On Tuesday March 4th, President Trump was about an hour into his big address to Congress when I started getting text messages: “Are you ok?”
I was kinda tired, a little bored and not necessarily looking forward to recording a late-night podcast reacting to the address, but yeah I was fine. And then the follow up: “Have you seen the Wall Street Journal article?”
Initially I hadn’t, but the article read, “About 200 employees are being let go at Disney’s ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks unit, people familiar with the matter said.” It continued, “ABC is also eliminating the political and data-driven news site 538, which had about 15 employees.” After nine years of making the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast it appeared my job was coming to an end.
While the manner in which the news broke was surprising, if I’m being honest, the content of it was not altogether shocking. Inside of ABC, the first part of 2025 had felt like a layoffs waiting game and the FiveThirtyEight site ha…
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