While the news may be “devastating” to some parties—including the official Merriam-Webster dictionary account, which opined as such in the comments—it does sound like we’ll be getting some music recommendations from the politician later on. Obama didn’t specify what exactly he meant by “everything going on” (it’s not hard to guess), but he did share his summer reading list, which includes multiple timely-feeling titles. He described Madeleine Thien’s A Book Of Records, for example, as “A beautiful fable about migration, memory, and the struggle to recognize our common humanity,” while Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance is, in his words, “A must-read for progressives who want a blueprint for reforming government so it can deliver for working people.” In the same post, he also announced that the Obama Presidential Center will include a new branch of the Chicago Public Library when it opens next year.
While Obama has been largely out of the spotlight during Trump’s second term, he has spoken out about the current administration a number of times on X in the past few days. On Thursday, he posted a video raising awareness about Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts in Texas. He also shared an interview between New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and journalist Radley Balko titled “Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force” to address “the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions,” as he wrote in his post. In a response, he added, “The erosion of basic principles like due process and the expanding use of our military on domestic soil puts the liberties of all Americans at risk, and should concern democrats and republicans alike.”
