Robert Scott

The surest path to influence right now is to not be the person who was supposed to have it. Ambition gets you to the door; someone else's miscalculation gets you inside. The machinery is running fine—it's just that nobody programmed it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ⬆

The Health and Human Services Secretary didn't campaign, didn't fundraise, and didn't appear on a single ballot in Iowa—yet his MAHA-backed gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn beat Representative Randy Feenstra, whom President Donald Trump had endorsed as "MAGA all the way." The man who couldn't get on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024 now has a say on the GOP's 2026 slate.

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Graham Platner ⬇

The Maine Democratic Senate candidate has survived a tattoo linked to Nazi imagery that he later covered up, as well as bigoted online posts. But now that explicit texts to other women—texts his own wife flagged to his campaign last year—have surfaced, the party finds itself counting on a scandal-plagued oyster farmer to win a Senate majority. Democrats need Maine so badly they've decided his character is someone else's problem.

Bill Pulte ⬆

The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency was best known for combing through the mortgage paperwork of Trump's political enemies looking for prosecutable missteps before being named acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. The bar for the nation's top spy has moved so far that "loyalist with a social media account" shoots to the top of the résumé pile.

Jony Ive ⬇

The legendary designer of the iPhone unveiled the Ferrari Luce—the Italian sports-car maker's first fully electric vehicle, priced at $640,000—to a social media pile-on, analyst skepticism, and a stock drop of as much as 8 percent; a former Ferrari chairman publicly warned of brand damage. Worth $6.5 billion to Sam Altman, and he still couldn't make a Ferrari look like a Ferrari.

Crissy Froyd ⬆

The former USA Today NFL reporter was fired in April after publicly criticizing a colleague over an alleged relationship with a head coach. Six weeks later, she published in The Daily Mail the column her former employer wouldn't print—alleging at least six female journalists told her they had relationships with NFL coaches or staff, with more names implied to be coming. USA Today cut ties with her; she went to The Mail and made the story bigger.

Scott Pelley ⬆

The veteran 60 Minutes correspondent showed up to a get-to-know-you meeting with new executive producer Nick Bilton and accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of "murdering" the program—and was fired within 24 hours. The former anchor has since said Weiss is currying favor with Trump and that "the waste is heartbreaking." He lost his job and won the argument.

Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.

CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.