| Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter: |
| • The Big Read: The frustration behind a beautiful, Tesla-beating EV |
| • The Top 5: The very best personal personal trainers |
| • Plus: A different type of It bag; Keri Russell's Americans; and a Maine attraction returns. |
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| Since the presidential election, much of America's attention has focused on Mar-a-Lago as President-elect Donald Trump has held court there at his private club, barreling through an extraordinary number of cabinet appointments and entertaining guests like Elon Musk. |
| My eyes have actually been drawn 10 minutes down the road from Mar-a-Lago to what's happening above a nondescript Palm Beach shopping center. The offices there belong to 1789 Capital, a little-known venture firm. Anyone interested in understanding the feedback loop between the tech world, the Trump administration's policy moves and the Trump family's business dealings would do well to be as curious about 1789 Capital as I am. |
| Donald Trump Jr. this week announced that he would be joining the venture firm, which focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth—that is, it eschews environmental, social, and governance investing. The firm has about $150 million under management and just a single public investment—Tucker Carlson's new media company—but the modest-seeming operations fit into a much bigger picture. |
| Indeed, 1789 is just one node in a sprawling network of businesses and organizations funded and operated by the same cast of characters. 1789 co-founder Omeed Malik has also backed two SPACs focused on building out the "patriot economy" (think pro-life diapers and Trump fan merch). Another co-founder, Chris Buskirk, has been involved in crafting conservative media brands and "Stop the Steal" efforts following the 2020 election. (I first came across Buskirk while researching my story on Curtis Yarvin, who shared some of his political vision on Buskirk's podcast in 2020.) |
| Meanwhile, Buskirk and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a conservative donor group that internal documents refer to as "a kind of political venture capital firm." Rockbridge is financed in part by Peter Thiel (whose lieutenant, Blake Masters, is a 1789 board member) and Rebekah Mercer (the third 1789 co-founder). The group used their financing to deploy millions of dollars this year on Republican get-out-the-vote operations. |
| After lending their support in the election, 1789's key players could stand to benefit significantly from the incoming administration—and the open line of communication Trump's eldest son will provide. With Trump's promises of sweeping deregulation, 1789 seems poised to act on Buskirk's interests in cryptocurrency, defense tech, biotech and charter cities, which are deregulated, pro-business zones experimenting with new forms of governance.—Julia Black |
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| At the moment, the market for electric vehicles is a rather gnarly race. Across the industry, sales growth has stalled, with few choices for customers who don't want to purchase a luxury sedan—or who can't afford one. Construction of important charging infrastructure is happening at a slow pace. Every automaker attempting an EV is losing millions and millions of dollars, while Elon Musk's Tesla enjoys a pretty clear first-mover advantage as it gets gassed up further on his expanding public image. |
| And yet Peter Rawlinson, a onetime Musk lieutenant and one of the most consequential Tesla employees ever, is dead set on his carmaker, Lucid Automotive, taking a leading position in that competition, as our Steve Levine explains in our latest Big Read. |
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| Want to polish your triathlon time? Spar with the guy who has whipped Mark Zuckerberg into shape? Or maybe pick up some pointers from a former world-champion weightlifter? Weekend contributor Annie Goldsmith has rustled up a list of the personal trainers who come with seals of approval from people like Zuckerberg and Max Levchin. Levchin's guy, Matt Dixon, promises that his clients will walk out feeling like "Yes, I'm getting faster in my sport, but this methodology is actually helping me show up better for work—show up better as a leader—and helping me gain an edge in the workplace and, by extension, broader life." |
| Abram Brown, editor of The Information's Weekend section, feels he's as qualified for a White House position as anyone these days. You can reach him at abe@theinformation.com or find him on X. |
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| Buying: Big Blue Beauty |
| At a recent Information company offsite, I noticed my co-worker was carrying the most delightful tote bag. It was electric blue and spacious, but not imposingly so, and it had unusual pockets reminiscent of a chore coat: I had to have it. |
| During one of the day's activities, I surreptitiously snapped a photo of the label—which identified it as a product from Ölend, a Barcelona-based backpack brand. I went home that evening and bought it. |
| About a year and a half later, I still feel as passionately about the bag, officially known as the Cosmico Tote. I can fit anything and everything in there, and I often do: It's one of my go-to work bags, but I've also used it as an overnighter and beach bag. (Did I mention it's water resistant? And on sale right now?) It makes any trek look stylish and it's available in three colors! I still prefer the cobalt blue.—Paris Martineau |
| Reading: Another Serving of Olive |
| Oh, Elizabeth Strout! America has seldom had a more graceful laureate of small-town love and loneliness, courtesy of Strout's uncanny ability to hold up a mirror to the type of people who populate most of this country and to tenderly reflect the triumphs and miseries that fill their lives. Two decades ago, she made this skill plainly evident in "Olive Kitteridge," a slender novel that revolves loosely around the titular hard-to-please, harder-to-love Maine school teacher. It won Strout a Pulitzer Prize, and she wrote a sequel, "Olive, Again." |
| Strout returns once again to Olive and lighthouse land with "Tell Me Everything." Olive is 90 now but still delights in recounting stories of "unrecorded lives" to old friend Bob Burgess and new friend Lucy Walton, a pair introduced in separate Strout books and brought together with Olive for the first time here. Lucy is a retired artist, Bob a former criminal defense attorney who takes up the case that's catching everyone's attention in Shirley Falls, Maine: Did reclusive Matt Beach murder his octogenarian mother by pushing her off a quarry's edge? |
| Strout has an eye for the little details that make her world feel so fully formed—the cardboard put down at a grocery store's front door when it gets mucky out, for instance—and they grant real power to her plainspoken observations. These are truisms such as "None of us are on sturdy soil," as Lucy says to Bob, "we just think we are," as well as "Those of us who need love so badly at a particular moment can be off-putting to those who want to love us." Oh, how very true.—A.B. |
| Watching: A Fantasy State Department |
| As President-elect Donald Trump begins to appoint ambassadors like Mike Huckabee and Elise Stefanik, I've been imagining what kind of challenges they'll face as our global alliances become more and more fraught. Hopefully it's nothing like the roller coaster Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) faces in the second season of "The Diplomat," which recently arrived on Netflix. |
| Wyler, a maverick U.S. ambassador to the U.K., must navigate assassination plots, geopolitical power plays and her own messy marriage. This new season is a perfect blend of soapy and serious, and while it has moments that feel uncannily timely (the theme of the season is how far democracies will go to counter the rise of authoritarianism around the world), I promise it's more enjoyable than watching the nightly news, and really, this one's a must-watch for anyone who gets a kick out of risk game nights.—J.B. |
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| Pour one out. |
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