| In addition to being cheaper to build and own, townhouses consume less energy and foster healthy habits and social connection better than single-family homes, Amanda and Heather found in their reporting. Townhouse construction is encouragingly on the rise; Amanda and Heather counsel that “what land remains in cities and fast-growing suburbs should be used to build as many homes as possible,” with zoning laws changed as needed. Hey, people are keeping their Camrys for years and years — they’re reliable! — and, gosh, the heartburn with champagne. Why should we trap ourselves into thinking of townhouses as starter homes when they can actually be dreamier than that big, weedy lawn down the street? Chaser: What kind of housing would you most like to live in? How has your idea of the dream house changed over time? Share your thoughts with Post Opinions. Red vs. blue vs. something new Today in red-vs.-blue news, Matt Bai wants us to revisit Donald Trump’s presidential record — which he says is, in a word, disastrous. Democrats are focused on the threat of a second Trump term, Matt writes, and “Trump just gives you so much else to talk about on a near daily basis that four or six years ago feels like the Bronze Age.” But there is a “singular anti-achievement of Trump’s presidency” that deserves more attention, he says: the more than 1 million Americans dead from a mismanaged pandemic. Kamala Harris is at least drawing heavily from the quotable Trump to remind voters of all the unsavory things the former president has said; E.J. Dionne writes that her strategy of screening Trump clips at her rallies could be what turns the race her way. (Trump’s recent claim that Jan. 6, 2021, was “love and peace” might need a spot in the montage. Is he just deceptive or actually delusional, Colby King wonders.) How America weighs all the evidence and decides will chart a path for not only this country’s future but the entire globe’s. “The world relies on steady U.S. leadership, and that could be replaced by chaos and confusion in a Trump White House,” Max Boot writes. “While Trump would imperil the post-1945 world order fostered by the United States, Harris would defend it.” The most interesting political idea today, however, is not red-vs.-blue at all. It’s Perry Bacon’s pronouncement that we need new political parties in very conservative and very liberal states. Perry writes that there are certain places where one party’s brand has become simply too toxic ever to be electable — but that independents running on a bespoke platform might manage to win over lots of folks who don’t quite align with the other party. We’re seeing this with Dan Osborn in the Nebraska Senate race. Eventually, enough independents could morph into a new party, such as a non-red “Great Jobs and Great Schools Party” in New England or a non-blue “Leave Us Alone Party” in the Great Plains, Perry suggests. (Perry, we can workshop the names.) “What’s vital is that very red and very blue states don’t have just the occasional unicorn,” Perry writes, but an enduring framework for candidates who can inject competition into these states. Chaser: Speaking of parties, if U.S. democracy can make it to July 2026, it gets to celebrate its 250th birthday. The Editorial Board says event-planning talk could be an appealing message from either presidential candidate. More politics Usha Vance: undercover pro-democracy hero?! Usha Vance, wife of JD: the secret resistance within the Trump campaign?!? Well, no, Molly Roberts writes of the second lady aspirant who has been surprisingly absent from the campaign trail — which has gotten people speculating that the Yale-educated daughter of immigrants deep down deplores everything Trump and her husband are running on. In fact, we simply don’t have much information about what she thinks. “This kind of thinking sets up a facile analysis,” Molly writes. “If [political] husbands and wives are there and smiling, they’re on board. If they’re gone or anything less than sunny, they hate the agenda. This crude diagnostic not only robs the spouses of agency but, worse, it also robs us the people of the chance to understand them as individuals — and judge them, again, as individuals, for what they do or say.” Want to know what Usha Vance thinks? We’re going to have to actually ask her. Smartest, fastest - Ukraine’s defense minister outlines Kyiv’s “victory plan” in an interview with David Ignatius.
- Elon Musk has lost the script fooling around in politics, Adam Lashinsky writes, and he might be putting Tesla in jeopardy.
- Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death has revealed a lot about the state of things in the Middle East, but it’s not necessarily a game changer, Jen Rubin analyzes.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku. In consumers’ race, Easier to measure up With a smaller yard *** Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow! | 
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