"All of a sudden, his grip in the Senate is a lot weaker, and they're acting up. God bless them." "The retribution campaign is...we don't want to overstate all this, but, it is backfiring." Mike Murphy and @timmiller.bsky.social on Trump’s revenge tour boomeranging into a Senate GOP problem.

Keep telling the truth. Thank you to Stephen Colbert and everyone at The Late Show.

Meanwhile, Republicans are suddenly defecting from Trump on his ballroom, on his corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund, and even on the war. Trump keeps boasting of ousting disloyal GOPers in primaries, but that isn't actually keeping them in line, all of a sudden: newrepublic.com/article/2108...

What makes the Fox poll so brutal is it shows Trump tanking with core voter groups (working class whites, rural voters, even white men) and *also* with the 2024 constituencies he made inroads among. The Fox poll portrays extraordinary collapse: newrepublic.com/article/2108...

I think we've crossed an important threshold. Trumpism as a political project is facing new levels of peril: *Fox poll shows Trump coalition imploding *GOPers abandoning him on ballroom *Slush fund in deep trouble *War and economy bleeding him out New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/2108...

"Meetings are held, emails are sent, phone calls are made, and something like 520,000 children die of malnutrition, diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV." prospect.org/2026/05/22/w...

How the record gets laundered: Pardon the J6 defendants. Move to dismiss the indictments. Point to the dismissal as “proof” they were victims. Open the door to taxpayer-funded “weaponization” payouts.

A history of the top marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans: 1940: 81% 1950: 84% 1960: 91% 1970: 72% 1980: 70% 1990: 28% 2000: 40% 2010: 35% For 50 years, corporate backed politicians in Congress have slashed taxes to line the pockets of their wealthy donors.

An extraordinary rebuke of Todd Blanche and his Justice Department. Federal judge dismisses the indictment of Abrego Garcia (an exceedingly rare outcome in a criminal case). Finding of vindictive prosecution and "an abuse of prosecuting power." The opinion name checks Blanche nearly 30 times.

SHABANA MAHMOOD’S SHAMEFUL IMMIGRATION PLAN WILL KEEP PEOPLE WORKING IN KEY INDUSTRIES LIKE CARE IN TEMPORARY STATUS FOR A DECADE OR MORE. It will keep people in insecure work, make them more easily exploitable, poorer and marginalised - WHEN DID THAT BECOME THE POLICY OF A LABOUR GOVERNMENT?

Let's make billionaires pay their fair share and find out

He promised to release his tax returns as soon as there were no more audits pending, and now there are no more audits pending.

Hearing Viola Davis say it out loud hits different. These aren’t just stats—they’re real people and real trauma. Yet too many look away. We won’t. Her #CupOfJoe speaks truth to power. ☕️

Hawai'i didn't lose its Kingdom overnight... it started years before the overthrow. In 1887, a group of powerful business men forced King David Kalākaua, to sign a new Constitution- backed an armed militia. This became known as the Bayonet Constitution. It changed everything. It stripped 1/

Justice Clarence Thomas reached back to an 1873 law to suggest mailing mifepristone is criminal. No charges. No trial. No conviction. That is not judicial restraint. That is ideology in plain sight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P_lDpuI5sU #ShanWu #LegalAF #SCOTUS #ClarenceThomas #Mifepristone

You're seeing defenders of Israel and Netanyahu publicly distance themselves from Ben Gvir after this video has gone viral. They're saying this isn't Israel and he doesn't represent the country. What are they talking about? He literally represents the government and this is who he's always been.

Not only does Trump's IRS settlement hand him a $1.8B slush fund. It also bans the agency from auditing Trump and his family, allowing him to avoid nearly $100M in penalties and get away with any future tax-dodging. He is the most corrupt president in American history.

Great idea!

You might not be able to get rid of the EC - because small states and rural states will always tank the amendment to do it - but you can expand the size of the House, which would solve a lot of these problems pretty quick.

When nobody visits the web anymore, what incentive is there for people to populate it with information? That means AI search will be retrieving information from deteriorating, out-of-date sources and feeding it endlessly back to us. And that means even fewer people will populate the web. (2/3)

Congrats, Google. We now have unreliable AI narrators of impoverished information sources, representing their hallucinations as truth. I'm glad I learned to use a card catalog when I was a kid, because fuck this. I'm going to the library. (3/3)

After reviewing texts from sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln reporting they're starving, Marine Corps vet/journalist Zisser: “I don’t care what your politics are—if you raise your right hand and swear an oath to the Constitution, you should not have to worry whether you’ll get adequate food.”

He's not planning on leaving. That's what the ballroom bunker equipped with drones is for. It's why he's calling for Thune to fire the parliamentarian who's refusing to allow the $1B for the ballroom in the reconciliation bill. It's why he's paying the insurrectionists with his slush fund.

Apparently some senior government officials who David Rothkopf knows are "very loathe to make Trump’s corruption a campaign issue." They feel it's "a distraction from the kitchen table issues most Americans really care about." But they're the same issue!!! As Rothkopf points out in his newsletter.

Lack of clarity of the legal citizenship of free African Americans + the status of enslaved Black Americans as property was apparent for all to see in Twain's lifetime. It left Black people open to all kinds of discrimination. Which is why the 14th Am birthright citizenship clause was necessary. 1/

Years ago Scalia provoked gasps in the gallery when he called the Voting Rights Act a “racial entitlement.” But turning American democracy back into a white racial entitlement, as it was for most of American history, is exactly what the Roberts Court is doing. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Cassidy is already making major moves against Trump—says he’ll vote for war powers and against ballroom. Massie already was. Cornyn might be next. And they have nine months left in office. By demanding total loyalty, Trump may be his own worst enemy.

This, by @jonathan-watts.bsky.social, is a brilliant, fascinating and definitional article. If you want to understand what's happening around the world, you should read it. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

terrible. 20 years ago, the internet was full of hobbyist blogs and forums. over time, these have been replaced by paywalled substacks and private discord channels, each a walled garden. google's decision to prioritize AI just makes it less likely people will create free, public info

Final vote count… Trump successfully punished Thomas Massie for releasing the Epstein files.

Hate your AI overview? Got it. We'll make that the whole thing.

Who do you turn to when criminals head the criminal justice system following orders from the President while the Supreme Court whoops and cheers?

We FOIA’d the Department of Defense and after multiple follow ups, we finally heard back. The illegal militarization of Los Angeles and federalization of the Cal Guard cost taxpayers at least $111.2 MILLION — and that’s not including civilian costs.

About a decade ago, the perception that society was getting slightly better for marginalised people utterly broke the brains of every person in charge of things. How are you taking a service you became so synonmous with that your company's name became a verb and fucking it up like this?

Weaponization was not a Biden thing. It's a Trump thing. presswatchers.org/2026/05/news...

And let’s not forget what sure looks like an attempt to pardon Trump for crimes….

Trump did not reach a settlement with the government. There was no case to settle. He has not created a slush fund. He has colluded with Todd Blanche to steal money from the US Treasury. This is not a “deal.” This is a crime for which Trump & Blanche must be prosecuted. It ia a crime.

An illegal agreement made in violation of US law to "settle" a lawsuit where the parties were not adverse in order to disburse funds that have not been appropriated with the intention of giving them to the President and his allies including literal insurrectionists. Toilet paper is more valuable.

The US ... is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action [etc]... whether presently known or unknown, that... have been or could have been asserted [by the US against Trump, his family, and his companies] out of.. Lawfare 1/

Sen. Coons: "Will you commit that no one who has been convicted of assaulting a police officer will receive a payout from this fund?" Blanche: "Anybody can apply…Whether an individual, an Oath Keeper, applies for compensation — anyone in this country can apply."

The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry says drones that targeted the Barakah nuclear power plant came from Iraqi territory. The announcement likely means that Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which earlier had launched drones targeting Gulf Arab nations in the Iran war, were behind the attack.

I was at home on a reduced salary using my laptop to teach dozens of students while this guy was collecting book royalties checks

COONS: Will you commit to making reports fully public so Americans know who is getting taxpayer dollars out of this settlement fund? BLANCHE: There are privacy laws that may prevent some of the information from being fully public

* TRUMP: IRAN IS BEGGING TO MAKE A DEAL * TRUMP: WE MAY HAVE TO GIVE IRAN ANOTHER HIT, NOT SURE @reuters.com

Trump, ranting and raving about his ballroom: "This is Rome. They like the flat roof. Greece likes the the triangles, and you see that. This is a porch that looks out over the city. Also, it's developed in such a way that we can have military there. It's also a drone port."

Good coverage of yesterday's events in Selma and Montgomery. We may not have wanted to be in this play, but the this is where you go to learn from those who came before how to act when you are called to this stage.