Republican Sen. Susan Collins was a bastion of independence and moderation in Congress for more than two decades — but those days are long over. The brilliant Rebecca Traister digs deep into what changed. (The Cut, ~37 min.)

The pink princess, with its pink-streaked, heart-shaped leaves, caught fire and became the year’s “It” plant. But in short order, there were pink plant scams everywhere. (WIRED, ~13 min.)

Protective face masks are selling like crazy right now, but what happens if the coronavirus turns into a global pandemic? The owner of a Texas medical supply company sounded the alarm years ago. (Washington Post, ~9 min.)

Meet Roberto, a comfort soup that went viral years after its creator shared the recipe in a now-shuttered email newsletter. (New Yorker, ~11 min.)

Oregon’s mental healthcare system was ranked among the top in the nation. Then Anthony Montwheeler killed two people, just after he’d been released from state oversight. What on earth happened? (Rolling Stone, ~35 min.)

On the road to Bond with Ana de Armas, the breakout Cuban star of Knives Out. (Vanity Fair, ~15 min.)

Holding pattern, touch base, level-setting: The language we use at work is the worst. Here’s how we got here. (Vulture, ~19 min.)

Whistleblower Susan Fowler put everything on the line to sound the alarm about a widespread culture of sexism at Uber. Her life will never be the same. (The Verge, ~14 min.)

Why the differences between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders matter. (The Atlantic, ~5 min.)

Katie Porter was a promising freshman congresswoman from California when her career was derailed by revenge porn. Where does she go from here? (Playboy, ~13 min.)

On call for 24 hours — and 82 incidents — with the firefighters of Station 9, whose Los Angeles territory includes skid row. (L.A. Times, ~14 min.)

Miss America is a hot mess in the era of MeToo. So the ever-delightful Lyz Lenz headed to a casino in Connecticut(!) to capture a cultural institution on the brink. (Jezebel, ~17 min.)

If you know someone who’d like this, send it their way. You can find the online, shareable version (and subscribe) here. For additional stories that don’t make it into the newsletter, you can follow The News Gal on Twitter here, on Facebook here, on Pocket here, and on LinkedIn here. Questions, comments, concerns, and story suggestions are always welcome — just hit reply.

• This profile of Macaulay Culkin, the first he’s sat for in 15 years, is one for the ages. (Esquire, ~28 min.)

• A delightful chat with the director and distributor of Parasite, 2020’s big Oscar winner. (Variety, ~14 min.)

• Trump should be anathema to Christians, yet they continue to support him in spite of increasingly egregious words and actions. What’s the deal? (French Press, ~8 min.)

• Inside the fight to beat Tampax in world tampon domination. This is business writing at its finest. (The Guardian, ~27 min.)

• Meet Charles Bess, the black busboy in the background of the famous 1960 photo of the sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter. (Bitter Southerner, ~10 min.)

• Based on a true story, The Tattooist of Auschwitz was a global literary phenomenon. But family members of the real people portrayed in the book are astonished at the author’s perversions of truth. (The Monthly, ~24 min.)

• A photographer and a reporter spent a year tracking the climate crisis across Norway. Their incredible work lets us see and feel our new reality up close. (NRK, ~15 min.)

• Eddy Curry was the longtime laughingstock of the NBA. But people didn’t know the half of it. (Players’ Tribune, ~20 min.)

• Lincoln’s legacy of environmentalism has long been overlooked, what with the Civil War and the ending of slavery and his assassination. But a look at his record shows he was quite the green president. (Washington Post, ~6 min.)

• And just like that, it’s OK for political reporters to ask the 2020 candidates — men included — about their skincare routines. (Politico, ~9 min.)

• Plasma-for-profit is big business. In fact, it’s a single family’s big business. (Bloomberg, ~5 min)

• The oldest woman who ever lived died at 122. But was it really her, or was she a fraud? (New Yorker, ~43 min.)

• Once upon a time, the city manager of Lafayette, Calif., thought he could forge a compromise between a big developer and the NIMBY citizens of his small Bay Area town. Then reality threw him a curve ball. (New York Times, ~15 min.)

• C-SPAN’s off-the-wall live call-in show is celebrating 40 years. Here’s how it’s lasted all this time. (Vox, ~18 min.)

• James Morrison and Hilaree Nelson had each lost so much. Then they found each other, and decided to test their new relationship by becoming the first people to hike up, then ski down, Lhotse, in the shadow of Everest. (Sports Illustrated, ~23 min.)

• White-collar crime is thriving — in fact, there’s never been a better time to launder money, hide corporate profits in offshore tax havens, or defraud the American consumer. This piece is stunning. (HuffPost Highline, ~31 min.)

• What it’s like to work as an International Pizza Consultant. (The Goods, ~9 min.)

• The beautiful, intelligent daughter of an old-money New England family settled down with a handsome college classmate just as her biological clock was winding down. They had two sets of twins, then a fifth child. Then she disappeared. (Air Mail, ~13 min.)

• Michael Bloomberg has faced nearly 40 sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits over his long career. Why is no one talking about it? (GQ, ~5 min.)

• Tracy Walder was a sorority girl at USC who thought she’d become a teacher after graduation. Instead, she became a spy for the CIA. (D Magazine, ~12 min.)

If you know someone who’d like this, send it their way. You can find the online, shareable version (and subscribe) here. For additional stories that don’t make it into the newsletter, you can follow The News Gal on Twitter here, on Facebook here, on Pocket here, and on LinkedIn here. Questions, comments, concerns, and story tips are always welcome — just hit reply.

• How a brilliant marketing campaign to bring more tourists to Utah’s parks created a monster. (Outside, ~28 min.)

• The heart-wrenching story of a heart transplant recipient who bikes across the country to meet his donor’s parents. I’m not crying, you’re crying. (Bicycling, ~20 min.)

• Meet the two women who charge white women $2,500 to attend a fancy dinner and learn how they’re racist. (The Guardian, ~8 min.)

• Inside the incredible alternate universe of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. I couldn’t put this one down. (The Atlantic, ~37 min.)

• At home with Huey Lewis as he grapples with mysterious hearing loss, and the possibility that he may never perform again. (Esquire, ~11 min.)

• A captivating conversation with sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom, whose Twitter feed is among my favorites. (The Sun, ~33 min.)

• Margot Robbie came to Hollywood and was quickly pigeonholed as the hot blonde. Then she took matters into her own hands. (BuzzFeed News, ~22 min.)

• What if there is no swing voter, and everything we think we know about American elections is wrong? The most interesting piece of political journalism I’ve read in years. (Politico, ~20 min.)

• American restaurants have changed remarkably in the past decade. Here’s how. (New York Times, ~7 min.)

• The true story of Africatown, an Alabama community forged from the horror and trauma of America’s last slave ship. (National Geographic, ~21 min.)

• Let It Go from Frozen still stuck in your head? An Oregon baby boomer is the man responsible. (The Oregonian, ~5 min.)

• A Florida retirement community is all in for Trump — except for 71-year-old Ed McGinty, whose courageous one-man protest is a sight to behold. (Washington Post, ~8 min.)

If you know someone who’d like this, send it their way. You can find the online, shareable version (and subscribe) here. For additional stories that don’t make it into the newsletter, you can follow The News Gal on Twitter here, on Facebook here, on Pocket here, and on LinkedIn here. Questions, comments, concerns, and story tips are always welcome — just hit reply.

• Hands-down the best Kobe column of the past week. (The Ringer, ~14 min.)

• Meet Bobby Pritchett, an American diver who is battling the U.S., French, and Spanish governments for rights to a 16th-century shipwreck he discovered at the bottom of the sea. (Hakai Magazine, ~26 min.)

• Why is it that we never talk about abortion from the man’s perspective or experience? This essay is a terrific start. (Believer Mag, ~19 min.)

• When a British journalist is detained and interrogated for weeks on end during a reporting trip to Iran, he sees a side of the country that, for better or worse, he never would have experienced. I loved this one. (Economist, ~47 min.)

• An ER doc took his infant daughter to his own hospital after he accidentally rolled over on her in bed. Then, despite the objections of 15 medical experts, he was charged with child abuse. (NBC News, ~26 min.)

• Brad Pitt’s always been gorgeous and talented. Did the former cause us to overlook the latter? (New York Times, ~9 min.)

• A citizen dispatch from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. (China Channel, ~7 min.)

• An impressively thorough deep dive inside the unregulated world of vaping, and an introduction to the capitalists calling the shots. (California Sunday, ~46 min.)

• How KitchenAid mixers and $300 dutch ovens became millennial status symbols. (The Atlantic, ~10 min.)

• What happens when a man with deep pockets and an uncompromising vision moves to a small Texas town? Welcome to Marfa, population 1,700. (Texas Monthly, ~36 min.)

• A surprisingly deep and delightful profile of James Corden, the Brit who broke the late-night TV mold. (New Yorker, ~35 min.)

• Let’s quickly wrap our heads around the political situation in Iran since Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani. (Slate, ~7 min.)

• Remember Bennet Omalu, the scientist who discovered CTE in NFL players? Turns out he’s full of it. (Washington Post, ~20 min.)

• Inside the literary world’s meltdown over Oprah’s latest book pick, American Dirt, a novel about Mexican immigrants whose author is a white American woman. (L.A. Times, ~10 min.)

• Two weeks in the life of a Target employee. Wow. (VICE, ~25 min.)

If you know someone who’d like this, send it their way. You can find the online, shareable version (and subscribe) here. For additional stories that don’t make it into the newsletter, you can follow The News Gal on Twitter here, on Facebook here, on Pocket here, and on LinkedIn here. Questions, comments, concerns, and story tips are always welcome — just hit reply.

• The terrible, horrible story of the long-shot effort to save an innocent Iraqi refugee from being deported and killed. (New Yorker, ~36 min.)

• Behind the scenes with Michael Barbaro, the New York Times reporter who headlines everyone’s favorite podcast. (Vulture, ~23 min.)

• Small businesses increasingly are turning to social media, begging for customers to help keep their doors open. For a doughnut shop in Texas, the tactic worked. (Input Mag, ~4 min.)

• Oil-and-gas industry waste from drilling and fracking is killing us slowly — and there’s no end, or even regulation, in sight. An incredible investigation from Rolling Stone. (Rolling Stone, ~39 min.)

• Longtime political reporter Tim Alberta left D.C. to report on the “real America” for a year, and his first dispatch is from a Michigan gun show. It’s wild. (Politico, ~19 min.)

• Inside the political awakening of Taylor Swift, music’s biggest star and, until recently, its most reluctant activist. (Variety, ~22 min.)

• In an epic race against time, a small group of investigators spent decades identifying and tracking down top Nazi collaborators who settled in the U.S. after the war. What a story. (Washington Post, ~19 min.)

• Bless the academics and professors who spend their free time on Twitter, clapping back at Trump’s lies about American history and setting the record straight. (New Yorker, ~7 min.)

• Once upon a time, Nike had its own superhero, Swoosh. Who knew? (Daily Beast, ~17 min.)

If you know someone who’d like this, send it their way. You can find the online, shareable version (and subscribe) here. For additional stories that don’t make it into the newsletter, you can follow me on Twitter here, on Facebook here, on Pocket here, and on LinkedIn here. Questions, comments, concerns, and story tips are always welcome — just hit reply.