Oh, NOW they want a say

I’m not gonna lie and tell you it will accomplish anything, but if you feel like venting, GOP House Leader Scalise is asking for feedback on how you rate House Republicans’ performance (in 2025, it says, oddly) and why. engage.stevescalise.com/2026-gop-age...

Oh come on… www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/b...

WH still giddy today about… Spain’s soccer team? Anything with the boss in the frame I suppose.

In which an official WH account tells Richard Gere a thing or two about USAID’s “bullshit”

Darline Graham announces that she will seek a full term as Senator, running in the Aug 11 special primary. Apparently she confirms it in an interview with Sean Hannity set to air tonight.

Tragic

The NRCC just put out a release condemning “deranged” Cong. Derek Tran for his “disgusting” post yesterday of people in his district on the anniversary of John Lewis’s death. Can you spot the grave offense? I’ll provide the answer below….

“I just want to find 2 strokes…. So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 2 strokes. Fellas, I need 2 strokes. Give me a break….”

Has Patrick Stewart ever considered saying “no thanks, I’m 140 years old, I don’t need to do this shit any more”?

Dan Kleban has now joined the conga line dropping out of the Maine US Senate nomination contest; in a statement he says he’ll work to help Troy Jackson defeat Susan Collins.

This World Cup awards ceremony is taking valuable time away from the winners partying in the locker room with Kash Patel

VPOTUS announces a baby boy

Argentina reminding us that this could have been a really exciting, entertaining game the whole time

USA can still win the Cup if Mike Pence has the courage

You’re watching extra time in the World Cup final, but the GOP thinks you should be thinking about Olive Garden pasta security

Gotta be honest, I don’t even know what “question before Congress” he’s talking about

He also regularly says that he’s going to arrest mayors of sanctuary cities, so I’m not sure he’s a very reliable source on his own behavior

First thought from FIFA ‘closing ceremonies’: Do other countries have bucket drummers? I would guess yes, but don’t know.

Gotta admit, I’m a sucker for a major golf tournament in which everyone collapses upon getting a taste of the lead

I had just finished reading (in print) the NYT investigation of failed protester prosecutions, my takeaway being that there are no consequences for ICE misconduct, and - boom - new NYT item has been posted: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/19/u...

Meanwhile…

The Tate brothers situation - and whether the US extradites them - will be interesting to watch, b/c there’s a sharp divide among MAGA world. Trump, Vance, groypers, Tucker etc are big for Tates. Many others strongly anti-Tate. …

Seems like a good idea

Show me a good movie with sword fighting

France players sitting pretty with their big Kalshi bets on England

WSJ reports on the absolutely predictable abuse of prediction markets in official Washington. (One assumes this goes on in every remotely exploitable field, though some may have less obvious potential consequences than federal govt.) www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but high-ranking officials in our federal government have been appearing on broadcasts today talking about the security procedures used by Olive Garden for its Never Ending Pasta Pass.

Ooh but what about the alternative Talking Points MAGA one

In which my wise friend @marcelagarcia.bsky.social explains why she (and many other Latinos) are rooting for her home country’s colonizers against Argentina in the World Cup final. mailchi.mp/bostonglobe/...

Read @juliaazari.bsky.social on the important big picture - and please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription, currently on sale for 20% off! open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...

It’s not every seat of elected power that propagandizes against the legitimacy of its own elected officeholder

I don’t want to shock and upset anyone, but today’s Steve Bannon interview of John Solomon about election integrity seems to include claims that do not entirely comport with known facts and evidence

DHS Secy Mullin to speak at top of the hour about how he’s going to carry out Trump’s charge to remove, um, “potential non-citizens” from voter rolls

Trump claimed tonight that an FBI leader set up a shadow government to cover up Chinese penetration into US election systems. According to a post from Jeff Clark (who you might remember from his 2020 election denial work), this apparently is the “declassified text message” proving the claim:

If he’s got something that important to say about a stolen election, you would think he’d talk about it somewhere near the top of the speech about it

Sen. Bernie Moreno posts that he has been briefed by the White House about tonight’s speech, which “may be the most important Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Mike Lindell is on the Matt Gaetz show tonight; do with that information what you will.

Two of the most notorious distributors of pro-Trump anti-Dem memes, meeting with POTUS, Blair and Cheung the day of Trump’s 2020 conspiracy speech, hmm

Wait he is who now

At GP/BP, where we're running a sale this week on paid subscriptions. Hope y'all will consider it, and thanks to all our paid and free subscribers. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com

Economist cover

“far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism” www.whitehouse.gov/releases/202...

Personally I think that’s a little low to fly a Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet over civilians, but maybe I just don’t love America enough

It’s hard to describe how invested the online MAGAsphere has become in the new Odyssey movie being a total woke-ruined flop

lol “prediction markets” are such crap

Dude maybe needs a little less T if you ask me

WaPo finds that poor work by the no-bid contractor is probably to blame for reflecting pool peeling www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Unconscionable if accurate. Most (including me) have been guessing that they’re sitting on the third-stage review. According to this, they haven’t even conducted it. www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/p...

Maybe not an Act per se, more of an unspoken tacit agreement