The World Jewish Congress is apparently using AI to generate fake videos of Anne Frank. Truly shameful. This opens the door to all kinds of AI slop misrepresenting the Holocaust. www.jta.org/2026/05/07/c...

I'm not a legal expert, maybe Virginia's redistricting case was complicated, but Florida's case is not: Voters passed a referendum that said no partisan redistricting, DeSantis and the Legislature said fuck you we're doing it anyway, and nobody seems to think the all-Republican court will stop them.

When it comes to manipulating or violating rules, procedures, and norms to get what they want, Republicans are the party of "Yes we can!" Democrats are the party of "Maybe we shouldn't."

This is exactly right. One message of the GOP's rigging of the system is that the ordinary means of democratic participation - voting, organizing, protesting, lobbying - are pointless. Convince people of that, and some small portion of them will conclude that violence is all that's left.

The Iran war can’t come to an end until Trump accepts that the side with more bombs doesn’t always win, and he’ll have to compromise. That could take a while. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/to-end-his...

I've had some crappy bosses, but can you imagine working for this jabroni

"Some of us were too quick to believe in a final cultural/political victory, confident that even as Republicans used their power to preserve emblems of the Confederacy and banish discussion of slavery and racism from schools, they were fighting a doomed rear-guard action." — @paulwaldman.bsky.social

Every picture of Rubio looks like he just read a 14-point set of instructions titled "How to Stand" and he thinks he got it right but he's not completely sure

We act like the best politician to have is a Bernie-style, hold-the-same-three-unwavering-beliefs-for-50-years type, but there's also a lot of value in the finger-in-the-wind kind of politician who will change their views according to the prevailing politics of the moment.

Hey, remember when we found out top Trump administration official Tom Homan took $50,000 in cash in a paper bag from an undercover FBI agent, the Trump people said, "Who cares, piss off," everyone decided to move on, and he's still there making policy? That was funny.

Between Trump making the US an international pariah and FIFA jacking up prices into the 4 and even 5 figures, looks like most of the World Cup games will feature half-empty stadiums. What a disaster.

Conservatives have always wanted to undo the 1960s. But now they're taking aim at the 1860s as well. My latest at Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-conf...

So I assume in the next season of Daredevil, Kingpin starts referring to the events of this season's finale as a "day of love" and gets elected again, right?

All the analysis of the Indiana results says "With Trump's victory, now Republicans in the South are going to gerrymander away all the Black districts." But that assumes if the Indiana incumbents had won, the Southern Republicans wouldn't have gone ahead. I see zero reason to think that's true.

Trump succeeded in replacing some conservative Republicans in Indiana with some other conservative Republicans. But he didn't actually win anything. My latest at MSNOW: www.ms.now/opinion/indi...

Fact-check: ✅ I've worked in academia & government: Both have communication problems, but they're NOT the same problems. -None of the politicos I've encountered spout Derrida or Foucault. -None of the academics I've encountered talk about "meeting hard-working everyday Americans where they are."

Folks who don't get their newsletters may not know this but Axios is a publication of such shameless AI boosting it would make the OpenAI PR department blush. Every day is three stories about politics and four "If You Don't Fire All Your Employees And Replace Them With AI You'll Be Left Behind"

This is a profound misdiagnosis of the communication problem. It's not that Democratic candidates talk like they're in "a college seminar." Politicians aren't throwing academic jargon at voters. The problem is that they talk too much like POLITICIANS - cautious, careful, talking-point-ese. [cont]

Let’s not forget that when cults start out, they can seem to offer adherents something compelling. It’s only later you get forced to drink poison. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/when-the-c...

"Project Freedom"? It's like they're not even trying anymore. Why not "Operation Thunder Thrust," or "Operation Relentless Pounding," or "Operation Pete Hegseth Is Not a Little Boy He's a Great Big Strong Man So Shut Up Dad You Can't Tell Me What To Do I'm Not Crying You're Crying"?

Saw a lady yesterday in a Pantera sweatshirt, and let me tell you she had done some hard livin'

So weird that when when Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, the most mediocre mediocrity who ever chug-a-lugged his way to the top, conservatives didn't demand to see his LSAT scores, I wonder why that was

Thinking again about how one day years from now I will leave my grandchildren in awe as I tell them the jaw-dropping tale of Four Seasons Total Landscaping

If the He-Man movie turns out to be as bad as it looks, I fear it may lessen Hollywood's desire to at long last make a live action Thundarr the Barbarian movie, which would be too bad because Thundarr the Barbarian frigging rocked

I say this as someone who went on cable news to bicker with conservatives more than a few times: What kind of sicko would you have to be to want to spend an hour of your life watching this? Even once, let alone every night?

Looking forward to Kavanaugh's decision in which he writes "Plaintiffs allege that this violates the 'Purcell principle,' which I have never heard of and couldn't possibly have any relevance here"

No expense will be spared to protect the president’s tender feelings, and no idiocy will fail to be defended by the collection of spineless lickspittles with whom Trump has surrounded himself. The latest from my newsletter: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-snivel...

Is there a new Amazon feature that allows me to watch a robot punch whoever came up with this idea right in the face

The historians on the Supreme Court: "In a 1762 letter to his manservant, William Blackstone used the word 'small.' Ergo, child labor is consistent with our history and tradition." Also the historians on the Supreme Court: "Racism ended when Rosa Parks sat down on that train. Or bus? Whatever."

Racism is over says the Supreme Court, which you can tell because it took literally a matter of minutes after they gutted the Voting Rights Act for Republicans in the South to start moving to make sure Black people in their states get no representation in Congress

Looks like it's time for this piece again: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/democrats-...

Just finished @mollycrabapple.bsky.social 's "Here Where We Live Is Our Country" and it is so, so good - thought-provoking, moving, beautifully written. Can't recommend highly enough.

Today is a reminder that except for a brief period running roughly from Brown v. Board to Roe v. Wade, throughout its history the Supreme Court has been a reactionary force protecting the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, almost always hostile to equality and justice.

This is for their own good, since it is widely known that if a woman talks too much about soybeans, her uterus will dry up. That's just science. www.reuters.com/world/americ...

So this is where we are: Trump: My opponents should be put to death, immigrants are vermin, black people have low IQs, journalists are the enemy of the people Democrats: Donald Trump is a fascist Bigshot media: Whoa, Democrats, isn't your extreme rhetoric promoting violence?

Republicans have spent decades arguing that presidents must have total control to direct the work of executive agencies Congrats, now legal motions filed by the government sound like Trump wrote them on the toilet ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Give them this: Republicans have something they deeply, sincerely believe in and which they will pursue even at great political cost. Unfortunately, that thing is that rich people shouldn't have to pay taxes. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Anyway. Remember that time a bunch of MAGA trucks swarmed a Biden campaign bus in Texas and tried to run it off the road and trump and Rubio were like that’s awesome? The rhetoric dial remembers.

1. This interview with @smettler.bsky.social is perfectly fine, but it continues the streak of everyone asking "How can Dems win back rural voters?" while never considering that REPUBLICANS have any obligation to those voters, whom they exploit mercilessly. www.liberalcurrents.com/can-we-win-b...

Thoughts and prayers for all the Republican members of Congress who are going to have to go on TV and pretend to be this stupid

Lmao

There's some speculation here, but Garrett Graff is an extremely careful journalist who knows more about government security issues than almost anybody, so this is pretty compelling.

this is real

"On the day it is completed, Trump will walk in, look around at the gold chandeliers and gold curtains and gold sconces, thrust his arms out, and spin around like Julie Andrews at the opening of The Sound of Music." paulwaldman.substack.com/p/kick-him-r...

You know who we haven't heard from in a while? Nikki Haley. I guess she's waiting for just the right moment to jump up and say "Hey, remember me? I always hated Trump!"

Glad @paulwaldman.bsky.social wrote this. Trump isn't inviting people to try to kill him exactly, but he relishes it when it happens. His narcissism spins it up as another sign that he is the most importantest man to ever live. www.publicnotice.co/p/white-hous...

One of the inspiring things about the House of Representatives is that it is, like America itself, full of morons

It was really just a matter of seconds so it's not a big deal, but getting a 79-year-old obese man out of his chair quickly is not easy, and also he tripped and fell on the way out, as you can see in this video: www.gettyimages.com/detail/video...

Just a reminder: Trump and his supporters are not opposed to political violence. They think it's fine if their side is the perpetrators and the people they hate are the victims. I go into that, and our age of chaos, in my latest for Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/white-hous...

TWO DOZEN women took the risk of publicly telling their stories of Trump sexually assaulting them, knowing that doing so would probably ruin their lives. For every one who did that, there had to be, what - 20? 50? 100? - he did it to, but who made the very reasonable decision not to go public.