The Slatest for Sept. 29: The Questions Dianne Feinstein Leaves Behind

Dianne Feinstein’s office announced Friday morning that she has died at the age of 90, after more than 30 years representing California in the Senate.

As her colleagues share memories of her, some huge, high-stakes questions are looming—namely, who will take her seat, and what will become of her spot on the powerful Judiciary Committee. Jim Newell walks us through what seems likely to happen, and what still remains unknown.

Plus: The Waves reflects on the senator’s legacy of fighting gun violence and conflict with her left-wing constituents.

Unless Congress passes a bill to fund the government by Oct. 1, we’re cruising for a government shutdown. (Yes, even the prospect of impeaching Biden was apparently not enough to keep the Freedom Caucus from taking us all this close to the edge.)

Shirin Ali explains what a shutdown would mean for Jack Smith’s prosecutions of Trump, and Nitish Pahwa looks at what it would mean for the FTX trial.

And wait—didn’t we just face the threat of the government running out of money, like … a few months ago? Ali also has a refresher for you on the difference between government shutdowns and debt ceiling crises, and why these kinds of news cycles keep on happening.

New York City struggled with intense flooding again today. Shannon Palus rounded up some of the most striking images and videos of the inundated city, and wrote about how this is starting to feel like a (terrifying) new normal.

That big pink Barbie energy of the past year is kinetic. Dahlia Lithwick explains why women are going to determine the 2024 election.

One of America’s most polarizing reporters just published her first book. Dan Kois shares what he thought of it, and what it tells us about the changing nature of internet fame.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pair of cases that “could fundamentally alter the nature and operation of social media platforms and the internet itself,” Timothy Zick writes. He unpacks the potential implications for the platforms, their users, and the public.

Make sure to check out the rest of our Opening Arguments series kicking off our coverage of the Supreme Court term that begins next week.

And speaking of the future of social media platforms: Nitish Pahwa took a closer look at Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of the social network formerly known as Twitter, who keeps getting humiliated on Elon Musk’s behalf.

OK, I’ll bite: What are people mad at Taylor Swift about now?

Nadira Goffe breaks down why Swift’s rumored pairing with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has conservatives all worked up. (“It’s not surprising,” she concludes, “but that doesn’t mean it makes a lick of sense, either.”)

… much like Fred Kaplan’s SEO doppelgänger—even though Meta’s A.I. chatbot claims the Other Fred Kaplan has one (lies!). Don’t miss Kaplan “interviewing” the bot about what it thinks of both authors’ books, which were among the 183,000 published works it was trained on.

Thanks so much for reading! We hope you have a great weekend—maybe take in a movie, grab some dinner, join a nice class-action lawsuit against a large language model that ate your books—and we’ll see you on Monday.