Check out these SFF books I'm itching to get to: Indie Edition! @ProblyRobWriter @_GregoryMichael @AndrewTheWatson Aaron Hall

I just signed a new law imposing a 100% state tax on any Californians who benefit from @realDonaldTrump's Jan. 6th slush fund for insurrectionists. Taxpayer dollars should support victims, not the people who attacked law enforcement officers and our very democracy. We don't fund criminals.

What happened to my bank account? Absolutely nothing. You believed a lie. You believed a lie that was told to you by your political class, and your news media, to keep you from asking uncomfortable questions about how much you are paying in tax, where that money is going, and what quality of care you actually receive for the portion of it they didn't steal. Don't believe me? Look at the pictures. Look. At. Them. That's my wife, @acrobatichobbit. Before and after. That's a five centimeter mass. Stage 4 metastatic melanoma. The worst kind of cancer, the most vicious form of assassin your own body can betray you with. That bright area? Blood. Ten years ago, anywhere in the world, the scan on the left is a death sentence... an endless gauntlet of painful surgeries, followed by chemotherapy, hair loss, uncontrolled vomiting, wasting away to nothing, death. In America, today, it's not. We have things here. Genetic therapies. Tailored viruses that attack tumor cells. Drugs that highlight cancers for your immune system, drag them kicking and screaming into the spotlight to be killed. I won't tell you about her exact course of treatment, because that's none of your goddamned business, but I will tell you that it cost American drug companies and medical researchers a fortune to discover. A fortune that your nation cannot afford because you chose socialism instead of progress. And socialism, however fine-sounding in theory, simply does not work. Were she and I British, living in Britain, relying on the National Health Service, I would be a widower now. Did saving her cost a ruinous amount of money? Yes. This technology was expensive to create, and the people who did so deserve to pay their mortgages and feed their kids. So do the oncologists and surgeons. Many of the men who cared for her were old men, experienced men, long past retirement age, still working because when your profession is clawing souls back from the void, sitting on a beach with a pina colada instead just doesn't hit the same. They deserve every cent. Did saving her cost a ruinous amount of money? Yes. Did I pay it? No. Because believe it or not, when things are ruinously expensive, but vitally necessary, we here in America come up with ways to deal with that. Ways that don't involve creating a big pot of money and entrusting it to corrupt slimeballs. We have insurance. And sometimes insurance isn't cheap, but the bite it takes is a hell of a lot less of what we have than the tax man takes from you. And insurance companies sometimes have to make hard decisions about which spending choices will save the most people. I know about this in detail, because that is my wife's profession. She creates the mathematical models that pay for all this stuff. The insurance that saved her is the exact same plan that she provides to others. And at the end of an awful year and a half of treatment, awful because cancer medicines make you far sicker than the cancer itself... We were left whole. Battered and wounded in spirit, but financially whole, at least. The only loss we took was the blow to my career as a novelist, because it turns out you can't write stories while your wife is dying, and you don't automatically recover that ability afterwards. Not right away. I wondered every day if she was going to live or die. I wondered every day what the hell I was going to with myself without her. But I never wondered, not for a moment, how the hell we were going to pay for all this. Your government doesn't solve the problem. It is the problem. They lie to you.

Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth. odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/…

Dear Joe, I wish I could sit down with you face to face and explain why so many of us were offended by the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House. For me, it had nothing to do with the UFC or who showed up for the fights. The brand you and Dana have built is a bona fide American success story. More power to you. As for the fighters, in my book, anyone brave enough to put it all on the line in the arena is remarkable to witness. Their dedication and discipline inspire me. I don’t understand anyone who can’t admire that. And as for the people who attended, I, for one, love Shane Gillis. I think he’s hilarious and brilliant. It was a show. A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to witness it firsthand. My problem is that I believe some of our public spaces are sacred. And unlike many of the great powers that came before us, these American monuments belong to all of us. Not to whoever happens to hold power at the moment. The White House does not belong to Donald Trump. It does not belong to any President. It belongs to the people. To treat it as Caesar treated the Colosseum is antithetical to everything our founding fathers fought for. This is not Rome. Presidents are not emperors doling out bread and circuses for the peasants. The White House is the People’s House. This “celebration” could have happened in any stadium within a stone’s throw of the South Lawn. No one would have had an issue with it. But that was obviously Donald Trump’s whole point. By holding the event on the South Lawn, what he was saying to the rest of us is: “This is my house. I own it. I will do with it what I please. I’ll build a colosseum and have the gladiators fight under my gaze. I’ll tear down the East Wing. I’ll pave over the Rose Garden. I’ll cover everything in gold and marble. I’ll erase the names of all the men who came before me.” The fights were an exhibition of imperial domination, not a celebration of our 250th anniversary as a democracy. The White House is not Buckingham Palace. It is not the Palace of Versailles. It is not the Forbidden City of Beijing. It does not belong to an emperor, or a king, or a commissar. The White House belongs to us. All of us. The person who sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is nothing more than an honored guest. A temporary caretaker. The President is our servant. Not our Caesar. Respectfully, Hunter P.S. Cage match between me and Don Jr.? Your call on the venue. Anywhere but the South Lawn.