Thune losing control of the caucus

Many in DC's savvy political media have been giddily documenting Trump's revenge tour these past few weeks Kinda been ignoring the mess he's created for his party (and Dem consistent overperformance in D v. R races) Also overlooked: revenge can go two ways!

Wheels coming off for the Senate Republicans, they're pulling the reconciliation bill after what sounds like a very confrontational meeting with Todd Blanche over Trump's slush fund. Seems like the whole thing will get pushed into June, presumably House votes tomorrow will be cancelled soon

Honestly, this made me pause in shock. Never seen anything like this for a bill that should have easily sailed through. Now that I’ve had a little time to reflect on this and collect my thoughts, here’s my official statement: lmaoooooooooooooo

Maybe a president trying to push a program through with thin congressional majorities _shouldn’t_ have gone out of his way to make two senators eat s––? Gosh, who’d have thunk.

So Third Way thinks the autopsy was good, actually. Their standards are revealing!

Bezos told CNBC there is "way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies" the Trump admin literally JUST redirected billions in infrastructure bill taxpayer subsidies to his LEO satellite broadband company for service he ALREADY PLANNED TO DEPLOY shameless fuck

Here’s a good reminder from this poll that we politics/news junkies live in a bubble: “Among Democratic supporters, Mr. Schumer was viewed slightly more negatively than positively, though 35 percent of Democrats had not heard of him.”

The Saudis cancelling $400 million for the Met Opera last month should have been a bigger deal than it was.

Meanwhile … www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

the crazy thing about the narrative over Senate Republicans panicking over Trump torpedoing Cornyn is the notion that Cornyn was some kind of serious, grown up - reasonable Republican. He is one of the original right-wing nutjobs who ushered in the era of total obstruction in McConnell's caucus.

Fascinated by this Paul Krugman piece on European versus American GDP/productivity decline, and whether it is actually as bad for Europe as it seems: paulkrugman.substack.com/p/challengin...

Tough blow for Polis BFFs like Yglesias and Ezra Klein: Colorado Governor Censured for Commuting Sentence of Election Denier www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/u...

Remember, folks: the Supreme Court assures us this isn’t corrupt, because it involves no direct gift or payment to the president in explicit exchange for an official act. Thank goodness — I worried for a sec!

NEW: The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5M to the Trump-backed super PAC MAGA Inc. on 4/30/2026. 8 days later, the Trump administration rolled out a new policy that could be very lucrative for Reynolds by allowing it to begin selling flavored vapes.

NEW: Records released tonight show that Reynolds, makers of Vuse vapes, gave $5 Million to MAGA Inc. days before the FDA wrote a policy that could allow them to make millions selling flavored vapes. Via @kenvogel.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/u...

Rachel Bade (a right-wing coded mainstream DC reporter who started out on Hill rags such as Politico) let's the cat out of the bag: Republican majorities in the #SCOTUS and state supreme courts around the country are a part of "Trump's political operation."

Accountability will the name of the game for Democrats who are looking to get my vote in the presidential election of 2028. That needs include a concrete commitment to bulldoze all Trump's vanity projects in DC.

I applaud the Trump Administration's position that it is a criminal act under United States law for a government official to order the downing and murder of defenseless civilians in international waters.

Even if you agree with the ridiculous premise that Donald Trump incurred damages from the release of tax returns he said he wanted to release anyway, auditing decisions should be based only on law, policy, and evidence. They're not a chit you can give a compensation.

I can't even quite put into words the absurdity of a government who has taken the position that the singular President in the world immune from its domestic courts is its own.

When Barack Obama said he would meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions it spurred years of right-wing attacks over his willingness to talk to the guy Sean Hannity described as "Hitler Jr." www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity...

I think this is exactly right up until the last seven sentences. A fancy law prof is less likely to get this right because we have internalized thinking about law in rather formalistic ways, when much of what this administration has done goes off the rails as a matter of first principles.

This take misses the forest for the trees. There is stated preference and there’s revealed preference. Trump ran in 2024 against bipartisanship and campaigned on maximal political warfare with Democrats, and then won every swing state. Voters care about outcomes, not process.

I mean I know we are re-running the gilded age here, but I was hoping we could avoid The Jungle.

As Trump's approval ratings continue to plummet, he has doubled down on enriching of his core constituents: insurrectionists and AI industrialists. From our @kjboyle.bsky.social:

Now that we know Trump's "settlement" with IRS will nix audits, potentially saving him millions, Jamie Raskin's push to force Repubicans to vote on this whole fiasco looks more urgent. Make Rs defend this with Trump 31 points underwater on the economy: newrepublic.com/article/2106...

Do you know I actually think that these people are so inoculated from any public sentiment that they are legitimately shook by a handful of boos at commencements this week?

It’s wild to be this out of step with public sentiment. Wild. Yeah, that’s one word for it.

The data centers that your phone needs to run and the hyperscale facilities they're building to push AI down our throats are not at all comparable things. Spanberger knows this. And instead of standing with the public and fighting back, she's trying to shill for the AI technofash.

It's the corruption. Spanberger won a race any Democrat could won, and she is governing in about the worst Democratic Party way imaginable. Judge not only her, but those who trumpeted her ascent.

Important to recognize she's not an idiot, she knows the data centers being built are AI-specific and that the extreme power and cooling demands arise specifically from GPUs, not data storage or transmission. She's repeating lies that lobbyists told her to say to confuse the public.

A James Ellroy novel about the US and Israel trying and failing to install Ahmadinejad to run Iran would be so perfect. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/u...

It really is political malpractice that Democrats haven't made Vought famous yet. He is the perfect avatar for all the awful things the Trump administration is doing. He can be used to explain the motive, means, and opportunity.

Vought is the one person who is welcome in every faction of the Trumpist coalition. Everyone sees him as "their guy."

"Vought is the connective tissue linking different elements of the MAGA coalition... into a machine for advancing the interests of a small minority of oligarchs." Really hard to overstate how important this point is. talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/democra...

Democrats Shouldn’t Let Russell Vought Fly Under the Radar talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/democra...

An ugly look for Durbin, Gallego (who loves confirming Trumpers), Reed, Heinrich, and Whitehouse. Shaheen and Hassan are hopeless. Fetterman is just shameless.

8 Senate Democrats just voted to advance one of Trump's judicial nominees. Which raises the question: WTF? Dick Durbin John Fetterman Ruben Gallego Maggie Hassan Martin Heinrich Jack Reed Jeanne Shaheen Sheldon Whitehouse

If you thought Trump was corrupt before, it just got *a lot* worse. The DOJ just expanded the absurd settlement giving him a $1.7 billion slush fund to ALSO bar the IRS from pursuing investigations into him, his family and his businesses. That's a huge, unconstitutional giveaway to Trump. 🧵

just out of respect I feel like they should retrieve John Cornyn's mangled carcass from the Capitol building.

This, like so many things, but perhaps above all those things, should not be a partisan issue.

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. are enduring life-threatening temperatures and humidity amid a fossil fuel-turbocharged heat wave. Musk, Vought, and other Trump vandals have made increasingly common extreme heat events more dangerous.

Spygate latest: Southampton kicked out of Championship play-off final

Jackie Robinson's alma mater!

it is time for #UCLA athletics coaches to negatively recruit against all schools with football/basketball programs making money of black athletes but treating them like second class citizens in Jim Crow states.

👀 NEW: "I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo." Yet the Trump DOJ settled decided to pay $1.8 billion of taxpayer $ to allies.

Newsom on stage saying "you can not save democracy without democratizing the economy" while opposing the wealth tax is pretty fucking rich stuff.

The Abundance bros must be so sad!

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