Weekly Notes, April 18-24, 2026

What I’ve Been Reading and Thinking About This Week

Apr 25, 2026

This week I found myself coming back to a familiar theme: not so much ideology or even discrete events, but systems—how they function under pressure, how they adapt, and in some cases, how people try to work around them entirely.

What struck me most is how often the response to a failing or misaligned system isn’t reform, but something more structural—whether that’s redrawing boundaries, reshaping institutions from within, or simply shifting attention in ways that distort outcomes.

The story that made me wonder whether people are rethinking the wisdom of forcing the mid-decade redistricting in Texas
Trump Has a Bold Option to Counter Virginia’s New Gerrymander Scheme: Returning Arlington to the District of Columbia Would Fight Fire With Fire
Chad Mizelle, Foxnews.com, April 21, 2026
Let’s set aside, for the moment, the faux shock and indignation here, given the fact that the Democrats’ Virginia redistricting proposal was prompted by the Republicans’ in Texas. The idea of a reverse-retrocession of those parts of the original District of Columbia that were ceded back to Virginia in the 19th century is fascinating in its utter audacity. I’ve heard many proposals about ceding most of the rest of DC to Maryland, but this is the first idea I’ve heard of restoring DC to its original square shape. It’s probably asking too much to get both parties to consider proposals to limit gerrymandering and follow most other modern democracies in depoliticizing the design of Congressional district borders going forward, but here’s hoping.
The story that shows how much the Foreign Service is being changed
Who Wants to Be an American Diplomat in Trump’s Administration?
Sam Skove and Rachel Oswald, Foreign Policy, April 21, 2026
A piece this week in Foreign Policy looks at how the U.S. Foreign Service is being reshaped—not through sweeping reform, but through hiring, incentives, and culture. The focus is on a new recruitment push that, in tone and substance, represents something of a throwback—moving away from the more recent emphasis on broadening the pipeline and toward the former, narrower conception of what a diplomat looks like—more “white, male, and Yale” with less emphasis on diversity and more on a particular vision of professionalism and loyalty that looks less like the country as a whole than one particular segment of it.
The story about how the wrong incentives can distort leadership behavior
Kiss Up and Kick Down: The Trouble With Too Much Upward Management
Victor Lipman, Forbes, March 11, 2019
This is an oldie but goodie that I pull out and read now and then. Focusing on pleasing your superiors at the expense of leading your teams is something I have seen in a number of contexts, including, at times, within the State Department, where the evaluation process tends to focus on upward performance. I like sharing this article to remind people that good leaders are those who know how to mobilize, incentivize, and motivate their teams towards shared goals. When you do this well, you should be able to deliver results for your upper management organically.
The story that shows how systems adapt in response
How France Learned to Fight Russian Disinformation
The Economist, April 8, 2026
A particularly interesting piece that looks at how France has adapted to cope with sustained disinformation efforts. Rather than treating it purely as a media problem, France has built something closer to a national resilience model—combining real-time monitoring, faster response, and a broader effort to harden society itself against manipulation. It’s an example of an institution adjusting to a persistent, evolving threat.
The story about the importance of credibility in leadership
The FBI Director Is MIA
Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic, April 2026
This piece by Sarah Fitzpatrick definitely did not go over well with the FBI Director, whose response was to say he was suing The Atlantic. The striking profile Fitzpatrick paints of the FBI Director in this piece raises questions about leadership credibility inside one of the U.S. government’s most important institutions. Interestingly, since it was published, Fitzpatrick claims she has been inundated with people willing to verify the various points in the piece.

Stepping back, there’s a common thread running through all of this. Systems—whether political, institutional, or organizational—tend to look stable from the outside. But they are constantly being shaped by incentives, pressure, and human behavior. And when they begin to shift, it’s often not through dramatic change, but through quieter, more incremental forces that only become visible in retrospect.

Substacks of Note This Week

And here are two Substacks I would recommend this week:

How to Human by Lura Forcum, a founder of the Independent Center, focuses on something we don’t talk about enough: the breakdown of civic relationships. Drawing on psychology and real-world experience, she explores why so many people feel politically homeless and socially exhausted—and, more importantly, what it might take to repair trust at a human level. It is one of my go-to Substacks that I always find myself sharing with others.
Alliance for American Leadership by Asher Moss is another Substack worth tracking. A4AL started up last year as an organization aiming to build a movement to elect pro-democracy leaders and restore foreign aid programs. It recently featured a piece by Alicia Contreras-Donello, a candidate running in the June 23 Democratic primary for the Maryland House of Delegates from District 14. (Full disclosure: Alicia, who is amazing, was one of the thousands of USAID Foreign Service Officers fired last year when the agency was demolished by DOGE and served with my husband in USAID’s Libya Office in Tunisia.)

I’m always on the lookout for more Substacks, so please feel free to recommend them in the comments!