Matt Yglesias co-founded Vox, left for Substack in 2020, and built Slow Boring into one of the largest individual-writer political subscription businesses in the United States.
Washington stopped reading press releases. The public affairs function — connecting companies with policymakers, regulators, and the political process — is operating in conditions that have shifted meaningfully since 2023. The bipartisan reset, the new playbook, and the firms adjusting.
Politics and public relations intersect at scale across campaign communications, government affairs, ballot initiative work, political consulting, crisis response, and the broader public affairs category. The major firms operating at the intersection (BCW, FleishmanHillard, Edelman public affairs practice, SKDK, Mercury Public Affairs, Bully Pulpit Interactive, GMMB, Precision Strategies). The five disciplines that compound across both political and corporate communications work in 2026.
It seems the falling out between Fox News and its former top draw, Bill O'Reilly, was shorter than advertised.
When Trump attacks a Morning Joe co-host, the show's ratings nearly double — 1.66 million viewers against a 896,000 baseline, beating Fox & Friends. The cross-audience tune-in mechanic, why it happens, whether the spike is sustainable, and what it teaches program development teams currently building strategy for the fall.
Al Jazeera is under siege at home. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Qatar and demanded the network's closure. Qatar refused. The demand list, the alliances, and the counter-pressure track running against the platforms.
A CNN headline this week: "Donald Trump is Fox News' Top PR guy." Four months in, the defining feature of the Trump White House press operation is a media-relations strategy that runs almost entirely against the traditional press corps and almost entirely in favor of a single friendly cable network. The Muir interview, the amplification loop, and what it means for the network press.
In a recent speech, Immelt made it clear that he believes US companies need to step up and change their attitude if they hope to compete with foreign firms.
Reshma Saujani built Girls Who Code into the most-cited gender-and-tech nonprofit of the last decade, then pivoted to Marshall Plan for Moms during the pandemic. Fifteen years of founder-voice discipline, strategic confrontation (including the 2017 Ivanka Trump book cycle), and vehicle-agnostic mission continuity. A case study in sustained personal-brand communications operations.
April 2017. Aetna exits the Iowa ACA exchange. Eight months later, CVS announces it's acquiring Aetna for $69 billion. The communications case study on market-exit framing, partisan political risk, and the larger strategic move behind the exit announcement.
