Here are the instructions (they’re important). First, you have to pre-order The Day After between now and July 13 (the pre-order period). Any books ordered after the pre-order period won’t be eligible. You can find pre-order options here (I recommend independent bookstores on that list but all of the retailers are fine).

Once you’ve pre-ordered, you must fill out this form. Once you’ve submitted that form, my publisher will be sending hand-signed bookplates out (only to US addresses) shortly after the book arrives. Once you receive the bookplate, you can remove the back to expose the sticky side and stick it inside the book.

Alternatively, if you live in/near DC, New York, or Los Angeles, I’ll be signing books in person on my book tour. So please grab tickets to join me on July 14 in DC, July 15 in NY, or July 18 in LA.

A little background on the book. The Day After is a blueprint for how Democrats can and must wield power in a way that doesn’t simply restore the status quo, but seeks to rebuild our government with a particular focus on outcomes. If there’s one lesson that we can learn from Trump, it’s that our institutions are not as sacrosanct as we once believed. But unlike Trump, we can overcome those barriers for virtuous reasons. As opposed to self-enrichment and the consolidation of power, we can deliver universal healthcare, we can combat climate change, we can expand voting rights, we can create a just economy. In fact, as I argue, we must.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I must say, for an English major who could only dream of one day being an author, I am eternally grateful for those of you who are kind enough to support my writing. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Pre-order The Day After here

Even without the record-breaking heat throwing a wrench in things, America 250 has already been upstaged by a different marquee event: the World Cup. For weeks now, Americans have been glued to their TVs, packing sports bars and outdoor watch parties, and flocking to stadiums to watch soccer. Not even one of our top 3 pro sports. But here we are, with the US Men’s National Team taking their first knockout stage win in 25 years.

Naturally, Trump’s going to try to take credit for it, calling the US team the “best in the world” after the win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the success of this team comes in spite of Trump, not because of him. Half of the roster is made up of dual citizenship holders, foreign-born players, and children of immigrants. Coach Mauricio Pochettino is Argentine. This team is a repudiation of everything Trump stands for and is working towards. It could never exist in the world that Trump has tried to bring about with his brutal immigration crackdowns and isolationist foreign policy. You can’t take credit for the success of the team while simultaneously trying to eliminate the conditions necessary for it to exist.

If you enjoy my work, please join me on my book tour on July 14 in DC, July 15 in NY, or July 18 in LA. Otherwise, please pre-order my upcoming book here.

One of the more delightful features of the World Cup is the opportunity for foreign players and fans to discover our uniquely American culture, including such gems as Baja Blast, Waffle House, and Ranch dressing. It’s a testament to the fact that even after all the damage Trump has done to our reputation on the world stage, we still have culture (and food) that the world wants to consume. Hundreds of thousands of people have traveled from all over the world, which is a massive economic boost, by the way. Imagine how much more the world would embrace us if we didn’t try to scare them off with our roving bands of ICE agents and rampant gun violence.

This kind of global cooperation and collaboration is exactly the thing Trump and Republicans have been trying to kill with their xenophobic rhetoric and by taking a sledgehammer to the global order. And despite their best efforts, it’s not working. But the world does still value our culture, and we still want to embrace the world. It’s why you’re seeing massive crowds in the streets in Koreatown in Los Angeles to watch South Korea vs. Mexico, and why everyone you know is googling “where is Cape Verde?”

This is the America we’re fighting to protect. It’s the America that Trump is afraid of, because he’s not at the center of it. And this is the America we should be celebrating in our 250th year.

For comparison, Biden’s final financial disclosure was - wait for it - 11 pages.

But, let’s say, hypothetically, you wanted to make the argument that Trump’s a businessman. Remember when he said, “My whole life I’ve been greedy greedy greedy, I’ve grabbed all the money I could. But now I want to be greedy for the United States”? This is simply what Trump does— and now he’s doing it for America. Not quite. The reality is that his greed is still limited to just one man. In 2024, his total revenue was $622 million. In 2025, that ballooned to $2.2 billion. Being the President is the business, man.

🚨 If you live in NY, DC, or LA, please grab tickets to my live shows between July 14-18. I’ll be with Jim Acosta in DC, Don Lemon in NY, and Jon Lovett in LA. Tickets are still available here.

In actuality, what it is is a grift. This man doesn’t build things. This revenue comes from slapping his name on things, and letting other people do the work. The Trump golf courses. Trump hotels. The memecoin. Trump bibles. Trump watches. These are just glorified licensing deals— and not even good ones. Need proof? When was the last time you flew on Trump Airlines?

.

But this isn’t just in poor taste, because a lot of these deals could also fall into the category of “national security risk.” Trump is licensing his name to properties in countries where the U.S. has foreign policy interests, places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If he’s personally pocketing money from these countries, the relationship with them benefits his personal interest, not the best interest of the U.S.

And those countries have also pumped money into Trump’s crypto business, raising yet another conflict of interest. Trump’s crypto operation is maybe one of his most egregious “get rich quick” schemes, if only because he profited at the massive expense of regular people. Trump launched the $TRUMP memecoin ahead of his inauguration, conning legions of his followers into investing. While Trump made over $600 million off the deal, hundreds of thousands of his loyal fans lost catastrophic amounts of money.

The metaphor here is almost too perfect to describe the way Trump regards his followers. They’re suckers. He’s willing to bleed them dry to enrich himself and give nothing in return. Because the financial interests of regular people aren’t of interest to him. In fact, they bore him.

Case in point: he’s refusing to sign a landmark bipartisan bill to alleviate the country’s crippling housing shortage because it’s “a yawn.” I’m not making this up. Trump looks at Americans struggling to keep a roof over their heads the same way I do at an entire 8-episode Netflix documentary I half-watched while doing my laundry. That’s how little he cares about you.

Congress managed to do the impossible in passing a bipartisan housing bill that would actually deliver on Trump’s own promise to make life better for Americans. But Trump cancelled the signing ceremony at the last minute, preferring to hold it hostage in exchange for passing the SAVE America Act, which takes a hatchet to what’s left of voting rights. He’s throwing away a bill that has universal support from both sides of the aisle in favor of pushing through his deeply unpopular pet project that has languished for months and stands no chance of becoming law.

Every decision he makes as president is a calculation of self-interest. Whether it’s setting up a cryptocurrency scam or launching a war of choice against Iran, he’s not thinking of anyone but himself.

The takeaway here: this is all the proof we need that Supreme Court expansion is beyond necessary. The fact that you have three to four justices (depending on how you read Kavanaugh’s flaccid argument) on the record saying that the Constitution does not apply in the case of upholding birthright citizenship should be a flashing red light to anyone watching. Birthright citizenship - which is affirmed in the plain text of the Constitution - barely survived this session. And I’d venture to guess that what’s left of our voting rights will have an even slimmer chance of making it out of the 2027 session alive.

As far as this court is concerned, we’re no longer in a position to “hope for the best,” to watch and wait for things to turn out alright. We have to act.

Interestingly, this came up in a conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom about my new book, The Day After, on his podcast. Newsom and I have disagreed about Supreme Court expansion. But in a discussion about my book, which is literally a blueprint for how Democrats should wield power in a post-Trump world, I got Newsom to agree with me for the first time on how to wield it.

“I’m with you. I’m done winning arguments, we gotta win.”

If and when Democrats retake control of the government (already a Herculean feat unto itself) and manage to pass progressive legislation (another Herculean feat), all of it will be rendered completely moot by a court that’s guaranteed to strike down everything that doesn’t comport with its political ideology. We have to decide if we want to win symbolic victories and simply get caught trying or if we actually want to make permanent, meaningful change. If it’s the latter, then inherently, that requires us to expand the Court. 

Now, this isn’t the only conversation taking place about this. Sen. Adam Schiff appeared on CNN and said, in response to my discussion with Newsom, that he agrees with me that the Court should be expanded and reformed.

But he makes a crucial point here; it’s not enough for Democrats to institute term limits for justices or get into the weeds on ethics reforms, because all of it goes before an existing Supreme Court that will always rule in its own self interest. So unless Democrats expand the court – and Schiff argues for that to be to 13 – none of this matters.

This is exactly what I lay out in my book, The Day After. It’s what I’m going to talk about the most and the loudest while I’m on my book tour. And now we have two of the most powerful Democrats in the government, including one who’s a likely 2028 presidential candidate, joining the discourse and beating the drum for expanding the court.

This is exactly what the book was meant to do: push Democrats to fight harder to make real material change, and to fix what’s been broken. And now, in conversations about the book, I’m pushing Democrats to fight harder, and they’re agreeing to get into the fight. It’s a testament to how effective this book could be. So, immodestly, I will ask that you not only pre-order a copy and grab tickets to my book tour in NY, DC, and LA (both of which can be found here) but tell people about it. The more books we sell, the more attention it gets, and that’s how this conversation spreads and these ideas pick up steam. Courage can be contagious, but it has to start somewhere.

We have the opportunity to take back control of Congress in the midterms, and I believe we can do it. But once we do, we have to be ready to get to work. This is the instruction manual for how to do it when the time comes.

Naturally, the guy tapped to lead the nation’s intelligence agencies has zero experience in intelligence, the military, or even a proper security clearance ahead of assuming the position. What he does have, though, is a documented history of using government power to go after Trump’s enemies. Look at his track record while running the Federal Housing Finance Agency: going after Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, Jerome Powell, accusing them all of mortgage fraud.

How does that qualify him to run the government’s entire intelligence apparatus? Great question. It doesn’t. Because keeping the country safe from terrorist attacks, espionage, and cyber-warfare isn’t the job. Wielding government power as a weapon on behalf of Trump against his perceived enemies is. The only qualification that matters to Trump is complete and total fealty to Trump. And Pulte got on his knees to prove it. He lobbied hard for the job. He had strong endorsements behind him, too. Roger Stone allegedly pushed for him. Other MAGA insiders called him a “bulldozer,” which is exactly what Trump is looking for. He wants someone to go in, clean house, and demolish his opponents.

If you’d like to support my work, please pre-order my new book The Day After. And if you live in NY, DC, or LA, grab tickets to my book tour!

And if this looks like just another instance of a completely incompetent Trump loyalist getting rewarded for prostrating themselves at the altar of the Godking, it’s not just that. The stakes on this one couldn’t be higher. Pulte has the ability to completely unravel our intelligence infrastructure just as this country faces serious security threats (of Trump’s own making, naturally).

Section 702 of FISA, which gives us the surveillance authority to monitor foreign threats, just lapsed, and both Democrats and Republicans cited Pulte’s appointment as the reason they blocked its renewal. That means our intelligence agencies are flying partially blind as we’re in the middle of a war with Iran that Trump started, and facing very real threats from Russia and China. The cuts at the National Counterterrorism Center in particular pose a real risk. This is an agency established in the wake of 9/11 that’s responsible for pooling intelligence across agencies. If Pulte succeeds at firing everyone there, we’ve lost exactly the people whose job it is to connect the dots before something happens. Which, ironically enough, is the exact intelligence failure that reportedly led to 9/11 in the first place.

This is the exact same playbook we’ve seen used at DOJ, DOD, State: gut the institution, install an unqualified Trump loyalist, and weaponize the position against his perceived enemies. It’s governing by pettiness. The lack of competence in these positions isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Trump wants useful idiots to do his bidding, and up until this point, it’s worked.

Only this time, the idiot’s playing with fire. Intelligence agencies handle the most serious security threats facing the country. When something goes wrong - and history tells us something will - who will be there to handle it? More importantly, who will have to answer for it?

These elusive “vandals” have taken “some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool,” according to Trump on Truth Social. Predictably, the 250 foot gash has evolved into a 300 foot gash according to Trump’s newest screed this morning. It hit 350 feet this afternoon. I’m excited to see what new lengths tomorrow brings.

These vandals remain unidentified even under the watch of National Guardsmen deployed to the Reflecting Pool. And they were apparently reckless enough to do their dirty work under 24/7 surveillance - there’s a permanent wide angle camera mounted atop the Washington Monument. You can drop in on the feed any time.

OK, granted, it’s an extremely wide angle, and you’d need some CSI-grade zoom-in technology to get a good look at the alleged vandals. But Trump himself claims there are tapes. So this is a problem very easily solved. Just release the tapes, and we can clear this all up. (Not the water, of course; that much has proven impossible.)

Not gonna happen.

My new book, The Day After, comes out July 14. Pre-order your copy today, and get tickets for my book tour in DC, NY, and Los Angeles. They’re going fast— so grab your ticket today!

Pre-Order

As erratic as Trump’s behavior can be, at the end of the day, he’s the most predictable guy there is. Because he’s been in this exact same kind of situation before - backed into a corner, attacked on some spurious claim that can be easily cleared up by evidence he confidently proclaims exists but never actually produces.

Trump could have released the Epstein Files and dispelled the toxic rumors that have dogged his second term and tanked his approval ratings. He promised to do it. We’re still waiting and he’s still getting roasted over it.

Trump continues to perpetuate the blatant and repeatedly disproven lie that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming there’s tons of evidence. He’s siccing his lackeys on election officials, seizing ballots, sending minions to monitor vote counts in California, and has yet to publicly produce a single piece of viable evidence to support the claim.

Earlier this year, in the most egregious instance of this practice, after ICE agents shot and killed two innocent Americans during immigration raids in Minneapolis, Trump insisted “the tapes” proved that the killings were in self defense, that the victims had attacked the agents. Only that time, there was footage, and it completely debunked the claims, and revealed Trump for the liar that he is.

Which is exactly why we’ll never get the Epstein Files or evidence of a stolen election, or - for that matter - security camera footage of a team of vandals doing a football field’s-worth of damage to a very public national monument in broad daylight. Either it doesn’t exist, or he’s just refusing to release the footage that would validate his claims. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

So, just like the putrid water in the reflecting pool, Trump will continue to circle the drain, clinging to lies like a life raft.

For every copy of The Day After sold during the pre-order period, I will be donating a portion of the proceeds directly to the Free Election Fund. And both my editor and my publisher, HarperCollins, have generously agreed to match those funds.

This match is only valid for pre-orders placed before the book’s release on July 14. So if you’ve been waiting, now is the time to pre-order (pre-order here).

And more good news: Now, everyone who pre-orders is eligible to receive a signed bookplate, shipped to any address in the US. You must fill out this form with your information and proof of purchase, and you will receive your signed bookplate in the mail (please note, the signed bookplate will arrive separately from your book).

Marc’s team is in federal and state courts right now fighting to protect mail-in voting, block illegal gerrymanders that strip Black and Latino voters of representation, challenge proof-of-citizenship laws designed to keep people off the rolls, and stop the Trump administration’s systematic assault on the foundations of free and fair elections. These cases will determine who gets to vote, whose vote counts, and whether the results of elections actually mean anything.

They’re on the front lines, but they can’t do this alone. Every book you buy funds that fight directly. Every person you share this with expands the coalition. This is how we build something durable enough to outlast the moment we’re in. This administration will end, but what comes next will call for strong collective action to rebuild what Trump broke, and to find a way to do things better. That’s exactly what my book is about.

Please pre-order The Day After today. The match ends July 14.

Pre-order

One of Trump’s pet projects has failed spectacularly: his attempt to fix the notoriously leaky and algae-riddled Reflecting Pool while improving on the 100 year-old design by installing a cheap pool liner in “American Flag Blue” backfired. The water has instantly turned bright green, thanks to an out-of-control algal bloom.

Now, in fairness, this is a problem that didn’t start with him. Previous administrations had devoted time, money, and care to trying to fix it. But it proved challenging, with root causes that go all the way back to its design in 1922. Despite best efforts, no one had effectively solved it. The Obama Administration put $34 million into rehabbing the pool, shoring it up for a few years at least.

But the putrid Reflecting Pool problem isn’t the only Obama era challenge Trump has attempted to solve this week— only to make it much, much worse. Much like the crumbling lining of the Reflecting Pool, details from Trump’s Iran deal have leaked, and it’s a mess.

Trump announced on Sunday, as a birthday present to himself, that a deal had been reached and that the war was finally (for the 12th time) over. This deal would be the best deal, better than any deal that has ever been made, and certainly completely different from the Iran Nuclear Deal negotiated under Obama in 2015, which Trump himself destroyed.

But here at the end of a completely unnecessary war of choice that no one wanted — that still, Congress has never approved — Trump has put the US in a far worse position than it was in before, and Iran in a better one than ever.

Essentially what it leaves us with is a more extreme Iranian government: more repressive, more anti-West. Iran will reportedly gain access to a $300+ billion fund to tap for reconstruction. And Iran now knows that it can use the Strait of Hormuz - through which a significant portion of the global oil supply passes on a daily basis - as leverage at will. In other words, Iran walks away with a playbook to hold the world economy hostage whenever it so chooses.

*

Trump inherited a flawed Reflecting Pool that had been shored up over and over again, but it was always on shaky ground. DC is a swamp, and the ground beneath the pool has been constantly shifting, cracking the infrastructure and causing it to leak up to 16 million gallons per year at some points. Despite Trump’s assurances that his proposed fix would be both cheaper and better, what he ended up doing cost almost seven times more than he initially promised, and has been an utter disaster. On top of the over $14 million it cost to make a historic landmark look exactly the same as my grandma’s in-ground pool on Long Island, Trump now has to drop another $1.7 million on a system to clean up the mess he made. Naturally, he found a way to frame this as “not his fault,” by rebranding the algae as “Biden’s filth.”

This new Iran Deal is just another transparent rebranding effort. Trump couldn’t stand to have a deal in place that bore Obama’s name. So he tore it up, and launched a war just so that he could slap his name on a similar – re: worse – deal. But what we’re left with is a deal so incomplete and inadequate, it’s already turning green before our eyes.

What I learned as a wrestler was that on the mat, there’s no way to hide. There are no shortcuts. It’s you and your opponent out there. If you don’t put in the work, you will lose. I also learned discipline. I spent most of my high school career cutting weight. There were days I’d go to school with a baggie of iceberg lettuce for lunch. That’s all. Even if I hadn’t eaten in a week, if I was still over weight (for my weight class), that was all I got. It was mentally excruciating, physically exhausting, physiologically challenging. But still, at the end of a bout, when my hand was raised, there was the ecstasy of knowing that I got the win. The hard work paid off. I did that.

Trump can’t say the same. His entire existence has been marked by a desire to steal credit for what other people built. He got rich off the backs of contractors he stiffed. He slapped his name on products and brands that were doomed to fail. He has no lasting legacy other than his willingness to plow over people while enriching himself.

The dichotomy at tonight’s UFC event is going to be stark: a guy who lied, cheated, and stole his way through life, watching fighters who could only get into that octagon because they worked for it. There’s no way to lie, cheat, or steal your way through a fight. Tonight, Trump’s big walk-out will be from the Oval Office to the Octagon. Twenty feet, maybe thirty. I wouldn’t put money on him making it in a straight line.

He’ll bask in the spotlight of an event paid for in sweat and blood that isn’t his, on a lawn that, by the league’s own estimate, will cost $700,000 to repair afterward— money that also isn’t his.

A bigger man might draw a lesson from that about what it actually looks like to work for something. He’s not that. His legacy will be having conned his supporters into voting for him on the pretense that he’d help them, when the only people he’s ever looked out for are the ones in his own family.

That’s exactly how he’s governed. While he swore on the campaign trail that he’d focus on an America First agenda, since the moment he took office, it’s been about him. His new jet. His ballroom. His gold-plated Oval Office. His reflecting pool. His arch. All for him.

Tonight, Trump will watch from the good seats under The Claw that our tax dollars paid for. He’ll pose for photos with titans of industry like UFC president Dana White, his family members who are obligated to be there, and not a single relevant celebrity invitee; those people turned him down. He’ll wave and clap and bask in the attention he orchestrated for himself. Hopefully, he’ll be able to stay awake for the whole event; his track record isn’t great, and Knicks fans won’t let him forget it.

But when they run the photos tomorrow, if you look closely, I bet you might be able to see a modicum of humiliation in his eyes. Because tonight, he’ll be surrounded by people who have worked hard to earn the win, and he’s going to feel exactly how small he is.

Trump has already gone after Letitia James, Adam Schiff, James Comey, John Bolton, Jerome Powell. He’s sued ABC News, CBS, Meta. He got Stephen Colbert canceled and Jimmy Kimmel suspended. This looks like the next iteration of their plan, which is to go after content creators. So now, it’s my turn.

You might have seen my “official” response to the development. If not, you might want to take a quick look. But be forewarned, I opted for some… choice words.

I will admit, I was initially nervous about posting that because, well, all know who Trump is. He is a vindictive, petty, small man who seeks retribution as easily as he breathes. He doesn’t need any legitimate reason to go after someone. And frankly, when he does go after someone, it’s taxing (emotionally, mentally, financially). That’s the point. If Todd Blanche decides to prosecute me for whatever inane reason he conjures up, it’d probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars (not to mention whatever fleeting moments of joy I’m still capable of feeling). All of which is to say, logic would suggest that it would be smart to keep a low profile, stay off of their radar, and not get myself into any (more) trouble.

However.

I began thinking about the way I felt when I watched law firms like Paul, Wiess capitulate to Trump— because it was easier for them. And how Trump saw that and felt emboldened. I remember how I felt when ABC and CBS settled absurd lawsuits with Trump— because it was easier for them. And how Trump saw that and felt more emboldened. I remember how I felt when tech and media companies lined up to pay Trump millions for his ballroom— because it was easier for them. And how Trump saw that and felt more emboldened. In effect, their decision to try and make their own lives easier actually made the rest of us less safe, because now Trump knows how easy it is to wield the government against his enemies to get his way.

So when I saw my name on Trump’s newest enemies list, the absolute last thing I was going to do was the same thing all of those other cowards did by folding to Trump, getting themselves out of trouble, and not thinking about the effect it was having on everyone else. I have an opportunity here - in my small corner of the internet - to walk the walk, instead of just talking the talk. So if Trump wants to come after me and content creators, go for it. We’ll be even louder than before. If this self-proclaimed free speech champion wants to clamp down on my right to speak out against him, then I’ll do it twice as loud. I’ll make sure everyone knows what a fragile little man this person is. And if me doing so gives a permission structure for the next person to fight back instead of capitulate, then I’ve done my job. If courage is contagious, I want to make sure we normalize the idea of stepping up and speaking out when we inevitably fall into Trump’s crosshairs.

Remember: he’s not doing this from a place of strength; you don’t go after content creators if you’re strong, or popular. You do it when you’re flailing. That’s exactly what he’s exposing about himself. These are the last gasps of a desperate, lame duck president before his legacy is wiped out and he falls into obscurity. And I’ll be the first one cheering it on when it happens.

To that end, if you’d like to show some support for my work, the single best way to support me, if you can, is to pre-order my book, The Day After. It’s a blueprint for how Democrats can and must fight back against this aspiring autocrat. I’ll also be on tour in DC, NY, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles in mid-July; you can grab tour tickets at that same link.

‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi was let go over the weekend, and she did not go quietly. Here’s what she said:

In the coming days, network leadership may attempt to hide behind corporate euphemisms like ‘modernization’ and ‘restructuring’ to explain away my departure. Don’t be misled. This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.

This is the end of a story that goes back to December of last year, when Alfonsi’s segment about torture at the CECOT prison in El Salvador got pulled off the air at the last minute - a highly controversial, albeit completely expected move by Bari Weiss.

It caused an uproar in the newsroom, along with totally valid claims of politically-motivated censorship (that thing that conservatives used to pretend to despise). It’s well documented, including by me, that Bari Weiss was installed at the CBS news division as a compliant mouthpiece for the Trump administration. And that the Trump-allied Ellisons who now own CBS’s parent company, Paramount, need government approval for a merger that would also give them control of CNN.

So you’re looking at government collaborators about to get control of a massive market share of news in this country. And you have a veteran journalist at one of the most trusted news sources sounding the alarm.

CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it. The wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down.

On the one hand, this looks like the behavior of an administration that feels emboldened to go full authoritarian by taking a hatchet to press freedom in exponentially more egregious ways. But on the other hand, this administration is operating from a place of fear and weakness. Clamping down on freedom of expression means you’re afraid of what’s getting expressed. Pair that with Republicans’ manic redistricting free-for-all. Yes, they’re leaping at the opportunity to abuse the power they have— but they’re doing it right now because they’re terrified of losing in the midterms. If Republicans were sure they could win elections on the merits, they wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of rigging the game.

Now, I’m not saying we should sit back and breathe a sigh of relief. Alfonsi certainly isn’t. Her firing is definitely beyond the pale. What I am saying is that this is exactly why we should double down on fighting back - redraw the maps, push for SCOTUS reform, and pressure our leaders to stop protecting process at the expense of losing our democracy.

This is why I spent the last year writing my book, The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World. There’s no going back to the old status quo. If we’re going to take back the country, it’s going to take a radical new approach. In the book, I outline why and how we can do it. If that message resonates with you, I hope that you’ll pre-order it at the link below.

Preorder Now

Though his team had granted an interview to Kaitlan Collins at CNN, the decision by Polis to go to legacy media and cut out independent media altogether is a pretty apt microcosm for Democrats’ failures. Jared Polis has learned exactly no lessons in the last few years, whether it’s about where people on the left are consuming information or whether it’s a good idea to commute the sentences of people who wanted to overturn the previous election on behalf of Donald Trump. (Spoiler: it’s not).

Here’s my interview with Polis last year, when I pushed him to step up and fight back in the redistricting war. Based on his response then, I’m not surprised we find ourselves here, now.

Now, thanks to Jared Polis, Trump has a blueprint. He knows that if he attacks someone enough, if he threatens to sic his army of supporters on someone enough, if he uses the government as a cudgel against his enemies enough, they will relent and bend to his will. And so in the face of so much capitulation from news networks, and tech companies, and CEOs, and law firms, and universities, we can add Democratic governors to the list of those who Trump knows will eventually succumb to his whims if he just pushes hard enough. This will teach him Trump the wrong lessons, and it will make everyone worse off as the result of it.

As for Tina Peters, she decided to come out, fresh off her commuted sentence, and say that the Democratic censure of Polis for granting her clemency is further evidence of an election rigging coverup. Polis burned his political capital so that an election denier could further entrench her election denialism. Bravo.

Worth noting: the Colorado Court of Appeals had already thrown out her sentence in April, though they upheld her convictions, and sent the case back for resentencing. Polis jumped the line before that could happen. Why he didn’t simply allow the appeals court to re-sentence her is anyone’s guess, but obviously sends the absolute worst message.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a thousand more times if I have to: if there is one thing I want to see change on the left, it is this impotence and fecklessness where we bend over backwards to show goodwill to the other side while they wouldn’t be caught dead doing the same thing for us. They game the refs by complaining about a rigged election – demonstrably false – and they get their goons in the media to repeat it over and over again, to the point where weak-willed Democrats feel the need to offer concessions to the other side. The message that the right gets is, “all we have to do is lie loudly enough, and we get what we want.”

Jared Polis is perpetuating this problem. He is a weak Democrat who has learned zero lessons from the past, and is instead teaching the Republicans exactly how to continue to game the system— by manipulating people just like him.

We have roughly 1,500 convicted January 6 insurrectionists, who stormed the Capitol, assaulted police officers, threatened to kill members of Congress, and tried to overturn the election. Most have already been treated to a pardon. Now they may also be looking at a payday.

Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund (a little on the nose) divided by 1,500 “patriots” comes out to more than a million dollars each.

A million dollars. Per insurrectionist. Courtesy of the American taxpayer.

(For context: the average American makes about $60,000 a year. So while you’re paying your taxes, Trump is cutting you a check to the guy who beat a Capitol police officer with a flagpole. You’re welcome.)

Subscribe now

The Art of the Deal with Yourself

Earlier this year, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, accusing the agency of failing to protect his tax returns from an unauthorized leak. To be clear, that’s a sitting president suing his own government for billions.

The situation is so absurd, even Kafka would think it’s a little much. Trump himself called it out, saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.” He’s acknowledging the absurdity, as if to mock everyone watching.

And work out a settlement, he did.

On Monday, Trump’s legal team moved to drop the lawsuit - again, filed essentially against himself, since he is in charge of the government. But not before the Justice Department - which, again, Trump controls - agreed to create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of the settlement. The fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed entirely by the Attorney General. The Attorney General is Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche was, until recently, Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney.

And for good measure, Trump can also fire any member of the commission at will.

So, essentially, what you’re looking at is Trump suing Trump and winning a massive payout for Trump to be overseen by Trump.

There are, per the Justice Department, “no partisan requirements to file a claim.”

And here’s the part that should make your jaw drop: Trump’s lawyers argued in their filing that the dismissal was “self-executing” — that “no judicial analysis is appropriate.” They didn’t just settle the case. They argued the judge assigned to it had no right to look at it. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams agreed to close the case but noted pointedly that Trump’s lawyers never actually referenced a settlement in open court. “Because the Notice does not reference any settlement,” she wrote, “there is no settlement of record.”

A Columbia Law professor called it a “collusive suit” — a president negotiating between two entities he controls, with no requirement that any claimant prove their rights were actually violated. There’s barely any evidence of a judicial system’s involvement at all: no judge, no jury, no standard of evidence. Just a commission of Trump appointees handing out checks.

Here’s How it Ends

You didn’t think Trump wasn’t going to sweeten the deal with himself for himself, did you? In the fine print of the settlement: the IRS is now barred from taking action against Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and affiliated entities for past tax issues related to “Lawfare and/or Weaponization.”

So, he dropped a $10 billion lawsuit and got $1.776 billion for his allies, personal legal immunity from IRS claims, and made sure no judge could scrutinize any of it.

It Has Unconstitutional Written all Over it

This should come as a surprise to no one, but it warrants saying it out loud: this might just be unconstitutional on its face.

Section four of the 14th Amendment explicitly prohibits federal dollars from going to pay the debts of insurrection and rebellion against the United States. This, by the way, is the same amendment Republicans invoke selectively when it’s convenient for them. As Congressman Jamie Raskin put it in my interview with him, that provision was considered important enough to include directly into the plain text of the Constitution.

Congress never appropriated a dollar for this fund, and they never would. The money comes from the DOJ’s Judgment Fund, which is a permanent appropriation that allows the department to settle cases.

Trump not only did backflips, he’s executed a magic trick: he moved $1.776 billion in taxpayer money without a single Congressional vote. Poof - checks and balances have disappeared.

The House Democrats’ Litigation Task Force has already filed a motion to block it. Rep. Raskin is pushing a discharge petition that would require three or four Republicans to sign on. Don’t hold your breath (especially with the ouster of Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie, who dared challenge the president’s total control). But I would keep an eye the federal district courts. That’s where this actually gets challenged.

A Precedent with Teeth

Here’s how I know Republicans aren’t thinking more than one step ahead. Because they’re setting a precedent that’s going to come back to bite them. What happens when a Democratic president does this?

What if the next Democratic administration decides to sue itself, settle with itself, and create a $500 billion fund — fully funding Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, Everytown for Gun Safety, and so on — using the exact same mechanism Trump just established?

If Trump gets away with this, the answer is: probably nothing stops them.

The people cheering this decision haven’t thought it through. It’s so obvious that their blind fealty to Trump has completely clouded their vision. Because by handing this president carte blanche, they’re giving it to every future president, too.

That’s the thing about Republicans. They’re not thinking about you or your future. They’re thinking about power, and how to get it immediately and keep it for themselves. But it’s shortsighted, for all the reasons I’ve laid out here.

That’s why they’re so afraid of what’s coming in the midterms. That’s why they’re racing to redraw the maps in their favor. Because they know they’ve turned on the people, and the people are going to turn on them, too.

Well, almost.

While the Supreme Court did rule in favor of drawing a second Black opportunity district, it forced Alabama to use the illegal maps anyway. The reason: it was too close to the election. They relied on a doctrine called the Purcell principle, which says that courts can’t make changes too close to an election because of the disruption it might cause to voters. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito put it in writing: “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others.”

In 2022, Black voters in Alabama went to the polls using maps the courts had already ruled were illegal. The disruption of correcting an injustice, the Court decided, was worse than the injustice itself.

Same, But Different

Fast forward to November 2025. This time, Black and Latino voters in Texas score their own win: the Supreme Court found that Texas’ congressional map was an unconstitutional gerrymander. I bet you can guess what happened next.

Two weeks later, despite the win, the Supreme Court blocked the implementation of a new map. Same reasoning, nearly identical language. In offering relief in the form of a new map, the district court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

The Texas primary was in March 2026. Four months away.

Two states. Two illegal maps. Two wins for minority voters. Both erased by the same Court invoking the same doctrine about the same thing: we cannot disrupt an upcoming election, even to correct a wrong, even with four months to spare.

Cut To

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Callais, gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act, the last major federal protection against racially discriminatory maps. Five days later, on May 4, the Court did something it refused to do in Alabama or Texas: it made the judgment effective immediately, bypassing the standard 32-day window that exists specifically to allow parties to seek clarification or rehearing.

No mention of the “unanticipated and unfair consequences.” No mention of “confusion.” No mention of “upsetting the delicate balance.” All their words, not mine.

At the moment the Supreme Court acted, more than 104,000 Louisiana voters had already cast early ballots. Another 42,000 absentee ballots had been submitted when Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry ultimately suspended the congressional primaries altogether.

The same Supreme Court that told Black voters in Alabama and Texas that they’d have to live with illegal maps because a primary was four months away had no problem blowing up an ongoing election in Louisiana.

The Rule Is: There Are No Rules

There’s a pattern here. The Purcell principle exists when it protects one set of voters. It disappears when it protects another. Every procedural precaution is taken when the beneficiaries are white Republicans. No such precautions exist when the beneficiaries are Black, Brown, or Democratic.

This is not an oversight or a coincidence. It is the point.

What should be clear by this point is that the Supreme Court justices are not neutral arbiters of the law. They never were and they aren’t now. Just as the Republicans are not partners in democracy. They never were and they aren’t now. To that end, we get nowhere conferring goodwill to the other side. As I write in my new book, The Day After, about this antiquated notion of compromising with a party that is wholly disinterested in bipartisanship:

How have Republicans managed to skew democracy so much? Because they pursue power over principle, whereas too many Democrats pursue fairness and good government. Republicans controlled the drawing of 191 of the districts in 2024, compared to only 75 controlled by Democrats. The rest of the House districts were drawn by commissions, courts, or divided state governments. In the Democratic strongholds of California and New York, there are independent redistricting commissions. In Texas and Florida, there is no such thing. In Republican-­ controlled districts, there is little legal recourse to correct the maps. In their largely conservative courts, the judges often refrain from interfering with map schemes—­ unlike the mostly liberal courts reviewing maps in Democratic districts.

I wrote The Day After as a blueprint for how to fight back— how to actually wield power effectively when we get it, while we still have the chance to wield it. If you’d like to support my work and amplify this message, I ask that you please pre-order a copy here.

Now is the time to use every tool at our disposal, because winning is existential. If Republicans are gerrymandering Democrats out of existence in every state they control, we absolutely must fight back. That means Democrats in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, and Oregon need to start the process of redrawing their maps. And I understand that it’s not good government, but if we lean on good government solutions, we’re going to good government ourselves into obscurity. We gain nothing by sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that none of this is happening. The only way we actually emerge from this with our democracy intact is if we fight hard and fight to win.

But on the topic of constitutional violations, how about we look at the Republican-run states across the South that are unilaterally redrawing maps essentially because Trump told them to. The question of following proper procedure went out the window a long time ago— at least for the GOP.

This is the kind of asymmetrical warfare I’ve been waving my hands at for what feels like an eternity at this point. The Virginia case is just the latest example of it. Congressional maps have become the battlefield, and Democrats’ tactic is to put redistricting to a vote, while Republicans just… do it.

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling obliterating the Voting Rights Act didn’t help. I talked in my last post about the chain reaction the ruling set off across the South: Florida redrew its maps within hours. Louisiana cancelled an election in progress; 42,000 votes had already been cast. In Tennessee, Nashville and Memphis have been completely disenfranchised.

And now you have the starkest example of the Democrats’ “put it to a vote” strategy in Virginia. They got three million people to vote in the redistricting referendum. And look where that got them.

For too long, the left has been so desperate to practice “good government” that they’re good governing themselves into obscurity. Meanwhile, the right has no issues whatsoever with flaunting their blatant pursuit of power. Republicans drew 191 districts in 2024. Democrats, with their votes and procedures, managed to take only 75.

I saw this coming. I feel like we’ve been tied to the train tracks by a mustache-twirling villain while the train’s been barreling towards us for months. I’m thinking back to about eight months ago, when I did one of the most contentious interviews I’ve had in a long time. Texas had just answered Trump’s call to go on a redistricting spree and Gavin Newsom had pushed through Prop 50 to combat their efforts by circumventing California’s independent redistricting commission to redraw the maps. I sat down with Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat in a state with its own independent redistricting commission and I asked if he would follow Newsom’s lead and step up in the fight against the Republican efforts to rig the system.

He said, “no.” At least twice.

Polis wanted to lean on politics as usual, and put it to the voters. “Trust the process.” I tried in vain to get him to see the urgency of the moment. Eight months later, the moment has passed. Polis is term-limited, and I can only hope that the next governor recognizes what’s at stake.

This isn’t the time for process. We don’t have the luxury of time for votes. “Good government theater” isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s not good enough to get caught trying. We need to succeed, because this is existential. The window to save this democracy is closing, but it’s not closed. If our elected officials don’t have the stomach, they need to step aside.

So what needs to happen now - and it needs to happen now - is that Democrat-led states need to set aside procedure and redraw the maps. New York, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, and - yes you - Colorado need to get to work and get it done. Do it in 2026 if possible. By 2028 is non-negotiable. There is no excuse for waiting. I don’t want to hear about practicing good government, because you know what’s not ‘good government’? Letting our democracy slide into autocracy. Step up or step aside.

What I wasn’t ready for was what came next. Brace for whiplash. This all happened so fast, it’ll make your head spin. Here’s the rundown of what happened within hours - not days, hours.

Florida passed a new congressional map and cited the ruling by name. Ron DeSantis axed the popular Fair Districts Amendments, which prohibited racial gerrymandering. The result: Florida could end up with a map that gives the GOP four more seats, putting the state’s delegation at 24-4, Republican to Democrat.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency to suspend its primary election that’s already under way. People already have mail-in ballots in hand. Not because of a storm. Not a logistical issue or a public health emergency. It was so they could redraw the maps before anyone could vote. The emergency of Black representation in government.

Alabama called a special session. Tennessee called a special session. Mississippi called a special session. South Carolina put Jim Clyburn’s seat directly in the crosshairs.

That was all in 24 hours.

Even those of us who saw this ruling coming couldn’t see this: Republicans came prepared. There was practically no time between the decision and the action. This ruling was a starting gun.

So let’s talk about what Callais actually did, because the headline doesn’t quite capture just how damaging it is.

The court didn’t technically strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial gerrymandering. They just made it basically impossible to enforce. It’s as good as dead.

A little history for context: When congress passed the VRA in 1965, you had to prove intent to discriminate in order to prove a violation. Which made it nearly impossible to win because either you’d have to be able to read a politician’s mind, or hope they left a paper trail. It’s only recently that a politician would be stupid enough to do that, but I digress. Congress saw the problem there and changed the law in 1982 to get rid of the intent issue. You just had to prove the results were discriminatory. If a map diluted the power of Black voters, that was enough.

That’s what this court just undid.

So now, any state can draw a map that eliminates Black representation entirely, and as long as they claim partisanship, they’re good to go. Even in the South, where race and party are inextricably linked that parsing that is basically impossible. Justice Kagan said it in her dissent: Section 2 is now “all but a dead letter.”

It gets worse. In 2019, the court ruled it couldn’t touch partisan gerrymandering, either. They basically said “it’s a political thing, not our problem.” Now, racial gerrymandering is effectively legal. Partisan gerrymandering was already legal. So all gerrymandering is legal. The last guardrail is gone.

Let’s look at every state that moved in those 24 hours: Louisiana. Alabama. Tennessee. South Carolina. Florida. They’re not just targeting Democratic seats, they’re going after Black seats.

Every single one of these measures is aimed specifically at eliminating majority-Black districts. 35 out of 40 representatives of color in the South were elected in those districts. To say nothing of the fallout: we could be looking at white candidates winning 15 seats currently held by Black members of congress. Some projections put it as high as 19 seats flipped. You’d have to go all the way back to the end of Reconstruction to find a drop in Black representation that steep.

I keep coming back to this: this is exactly why the Voting Rights Act was written in the first place. It was a direct response to Jim Crow laws these same states imposed, defended and enforced. The VRA was the only thing holding them back. It was congress saying, “we know what you do when left to your own devices.”

Last week, they got their devices back. And within hours, these states were up to their old tricks, sprinting to disenfranchise Black voters.

They’ve been waiting 60 years for the opportunity, and the courts just handed it to them.

So, what now? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. (I wrote a whole book about it.) Here’s what I see. There are three different responses being talked about right now. I believe in all three, but we need to be realistic about what each one can and can’t do.

There’s the electoral response. AOC came out immediately and said Democrats need to fight fire with fire - redraw the maps in every state they control. Efforts were already underway in California. New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Maryland would all be on the table. I agree, we should be aggressive. It’s a welcome change to see Democrats finally mounting some offense after what feels like a lifetime of flaccid defense. My lifetime, at least.

But we’re playing catch-up. Republicans have had a decades-long head start on this. And there’s another problem here, because if Democrats move to maximize gerrymandering in blue states, they risk breaking up safe Black districts in big cities like New York and Chicago.

Then we have lawsuits. As quickly as those states in the South moved to tear up the maps, lawsuits were filed against it. Florida voters challenged DeSantis’ move under their own state constitution. Now, that’s worth watching - because state constitutional challenges are insulated from the federal court system. But that offensive is slow. It has to go state by state, and the reality is that many of those courts are republican-controlled, too. But this judicial offensive is limited. Because federal lawsuits are effectively doomed to fail, since they all end up at the same Supreme Court that just issued this ruling. You’re asking the arsonist to investigate the fire.

Finally, you have legislation. Democrats are pushing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Maryland passed its own state VRA the day before the ruling, which, credit where it’s due. Illinois was moving a state constitutional amendment and then paused after Tuesday to figure out what that even means now. All of that matters, and it’s worth pursuing. But a true federal fix requires winning the House, winning the Senate, eliminating the filibuster, and getting past a presidential veto. And even if we did all of that, we’d pass a law that would get challenged, appealed, and land at this court.

So here’s where I land on this.

These aren’t three separate problems with three separate solutions. We’re really looking at one big problem. Because AOC’s proposed electoral response can be neutralized by courts. The judicial response is the court. The legislative response gets struck down by the court. Every path runs right back to the front door of the same institution that just dismantled 60 years of civil rights law in a single ruling.

This isn’t whack-a-mole. It’s a maze with one exit, and that exit is blocked.

We can fight on all three fronts simultaneously and we should. But that’s like treating the flu with hot tea and a good attitude. It makes you feel a little better, but it’s not a cure. It doesn’t treat the root of the problem, which is an insidious virus that’s infected the entire system.

The root of our problem here isn’t the gerrymandered maps. It isn’t even this catastrophic ruling. It’s that we have a branch of government that has made itself accountable to no one, that has systematically dismantled every protection that stood between vulnerable Americans and the people who have always wanted to strip their power. And there is currently no mechanism to stop it.

So we need to have a real conversation about it and what we can meaningfully do about it.

The VRA was written because of what these states did. It took them hours - not years, not decades, hours - to show us exactly why.

We keep trying to tell ourselves that people can change, and that progress is permanent. This week was a rude awakening. The second the rules were lifted, Republicans showed us who they’ve always been.

We have an arsenal of tools on the table - redraw the maps, file the lawsuits, push new legislation. We should do all of it. But every single one will hit the same wall.

Which means the only real question is whether we’re willing to have the honest conversation about what this actually requires. I wrote about reforming the Supreme Court in my book, The Day After. I’ll link to it here. Because that conversation is the one we can’t afford to avoid any longer.

The VRA held for sixty years. It took Republicans hours to tell us everything we needed to know about why.

When I saw this week that the Supreme Court had taken a hatchet to the Voting Rights Act, I was - depressingly - not surprised. Because of course they would. This conservative court has by now pretty much declared their fealty to Trump over the Constitution. So the ruling was - in my opinion - a foregone conclusion.

The reality is that this is just going to keep happening until we’re left with a hollowed out shell of a democracy. Even in an ideal scenario, where Democrats have full control of government and can finally pass a new Voting Rights Act, the Roberts Supreme Court will always be waiting in the wings with a machete to break down whatever Democrats build up.

But there is a solution. This is the clearest way I can explain it, in this excerpt from my book:

To restore democracy, to restore integrity to the judicial system, we urgently need to reform the Supreme Court. Those reforms need to be based on principle, not politics, to have any legitimacy or public support. The first order of a filibuster-free Congress should be reform of the Supreme Court. Not the second or the third or the fourth, or it will be too late to save the republic and our independent judiciary. If any subsequent reforms are to stand a chance at surviving, we cannot leave in place a rogue branch of government with the power to strike down anything that doesn’t comport with its far-right ideology.

The first reform should be to expand the Court, in line with the principles that determined the number of justices in the early years of the republic. The first Supreme Court had six justices, reflecting the six federal court circuits. The Court grew to seven justices in 1807, after a seventh circuit was added. It grew again to nine after two new circuits were added in 1837. Today there are thirteen federal court circuits but only nine Supreme Court justices. The Court should reflect the size of the country and the scope of its legal challenges, as it did more than a century ago.

The second reform should be to limit the term of new justices to eight years, allowing newly elected presidents to choose their own nominees regularly. This would reduce the opportunities for the kind of procedural delays that stymied Obama’s appointment of a justice in his final year in office. The regular flow of new appointments would help remove the national drama from each nomination by diluting the novelty of each new appointment. Once again, there is widespread public support for term limits for Supreme Court justices: 75 percent of Americans agree with term limits, according to a PRRI survey in 2025.

The third reform should be to establish an enforceable code of conduct, with a Supreme Court panel mandated to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and impropriety. The panel should have the power to force the recusal of justices in cases where they have personal ties and even force the removal of justices in cases of conduct unworthy of the Supreme Court. Public polling suggests that there is huge support for such reforms as well: 76 percent of Americans are in favor of a binding code of conduct, according to a USA Today poll in 2024.

The final reform should be to retire any justice over the age of seventy from the Supreme Court, regardless of who appointed them. The Constitution says that judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which has been interpreted as lifetime appointments. That is one way to interpret the phrase but by no means the only one. A retired Supreme Court justice could be moved to a lower court and still stay within a reasonable interpretation of the constitutional language.

In fact, there’s widespread public support for retiring all public officials over a certain age, and there’s a surprising degree of consensus on what that age should be. As many as 79 percent of Americans favor age limits for elected officials, and 74 percent favor them for Supreme Court justices, according to Pew Research Center. Polling by the Benenson Strategy Group showed that a clear majority, 63 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Republicans, support an upper age limit of seventy for anyone to be sworn in as president. (The Constitution does not set any age range for the Supreme Court but does state that the presidency has a lower age limit of thirty-five.)

Mandatory retirement at seventy years of age would lead to four immediate vacancies on the Supreme Court: three conservatives and one liberal. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would leave, along with Chief Justice John Roberts. So would Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Barack Obama. All three Trump judges would remain, along with one Obama and one Biden appointee.

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt tried and failed to expand the Supreme Court, Washington has shied away from reforming the highest court in the land. However, FDR’s plan was the product of another political era, almost a century ago. The Court had struck down several pieces of his New Deal plan to revive the economy from the depths of the Great Depression. FDR also proposed to retire judges at age seventy, but if they refused to leave, he would be free to add an additional justice, potentially expanding the Court to fifteen. Congress defeated his plan, but FDR ultimately prevailed; within five years, seven of the nine justices were his own appointees.

Today’s Supreme Court has weakened itself by its political activism, repeatedly disregarding the Constitution and its code of conduct. It is populated by older justices at a time when the American people are yearning to reform the status quo. If we want to revive our democracy, we need to revive our Supreme Court. If that seems extreme, consider an alternative that is already upon us: a Court that undermines the very Constitution it’s supposed to uphold.

This week’s ruling was not a one-off. It’s the logical endpoint of a decades-long effort to disenfranchise minority voters and keep minority representation to an absolute minimum.

The three longest-serving conservative justices on the court right now have a combined 75 years on the bench. This is their pet project. They own it. And the other three conservatives, all Trump appointees, are comparatively young and spry. Gorsuch doesn’t even have a full decade under his belt. Without court expansion, we’re stuck with this right wing majority for another couple of decades at least.

We need to normalize ourselves to the idea of court expansion, so that when we have power, we don’t waste our time negotiating what we should be doing, but rather spend our time doing it.

If this helped you make sense of a chaotic news cycle, the full book goes much deeper into how we got here and what comes next.

It’s out July 14. You can pre-order it here:

Preorder Now

When things are going badly for Trump, he reliably shifts the blame away from himself and onto someone else. There’s a grab bag of reasons he wakes up in the morning and decides to fire a high-ranking sycophant, and Patel checked a lot of the boxes - bad press, main character energy. Trump already fired Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Lori Chavez-DeRemer in a purge that kicked off in early March. Most recently, Pete Hegseth axed his Navy Secretary (nothing like kneecapping your military leadership in the midst of a war).

This spate of firings in the last 60 days or so is new for Trump’s second administration, but it’s one of Trump’s oldest go-to tactics for when things go south, fast. Let’s go back to the last time the wheels came off - the 2022 midterms. Trump got behind a raft of hardline MAGA candidates, the diehard election deniers who’d made themselves in his image.

He endorsed Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Kari Lake, Blake Masters - real lunatics who embraced every inch of Trump’s MAGA platform. But we know how that played out. The 2022 midterms saw a massive blue wave, and, by extension, a humiliating loss for Republicans and for Trump.

He needed someone to blame for the losses, and he certainly wasn’t going to look in the mirror and do some soul searching. So he spun a roulette wheel and landed on RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Now, she presided over exactly zero successful election cycles for Republicans in her 7 year tenure. But she didn’t force candidates to run on Trump’s losing platform. But she was going to go down for it when it failed. Trump forced her to resign.

He wants to take all of the credit when things go right and none of the blame when John Fetterman steamrolls your preferred TV doctor in Pennsylvania. Heads must roll. It’s the Roy Cohn school of management.

That said, none of those firings solved Trump’s problems. But if there’s one thing he’ll never do, it’s learn a single lesson, so here we are standing around the guillotine. But ultimately, firing Kash Patel is like shitting your pants and changing your shirt.

The midterms are fast approaching, and with Republican numbers writ large falling off a cliff, we can expect Trump to lash out in every direction. And whichever unlucky administration official happens to have been caught by a major publication humiliating themselves that week is going to catch the heat. Trump will keep firing people, and whoever he installs in their place will make the existing administration look positively moderate by comparison.

He can tinker at the edges, but it’s not going to treat the problem at the root.

CTA: I’m looking for the pattern behind the headlines. Subscribe to follow along.

Kristi Noem wasn’t responsible for DHS policy, that was Trump. So getting rid of her didn’t solve the problem of brutal and deeply unpopular immigration policy. The policy never changed. Just the face of it did.

But we’re not collectively as dumb as he’s making us out to be. The economy is in freefall, affordability is dead and buried. Americans are struggling to pay for groceries and fill their gas tanks. That’s all because of one person.

There’s a pattern here: bad headlines turn public opinion against him, so instead of fixing the problem, he fires someone. The story becomes the firing instead of the failure: classic misdirection. Roy Cohn would be proud.

It’s going to keep happening, more often and faster. So don’t just watch who gets fired next. Watch what story disappears when they do.