Coming up on CNN at 9:30 am

Democratic Strategist and Mayday Network’s @julieroginsky.bsky.social joined @cnn.com John Berman to discuss why Senate Minority Leader @schumer.senate.gov is not meeting the moment.

An Urgent Appeal to Democrats: the hour is getting late open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

No wonder that, in the wake of the Kirk murder, leaders and pundits in the MAGA movement have become so sensitive to being compared to Nazis. The more they lean into similar rhetoric, the more they try to gaslight the rest of us about what it is they are doing. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

The latest chapter in our series on how Russia interfered in the 2016 to help Trump win. Don't let him gaslight you about the "Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax." The only hoax is that the whole thing was a hoax. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

Old enough to remember when SNL went after a teenage Chelsea Clinton, which rightly outraged her parents. And yet, neither of them demanded that the show be canceled.

Legacy media continues to show how out of step it is with where the audience is today. News alert: aside from Fox viewers, no one wants to tune in to watch MAGA exploiting a tragedy to go after its perceived enemies.

Until Democrats stop unilaterally disarming and cowering and learn how to communicate, we will slide deeper and deeper into fascism and autocracy. The hour is getting late. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

Apples (Honeycrisp, per pound): $2.24 (up from $1.72 this time last year) Bacon (sliced, per pound): $7.208 (August, 2025, up from $6.883 this time last year) Eggs (Grade A, Large, per dozen): $3.59 (August, 2025, up from $3.08 this time last year)

Charlie Kirk's death is a tragedy but another tragedy is how quickly Trump and MAGA are exploiting it to baselessly go after the people they perceive to be their political enemies. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Cardinal Timothy Dolan failed to report direct admissions of rape by multiple priests, lobbied against extending the statute of limitations for sex abuse, and moved money off the church books to hide it from victims of sex abuse. In case you were wondering.

Hey, MAGA! What goes around comes around. youtu.be/TZIBB3Og64w

Belatedly, corporate media executives are realizing that the man they thought they were playing to score ratings and money actually played them all along. Now their puppet has become the puppeteer. They either dance on a string for him or the money will no longer be rolling in.

Joining CNN at 9 am

Last night, Trump pulled his most dangerous move yet. This should deeply concern every single one of us, because it concerns every single one of us. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

I will not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate who does not promise to respond in kind. We will rebuild from the rubble. But first, accountability.

If you believe that South Park was pulled tonight because the creators didn't get a new episode done in time, I have a bridge to sell you.

Folks, Michelle Kinney and I are going live at 7:30 pm ET to talk about Disney's disgraceful capitulation by firing Jimmy Kimmel. Watch it here. www.youtube.com/live/XN-gan9...

After the $16 million settlement and now this, is it fair to say that there is no bottom for Disney? This is why we independent media is so crucial.

No one is coming to save us. Not our Democratic politicians, not the media, not our cultural icons — no one. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Look to yourselves and to the communities we have built together. The old way of doing things — the old heroes — are no more.

Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted by a jury of her peers for trafficking those minors. Is he saying the jury erred in convicting her? If so, why is she still incarcerated for a crime Kash Patel does not think she committed?

How Trump's Big Beautiful Bill will impact one domestic abuse survivor from New Jersey. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

So much of the crisis is the fact that liberals are unwilling to describe what's happening, because they're scared to say that their opponents are lying, are operating in bad faith, want evil or harmful policy, and don't share our basic goals about what society should look like

Scott Jennings, the face of the Republican Party on CNN, just said that Charlie Kirk's views are "mainstream Republican" and that 50% of the country, presumably including Jennings, voted for those views. This is not Fox News. This is CNN.

Who wants to tell Marc Thiessen that Charlie Kirk called George Floyd a "scumbag" after he was killed?

The fucking abject cruelty.

Friends, join Michelle Kinney and me at 2 PM ET on the Mayday Network YouTube channel for our Mayday Daily Dispatch to talk about freedom of speech and how it’s under attack more than ever. www.youtube.com/live/Zp_vStB...

Welcome to Trump’s America, where they fire Karen Attiah and Matthew Dowd for pointing out Charlie Kirk’s right-wing extremism and applaud Brian Kilmeade for suggesting we murder the homeless.

By 2016, Trump was the chosen Republican presidential candidate in a sweeping foreign influence operation. It was a campaign built to implode America from within and leave it unrecognizable. Less than a decade later, the Kremlin appears to have succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.

Charlie Kirk's murder exposes the broken corporate mews model.

I hadn’t seen this. Kirk, the moderate free speech guy who did politics the right way per some liberals (!), called for Biden to be executed. Meanwhile Joe Biden put out a very strong statement condemning Kirk’s killing. Both sides!

Bacon (sliced, per pound): $7.208 (up from $6.883 this time last year) Eggs (Grade A, Large, per dozen): $3.59 (up from $3.08 this time last year) Sources: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU00... www.bls.gov/charts/consu...

Brian Kilmede lives on Long Island. Fox pays for a car to take him back and forth to work every single day. If he walks anywhere, it is around the block from Fox to DelFrisco's. He has not encountered a homeless person in decades. -- Signed, a former Fox News contributor.

There may be another reason Trump doesn't want to release the Epstein files -- and it has nothing to do with sex. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

As a former Soviet refugee, I know sending Russian dissidents back puts their lives at risk. @julieroginsky.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/Ijd9X... Follow The Ken Harbaugh Show here: linktr.ee/thekenharbau...

Wait a second, Kash Patel flew to Utah to stand behind the governor and show photos we've all seen for hours?

WSJ just retracted its report that the shooter’s ammo was engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” It smelled like bullshit from the beginning, and every conservative who ran with it should be shamed into obscurity.

We can mourn Kirk’s death because he was a young man with a full life ahead of him. We can mourn it also because of what it says about the divisions in our country. But we cannot allow the right to run roughshod over our ability to debate those differences and stand up for our values.

What the actual fuck, CNN. Kids got shot in school yesterday, as they do almost every day. Barely a peep. Meanwhile, wall to wall Charlie Kirk coverage. Enough of this hagiography. It's a tragedy and it should not have happened but there is other news.

Russian bots out big time in my Twitter comments today. The tell? Egg accounts/accounts with just a few 100 followers (or fewer), spewing basically identical, misogynist shit. @olgalautman.bsky.social and I described their tactics in our most recent Active Measures installment.

Don’t ever let them tell you that political violence is a one-way street. Don’t be cowed into silenced because you’re afraid that they’ll attack you for being insensitive in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. Don’t let them rewrite history. Never allow it.

Trump is rebranding the Defense Dept. as the Dept. of War — with him, marketing becomes reality. @julieroginsky.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/8tEZL... Follow The Ken Harbaugh Show here: linktr.ee/thekenharbau...

Trust in the DoD has eroded—from secret raids to shaky claims, the benefit of the doubt is gone. @julieroginsky.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/HtE11... Follow The Ken Harbaugh Show here: linktr.ee/thekenharbau...

It took grandpa all night to digest the steak from Joe's Crab Shack and notice that WWIII is on Europe's doorstep. Someone would have told him earlier but his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense were eating out with him, rather than getting briefed on a massive national security threat.

The answer to why Putin is choosing now to test NATO's resolve. open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

Russian drones attacked a NATO country tonight, yet our legacy media is barely making a peep. This is a deeply concerning geopolitical situation which is quickly escalating into a crisis. @olgalautman.bsky.social and I were live a few minutes ago to break it down. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxyv...

Shreveport, which Johnson represents, has a total crime rate 144% higher than national average and 62% higher than Louisiana average. Its violent crime rate is 138% higher than the national rate and 44% above Louisiana's. Why isn't the military invading Johnson's district?

Are you guys in the mood for a new morning show that doesn't bend the knee to Trump? Stay tuned. #MaydayMedia

When this is all over — and it will be over one day — we need to prosecute the people responsible. The presidency protects Trump but the rest of them are not protected. Not Vance. Not Rubio. Not Homan. Not Noem. Not the henchmen who do their will. All of them deserve to face justice.