the central conflict in an ongoing battle between two titans of the energy sector: electric companies and gas stations. Who has the right to sell wattage? And how much will it cost? One vision for the future requires a widespread gas station glow-up: dropping the exsanguinating lighting and rotating hot dogs for wi-fi, comfy couches and protein bowls that can keep drivers comfy while they wait for their cars to charge. Another sees EV drivers preferring the convenience of charging up while sipping a latte at Starbucks or going grocery shopping, largely abandoning all but those absolutely-no-alternative refill stations along lonely stretches of highway. "In other words," Ferris writes, the charging spots popping up at roadside gas stations "are either the dominoes that trigger the gas station's revolution, or the headstones that mark its grave." Read the story.
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| "He has … the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought." Can you guess who said this about UK Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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Vice President Richard Nixon shakes hands with Jackie Robinson in Plainfield, N.J. on Oct. 4, 1960. | Henry Griffin/AP Photo | Swing Voter … In the 1960 election, JFK and Richard Nixon both coveted an endorsement from one man: legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson. Can you guess who won? Sports historian Fred Frommer tells the story of a fraught relationship between an icon and a president .
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| 49 percent … of women voters have written mostly or exclusively in cursive over the past year when writing by hand, compared to 30 percent of men.
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| The latest repercussion of the ongoing episode of public antisemitism from Ye, better known as Kanye West: The rapper and entrepreneur's "Donda Academy" abruptly announced it was closing for the remainder of the school year yesterday. Then, just hours after the announcement, TMZ reported that parents and students received an email from "Parents of Donda" saying school was back in session. Confused? Here's some context for the dizzying fall from grace of one of the world's most (in)famous men. (From Derek Robertson.) - It might be hard to imagine now, but just a little over a year ago West's most recent album "Donda" was shattering streaming records on nearly every platform. It's now more unlikely than ever that he'll return as a working recording artist. - West's troubles were kicked off by his Twitter threat to go "death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE" earlier this month, but he continued to double down — saying among other things he's been " screwed by the Jewish media ." - Some of West's antisemitic remarks appear to be influenced by the ideology of the Black Hebrew Israelites , an ideological sect classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. - Forbes estimates that by losing his Adidas deal, West has taken a $1.5 billion — yes, billion — hit to his net worth.
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POLITICO illustration/Photos by Reuters, iStock | The Reporter and the Hackers … Wall Street Journal chief foreign correspondent Jay Solomon lost his job in 2017 after allegedly discussing business deals with a key source. Now, he's suing — not because of his firing, but over what he claims was a multi-million-dollar criminal campaign by a foreign emirate's American law firm to hack his correspondence and use it to silence him, writes Michael Schaffer in this week's Capital City column .
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Sauk County, Wis., has voted for the winner of 10 out the last 11 presidential elections. | Andy Manis for POLITICO | An Electoral Crystal Ball … Sauk County, Wisconsin has voted for the winner in 10 out of the last 11 presidential elections; it swung from Obama to Trump to Biden. You might think such a politically purple place would turn out moderate, bipartisan candidates. Not so. After all, this is a state that sent both mega-conservative Ron Johnson and true-blue liberal Tammy Baldwin to the Senate. Now, as Wisconsin faces high-profile contests for its governorship and a U.S. Senate seat that could flip the chamber, Kathy Gilsinan reports on the elusive "secret sauce" of a county on an electoral winning streak .
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First Lady Betty Ford and her secretary, Nancy Howe, dress a skeleton for Halloween in the President's chair in his private study on the second floor of the White House. October 30, 1974. | Gerald R. Ford Library | On October 30, 1974, First Lady Betty Ford, left, and her secretary, Nancy Howe, dressed a skeleton — borrowed from the White House infirmary — in celebration of Halloween. The figure sat in President Gerald Ford's chair in his private study on the second floor of the White House. The following year, Ford oversaw the " Halloween Massacre ," a major cabinet re-organization involving the firings of Henry Kissinger as national security adviser (he retained his role as secretary of State), William Colby as director of the CIA and James Schlesinger as Defense secretary. (From writer Ella Creamer.)
| | | **Who Dissed answer: It was Winston Churchill, then serving in the House of Commons. MacDonald was widely panned as a poor speechmaker who tended to ramble, leaving him vulnerable to Churchill's clever barb. politicoweekend@email.politico.com
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