The future of Dolly's literacy program

Over the last three decades, Dolly Parton oversaw a program called the Imagination Library, which has given out more than 300 million free books to kids, according to its website. The program relies heavily on state-sponsored grants, which public officials have recently cut.

Indiana’s Republican governor cut state funding for the program last year. His wife then went on a fundraising spree for the program, and imagining the arguments those two may have had is very funny to me.

The program ended in Maine after losing state funding, leaving a nonprofit partner of the Imagination Library to fill the gap with a similar program. Dave’s home state of Missouri slashed $4 million in funding for the program and ended new enrollment. Even Washington state’s Democratic-controlled legislature has cut funding. Kentucky lawmakers tried to reduce state funding for the program as well. But voters, much like Dolly going toe to toe with Jolene, didn’t let them get away with it.

The Imagination Library is sticking around. The program has said it’ll keep sending books to children under 5. Newsweek also reports that Dolly Parton could have been a billionaire but instead chose to donate millions to causes like the Imagination Library.

Canada put tariffs as high as 50% on hundreds of products from the U.S. It was an effort to get back at the U.S. for putting 50% tariffs on Canadian goods last weekend. President Donald Trump then threatened Canada with “far WORSE” consequences.

But if you’re not importing goods from Canada, and I’m not importing goods from Canada, then why does any of this matter? USA Today breaks it down pretty clearly. These goods go from importers to retailers to us. Importers don’t want to pay all that extra cost, so they charge retailers more. And retailers don’t want to pay it either, so they charge us more. This isn’t theoretical — we have data showing that we, the consumers, have been hit by price increases after tariffs. But I don’t want to pay these higher prices either, so I’m just buying less stuff. And that frightens retailers, who now have to consider how much to raise prices without scaring us off entirely.

The Trump administration’s antagonism toward Canada doesn’t end there. It has threatened to annex Canada as the 51st state. But polling from last October showed only 16% of Canadians would vote for that. Meanwhile, just beyond Canada, Alaska’s Senate race is heating up. Trump-aligned Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is running against a Republican challenger named Dan Sullivan. Challenger Sullivan doesn’t like Trump. A third Dan Sullivan, the mayor of Anchorage, just endorsed the incumbent Trump-aligned Senator Dan Sullivan.

In what reads like a beat poet sending a hangxiety text, Trump aide Natalie Harp sent a sprawling letter to the president in 2023. In the letter, written around the time Trump traveled internationally with Harp, she apologized for her conduct on the trip.

The Daily Beast published the letter in full, along with a second letter Harp wrote. “I want things to always be right between us,” she wrote, before recounting how she’d forgotten to eat and sleep. “I never want to bring you anything but joy,” she wrote to the president. And she called Trump her “Guardian and Protector in this life.”

So, why is this news? Harp has enormous political influence. She works from the Oval Office and is always around the president. As the Financial Times puts it, Harp “has quickly become a symbol of the excessive sycophancy within Trump’s entourage and his own need for flattery at all times.” In other words, loyalty to Trump gets you power in this administration, and Harp has both in spades.

Harp was thrust into the national spotlight after Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff (D) publicly criticized her. Conservatives called the comments sexist, but a White House spokesperson also called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid,” so the outrage over sexism only goes so far.

To start, there is no evidence that the U.S. government is directly killing wild horses or importing tons of horse meat, contrary to what you may have seen lately. But we do still have reason to worry about wild horses in the U.S., and the federal government may be playing a role.

In 2007, I was eight years old, which is sure to upset Dave when he reads this. It’s also the year that the last horse slaughterhouse in the U.S. shut down, according to this helpful recap from Horse Illustrated. That’s good news for horses. But worse news for horses: The Bureau of Land Management has been pointing to overpopulation of wild horses — a problem that it says is improving but hasn’t gone away. How does the bureau try to address this? It rounds up wild horses and puts them up for adoption at this website.

The New York Times found the government has also been increasingly selling horses since Trump’s second inauguration. What happens after that? Legally speaking, that’s none of the government’s business. Horse adopters and buyers can turn around and sell the horses to horse killers abroad. The Times investigation found that some horses that the government sold wound up in Canadian slaughter plants, and I could make a hilarious callback to the tariff story here if I were better at understanding the economy.

That brings us to our media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! Emotional reactions to animal-interest stories can spread fast. Here’s how to get reliable information.

How can you tell if a video is generated by AI? I am, admittedly, not good at it! Many social media platforms have in-app labels for AI-generated content. But a February 2026 survey found that half of U.S. adult social media users want better labeling on AI posts.

And they have a point: These labels aren’t always reliable. Creators can mark a post as AI-generated even if it’s not, and platforms can also unfairly and inaccurately mark creators’ content as AI-generated.

Some governments are working to address this. An EU policy passed in 2024 takes effect this year, requiring a visible mark and digital watermark on AI-generated content that’s meant to look real.