We're NOT okay

Fifteen minutes before the President announced he was pausing strikes on Iran, somebody moved $500 million in oil futures. Somebody knew. Somebody told them. Or somebody is them. New piece ↓ open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

SEN. @ossoff.senate.gov : “The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice… Remember — While you pay more for everything, the First Family’s wealth is growing by billions. Because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.”

Trump never had a plan to improve America. He just hoped you'd be too distracted to notice that he's destroying it. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/opinion/trump-economy-jobs-mergers.html

The most corrupt President, the most corrupt presidential family, in American history. When will enough Americans care? Today’s show.👇 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

For the record, Iranian leadership & Iranian state media are both more believable than the President of the United States. There is something profoundly wrong about that.👇

Me too @JessicaBRiedl. And that movement ain’t ever coming back under the Republican Party banner. It’ll have to come back, if it comes back, under another party banner or an independent banner.

Trump is on TV now talking about perhaps resuming the bombing of Iran. Almost two months since he started the war. And the position of GOP members of Congress is that the people's representatives in Congress should have no say on this. They really do think Trump should have the power of a king.

"The hour is growing very late. Already the political damage is irreversible for Trump and his party." It's just a shame that the damage extends beyond the president and his party. lnk.thebulwark.com/4sMKN5T

Today's winner of the Internet. Congratulations!

Does Scaramucci Believe In The Multiverse ? Time Travel,Well Please Bring Obama Forward In Time,thank you .......

APNewsAlert: CAIRO (AP) — Iranian gunboats have fired on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, British military says.

After being pressured to be quiet about morality/immorality by Trump, Vance, et al, the Pope refused to bend to tyrants and continues to guide people on an international level about morals. If there is a God, he/she must be proud. I sure am.

And from the "Annals of Being Surprised that Water is Wet," a new study found that ICE has been hiring people with "questionable qualifications" and histories of lying to frame innocent people. Seriously, though, it is good that they did the careful study even though the results are obvious.

Dear Media: Blindly quoting the President without fact-checking or context is just misinformation with a press pass. We don’t need stenographers; we need journalists. Do your job.

"At a time of absolute kind of amorality and immorality in the world...he's a moral leader, and he is establishing himself as someone who's actually willing to stand up to power... That message is going to go down very well among billions of people." @rhodesben.bsky.social on Pope Leo XIV.

The grift never ends. Most corrupt regime in history

You do realize The Strait of Hormuz is not going to remain open, right? That Trump just made up THAT part too? Speaker of the Iranian Parliament:

Who could’ve predicted this would happen?

Iran is rejecting Trump’s claim that Tehran agreed to hand over its enriched uranium stockpile. A source close to Iran’s Parliament Speaker said “no form of nuclear material transfer to America has been negotiated,” directly contradicting Trump. 1/

It should be concerning that the Iranian Speaker holds Trump more accountable than the American press and the American Congress.

Trump has certainly mastered how to feed reporters bullshit who dutifully pass it along uncritically since showing an ability to get him to take their calls apparently demonstrates clout and outweighs other considerations such as accuracy and truthfulness. bsky.app/profile/atru...

When a prosecutor finds that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute one of Trump’s enemies after a thorough assessment of the facts and law, he just fires the prosecutor and gets a new one to hack it up. Authoritarianism 101 from Trump’s Gangster Lawless DOJ.

The U.S. could release a whopping $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds to Iran in return for its enriched uranium, per Axios.

FDR should’ve just declared victory in 1942 and told everyone we won. Would’ve been much easier.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker MB Ghalibaf accuses Trump of lying, saying he made “seven claims in one hour, all false.” He adds Iran—not the U.S.—will control the Strait of Hormuz, with ships requiring “Iranian authorization” to pass.

@timmiller.bsky.social: "The negotiations are over things that either were already happening before the war started—the Strait of Hormuz being open—or were in discussion before the war started with regards to the enrichment... It’s a lot of Sturm und Drang for essentially nothing."

Trump six weeks ago: I demand UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. Trump today: I basically surrender on regime change, the nuclear program being gone once and for all, missiles, proxies, sanctions, and paying off the Iranian regime. But memo to my followers: Let’s pretend it’s all good!

Peace, but only during trading hours

When your life becomes a case study in karma.

"This past week in politics began with a big bang: Péter Magyar’s stunning and momentous victory in Hungary...It ends with a pleasant coda: a 20-point Democratic victory in the New Jersey House seat that opened up when Mikie Sherrill was elected governor." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

This is not a conservative party. It's a nihilistic party... It's mind-bending to some people in that, I think who are younger may not understand it, but the conservative party today is the Democratic Party. Because as Democrats, we are trying to preserve, to conserve the things that we have created

"Trump and the people surrounding him have long pushed for a theocracy, an explicitly Christian nation. These folks are completely fine and happy when religious leaders weigh in … as long as they agree with what Trump is doing. But that’s not religion. It’s a cult."

Sean Hannity is an insufferable idiot who hasn’t had an original thought in years. He’ll say whatever Trump tells him to say. And pretty much everyone knows it.

Despite the administration’s rhetoric and bogus legal theories, the supposed armed conflict with “narco-terrorists” appears to be entirely make believe. Murder is the general term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict.

In other words, Trump LIED. I’m a huge fan of Kaitlan Collins, and this isn’t a shot at her, but when Trump lies like he did here about the Pope, instead of saying what Kaitlan said here - “the Pope didn’t say that,” I wish she had just simply said “Trump LIED.” We’ve normalized his lying.

In today's newsletter: Andrew Egger explains why Trump is failing in his effort to get rid of Fed chair Jerome Powell. I discuss why Trump fears--and is in a way right to fear--Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, who's a heck of a lot more popular than Trump. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

After Trump’s Attack on Pope Leo, a Bomb Threat Came for His Brother in Suburban Chicago John Prevost is a retired Catholic school principal who plays Wordle with his brother the pope every morning. On Wednesday night, police evacuated his neighborhood. open.substack.com/pub/lettersf...

A note to Pete Hegseth: I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage cloaked in faux piety and patriotism that you cannot resist peddling to the American people. It’s incredibly unpatriotic.

Just admit y'all made a mistake already.

It’s been overshadowed by Venezuela and especially Iran, but the deadly boat bombing campaign is still going, even though: -There’s no war -The US wasn’t attacked or under threat -Drug traffickers aren’t terrorists -These may not be traffickers -It’s blatantly illegal -With no clear strategy either

“We’ll talk about some of the things that should be on the table in a post-Trump America. If we’re going to push back, we’re going to have to get pretty wild and pretty far out there and go in directions that a lot of liberals right now are uncomfortable with.” www.thebulwark.com/p/how-to-dri...

"I'm just contemplating the fact that one moron, one psychotic moron, one capricious idiot, has completely bollocksed up the global economy not only to the detriment of his own people, but the detriment of the planet. ... It's like how much more of this can the planet take?"

Not the same scale, of course, but Vietnam flashbacks here. We're escalating (without a strategy) to allegedly put more pressure on the enemy. And "we're closing the Strait in order to open it" has real "we're destroying the village to save it" vibes. wapo.st/4sw6IOF