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.)

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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:

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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.

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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.

It was raining on Saturday night as I approached the barricade that served as the first security checkpoint to get into the Hilton, where I was attending a different party on the opposite side of the building from the White House Correspondents Dinner. I was asked to show an invitation or a QR code (or prove I was a guest at the hotel). They glanced at the email on my drenched phone and let me in.

It was a bit of a circus as I made my way into the lobby. It was packed with journalists and officials, all putting umbrellas away and shaking the rain off their tuxes and gowns. I asked for directions to my party and was told I was in the wrong place; I would need to head back out the doors into the rain and circle back to the other end of the building. But I’d gotten right into the Hilton lobby, no problem. Not terribly far from where the shooter was ultimately apprehended.

Later, after the shooting, Trump and the administration officials were carted off to safety, while everyone else inside the room was left to process what the hell had just happened.

There was a (now all-too-familiar) feeling of solemnity around town the rest of the night. But I’ll tell you one thing - not one single person was surprised. Another shooting, another act of political violence, another wholly unnecessary tragedy. And we can all set our watches to the “thoughts and prayers” that will drive the news cycle for the next few days.

As I reconcile my lived experience with my existence online, what’s become a source of debate is the legitimacy of the crisis. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok are all awash with accusations that the shooting was staged as a pretext for Trump to gin up support for his ballroom (I’ll get to that in a moment). Now, I don’t know the truth, nor am I in a position to opine. But I found this notable because Trump has been on a decade-long mission to obliterate the very concept of truth. And he did it.

There’s a perverse irony to the fact that Trump’s greatest success is the complete destruction of our shared objective reality. He loves to brag about his wins, when they’re all clearly failures (crowd sizes, tariffs, the “hottest” economy, the 2020 election). He would tell his supporters that up is down and black is white if it would somehow redound to his financial or political benefit. As far as Trump is concerned, the “truth” does not exist.

The shooting happened near a room full of journalists, many of whom immediately picked up their phones and began reporting. They called law enforcement to try to verify facts, they went live and started filming. They didn’t hesitate to do their jobs, which is to report the truth— in this instance as it was happening. And still, the sentiment online and of people around the country the next day is one of disbelief and rampant conspiracy theories. Trump wanted to create a world where the truth didn’t exist so he could fill that void with his own (more convenient) version of reality. Years later, the trust that once used to bind us is now so obliterated that the knee-jerk reaction to an assassination attempt of him is to distrust everything about it.

The hotel where the White House Correspondents Dinner is hosted is known as the “Hinckley Hilton.” 45 years ago, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan right outside, wounding three people. One of them was press secretary James Brady, who suffered permanent brain damage and ultimately died from his injuries. When the Brady law passed nearly a decade later, it established background checks for gun owners.

There’s been no such discussion in the aftermath of this shooting. Nothing on gun safety or mental health, not a word about political violence. Instead, what we got was a sales pitch for - you guessed it - Trump’s ballroom. A $400 million “solution” for gun violence. Well, gun violence against the president. But shootings happen every day in this country, and no one else has a $400 million ballroom to fall back on. Americans get shot in classrooms, concerts, church, malls, temples— and yet nothing changes. A collective shrug by the people who have the power to do something about it. So no, a ballroom is not a solution. It’s a bandaid— one intended to protect a very small and very privileged group of people. An apt microcosm for Trump’s America: fixes for the privileged elites, while the rest of the country is left out in the cold.

What’s important to pay attention to here is how Patel responded. Because we’ve seen this movie before. This isn’t about damage control on one bad headline. This sets the stage for what comes next.

He doth protest

This administration loves a lawsuit. Even better if it’s got an outrageously high dollar amount attached. Recall Trump’s $15 billion New York Times suit, and $10 billion suit against the Wall Street Journal (both dismissed). It’s the standard kneejerk reaction any time anyone’s feelings get hurt. But that’s just a tantrum. The real tell is what Patel did next.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo, he announced that arrests related to 2020 election interference are “imminent.” He knew the fallout over the Atlantic report was coming and that it wasn’t going to look great (to put it mildly). So he ran to throw out another flashy headline in hopes of deflecting. That’s the other knee jerking.

This is what they do

These are the moments when Trump administration officials lean into Trump’s pet projects. Patel knew he needed something to distract from the humiliating exposé, and he knows that any mention of the 2020 election resets Trump’s nervous system, and so we get “imminent arrests.” They signal their loyalty, and get back in his good graces.

But it’s not just about ego stroking. And it’s not just about validating Trump’s delusions around the “stolen” election. Trump is dedicating so many resources - money, energy, personnel - to pursue this line of questioning that’s already been proven moot a hundred times over.

We’ve now seen this multiple times. Different states, same playbook. Sending Tulsi Gabbard to Georgia to seize ballots in February was not about 2020. Trying to get ballots from Wayne County, Michigan was not about 2020. It just happened in California, where Chad Bianco - who is running for Governor - tried to seize 650,000 2020 ballots. Twice is a coincidence, but three times is a trend worth watching. This is not about relitigating the past. It’s about intimidating people who might stand up to Trump in the future.

Stay focused

Don’t look at this through Kash Patel’s beer goggles because you won’t be seeing the whole picture. Because above all, it’s about undermining free and fair elections in this country. Whether or not these 2020 election lawsuits have merit - and they don’t; these are conspiracy theories top to bottom - they still serve as justification for questioning and interfering with elections in the future.

They’re reading it into the record now, so that very soon they can point to the fact that even if an election might have been compromised, it’s always worth questioning the results and it’s never worth trusting them.

If you’re still waiting for Republicans to meet Democrats halfway, you’re going to be waiting forever. The Democrats’ search for common ground with Republicans is a fool’s errand. Good luck with that, Quixote.

Bipartisanship is a myth. Even when you think they’ve found it, what does it get us? This is a Republican Party that has shown time and time again that it’s not looking to come to the table. They’ll change the rules when it suits them, and they’ll change them right back again when it’s no longer convenient.

Merrick Garland should be on the Supreme Court, but for a rule change. But when that pesky rule stood in the way of confirming Amy Coney Barrett, poof. It was gone.

If you’ve been trying to make sense of how we got to this place, this is the clearest way I can explain it. Here’s an excerpt from my upcoming book, The Day After:

One of the great fallacies of the Biden, Obama, and Clinton years is the notion that if only Democrats would compromise with their Republican counterparts, their goodwill would be duly reciprocated. If only they capitulate to the GOP, this time - this time - the Right will lay down its arms and a golden era of bipartisanship would emerge. “I’ll hold the ball,” Lucy explains to Charlie Brown, “and you come running up and kick it.”

When Republicans are in control, they wield power in a take-no-hostages manner. When Democrats are in control, they seek compromise, practice good governance, defend the institutions of government, and even make sacrifices to the minority in the hope that their selflessness, their righteousness, and their virtue will be rewarded. As was the case with Clinton, Obama, and Biden, they never are. Lucy isn’t known for letting Charlie kick the football.

The political truth is this: Democrats like to signal their virtues, while Republicans like to swagger their virility. Democrats believe that being good is good enough to win elections. They think that Americans will admire them for standing up for civil rights and democracy, expanding health care, or saving the planet. They think they can even win over Republican support by moving to the center and offering morsels of compromise.

Republicans, on the other hand, think that Americans will admire them for looking strong, for wielding power, and for extracting personal wealth from public well-being.

Compromise is not part of their vocabulary.

How Power Actually Works

One side treats the rules as unbreakable. The other treats them as tools that can be bent to their will.

That’s why, no matter how many times they try, Democrats’ attempts at compromise keep failing. They’ll never make a convincing enough argument, because the target keeps moving.

Until Democrats accept that reality, they’ll keep getting steamrolled.

Here’s the good news. For the first time, predictive markets have Democrats favored to win the Senate, 55% to 45%— and that’s with a very unfavorable map for Dems. That’s because of this new class of Democratic candidates who, more than anything, are running against the status quo and are willing to fight back.

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas is speaking directly to his constituents when he says that the biggest fight in this country is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom.

Sherrod Brown in Ohio is touting a similar message, that politics isn’t left versus right, it’s whose side you’re fighting for. His messaging is relentless on labor rights, the dignity of work, and lifting up the working class.

Rob Sand is running for governor in Iowa on a platform that includes jail time for public officials who misuse taxpayers’ money.

They’ve all made it clear that they’re intent on actually delivering. And they all know that the litmus test for success is not about identity politics or upholding “norms,” it’s the willingness to fight. It’s a willingness to hold people to account and to actually use the levers of power in our government to make good on campaign promises and make the government work for the people.

It’s going to take people like this who aren’t willing to be steamrolled by a Republican Party that’s walked all over Democrats in the past if we want to repair a broken system. And let’s not forget who broke it.

Trump has shown that government institutions aren’t sacred. He’s been undermining them for evil. But it’s also possible to barrel through those institutions for a virtuous cause. And that’s exactly what our next class of Democratic leaders needs to be able to do.

And frankly, what do they have to lose? Worst case scenario, they’re on the receiving end of a Strongly Worded Letter from Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin.

The institutions are not an end; they’re a means to an end. Among the Democrats currently in office, there’s this feeling that they’re there to protect these institutions rather than the people they are built to serve.

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.

The Day After is out July 14. Please pre-order it today using the button below.

Preorder Now

It’s bad news for Trump, but it’s a huge win for democracy. Hungarians delivered a landslide win for the opposition with a staggering 78% voter turnout. The undeniable outcome forced Orbán to do what Trump never could: concede.

And it serves as proof of concept for how to defeat far-right nationalist populism: when enough people vote, these strongmen go down.

Who is This Man

Orbán was sort of the OG of this latest wave of authoritarian leaders. If Putin wrote the original playbook, Orbán adapted it and spread it. He became a template for far-right leaders across Europe, and then Republicans here at home. They all run in the same circles, share tips, rely on each other. Remove him, and it’s like the mean girls no longer have a queen bee to look up to.

Trump has been running the Viktor Orbán playbook, especially in his second term:

Consolidate and control the media: check. (Someone call Bari Weiss over at CBS, and see if she needs a Gatorade working overtime to turn the network into state news.) Stack the courts with sycophantic judges: check. Overhaul election rules: he’s trying.

It’s textbook far-right nationalist populism.

This kind of movement is a cancer that can survive culture wars and ad hominem attacks. But “affordability,” or the lack thereof works like chemo.

When inflation rises (check), living standards drop (housing, healthcare, education, I could go on), and the diehards start to waver (Tucker Carlson, MTG, I could go on), far-right nationalist populism stops looking so enticing.

These movements tend to hit their limits after about a decade. But what happens next depends on whether institutions hold and whether voters show up.

Throw out the Playbook

The Republican Party’s transition towards autocracy and far-right politics in the U.S. is a direct descendant of Orbán’s politics. They share media strategies, consultants, and a common ecosystem. So the fact that JD Vance goes over, jumps on the scale for Orbán as a show of strength, and then flops is significant.

What a week for JD Vance. He flies to Hungary and gets humiliated, flies to Pakistan and tanks Iran peace talks. This guy has the literal kiss of death. Recall, Vance flew in to visit Pope Francis last year and the Pope was dead within 24 hours.

Someone grab the garlic and the wooden stake.

Trump and JD Vance have become liabilities rather than assets. Far-right European leaders have put daylight between them and Trump on the Iran War. We’re seeing it with Giorgia Meloni in Italy, AfD in Germany, and Marine le Pen’s Front National in France.

And look at what happened in Canada. Trump-aligned conservatives were on track to take the election there, until Trump’s tariffs poisoned the well. That swept Prime Minister Mark Carney into office, who came out swinging as the face of a post-Trump world order at Davos.

He showed up like Steve Jobs revealing the new iPhone, only it was an economy that doesn’t need the US and making deals with Qatar and China.

Systems Breakdown

Orbán’s loss shows that these systems are not unbeatable. They’re also not unbreakable, but that part takes work and the votes.

Orbán did major damage, using a supermajority to do a gut job on Hungary’s constitution. When he gained that level of control in 2010, he transformed the courts, electoral system, and institutions.

Sound familiar?

Without a two-thirds majority, it becomes much harder for the new party to unwind those changes in Hungary. We have to overcome the same hurdle here.

Otherwise, it’ll look a lot like how it did after Biden’s election: Democrats technically in power but working against gerrymandered districts and a Trump-friendly Supreme Court.

And look, the new guy, Magyar, he’s no progressive. He’s a center-right figure who used to be part of Orbán’s party. But he’s pro-liberal democracy, he’s anti-Russia, and he’s built a broad coalition that includes progressives. That coalition is key. It shows that defeating authoritarianism requires a big-tent approach.

Buckle Up

If Democrats regain power, they’re looking at a massive cleanup effort. I’m talking BP Oil Spill-meets-Three Mile Island. They’d better be stocking up on Dawn dish soap now.

In the same way Orbán wrote the far-right nationalist populism playbook for Trump, Hungary’s new leaders could provide the instruction manual for the Democrats.

But, frankly, they should not need a semester of study abroad to figure out that we need accountability, now.

Those chickens are roosting abroad. Jair Bolsonaro’s in prison in Brazil for “conspiring against democracy.” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign in 2023 after lying to Parliament.

It’s not necessarily the beginning of the end, but it could be the end of the beginning. But success at toppling autocracy is conditional.

People have to vote.

That’s why I can’t stress enough, and I will shout from the rooftops until the midterms and straight through 2028: We need to organize, mobilize, coalition build, and get a massive voter turnout that delivers an undeniable defeat.

But he didn’t get there alone. Congressional Republicans let him do it.

This was a decision he made unilaterally, sure. He sent us to war without congressional approval, which is - to be clear - illegal. But in the many, many weeks since he started this, Congress hasn't lifted a finger to stop him. By laying down and letting Trump walk all over them, Congress enabled this situation. And I’d put money on the fact that it’ll only empower him to do it again.

I wrote this book months ago expecting it to be analysis, but instead, it reads like a prediction.

Trump wants you to believe everything he does is chaotic, and that this “unpredictability” is a strength. Believe me, it isn’t. Trump is nothing if not predictable - you can count on him being self-serving, erratic, and - in the end - cowardly. Case in point, this week’s flaccid ceasefire with Iran that left the US worse off than it was before the war.

When I sat down to write this book, The Day After, I was trying to make sense of the last decade so we could understand what comes after Trump. What I didn’t expect is that we’d still be living through it in real time.

If you’ve been trying to make sense of how we got to this place, here’s an excerpt from my book that breaks it down.

Don’t get it twisted. Donald Trump could not dismantle democracy on his own; he needs the obedience of an almost entirely spineless Congress to rip up the Constitution. And its members have happily obliged, no matter how much humiliation he heaps upon them.

The founders of our democratic republic made it crystal clear where power should reside. They did not start the Constitution with the presidency. Article I, Section 1, is about Congress, stating specifically and clearly that “all legislative Powers” rest in the Senate and House.

Section 8 defines those powers more clearly: “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations . . . To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . . . to define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas . . . To declare War.”

You get the picture: the power to set the federal budget; the power to impose tariffs; the power to decide who should be a citizen; the power to abolish organizations supporting science and the arts; the power to blow up ships off the coast of Venezuela; the power to bomb Iran.

None of these powers rests with the presidency or Donald Trump, unless Congress has decided to contract every ounce of its autonomy to another coequal branch of government.

That was not a scenario the founders imagined, as they strongly believed that human nature would never willingly surrender power.

I guess they weren’t quite capable of grasping the servility of Mike Johnson.

This is essentially the origin story of this war, if you set aside the scene where Trump gets mercilessly bullied by Netanyahu into doing it. He jumped into something everyone knew was a bad idea, launched into action in the middle of the night one Saturday at the end of February, and let Congress wake up in the morning and find out about it on Truth Social like the rest of us.

And on that “everyone knew it was a bad idea” point - they all knew, but no one had the spine to tell him. They may have hinted at it, they may have presented him with overwhelming evidence this would be a disaster, but not one single person had the integrity to step up and tell him outright, “don’t do this.” Not one of these sycophants is capable of putting the good of the country over their blind deference to the Godking.

Trump may have claimed victory with a decidedly pathetic ceasefire in a war that no one wanted, but make no mistake, this is decidedly not a win.

Trump’s achievements after six weeks of war include: upending the world economy, killing thousands of civilians, empowering the Iranian regime, freezing 20% of the global oil supply, spiking gas prices at home, decimating entire swaths of the Middle East, and completely destroying our credibility on the world stage.

Oh, and going on record threatening a nuclear holocaust.

And even after that, even after casually threatening war crimes on social media, Republicans and the sycophants in Trumps inner circle have so fully ceded power to him that they can’t even bring themselves to act against him when he threatens outright genocide.

That’s just how completely neutered this Congress has become. In just over a year, they’ve contracted every ounce of their power over to the presidency with one cowardly vote after another and destroyed their ability to serve as a check on his corruption. They’ve turned themselves into the vestigial tail hanging off the back of the U.S. government.

And now Trump knows they won’t stop him.

The full book goes much deeper into how we got here and what comes next.

It’s out July 14. Please consider pre-ordering your here:

Preorder Now

Trump threatened nuclear genocide on an entire civilization with no material congressional response.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi has no plans to respond to a subpoena to testify about her, frankly criminal handling of the Epstein files. And the jury’s out on any consequences there.

The real divide in the Democratic Party right now isn’t ideological it’s tactical:

Do you confront Trump in a way that risks escalating polarization?
Or do you avoid that escalation and risk looking passive?

I spoke with Rep. Ro Khanna about that question and what Democrats are actually doing about it.

3 Takeaways

1. Rep. Khanna urges Democrats to act on extreme measures they’ve been reluctant to use
Democrats should pursue both impeachment and the 25th Amendment. Republicans aggressively pursued the 25th Amendment for President Biden, who never threatened to annihilate a single civilization. Democrats need to step up and meet the moment.

2. Even Democrats admit their responses have been weak
Some of the most forceful statements are coming from people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green, and not Democratic leadership. The democratic base is frustrated that their representatives can’t muster the same fight.

3. He’s already focused on prosecutions after Trump
Including potential criminal consequences for officials tied to the Epstein investigation who refuse to comply with subpoenas.

On Inaction On Trump

What stood out to me here was that Rep. Khanna is moving beyond rhetoric and toward action. Trump’s behavior isn’t just fodder for messaging. It requires a material institutional response. That’s a real shift. So often, Trump will do or say something outrageous or unacceptable, and the best we get out of Democrats are a flurry of “let me be clear-” social media posts. And then nothing happens.

There are signs of life - Rep. John Larson of Connecticut filed articles of impeachment against Trump on Tuesday.

This is not without risk.

If Democrats pursue impeachment or the 25th Amendment, they risk giving Trump exactly what he wants: a polarizing fight that consolidates Republican support and lets him cast himself as the victim.

Rep. Khanna’s view is that the political landscape has changed. This isn’t 2020 anymore. That even parts of the Republican base are showing cracks, and that failing to act carries its own risk.

That’s the bet.

Pam Bondi’s Accountability Gap

Certainly, that’s not coming from this Department of Justice, which will absolutely not touch Pam Bondi. But her failure to cooperate with a congressional subpoena and appear for her deposition would be considered criminal contempt. Rep. Khanna said that when Democrats secure a majority in the House, they will vote for that. There’s trouble on the horizon for Pam Bondi and anyone else who’s been cowering under the umbrella of Donald Trump’s protection.

Life is much longer than Donald Trump.

Rep. Khanna argued that the next president should appoint a special counsel to prosecute the Epstein class, which is one of the few issues where the public outrage cuts across party lines.

The Bottom Line

Importantly, Rep. Khanna emphasized that accountability doesn’t just apply to Trump or Pam Bondi, or the entire Epstein class. He’s holding Democrats to account, as well, saying that just because they’re pursuing the 25th Amendment or getting Pam Bondi in to testify, they’re not forgetting about the rest of the agenda: taking care of Americans. That means healthcare, education, tackling the affordability crisis, housing - making your life better.

The real question isn’t whether Democrats know what to do.

It’s whether they’re willing to step up and do it, despite the short term risks. Because if they don’t, the longterm fallout will be catastrophic.

Glenn Kirschner and I discuss former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s legal exposure now that she’s been relieved of her position by Trump, and what might happen to her when Democrats regain the majority.

A lot. And if it’s making you feel insane, that’s the point. But cutting through the noise, here’s the big story, why it matters, and what comes next.

Today, it’s Trump’s pet project: ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders. The Supreme Court heard arguments today challenging the executive order Trump used to enact it on day one of his second term.

The case centers on the interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which was passed in the wake of the Civil war to grant the children of slaves and former slaves all the rights of citizenship.

This whole thing is extraordinary for a few reasons, not least of all that birthright citizenship is a cornerstone of our democracy. More on that in a second. In a somewhat stunning turn of events, Trump himself attended the hearing - the first time in history a sitting president has done it. Maybe they’ve avoided it until now because of the appearance of literally walking all over the separation of powers.

Unsurprisingly, Trump - who can barely make it through one of his own press conferences without falling asleep - left as soon as arguments against his position began. This guy’s skin is so thin you could read the Constitution through it, if you still believed in it. Which, TBD for him.

The 14th Amendment enshrined this concept of birthright citizenship in the Constitution. Once you start chipping away at it, you’re setting a precedent that other foundational concepts are up for debate.

Even though this wasn’t a rout by any means, and it’s impossible to predict how they’ll rule, the Justices at least appeared inclined to side with the plaintiffs. Nowhere was it more obvious than when Justice Kavanaugh, talking to attorney Cecilia Wang, laid out how, with “just a short opinion,” there are two ways the Court could rule against the government.

Wang said she’d be “happy to win on either or both of them.”

What’s actually going on

This is an argument about the bedrock of the United States itself. Trump wants to fundamentally change the definition of who gets to be an American.

And it’s connected to all of Trump’s other fetishes: his obsession with voter fraud and making sure “the right people” (re: white people) are the ones voting. His brutal immigration policies. His thinly veiled White-Nationalist-coded anxiety about changing demographics in America writ large.

The fact that the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court shows you just how much the ground has shifted. Even a few years ago, this argument wouldn’t have made it beyond the fringe of crackpot legal theories.

Speaking of, here are just a few points that the Trump administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer relied on. Chief Justice John Roberts called many of these “quirky.”

• “Birth tourism,” by “thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations”

• Chinese media reports

• They “don’t do it in Europe.” (Kavanaugh’s response: “We try to interpret American law with American precedent based on American history.” Yeesh.)

• Roman law sources

He used all of these things to paint a picture of a United States that’s under siege by “hostile foreigners” and an onslaught of “illegal aliens.” He described a world where “8 billion people are a plane ride away” from being U.S. citizens. He called it a new world.

Justice Roberts came in with the mic drop there.

“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

We’re entering Week 5 of “Operation Epic Fury,” or as I like to call it, “The War No One Asked For.” In this week’s episode, we get exactly what Trump promised he wouldn’t do: boots on the ground in the Middle East. As Trump runs up the bill with this next development, Republicans are forced to find a way to pay for it. Their latest proposal: deep cuts to healthcare.

What Just Happened

After Trump put his hand out and demanded another $200 billion be added to his allowance, like a kid who wants to pay for Pokemon cards, Republicans in Congress revealed they’re considering cuts to federal health subsidies to cover the tab.

One proposal pulls $30 billion out of healthcare subsidies, which would leave 300,000 more Americans uninsured.

It’s Not What It Looks Like

What might look like a budget tradeoff is actually a reallocation. Secretary of Defense (of War? of Excursions?) Pete Hegseth may have thought he was just firing off a meme worthy soundbite when he said, “It takes money to kill bad guys.”

But what he really should have said was that it takes money from Americans to kill bad guys. And by taking that money from Americans’ healthcare subsidies, he is, ironically, killing Americans. Who’s the bad guy, then?

What’s worse is that this funding bill isn’t just to pay for the war. It also funds ICE.

What’s Actually Happening

Republicans are pulling the old bait and switch. What they’re calling a “funding problem” is actually an opportunity for them. It’s a packaging strategy. They’re rolling three politically difficult policies into one single bill: war funding, ICE expansion, and healthcare cuts. On their own, each of these things would face a tough vote. But smashed together, this becomes a package where enough Republicans support one or the other that it can pass with the right coalition.

Republicans are attempting to use a process called reconciliation to bypass the filibuster. Reconciliation requires only a simple majority to pass legislation. No need to play games to finagle Democratic support. All they have to do is build a Republican coalition by dangling carrots for the war hawks, the immigration nutjobs, and the healthcare sadists, and boom - you’ve got yourself a majority.

That’s not to say that this is a slam dunk, or even a good idea. Actually, it’s potentially a very bad idea. Republicans are painting themselves into a corner, and facing two unpleasant options (if it even qualifies for reconciliation by the parliamentarian): Either vote for this and own the resulting massive healthcare cuts in an election year when Republicans’ approval numbers are already in the toilet. Or, vote no on this and break with Trump. Which, well, we all know how that goes.

Spin vs. Reality

They’re saying: Republicans claim they’re targeting “fraud, waste, and abuse” in federal programs. They point to programs like the earned income tax credit and housing tax credits as examples of inefficiency.

What’s actually happening: This is very straightforward. Republican spending cuts kick 300,000 people off their health insurance, and those lucky enough to remain get slapped with huge premium increases.

And all those “savings” just get funneled into the war and ICE.

The Pattern Here

Republicans are going to have to come up with a new strategy because this one’s becoming too obvious. What they’re doing is manufacturing “waste” or “fraud” that needs to be taken care of. Then they can rebrand cuts to those wasteful or fraudulent programs as “reform.” And then they’ll take those cost savings and funnel them elsewhere. In this case, Iran and ICE.

That’s not savings. That’s cooking the books.

Who Loses

It’s you. You’re losing your health coverage, or your premiums are shooting up, or you’re paying for a war you were promised wouldn’t happen.

Who wins? Trump. It’s always Trump.

Because while he claims he doesn’t have time to deal with all that - he’s doing a war, you guys - he does somehow find the time to help himself. Somehow he has the time to build a ballroom, or refurbish a Qatari jet, host Crypto dinners that put millions in his own pockets.

The Bottom Line

Trump always manages to find time to help himself. He ran as a populist champion. Then, he launched a trade war that raises the cost of everything, passed a tax cut that disproportionately helps millionaires and billionaires, cut healthcare, and plunged the US into a war that costs billions per day.

And he does it all while millions of Americans get crushed in the fallout from those decisions. What’s worse, he knows, and he doesn’t care.

In all, 8 million people showed up at over 3100 protests in cities all across the country (and world). There’s no way Trump and the Republicans could tune that out. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that these protests have gathered so much momentum, considering Donald Trump is at the lowest point of approval in his presidency. And he’s brought this all on himself.

Because - and I’ve been saying this all along - Donald Trump is for one person. Himself.

Everything he does is meant to make sure he’s comfortable, taken care of, surrounded by riches, opulence, and wealth. Meanwhile, Americans are poorer, sicker, and hungrier than they’ve ever been. And the fact that it’s happening at the hands of a populist president goes to show that this was a con from day one.

And by the way, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what it meant to tap into the pain that Americans were feeling in the lead up to this election. He was perfectly content to exploit people’s pain so that he could help himself, with no intention of fixing any of the problems he was exploiting.

You can watch my speech here, and read it below. If there’s one thing I want you to take away, it’s to be inspired not by me, but by the energy of those thousands of people gathered in Los Angeles and beyond who are all determined to fight for our country, and to do it together.

Let me ask you all a question: where are all the pro-Trump marches? Where are the boat parades? I’m thinking that maybe the reason they disappeared is because no one voted for ICE to terrorize our streets and slaughter Americans. No one voted for a price hike on everything. No one voted to cut healthcare and food assistance. And no one voted to spend billions of dollars per day on another fucking war in the Middle East.

This whole country - left, right, and center - has woken up to the bill of goods being sold to us by this government and the Republican Party. They cosplayed as populist champions. But they have done more for the oil companies than for working class Americans. They have done more for Epstein’s accomplices than for working class Americans. They have done more to renovate the White House than for working class Americans.

But that’s what happens when your government decides that it’s no longer accountable to the people. When the president views himself as a king and his majorities in Congress view themselves as appendages of their ruler. When they think they can ignore popular pressure.

Well, I’ve got some bad news for them. It’s gonna be difficult to ignore what will be the biggest protest in American history. And that’s possible because you all decided to be here, using your voices to speak out against the regime. But I want to be clear about something.

It can’t stop here.

This is not the destination, it’s the on-ramp. You’re not the end-user, you’re the beginning. YOU need to be the messengers now. YOU need to go back to the people in your lives who don’t pay attention to politics, and make them your responsibility.

When you march today, remember that there are organizations here that need your help. There are campaigns here that need your help.

So, I need to hear from everyone here that you will take the energy you feel right now, and that you will use it every single day between now and November, and then every single day from November 2026 to November 2028.

Because we are going to win the House just a few months from now.

And we are going to win the Senate a few months from now.

And then we will take the White House.

We will relegate Trumpism to the dustbin of history. And we will do it with a new generation of elected officials who are responsive to WE THE PEOPLE. Not the donor class, not the political class, not the Epstein class.

We will bring about an America where we have healthcare for everyone in the richest country in the world. Where we take climate change seriously. Where we fund education and infrastructure, and end the corporate welfare that plagues this country. Where we take corruption seriously and hold accountable the people who commit it. Where we excommunicate the Epstein class from our government-- even if the Dow is above 50,000, Pam Bondi.

A new America that works for all Americans is in our grasp, but it means fighting for it every single day. I’m grateful to be marching alongside you all today as we fight to take this country back.

TMZ put out a call for citizen journalists to send in photos of members of congress leaving DC for spring break amidst the longest TSA shutdown in history. And the people have delivered.

They caught Sen. John Thune on his way out at Reagan Airport in D.C., crossing his fingers a resolution to fund TSA passes the House. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.

Senator Marsha Blackburn got caught booking it out of D.C. The night before the Senate even voted on the bill.

And, obviously, Senator Ted Cruz had his email set to “OOO” well before the House even took up the vote.

Can you imagine being the unpaid TSA agent forced to go through Ted Cruz’s carry on as he stands there barefoot, hoping he’ll make his flight to Cancun on time? We all know he loves a trip to Mexico in the midst of a crisis.

How is it that TMZ is one of the only remaining mainstream media outlets with any integrity?

On the one hand, you have Bari Weiss gutting CBS News and turning it into a mouthpiece for the state. The same CBS News whose legacy includes Edward R. Murrow’s historic reporting live from the bombing of London during WWII. Then you have TMZ out here holding our elected officials to account. This is the same TMZ whose legacy includes photos of Britney Spears shaving her head and attacking an SUV at a gas station. How the tables have turned.

These Senators, who probably refused to make eye contact with the TSA agents they’ve nearly bankrupted, seem to feel like it was enough to get the funding bill out of their chamber and hope for the best when it went to the House. As if there was any chance Mike Johnson would get it over the finish line. Which, he didn’t. Surprise, surprise.

So now we have Trump swooping in, claiming to save the day with an executive order to fund TSA and resolve a crisis he caused. Long story short, he is paying TSA agents from the existing DHS budget, which begs the question: If he had this authority, why did he wait until right now to use it? Why did he allow Americans to spend weeks contending with hours long lines at airports? Why did he allow Americans to miss their flights? Why did he voluntarily subject Americans to chaos if a solution was available to him all along?

These are all rhetorical questions, because we already know that Trump had solutions right in front of him. Besides just funding TSA himself, which apparently he always had the ability to do, he was also given a plan that both Democrats and Republicans had reportedly agreed to.

According to Senator Thune, we could have had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said “no deal.” Trump explained: “Any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

I explained this in more detail yesterday. Trump has tied this DHS funding bill to passing the SAVE America Act, which guts voting rights, forces states to hand over voter rolls to DHS, and makes it extremely difficult for millions of Americans to vote. All of which is because Trump knows he and the Republicans are facing a brutal midterm season as voters turn on them for any number of things making life difficult: Gas prices, a war no one wanted, horrific immigration raids, sky rocketing health insurance costs, and now, a nightmare at the airports.

All of which is a mess of Trump’s own making.

So if you see something, say something, and send a photo of your representatives to TMZ. They deserve to be shamed.

After blocking multiple standalone bills from Democrats to fund TSA while the debate over DHS funding continues, Republicans put out their own proposal. It would have funded all of DHS except for some parts of ICE. Democrats said the offer didn’t include any of the limits on ICE agents they’re asking for.

So now, you have untrained ICE agents sent in to do the jobs of TSA they have absolutely no business doing. Which sounds idiotic on its face, but there’s a perverse logic to it, according to some. Like, for example, Steve Bannon. On his podcast, he said that sending ICE agents to airports is a test case for sending them to polling places in November.

First you had these masked idiots terrorizing Americans in the streets. Then you send them to the airports, to make the already stressful process of making a flight on time even worse. The end goal is apparently to take all the skills they’ve mastered and apply them to the midterms. It’s so obvious that Republicans are terrified of the absolute devastation they’re facing in this election, if they feel like they have to literally physically scare voters away from the polls.

Then there’s the fact that this isn’t just about ending the stalemate over funding and ending the DHS shutdown. Trump has made it explicitly clear that he’s not approving any funding deal unless Republicans pass the SAVE America Act, which is itself another desperate attempt to disenfranchise voters.

All of which is to say, Congress has been very busy. Here are a few things I’ve been keeping an eye on, and what’s really going on here.

The SAVE America Act

What happened:

Why paraphrase when Trump just came out and said it?

“I’m tying Homeland Security into voter identification, with picture, and proof of citizenship in order to vote.”

So, he effectively killed any chance of resolving the DHS issue, unless Democrats not only get on board with Republicans’ half assed funding proposal, but ALSO agree to essentially gut whatever is left of the Voting Rights Act.

What’s really going on:

This isn’t about election integrity, or preventing widespread voter fraud, which, to be clear, does not exist. This is about suppressing the vote, making it harder for people to vote, making it harder for specific people to vote.

The SAVE America Act would impose “proof of citizenship,” which is really just a fancy way of saying, “we don’t want young people, poor people, and married women who change their last names to be able to register to vote.” It also states that government-issued ID does not include student IDs issued by colleges and universities. I wonder why.

It’s also a blatant attack on mail-in voting, something Trump’s been railing against since time immemorial. On any given day, it’s “corrupt” and guarantees a “crooked election,” or cheating.

Apropos of nothing, Trump just cast a mail-in ballot in a Palm Beach special election this week. I don’t blame him though. It must cost a fortune to gas up the jet and get down there with oil prices being what they are.

Pam Bondi Threatens to Defy Subpoena

What happened:

Lawmakers have subpoenaed Pam Bondi to testify about her failure to release 3 million missing Epstein files. But Bondi hasn’t yet committed to comply with her deposition under oath, offering up an off the record briefing with lawmakers instead.

What’s really going on:

Here’s the thing. They’re mutually exclusive: “under oath” and “off the record.” And Pam Bondi has already proven that when she’s under oath, she has a tendency to - for lack of a better word - shit the bed. The last time she testified under oath, it did not go well. She perjured herself by saying that there’s no evidence in the Epstein files that Trump committed any crime in connection with Jeffrey Epstein. She was then immediately confronted with evidence.

She can only pull off this stunt for so long. Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s been leading the charge on the Epstein Files alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, had sharp words for her.

“I think Pam Bondi just needs to follow the law. We literally passed a law, and if Pam Bondi doesn’t follow it, her successor could prosecute her for that.”

Congress Won’t Rein In Trump’s War Powers

What happened:

The Senate rejected a war powers resolution that would have blocked Trump from using military force in Iran without congressional approval.

What’s really going on:

Democrats have put forward war resolutions three different times, all of which were rejected by Republicans. We’ve been watching Trump and the Republicans trip over themselves desperately trying to describe this war as anything but a war, because it’s only a war if congress says it is. But Trump waltzed into Iran unannounced, and that lack of communication extends to congress. So their hands are tied without passing some kind of resolution.

Meanwhile, Trump is sending 1000 paratroopers on an “excursion” into Iran, while simultaneously offering Iran a proposal to end “the war.” Which is it?

The Takeaway

You’ll notice that we’re not just talking about Congress in each of these instances. Trump butts in on every argument, puts his finger on the scales, sends his minion to do his bidding. It looks like chaos, but there’s a strategy. It’s meant to overwhelm us so that when we’re not looking, power shifts, and the structures safeguarding democracy get a little bit weaker.

Congress is struggling to keep up, but it’s everyday Americans taking the hit. At the airports, at the gas pump, and at the grocery store. That’s why it’s crucial to keep an eye on what’s happening and the pressure on the people in charge.

What’s Going On

As Trump continues to flail in the aftermath of his disastrous handling of the economy, the Epstein files, and now a new war in the Middle East, he took to Truth Social with a pretty unhinged threat:

If Democrats don’t agree to his demands, he’s going to send ICE agents into airports to handle security and start making arrests.

So if airport security already feels chaotic right now, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

Here’s What They’re Doing

Democrats have put forward multiple standalone bills to fund TSA (and FEMA and the Coast Guard), which Republicans have blocked six times as of March 20.

They want DHS fully funded: no concessions, no conditions, no accountability. Now, Democrats are absolutely open to funding the department, but with some basic guardrails: no masks, ICE agents must identify themselves, requiring judicial warrants to enter private property, and stay away from polling places.

You know, baseline following the law. All of which is completely reasonable. Republicans keep rejecting this anyway. So, instead of funding TSA and ending this immediately, they’re making the conscious decision to hold up funding and use the chaos as leverage.

Why it Matters Right Now

This workaround isn’t going to fix the problem. Sending untrained ICE agents in to triage long security lines packed with travelers on edge is not setting them up for success. Now we have ICE playing the role of TSA at US airports. Moving on from their previous role as “law enforcement” in American cities. We all saw how that went. What could possibly go wrong this time?

Spin vs. Reality

They’re saying: Democrats are causing the chaos at airports.
What’s actually happening: Republicans are blocking standalone TSA funding and tying it to unrelated DHS demands.

They’re saying: This is about making airports “safe again.”
What’s actually happening: They’re proposing to replace TSA agents with ICE agents, who aren’t trained to perform security screenings (let alone anything else).

They’re saying: Democrats won’t negotiate.
What’s actually happening: Democrats agreed to fund DHS with basic guardrails. Democrats put forth multiple clean bills to fund TSA. Republicans rejected all of it.

Who Loses

It’s the travelers stuck in endless security lines at the peak of Spring Break travel. It’s exhausted TSA agents forced to work without pay, doing double duty as more and more employees, understandably, call out of work. It’s the airlines forced to hold flights, leading to a domino effect that will cause delays across the country. And it’s travelers coming into the country whose first interaction will now be with the same trigger-happy losers whose actions have scared off tourists and now threaten the upcoming World Cup. (Which the already decimated tourism industry is counting on for a much needed boost.)

In the DHS funding standoff, TSA is the main pain point. It’s the one arm of the department that most regular people interact with most often. As the wait times at security get longer, and lines snake out onto the sidewalk, it’s regular Americans who are feeling the pain here.

The Pattern Here

We have the complete breakdown of an apolitical agency that performs a basic function for everyone. And we have one party using America’s headache for leverage.

The Republicans are once again holding American’s basic needs hostage in order to extract some completely unrealistic concessions from Democrats. Before it was healthcare, this time it’s the TSA (and FEMA, and the Coast Guard, so you’d better hope there’s no natural disasters or maritime… “excursions” before this is over.) How will they inconvenience us next for political gain?

Bottom Line

This could all be over tomorrow. Congress could fund TSA, agents would get their paychecks and return to work. Delays would disappear. Democrats want to do it. It’s Republicans who refuse to offer a single compromise.

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