We’re midway through the Independence Day weekend, and here’s hoping you got through the July 4 festivities with your property unscathed and your pets, well, recovering.

President Trump signed his “One Big Beautiful Bill” Friday, and if you’re wondering what exactly made it into the final version of the measure — well, I’m guessing that’s also true for a good number of the 535 senators and representatives who had to vote on it. So, here for your edification, is a story from The New York Times listing just about everything that’s in the bill — and how much it will cost or save the federal government. Now you’re smarter than most members of Congress.

If you’d rather just take a quick tour of the bill, here’s a shorter Q-and-A, also from the Times.

In the interest of providing you with a look at the bill from a differing perspective, this week’s Contrarian Corner (trademark pending) features seven conservative columnists in the Times writing about what they like and don’t like about the bill. A couple of observations: First, you probably were surprised — as I was — that the Times was able to round up that many conservative columnists, but relax: Only two of the seven are Times regulars. Second, as you will see, most of the conservatives were not able to muster much enthusiasm for the bill — that’s largely because the bill flouts several of the precepts that conscientious conservatives hold dear, such as not piling trillions of dollars onto the national debt for our children and grandchildren to deal with.

On the other hand, one of the conservatives, Matt Labash, made a point I hadn’t thought of — but which I can completely get behind:

Even if I hate the bill — and I do — it also seems to deeply irritate Elon Musk. And anything that irritates Musk as much as Musk irritates the rest of us should earn grudging credit as a karmic delivery system.

The Oregon Capital Chronicle had a roundup of state reaction to the bill’s passage. The Chronicle story notes that Cliff Bentz, the only Republican member of the Oregon delegation, voted for the bill — of course — but apparently wasn’t able to pull off a Lisa Murkowski manuever, in which he would have made his support for the bill contingent on a number of goodies for his state. Bentz has backed away from doing town halls recently, but wouldn’t it be fun if one of his constituents asked him this question: “Cliff, how come you didn’t bargain for a better deal for Oregon in that big, beautiful bill?”

Finally, I was going to summarize the bill for you — the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed — but here’s The Atlantic’s Alexandra Petri (who these days seems kind of pissed-off for a humor writer) who says it all better than I could.

Wow: That’s a lot more than I had intended to write about the bill. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

This was the week in which Paramount decided to settle — for $16 million — what all responsible parties agreed was a baseless Trump lawsuit against “60 Minutes” over the editing of its interview with Kamala Harris. (Remember her?) Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum illuminates the reasons why the suit was baseless and how it highlights another favorite tactic of the administration — extortion.

Speaking of Trump, you can fault him for many things — (many, many things) — but not for being inaccessible to the news media; Trump could be the most accessible president ever. This extends to his cellphone number, which apparently many reporters have. And reporters frequently call it. And the president often answers the call. David Bauder of The Associated Press probably doesn’t have the president’s number, but he has an engaging story about this phenomenon.

It’s worth keeping an eye on the political career of U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who has consistently won reelection in a conservative district in southwest Washington state. This week, she was in the news for proposing mental-acuity measures for members of Congress. Not surprisingly, her colleagues quickly slapped down the idea. But you know who did like the idea? Gluesenkamp Perez’s constituents. (I include this item not only because it’s interesting, but also as a shoutout to my one Washington-based reader of the Weekend Reader.)

The Washington Post has been much-maligned recently in the Reader, and for good reason. So I was on the verge of adding to the ire when I read about a new Post pilot project that allows sources on certain stories to add online “annotations” to the stories after they’re published. It still seems to me that there are many ways that this could go horribly wrong, especially at Jeff Bezos’ new Post. But I also could see this adding useful context to stories. Let’s keep an eye on it. Nieman Lab had the details about the project.

A new piece in The Atlantic notes how housing prices nationwide are continuing to spike — even in areas where housing had been perceived as somewhat affordable. The culprit, writer Roge Karma argues, is that the same sort of antidevelopment attitude that has helped drive up prices in coastal states dominated by Democrats (you might be familiar with one of those communities) now is taking root elsewhere. (And if you think it’s tough to get into the housing market now, wait until the debt incurred by the big, beautiful bill results in higher interest rates — oops, sorry, I said I was done talking about the bill).

Finally, here’s this week’s long read: It’s an Atlantic story from Chris Colin about calls to customer service centers — you yourself have made some of those soul-sapping calls — and how that process has been polluted by what experts call “sludge,” a tactic deliberately designed to create endless wait times and dubious procedural hassles.

Press “1” to speak to an AI-generated voice — or just leave a comment below. And we’ll gather again here next weekend.