Yesterday, I read about a medical condition called “exploding head syndrome” so, of course, my head exploded while I slept last night. Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as bad as it seems.

Mark Kelly a NO, notable as he was allegedly one of the cavers

Im seeing a lot of arguments like this from colleagues in PoliSci My view from working on autocracy is that Dems were winning on the biggest fight- making autocratization unpopular and now they're giving that up. Those are the costs

I’m not sure the benefits outweigh the costs, but this is a reasonable case that there are benefits to ending the shutdown.

If you’re too squishy for MattY, you probably have some serious soul searching to do.

That wasted TO when they tried to substitute on defense sure seems important now.

You can take the Team away from James Franklin, but you can’t take the James Franklin out of the team.

If James Franklin were still the coach, he’d figure out a way to screw this up in the last 4 minutes.

The elimination of USAID was an unforgivable moral atrocity that should haunt Trump, Elon Musk and Marco Rubio for the rest of their days and beyond

Was this the best use of my time today? No. Is it the most amusing way I could have spent the last 90 minutes? Absolutely. Pattern is free here: bit.ly/4nGGCGc

Glad I don’t have any need to fly anywhere for at least the next month and half of not longer.

People seemed to have missed the implication of putting ‘reason’ in scare quotes. I don’t actually think MTG is reasonable.

When MTG is the voice of ‘reason’ in your party, your party has truly gone off the rails.

When even Justice Thomas is having a go at you in oral arguments, things are not going well. (This is not me predicting that Justice Thomas or even any of the other R justices will vote against the tariffs but I’d no longer be completely surprised if he did.)

on this day in 1930, writer Sinclair Lewis becomes first American to win Nobel Prize in Lit. “Call me a socialist or any blame thing you want to, as long as you grab hold of the other end of the cross-cut saw with me and help slash the big logs of Poverty and Intolerance to pieces.”

Not an Ivy prof, but I’m available and willing to change my handle if necessary.

Happy tariff oral arguments day to all who celebrate! Listen in here (audio not started yet, but should any minute now): www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argumen...

Sleeping

Staten Island reliably demonstrating who the Republican is in the race.

And AP calls it for Sherrill just over 10 minutes after I posted this and only a couple minutes after Somerset, the last county to report any results, showed Sherrill running slightly ahead of Harris there in their 1st batch of votes.

AP has still not called the NJ governor’s race. My guess is that they’re waiting for returns from Middlesex and Somerset counties to at least start to come in. These are large-ish and swingy counties that have not reported any votes yet.

My analysis was overtaken by results (a call for Sherrill) but here’s what I swear I was going to say: Ocean County was largest pro-Trump county in 2024. With over 40% of the vote counted, Sherrill is running ~3% ahead of Harris who won the state by 6. Very good early sign for the Dems.

In the early returns in NJ (which might be vote by mail and, thus, vey much not representative) is running even or ahead of the Harris 2024’vote in every county that has returns.

That was fast! Congrats to Governor Spanberger and to Virginia.

REMEMBER, if you are in line to vote in the New York City elections NO YOU ARE NOT you are On Line

The race I’m really looking at is the Jersey City mayor’s race. In HS, I volunteered for McGreevey’s 1st election to mayor of Woodbridge and my 1st job was as his intern after he won. I also worked on his re-election campaign and state Senator campaign. McGreevey was my intro to practical politics.

As a former New Jerseyan, I’m going to be keeping a close eye on the gubernatorial race there this evening. I’m optimistic but I have been optimistic the last three presidential elections and that hasn’t worked out so well.

I worked for McGreevey the last time he was mayor (in the late 90s). There is nothing not confusing about this second act.

Prediction: if Trey McKenney shoots over 70% from 3 on the season, Michigan wins the national championship.

It’s amazing how much more daylight savings time screws with my body clock than traveling to the central time zone does.

Being able to teleport is an S-tier superpower for a RB.

Not sure Michigan will have enough healthy players to finish this game…

Stupidest rule in football.

Popcorn does not like it when I sing “Hail to the Victors.”

I can’t decide if Trump attending a Gatsby party demonstrates extreme self-awareness or a complete lack of any awareness. I’m leaning ever so slightly to the latter.

Let me sum it up: US lost $12B in soybean purchases and got $72M one time purchase All China “promised” is not binding, and is an interpretation of what you understood You lowered tariffs by 10% after you hiked them to 157%, but forgot and said it’s 57% TAIWAN? 🦗. China continues business with 🇷🇺

A vampire that’s not Dracula:

The good news here: no other country has tested nuclear weapons in years so that should mean it’s unlikely the U.S. will actually do tests if it really on a 1:1 basis. The bad news is everything else.

This vote is really only symbolic, but trade policy is one of the few areas where Rs reigned in Trump in his 1st term. I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for them to even try to do so this term. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In addition to the clearly correct Cordelia by Joss Whedon choice, I’d also go with This other Joss Whedon mistake:

Just...fuck you Joss Whedon.

If Trump’s skin was any thinner, we’d be able to see organs.

Trump has such remarkably thin skin. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Platner is the human embodiment of Milkshake Duck.

Gee. I wonder if there had been any way to have figured this out before the tariffs were enacted in the first place

This is awesome and Pudge is adorable but I want to note the breed is “Exotic Shorthair” and not “Exotic Shorthair Persian.”

Drinking Michelob Ultra Zero for reasons Bluesky is too small to contain. It might be better than alcoholic low carb or even light beers.

Like Vanderbilt hasn’t gone this hard against something since Cornelius learned what a union was

Good example of how much of a hack Oren Cass is—on April 2nd he had *the White House* publish his praise for Trump's tariffs, and now suddenly those tariffs were "haphazard", created "heightened uncertainty", and have "needlessly antagonized Allies"

Wow. That was an amazing catch by Marsh. Did he catch it with his forearm?