April 23: Steve Feinberg ’82 Fights for $1.5 Trillion Military Budget Proposal

Deputy defense secretary Steve Feinberg ’82 is using skills he developed in private equity to persuade Congress to favor President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget proposal. — The Wall Street Journal

Private equity billionnaire José E. Feliciano ’94 and his wife Kwanza Jones ’93 are nearing a deal to buy the San Diego Padres baseball team for a record $3.9 billion. — The Wall Street Journal

Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Hobart Earle ’83 discussed how and why the orchestra has continued playing during the war in Ukraine even after its concert hall was damaged in January 2025. — ABC News

On her Substack, epidemiologist Céline Gounder ’97 said fewer than 45% of new podcast feeds are made by real people; the rest are artificial intelligence, and many are about health. — What I Can & Can’t Say on TV

To reduce political polarization, Harvard professor Danielle Allen ’93 has a structural recommendation: “abolish taxpayer-funded party primaries and replace them with an all-party primary, where all candidates run on the same first ballot and the top vote-getters go on to a final round.” — The Unpopulist

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’76 issued a rare public apology to fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh for saying he “doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” — Foreign Policy Journal

“…The waiting room should not be the symbol of American health care.”

— Bill Frist ’74 of Monogram and Benjamin Kornitzer of Aetna in an editorial praising a partnership between their companies to allow more patients to receive care at home. — Yahoo

Netflix is creating a series from author Jodi Picoult ’87’s 2020 novel The Book of Two Ways, about a woman who can see divergent timelines in her future, one with her husband and child and one with her Egyptology career and former lover. — Variety

Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel ’87 told Fortune magazine he isn’t worried about a crisis over the national debt because he watched the 2008 financial crisis and saw “the country coming together with an effective response.” — Yahoo! Finance

As Open AI prepares for an IPO, anthropologist Peter Kurie *15 compared it to Hershey, a company also controlled by a charity that has been subject to political winds but governed by directors focused on long-term performance. — The Financial Times

New Yorker editor David Remnick ’81 penned an appreciation for portrait writer Calvin Tompkins ’47, who for 70 years “filled this magazine with portraits of the creative imaginations who thrilled him the most.” — The New Yorker

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06 was named Scholastic’s 2026 Alumni Achievement Award recipient, given to influential artists who received the Scholastic Art & Writing Award in their teenage years. — Scholastic

Journalist Melanie Kirkpatrick ’73 was picked to replace Tom Bray ’63 on the Dow Jones Special Committee, charged with safeguarding editorial independence and monitoring ethics at The Wall Street Journal. — Business Wire

Robert Mueller ’66, who led the FBI for 12 years and may be best known as the special counsel picked to investigate President Donald Trump, died at age 81. — The New York Times

President Trump has been making noise about wanting Supreme Court justices to retire while he’s in power, including Samuel Alito ’72, and has said he already has replacements in mind. — CNN

A piece by the author of a new Alito biography, Revenge for the Sixties, quotes the justice’s friend Andrew Napolitano ’72 refuting those who call the justice an originalist: “Sam is a conservative person who wants a conservative outcome.” — The Atlantic

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth ’03 garnered media attention for attributing a quote to the Bible that’s actually mostly from the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. — People magazine

Economist Burton Malkiel *64 reiterated his 50-year-old advice that index funds beat active management and offered his take on the AI bubble. — Marketplace

Stanley Jordan ’81 explained how he discovered his lauded tapping technique by accident when he tuned a guitar for the first time at age 11. — Guitar World

Physician Lucy McBride ’95 advised patients who want to discuss health data collected by a wearable device, like a smart watch, to look for patterns when preparing to talk to their doctor. — NPR