In the latest Weekender, we've got @kateriga.bsky.social on the America 250 fiasco @jragazzo.bsky.social on the deeply weird state of the economy A This Effing Guy on Jared Polis Thom Tillis relating Ken Paxton to Jeffrey Dahmer This week's news trivia & more talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekende...

Greg Bovino will speak at a white nationalist conference in Portugal tomorrow. He will share the stage with no fewer than five people who idolize Hitler, including one who joined a group created by two Nazi SS members. Another guy is a self-described racist who refers to women as "cockroaches."🧵

SCOOP: The Trump administration is paying millions to quickly cover four enormous bronze horses with extra-thick 23.75 karat gold leaf. The money for the rush job is coming from National Park Service funds. In total, I found ~$100 mil spent on new DC beautification projects.

VINDICATED: Condé Nast is paying the price for its illegal attempts at busting our union. Our members won a settlement that vindicates those who “marched on the boss” in November 2025. More here… nyguild.org/post/conde-w...

Bo French is declaring victory in his bid to be the GOP nominee for Texas railroad commissioner. This race was interesting bc French largely ran on islamophobia, 'DEI,' deporting 100 million ppl -- issues totally unrelated to the oil regulator job he's seeking.

"ICE detainees are dying by suicide at an ‘alarming’ rate, an AP investigation finds"

What a quote on Ken Paxton, by a party colleague. A gift basket to Talarico. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/u...

NEW: A U.S. counter-terror fusion center believes ICE's tweets are so racist they could incite acts of violence by white supremacists and encourage neo-Nazis to seek employment at the agency, according to an internal memo we obtained. theintercept.com/2026/05/21/i...

I spoke with several people whose loved ones were killed during protests for voting rights in the sixties. Most of their killers were never really held accountable. For these families, SCOTUS's decision last month to gut the VRA is a new injustice talkingpointsmemo.com/news/their-l...

Dennis Dahmer was 12 years old in January 1966 when Klansmen stormed his family's home and set it on fire, murdering his father, civil rights activist Vernon. He watched his father die. 60 years later, he watched the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/their-l...

Relatives of voting rights martyrs tell TPM they're reeling from the Supreme Court's decision gutting the Voting Rights Act. Now the one lasting change to American democracy that their relatives’ deaths brought about has been undone.  talkingpointsmemo.com/news/their-l...

Their Loved Ones Died for the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s Ruling Is a New Injustice.

With @khayahimmelman.bsky.social: How a New Jersey election denier got copies of ballots from Detroit's 2020 election, and is now laying the groundwork for the DOJ to involve itself in the state talkingpointsmemo.com/news/electio...

Why would one of the best golfer's in the world choose to make YouTube videos instead of playing on the PGA Tour? I wrote about it for TPM's mini-magazine, The Weekender, which also has great stuff from @allegrak.bsky.social and @emineirmakyucel.bsky.social. talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekende...

@dirm.bsky.social and I are taking the helm of TPM's Weekender newsletter, helping to unpack the funny, surreal, and strange in US politics and culture w/the rest of the team. We have trivia! We have little screeds about the modern world! We have bad posts! talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekende...

🚨BREAKING: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called for lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps for 2028, adding Georgia to the growing list of southern states poised to wipe out majority-Black districts before the next presidential election. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

South Carolina Republicans will proceed with passing a new congressional gerrymander despite it seeming to fail on Tuesday. Their proposed map below (right) would eliminate the only Black Dem to elect a 7-0 (white) Republican majority. Interactive map+data davesredistricting.org/join/c701dd1...

States are scrambling to cap or cut dental benefits to save $ after the GOP passed sweeping Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill. History shows us these cuts are “a false financial trade-off," @farrellbrenner.bsky.social reports. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-cos...

States searching for ways to make up for the GOP's $900 billion in Medicaid cuts are planning to cap dental benefits. But history has shown that these cuts are a fool’s bargain, with dire consequences for both states’ budgets and their residents’ health.

What happened tonight, final update —Dem aligned with “Dan Osborn” plan wins in NE —GOP SoS ousted by MAGA in NE; was quite con himself —2 supreme court justices lose seats in WV —NJ: Baraka reelected in Newark; left win in Belleville —WV’s GOP factions each get legislative wins —Powell up in NE-2

“Any mail that’s getting dropped into a blue box is not getting postmarked on the same day, and likely not on the day after either,” says the leader of a postal workers’ union. This could have tremendous implications for voting:

Hard to imagine a better illustration of the mendacious logic of Sam Alito's opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act than this South Carolina congressman explicitly arguing that Jim Clyburn's district isn't "conservative" enough because, uh, 47 percent of its residents are Black

I wrote about being inundated with AI writing at every turn, unwittingly turning my brain into the AI police, and how shitty AI writing is randomly showing up in my real life outside of the internet www.404media.co/your-ai-use-...

Louisiana citizens are standing in long lines around the city to sign a recall petition against Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. For more updates on the fallout from the SCOTUS VRA decision, follow @khayahimmelman.bsky.social + @kateriga.bsky.social's liveblog talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog-up...

SCOTUS' "hypocritical, inconsistent, politicized + unexplained decision" "to effectively allow AL to eliminate at least 1 of its majority-Black congressional districts + run House elections on a new map was the cherry on top of the shit sundae of" Callais talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

This is absolutely outrageous. SCOTUS reinstated Texas gerrymander 15 weeks before primary because they claimed it was too close to election to block it but now allowing Alabama to gerrymander one week before primary after trial court found map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters

It is wild how shameless this has become.

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a stay on an old Alabama map that had been found to intentionally dilute Black voters, likely setting the state up to eliminate at least one Democratic district.

🚨BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has allowed Alabama to select a different map for this year’s congressional elections in a stunning, last-minute move to interfere with another state primary election that has already begun. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

In Louisiana and likely Alabama, actual, cast votes are going to be tossed out as officials speed ahead with new (or previously enjoined) maps. This is such an extreme use case for the Purcell principle that the court ignoring it here signifies that it was always a made-up toy, not law.

BREAKING: SCOTUS acts immediately on Alabama redistricting, vacating earlier decisions blocking the 2023 map and sending cases back to the district court — over the objection of Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS issues “GVRs” in the Alabama cases—vacating district court injunctions & remanding for further proceedings in light of Callais. In practice, this means Alabama can now redraw its congressional districts in time for the midterms:

Seconded. And I'm very excited to be interviewing @joshtpm.bsky.social and @kateriga.bsky.social today at 1:00 Eastern to talk about independent media and the future.

45,000 ballots were already cast in Louisiana primaries for congressional maps that the state GOP is now redrawing. The governor's response: “Oh, those ballots are discarded and — and those voters will vote again in November. ...It’s not my fault." talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/sc...

TPM’s Hunter Walker has won a 2026 New York Press Club award for his seven-part investigative series delving into the impact of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda in New York, the U.S. city with the greatest population of immigrants.

A bit of exciting news! My "Undocumented Underground" series looking at mass deportation and the activists fighting it in New York City just won the NY Press Club's Rev. Mychal Judge award. I am really stoked! talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tpm-w...

Per @justinlevitt.bsky.social, "It’s not a great look for this to be a 4-3 decision to overturn the will of the public + it’s really not a great look to lecture Virginians about the evils of partisan gerrymandering w/o mentioning the larger national context." talkingpointsmemo.com/news/virgini...

@kateriga.bsky.social on the "asymmetric court warfare" happening in the redistricting arms race. Rs have gotten boost after boost from the courts as they push to draw themselves maximal safe seats. talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog-up...

"Republicans stripping majority-Black Memphis, where 39-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated 58 years ago, of its majority-Black congressional district takes its place in a rancid arc of American history that seems to be bending backwards." talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

BREAKING: In a loss for Democrats, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the congressional map voters approved last month to counter GOP gerrymanders cannot go into effect. The decision overturns the will of voters for technical reasons and gives Republicans a leg up for the 2026 midterms.

BREAKING: VIRGINIA’S TOP COURT OVERTURNS DEMOCRATS’ REDISTRICTING REFERENDUM talkingpointsmemo.com

Dallas Republicans Warned That Texas Was Turning Blue. Then They Wrecked an Election. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dallas-...

Microcosm of the horror of this post-Callais moment: the Mississippi House plans to hold its redistricting session in the Old Capitol where they seceded & instituted Jim Crow. They'll meet there aiming to erase Bennie Thompson's district — the one majority-Black district in a state that's ~40% Black

@gabygoldstein.bsky.social: What's coming next "is a redistricting war unlike anything we have seen, fought not primarily in Congress, but in state capitols, where the stakes are higher and the spotlight dimmer." talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/we-aren...

ICYMI, for @talkingpointsmemo.com, I wrote about the gaping logical flaws in the "missing scientists" conspiracy theory, and why it's a Tut's Curse for the brainworms generation. talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/whats-r...

In Louisiana, absentee ballots for the May 16 primaries have already been sent out But the Republican Gov is moving to suspend the primaries—which, again, are in ~2 weeks!—so lawmakers can redraw the House map in their favor after the Supreme Court VRA ruling www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

“the data center fight, with farmers and environmentalists and indigenous and working class people side by side, is an opportunity to grow and catalyze working class power. Fighting data centers is where good AI governance begins, not ends.” — @bcmerchant.bsky.social

Whoa. Janet Mills just suspended her Senate candidacy in Maine.

This is bigger than the a year's worth food assistance cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill

Today in two sentences via @kateriga.bsky.social: talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme...