The fallout from the Supreme Court’s abominable ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act has been enormous. Red states are rushing to do what they can this year, while planning for 2028, to disenfranchise millions of voters. But Democrats can beat Republicans at their grotesque game. One analysis states that if New York and California alone just got rid of all Republican districts, Democrats would come out ahead. Blue states are gearing up for sweeping changes, as Democrats who were previously tepid on redistricting are now moving fast.

A report by the Trump Justice Department’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” charges that protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination, policies promoted by President Biden, are an attack on the rights of Christians. The report lays the groundwork to strip all policies defending queer people and install a Christian nationalist government.

Donald Trump’s judicial nominees have consistently refused to state that Biden won the 2020 election when questioned by senators. Some have even refused to say that Trump cannot run for a third term in 2028. These are constitutional matters that should disqualify any nominee from being seated on a federal bench. But three Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to give an election-denying nominee who refused even to condemn the January 6th insurrection a lifetime appointment.

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We’ve now watched Donald Trump survive three assassination attempts, and in all three situations, Trump didn’t respond as would the great majority of human beings whose lives are threatened nor, certainly, like the many other presidents who survived such attempts.

Trump’s first instinct is self-promotion and opportunity. As a narcissist, he doesn’t experience emotions in the same way as others. After surviving assassination attempts, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and other presidents in recent decades rallied the American people, largely united against political violence.

Unlike Trump, Reagan, for example—who survived a serious bullet wound—refuted the idea that the attempt against him was evidence of a “sick society“ and instead focused on the support he received that came from Americans no matter their beliefs and political parties: “The society we heard from is made up of millions of compassionate Americans.”

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That was of course the right thing as well as the politically smart thing to do. It shows a leader with empathy, in that moment, for a public grappling with its own fears about the event. The us vs. them dynamic was about all of us against extremists of any kind who’d engage in violent attacks rather than about the targeted president against his opponents in the other party.

Not Trump. At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of 2024, Trump’s first thought as a gunman shot at him was to get a photo-op with his fist in the air, even as Secret Service agents were trying to pull him down to take cover. And Trump—who’d actually called for the execution of the chairman of the joint chiefs just a year before—blamed Democrats and his opponents for supposed violent rhetoric when no Democrat has said anything close to what Trump has in conjuring up violence against his opponents.

After a man with an semi-automatic rifle was caught having entered Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in September of 2024 attempting to shoot Trump while he was playing golf, Trump’s first thoughts were to rail against Joe Biden and his then-opponent, Kamala Harris in a post on Truth Social, for being “obsessed with ‘Getting Trump’ for so long” as well as vilifying all Democrats, calling them “the enemy from within.” He galvanized his supporters around that ugly message.

And less than two hours after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday, Trump gave a press conference using the attack to push for building a $400 million ballroom with taxpayer dollars after saying last year that it would be paid for privately, using the event to try to get the American people behind forking over money for his outrageous, illegal destruction and rebuilding of a part of the White House.

There was a lot of disbelief about the attack on Saturday, as conspiracy theories exploded, and “staged” trended on social media (as happened after the attack in Butler). But this time, there were also a lot of yawns, with many people tuning out of yet another day of insanity in Trump’s America. It’s looks like that included at least some of Trump’s own exhausted supporters.

That may seem callous, no matter one’s political beliefs or party. A president and his cabinet were targeted at a large public event, and we should all want to pay attention to such horror. But to many people, if Trump wasn’t going to take it seriously—instead of promoting his obsessive vanity project in the middle of a war he started for no reason—why should they?

And there was also a lot of outrage, as Trump took an event that should garner sympathy even from those who don’t support him—we in the opposition do not condone political violence, no matter what we think of Trump or MAGA—and turned it into an opportunity.

The White House immediately sent the talking points out to Republicans, right-wing media outlets, and online sycophants, all of whom were on-message, claiming that a new ballroom will prevent these kinds of attacks. Put aside the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner, hosted by a private organization, would never be held at the White House; this ludicrous claim presupposes presidents will never speak outside the White House again, including at rallies while campaigning.

None of this was to be taken seriously, and it’s not shocking that people believe the assassination attempt was faked. For the record, I’m not among those people. The 31-year-old alleged shooter traveled to Washington with the intent of doing harm to Trump and others. The last thing Trump would have put in the manifesto, after all, is a claim that he’s a “rapist” and “pedophile,” bringing his sex crimes and the Epstein files back into the media.

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Trump viciously attacked Norah O’Donnell’s for reading those words in the “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday—calling her “a disgrace”—and putting to bed the preposterous notion floated by some that he’d bonded with the White House press on the traumatic event they shared.

Trump has been very aware that the ballroom project is in trouble, hitting opposition in court and seeing that only 20% of Americans support it in polls. But this lame effort to use attempted murder to garner support for it has already backfired. Democrats rightly slammed it out of the gate, and much of the public, struggling under soaring gas prices and groceries, doesn’t appear to be rallying around the idea of spending money on a corrupt president’s obsessions.

Similarly, Trump tried to use the shooting to go after Jimmy Kimmel once again, backing a call on social media by Melania Trump for Kimmel to be fired for joking—four days earlier—that she looked like “an expectant widow.” Of course Kimmel was referring to Trump’s health clearly being in great decline as he’s turning 80.

But again, it flopped. This time there were no affiliates dropping the airing of Kimmel’s show, nor did ABC bat an eyelid. Kimmel wasn’t suspended; he was on the air the next night, slamming Melania again.

The administration doesn’t realize it lost that war, and again, they’re squandering whatever sympathy the public might give them on the shooting to go after Trump’s perceived enemies again. The FCC is moving to “review” ABC’s license, but this will only galvanize Americans, as happened the last time Trump threatened the first Amendment by moving to pull Kimmel off the air.

Without missing a beat, the Department of Justice was on to indicting former FBI director James Comey again this week too, in a case that will be thrown out by a jury, if it gets that far. Even Fox’s own partisan legal analyst Jonathan Turley called it. “weak.” And this shows Trump and the DOJ are more preoccupied with going after Trump’s perceived enemies than keeping attention on the shooting.

America has moved on from yet another assassination attempt against a despised president. It’s not, however, because people support political violence. Far from it, it’s because we take political violence seriously and not as an opportunity to gaslight the public, attempt to strip free speech rights, and squander the American people’s money. Trump has only himself to blame for the collective ambivalence.

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The numbers just keep coming in, and we may have reached the tipping point: Trump is at an all-time low of any president on the economy in over 50 years, including two of his whipping posts, Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden. It’s weighing down Republicans, as Americans see Democrats as better on the economy than Republicans for the first time since 2010. The GOP has benched the so-called “Save America” Act, meant to suppress voting, as there’s no way to pass it in the Senate, and their redistricting war is blowing up in their faces.

Trump is reacting by further unleashing his violent and racist impulses—and pandering to those who celebrate violence—cracking under the pressure of the Iran war, which he’s losing. In a Truth Social posting spree into the wee hours of the morning, he called India a “hellhole,” shared a post threatening the Supreme Court with military action, and made racist comments about Democrats. The administration also announced it’s bringing back the firing squad and the electric chair for those convicted of the death penalty in federal crimes.

Meanwhile, the corporate media is partying with Trump and the corrupt figures in his administration, celebrating his attending the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump had refused to attend for his entire first term and last year as well because he couldn’t take being roasted by a comedian. So they’ve dropped that part—no joking about Dear Leader. Meanwhile, Steven Miller and Pete Hegseth will be at CBS’s table. Walter Kronkite and Edward R. Murrow are rolling in their graves.

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The numbers reflect a divide in MAGA, and it has deepened after the war in Iran and events of recent weeks. Trump’s threats to “wipe out” a whole civilization, his attacks on Pope Leo, and his sharing an AI image of himself as Jesus have some in MAGA now calling him the “antichrist.” Some of the same people—and others—are also promoting conspiracies that his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania was staged.

Beyond that, even among those not pushing these extreme narratives, we’re seeing other MAGA figures coming out against Trump, such as Tucker Carlson, clearly worried about their own futures, and the fact that many of their followers are angry at Trump—and they don’t want to be behind their own followers.

David Gilbert of Wired, who covers the extremes within the MAGA movement, wrote all about it and joined me on my SiriusXM program to talk about it.

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Donald Trump’s latest and most direct attacks on the pope have only elevated Pope Leo to celestial heights while sending Trump’s numbers to the bowels of hell.

A new Reuters poll has Trump at his lowest approval in that poll, at 36%, following his lambasting the pope (while an American Research poll—a conservative outlet—has him at an all-time low of 32%). The six-day poll of over 4000 Americans shows that across party lines Americans are concerned about Trump’s “job performance, temper, and mental sharpness” with the Iran war and the attacks on Pope Leo playing into their decisions. Trump’s “attacks on Pope Leo have drawn attention in part because Americans have a generally higher opinion of the pontiff than they do of the president.”

In the poll, 60% of Americans—obviously across religious denominations—have a favorable view of the pope. Among American Catholics in particular, in recent polls, Leo has an 84% approval rating. Trump always saw himself as untouchable, but he’s clearly unnerved coming up against someone who is truly untouchable, exposing to Trump his own weakness.

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Trump seemed to have been afraid of this for over a year now, as he previously had others do the dirty work of trying to squash the pope, rather than do it himself. He knew that Leo’s criticism of the U.S. government on the brutal mass deportations and, later, on the invasion of Venezuela, could shape public opinion, galvanizing many who were opposed.

We learned recently that back in January Trump had the Pentagon threaten Leo after his State of the World speech.

That obviously didn’t work. Leo continued to strongly condemn the invasion of Venezuela, the ugly ICE raids, and then, in recent weeks, the war in Iran. Leo also pointed to Trump’s reckless post on Easter Sunday, a threat to “wipe out” a civilization, and his and Pete Hegseth’s use of God and Christianity to promote war and violence.

Leo’s secret weapon is that he rarely if ever uses Trump’s name. This is key because Trump can’t accept any dissent, anywhere, but he also is a narcissist who actually wants to be named by those with whom he disagrees and whom he rails against. The back and forth, in his mind, elevates him, particularly if it’s a back and forth with someone as prominent as the pope. But by not naming Trump specifically and individually—the closest Leo has come is saying he has no “fear” of the “Trump administration”—it diminishes Trump in his own mind.

That has triggered Trump to further attack the pope, hoping to get a direct attack back, which only further angers many in the American public. His posting of the AI image of himself as Jesus, following his post accusing the pope of being “weak on crime,” was meant to say he is the one truly like Jesus, that he is above the pope. This was so ludicrous that, beyond the charges of blasphemy by the faithful of all Christian denominations, it was not to be taken seriously.

Leo treated it more like a child’s rant—something you rise above if not quite dismiss—rather than as a real conflict with an adult world leader. He responded by staying on message—a disciplined politician as well as religious leader—speaking out against the actions of the administration and the violence of the war.

And then he let it all play out among the politicians, the pundits, and the public—many of them devout Catholics—as he headed to Africa on a trip that has now received much more attention because Trump had focused so much on him.

Even when asked about Trump specifically, including on his trip to Africa in recent days, Leo didn’t name him and even refuted the idea that he’s debating him. He explained that his comments on war, for example, had been “prepared two weeks ago, well before the person had ever commented on me and on the message of peace that I am promoting,” adding, “it was looked at as if I was trying to debate the president, which is not in my interest at all.”

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Calling Trump “the person” and saying he’s not even debating him—it’s all in Trump’s mind—is the kind of response that drives Trump crazy. Trump is really having a one-sided fight, his bullying not eliciting the kind of reaction he wants.

The result has been that Leo is more highly regarded than ever in the U.S. and around the world. As I reminded readers here two weeks ago, there was a method to the selection of Leo, and Francis was very clearly involved in that before his death, preparing for this exact moment in the world.

Upon Leo’s becoming pope, there was a lot of discussion among the American Catholic leaders deeply immersed in Republican politics and MAGA about how he was a break from Francis and would supposedly be more “moderate” or, some hoped, even “conservative.” Leo threw them a few bones—like allowing them to continue the Latin Mass after Francis had put on the brakes—and had a lower, quieter profile at first. He met with the rabid MAGA cardinal who tried to take down Francis, Cardinal Raymond Burke, giving him a hearing, as he did with other Francis critics.

These mild gestures—and his more deliberate style—helped endear Leo to many conservative Catholics. But in terms of the issues he is elevating as pope, there’s no question he is in the mold of Francis, focused on the poor, on immigrants, on workers, and on the environment. And if there was any doubt at first, Leo has made it clear that he’s continuing Francis’s promotion of acceptance and inclusion of LGBTQ people.

So Trump’s swinging and missing in attempting to hit the Pope, and Trump’s AI Jesus meme, have only given Leo—who is defending the working class and the downtrodden—more power and more stature. Trump has helped further define Leo as a moral leader for all, while some MAGA conspiracists have now broken from Trump after this episode, and are actually calling Trump the “antichrist.”

I’d say that’s a miracle.

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On Friday Donald Trump was trying to spin a humiliating surrender to Iran as a win, desperate to get out of the war he started but also claim some sort of victory. Trump bowed to Iran’s demand to stop Israel’s bombing of Lebanon in return for reopening the strait. Then we learned the U.S. would be handing Iran $20 billion in money that was frozen—after Trump and MAGA had attacked President Obama for doing so in 2016 with a mere $400 million owed to Iran. Then, overnight, Iran had more demands and closed the strait again.

Secret Supreme Court memos, obtained by the New York Times, show the origin of the court’s corrupt “shadow docket,” in which cases are decided on a so-called emergency basis, without any debate or public record. These rulings have allowed Trump to get away with imposing orders well before a court decision on the merits. It apparently all goes back to 2016, in a decision against President Obama’s environmental policy, and it further confirms Chief Justice John Roberts is a hack who is there to protect corporate interests.

FBI director Kash Patel is threatening a lawsuit regarding a report that adds a new twist to his showing up in Milan to chug beers with the U.S. men’s hockey team at the Winter Olympics a few months ago. Employees at the FBI describe him sometimes completely intoxicated on the job, often passed out, with his security detail having to wake him. Other times he’s just absent, and apparently he just last week had a paranoid “freak out” when he couldn’t access computers and thought Trump had fired him.

A Weekend Report after another week of madness…

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You have to watch and listen to this one. I did eventually go from zero to 10, and some listeners thought I should have given her more time to make her positions heard. They have a point. But honestly, I was quite nice—even called her smart—until she refused to agree that it was stupid that Trump attacked the pope (and wouldn’t even even name one thing Trump’s done wrong). That just astonished me, and yeah, the temperature just went up.

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The defeat of authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary was a major triumph for democracy in Europe and around the world. And, as Trump used Orbán as a model—Steve Bannon infamously said Orbán was “Trump before Trump”—it is a five-alarm fire for the MAGA movement in the United States.

Trumpists treated Orbán as a deity, having him speak at CPAC and conservative conferences around the U.S. often and even holding CPAC in Budapest five times. Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party aggressively passed anti-democratic laws and radically altered the Constitution; assaulted voting rights, including with extreme gerrymandering; stripped the rights of minorities, such as LGBTQ people; and hollowed out government institutions and the judiciary, and installed loyalists. And, through his oligarch allies, Orbán came to control over 80% of media, having a massive propaganda machine.

And still, after cementing 16 years in office, he faced a crushing defeat by an organized opposition led by a former member of his own party, Peter Magyar.

Luckily for us, Trump doesn’t have the amount of time Orbán had to transform the political and cultural landscape—and Orbán had the luxury of centralized national government, while Trump has to contend with federalism and the states having much power.

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Nonetheless, it’s clear that Trump is trying to do in four years what Orbán did in 16. Trump’s already attempted to cram in a lot in just two years before the mid-terms—after faltering in his attempts in his first term and then seeing much of the damage he caused undone by Joe Biden.

But at least one thing that was an ingredient in the mix of issues that brought down Orbán is playing out for Trump right now as well: The right-wing media cocoon.

Orbán and his party had near-total control over both public and privately owned media by 2026. Peter Magyar, the newly elected prime minister who slayed Orbán in Sunday’s election, told the Associated Press in 2024:

It might be very difficult to imagine from America or Western Europe what the propaganda and the state machinery is like here. This parallel reality is like the Truman Show. People believe that it’s reality.

Orbán early on took hold of public television and public radio, which have consistently had more presence and government funding in European countries and have valued independent, nonpartisan reporting. Orbán installed his propagandists, who echoed the talking points of his Fidesz party.

According to press watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Orbán, modeling Vladimir Putin in Russia, also oversaw media buyouts among privately owned media by his oligarch buddies to build “a true media empire subject to his party’s orders.” The organization estimated the control by Orbán of more than 80% of the traditional media.

But reports in the past year showed that Orbán himself was a victim of his own fawning media, increasingly out-of-touch and believing what he saw reported, as the public was souring on him, angry about a cratering economy they could feel and a corruption they could see, as Orbán’s billionaire friends made a fortune while people were struggling.

Magyar, meanwhile, who’d broken from Fidesz several years ago over the pardoning by the government of a child predator and founded his Tisza party, was using social media outlets and podcasts in the past two years to campaign, as well as holding old-fashioned rallies, traveling all across the country, and bringing out massive crowds in even the most rural outposts that were Fidesz strongholds. His message couldn’t be snuffed out by Orbán’s control of media, while Orbán himself was in a bubble of his own making, not seeing the unrest. As The New York Times noted:

The result on Sunday did not represent an ideological earthquake or a sudden swerve among Hungarians from right to left, but rather something highly personal. Voters toppled a strongman leader who, increasingly cocooned in the flattery of sycophants and the praise of a sprawling propaganda machine, had lost his touch.

I certainly don’t mean to simplify the results of the Hungarian election, which were about many things beyond media control. And Hungary and the U.S. are different countries with very different histories.

But you can see the same outlines in the U.S., as Democratic candidates fed up with corporate media use social media and thousands of podcasts, Substacks, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and a vast array of other platforms to get the message out.

And they’re doing the tried and true organizing in communities, meeting voters, holding rallies—like Bernie Sanders and AOC on the Fighting Oligarchy Tour or the many political leaders and candidates joining millions in “No Kings” marches. They’re able to get past the filter of the corporate media and its stereotyping of their political views and agenda, and win elections. Just ask Zohran Mamdani.

The corporate media, with TV ratings in the toilet and publications like the Washington Post collapsing, just doesn’t have the impact it had in the past, and every Democratic candidate who’s trounced—and flipped seats from red to blue—in the past year used the alternative outlets to build their following and make big shifts in the elections.

Also, Trump’s attempts to consolidate media to create an echo chamber so far are failing: After the Trump regime allowed the MAGA-supporting Ellison family to buy up Paramount and CBS, where anti-woke crusader Bari Weiss was installed as executive editor of CBS News, the CBS Evening News ratings have plummeted. What good is state propaganda if nobody is watching it?

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More than that, the rest of us who are using social media, Substack, YouTube, SiriusXM Progress and other outlets are taking what we want from the mainstream media and putting it in proper context, sharing viral clips from CBS or ABC or CNN that embarrass Republicans or hold up progressives and their message. Of course, the right has a far bigger universe of alternative media, with well-funded podcasts and friendly social media platforms. But in a way, they’re just expanding the MAGA media bubble, as they push lies and conspiracies and don’t do any favors for GOP politicians who aren’t hearing the reality about what’s happening on the ground.

The point is that we’re not allowing our voices to be suppressed or stopped from getting the truth out, though there’s surely a constant effort to do so—even as the U.S.’s own oligarchs, like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, own the platforms. Thankfully, neither Hungary nor the U.S. has reached the point of Russia—and surely not Iran or China—where even social media and alternative outlets are radically censored by the government.

The conservative media bubble led by Fox and the many other newer outlets, meanwhile, is feeding the MAGA masses, keeping them in the dark. That’s a bad thing, for sure. But it’s also created an altered reality that many Republican politicians themselves are deeply immersed in to their own detriment, out of touch with voters, just like Viktor Orbán.

And that’s what’s happening to Trump too. That line from the Times about Orbán—“increasingly cocooned in the flattery of sycophants and the praise of a sprawling propaganda machine“—could just as easily have been written about Trump. We in fact recently learned that Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles was asking members of his cabinet to start telling Trump the truth about the war in Iran rather than tell him it’s going great. People around him are afraid to tell him bad news, and the outlets like Fox or Newsmax that he watches all day are telling him he’s doing a spectacular job.

Is it any wonder then that this man, in mental decline and drinking his own Kool-Aid, lashed out at Pope Leo—who has an 84% approval rating among American Catholics—and then posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, causing enormous backlash even among MAGA and the Christian right, his own supporters? Immersed in all this worship of him, Trump thinks he’s the messiah, as his and the GOP’s poll numbers are in free fall.

Trump was forced to delete the image, clearly retreating only after some in the White House let him know how bad this was, just as he did when the post of the Obamas depicted as apes was removed. Yesterday we even saw the Trump administration reverse itself and allow the Pride flag to fly at Stonewall. We didn’t need their permission, by the way, as gay activists had replaced the flag within days after the Interior Dept. removed it. It’s clear though that some people in the White House realize how bad it’s all playing out, causing these quiet reversals to happen.

But it’s not enough to control Trump, who will continue to soak up adoring media that makes him literally feel like he’s God—and post crazy shit online or make outlandish statements. He will continue to be glorified by many other sycophants in the White House and beyond. And many GOP leaders in the House and Senate, too, and in the states, are just as immersed in this same fiction they’ve created, living in a cocoon.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to use all of these thousands of other platforms to get the message out, sometimes even bringing in people who escape the conservative media bubble but mostly galvanizing the millions who are already seeing the horrors happening. And we’ll defeat the authoritarian, just like they did in Hungary.

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Donald Trump went on an almost 500-word rant against Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other MAGA critics of the war in Iran, clearly petrified about the MAGA crack-up. Who’d have imagined this one year ago? True, the tariffs bugged MAGA, but the war in Iran has completely exploded everything—and Trump is still losing, as Iran has gained the upper hand. And the attacks on Trump are coming from his own followers on Truth Social too, enraged by the war.

Victor Orban, a MAGA symbol of authoritarianism, also looks like he could be going down this weekend in the Hungarian election, as polls show him tanking—barring his using the levers of power to steal the election. Putin-backed Orban has been held up as “Trump before Trump” by Steve Bannon. Orban spoke at CPAC many times, and the conservative far-right conference has been held in Budapest five times. JD Vance went to Budapest to campaign for Orban this week, while Trump called into the rally. Russia apparently was about to stage a fake assassination attempt on Orban to bring him sympathy and support. But none of it seems to be working.

At the end of another dizzying week in which the president of the United States threatened to “wipe out” a whole civilization, we saw the splashdown of Artemis II on Friday night, with a crew that included a Canadian citizen and the first Black man and first woman to go into deep space. It was perhaps an unexpectedly calming event that reminded us of when the country did great things in collaboration with others and championed science.

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The bottom line: Donald Trump is more dangerous than ever—and losing—while the GOP is in the toilet and Democrats are surging. Meanwhile, Melania’s trying to get out ahead of something while Pope Leo is telling Trump, in the most solemn and pious way, to go screw himself after the Pentagon threatened the Vatican.

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In recent days we learned that Pope Leo will likely not visit the United States during Trump’s presidency and declined an invite to the 250th birthday celebrations.

The tensions between the Vatican and the U.S. have been clear as Leo has slammed Trump for his brutal attacks on immigrants and, now, his reckless war in Iran, in which Trump threatened to “wipe out” an entire civilization.

A report has now surfaced that the Pentagon—not the State Department—called the Vatican’s ambassador in for a meeting in January after the pope’s state of the world speech in which he criticized Trump’s military moves. And the Vatican emissary was given a stark warning. From AL.com:

A Trump administration official gave the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States a “bitter lecture” about America’s military might and suggested the Catholic Church get on board with American foreign policy after Pope Leo XIV gave a speech condemning use of force and preaching diplomacy, according to a new report.

Cardinal Chrisophe Pierre, who at the time of the January meeting was the Holy See’s ambassador to the U.S., was summoned by Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby to the Pentagon in an unprecedented move, the Free Press reported Monday.

Pentagon officials “picked apart” the American pontiff’s January speech, “reading it as a hostile message directed at Trump’s policies,” according to the outlet’s sources. The Pentagon was reportedly furious that the speech challenged Trump’s so-called Donroe Doctrine that the Western Hemisphere should be controlled by the United States.

At one point during the meeting, according to the Free Press, “one U.S. official went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy, the period in the 1300s when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the papal authority.”

Pope Francis was preparing for just this kind of battle before he died, seeing Trump as a threat to the world. I wrote back when the conclave chose Leo in May of last year about how Francis shepherded Leo into the job. I figured this was a good time to repost it.

May 9, 2025

The politics of the election of Pope Leo XIV

This was clearly very well thought out--including the selection of an American--as the world is in a precarious place because of the dangerous leadership in the U.S.

With the arrival of Pope Leo XIV, much of the media has emphasized the mystery of the papal conclave, focusing on cryptic rituals, traditions shrouded in secrecy, and deep solemnity—which sells and keeps people riveted—when there are some things that are pretty clear as day regarding the politics of the selection of Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. And even MAGA world sees that, and is in a full-blown meltdown over it.

The Catholic church is a global institution with huge cultural impact. As a nation state, The Vatican, with embassies and diplomats all over the world, and a presence at the U.N., has a head of state who has outsized power. The pope has a massive political platform. Certainly Francis sought to influence public policy, in the U.S. and in countries around the world.

And, as I noted last week, Francis was a smart politician—unlike his predecessor, Benedict, who was a lousy politician, a man led by the impulsiveness of his zealous conservatism, rarely making strategic decisions.

It’s clear that Francis knew—or certainly tried to ensure—that Prevost would be the next pope, desiring to have someone who would continue his direction for the church, away from the conservative American church’s ideologies and emphasis. Francis had named the vast majority of the cardinals who voted on his successor, and they were loyal to him—and likely loyal to his wishes if indeed he’d lobbied them prior to his death.

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Francis brought Prevost to the Vatican in 2023—making him a cardinal, and thus eligible to be pope, only two years ago—to further learn the intricacies of the Vatican (and, by default, the papacy), obviously grooming him for the job. Francis put Prevost in charge of the office in the church that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most powerful offices in the Vatican, tasked with reshaping the church’s leadership.

It involved choosing new bishops upon retirements, but also sometimes removing church leaders and replacing them because they were trouble. Prevost worked alongside Francis in the two years before his death, a critical time. That was when Francis was seeking to reshape the American church’s hierarchy, as I wrote at the time, which for years has been deeply enmeshed in GOP—and MAGA—politics.

It was during that two-year period when there were big moves, such as Francis’ firing of Bishop Robert Strickland of Tyler, Texas—an icon of extremist MAGA Catholics—who defied Francis’ teachings. It was also during that time that Cardinal Raymond Burke was booted from his palatial Vatican apartment and sent packing. He was a Trump-supporting Covid denier who was making a fortune on the MAGA speaking circuit in the U.S.—and someone who also defied Francis’ reforms.

Prevost was there for all that and was deeply involved in helping carry out those decisions.

Before taking that job in Rome, however, Prevost, who was born in Chicago and educated in the U.S. and had spent his early years as a priest in the Midwest, was in the field as a missionary in Peru, where he also became a citizen of that country. He was Apostolic Administrator of Chiclayo, then named the Bishop of Chiclayo by Francis in 2015, where he served until Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 and made him a cardinal.

He got the experience as a missionary—a life experience that was vital to Francis’ outlook in reaching the people and getting beyond the church’s stone buildings—and then came to the Vatican to work with Francis in his last two years.

Francis may have had a few people in mind whom he was preparing over the years, but it was Prevost he clearly seemed focused on near the end of his life. The cardinals’ selection of Prevost, an American, sent shock waves through the world of church scholars and pundits, since no one expected an American to become pope because the U.S. has traditionally been seen as having too much power already.

But I believe having an American as pope at this point in time was part of Francis’ plan. Prevost was active in recent months on X. He hadn’t posted in all of 2024, but this year he slammed JD Vance, among other posts criticizing the Trump administration. I don’t think any of this was an accident, as these social media posts would become big news—which they are—upon the pope’s death and Provost’s becoming Pope Leo, sending a very clear message.

One opinion piece from The Catholic Standard that Provost re-posted just a few weeks ago was written by the auxiliary bishop of Washington, DC, Bishop Evelio Menjivar, who is from El Salvador and had been an undocumented immigrant himself for many years. It’s a powerful piece slamming the Trump administration:

The video of a student being accosted by masked agents after her visa was revoked without notice – apparently because of an op-ed she co-wrote years ago – is horrifying. Most egregiously, the government has now claimed the authority to unilaterally seize certain people based on mere suspicion, or because of their tattoos, and send them to a prison in El Salvador accused of human rights abuses – all without review by a court to even determine their identity. The government admits some have been wrongfully deported, but officials are fighting attempts to right these wrongs.

More than a few natural-born Americans are saying they do not recognize their country anymore, but many of us from other lands recognize all too well the terror of people being snatched by secret police and disappeared. We left our former countries precisely to get away from it.

It’s also noteworthy that Prevost chose Leo for his name, meant to signify his carrying on the work of Pope Leo XIII, who was known as the father of social justice. In his 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safety in the workplace, and the ability to form labor unions. Interestingly, the previous Pope Leo served from 1878 to 1903, during the entire presidency of Trump’s favorite president, William McKinley, the fanatic on tariffs who also emboldened big business to trample on workers.

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Provost also criticized Trump often in his first term, on issues such as gun violence and immigration. I believe Francis understood the need for a pope who is from this culture, who speaks English fluently, who spars in his own voice on social media, and who could sit down with American television interviewers and lay out the case against harsh policies and attacks on the marginalized.

While the U.S. is just one country among many, and while the church is growing much more in Asia and Africa, Francis had to see—as many of us have—that right now Trump is an existential threat to everything in the world that is held sacred, including the Catholic church itself. The Vatican is smack dab in the middle of the European Union, under attack by Trump’s trade war and by the U.S.’s encouragement of Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Europe. And the Vatican is surely impacted by any weakening of NATO.

But it’s, of course, beyond self-preservation. The causes that Francis promoted—supporting migrants, helping the poor and marginalized, saving the planet—are under assault.

We don’t know a lot about Leo’s recent beliefs and positions on women in the church, LBGTQ rights and other issues. Like Francis himself, he showed some hostility to gay rights many years ago—almost 15 years ago, in fact—but like Francis, he likely evolved, like many other leaders.

He recently remained open—though not fully committed—to Francis’s having allowed blessings of same-sex unions. And he has supported Francis’s commitment to “synodality”—diverse inclusiveness from grassroots lay people in the church—which the American conservatives in the church have fiercely opposed. My hunch is that Francis told him to keep his powder dry on the issue—as Francis did before he was pope—but we’ll know in time.

What is true is that there is no going back now to the archconservatives. Francis’s legacy lives on. And there is now a voice in the Vatican who is both a citizen of Peru and the U.S., someone whose maternal grandparents were Creole people of color from Louisiana. And he is someone with an enormous platform, who looks like he will be an outspoken home-grown counterpoint for all Americans—and the world—to the brutality of the Trump era.

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Wisconsin Judge Chris Taylor

The whipsaw of emotions can be intense. Twenty-four hours ago we were preparing for the possibility of World War III, Armageddon or worse. Trump sometimes TACOs but sometimes he doesn’t. Would it be mass genocide and unspeakable war crimes, or, as I wrote yesterday, would Trump at the last minute tell us about a “breakthrough” in negotiations?

To the great relief of billions of people globally, it turned out to be the latter. This was Greenland 2.0, a repeat, though more intense, of the anxiety that gripped the world in January only to be followed by Trumps climbdown at Davos. None of us, by the way, should think Trump can’t change his mind again—because he always does and he’s still surely hurting from the humiliation—so be on guard. But for now he caved completely.

Trump announced at the last minute before his 8 p.m. ET deadline that there were “good” negotiations with Iran and there would be a “two-week” ceasefire. (We all know what “two weeks” means in Trump’s lingo, i.e., “In two weeks I’ll have a health care plan.”) And, as I also noted yesterday looking at what could happen, it’s still an unmitigated disaster for the GOP.

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Trump exposed that the U.S. under his leadership is weak, and, as Bloomberg writes, all adversaries from China to Russia have taken note. Iran stood firm, vowed revenge, and was ready for doom. This is because the ayatollahs are religious fanatics and Trump just didn’t understand how they’ve been planning for this—ready to accept being martyrs—for decades.

They gave Trump a 15-point plan in the end that was all on their terms—even though Trump had rejected the same plan a few days earlier—which Trump says will now be a framework. Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz and may even charge a toll of a million dollars a ship. Trump, when asked about this early this morning, acknowledged it and said the U.S. may split the money with Iran in a “joint venture,” essentially planning to go into business with the civilization he was going to “wipe out.” Needless to say, any tolls would have oil prices skyrocket.

This is worse off than it was before the war, when Iran did not maintain a lock on the strait. There is no regime change in Iran, but there is regime hardening. A younger, more hardline ayatollah is in charge. The Iranian people are worse off than before. Iran also is no less near the ability to acquire nuclear weapons, however far off it may be.

Thousands died, including American soldiers, while the Gulf states’ days of being lavish playgrounds (and thought to be safe) are rocked forever. And gas prices in the U.S. will remain high for a year or more, as inflation on all goods ticks up. All because of Trump’s quest for domination that, in the end, had him completely dominated by a middle power.

Within hours of Trump’s surrender came another electoral five-alarm fire for the GOP here in the U.S.

Shawn Harris, the Georgia Democrat running in the special election runoff to fill the seat vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene—who didn’t endorse anyone in the race—lost by only 12 points in the blood-red district to Republican Clay Fuller, swinging the district by 25 points. This was the largest swing among all of the special elections since Trump came back to office, as The New York Times noted:

The race for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District was quickly called for Clay Fuller, a Republican, but the seat had the largest leftward swing in a special election since the start of 2025. It continues a trend in which Democrats have been showing strong improvements in districts won easily by President Trump in 2024.

Mr. Trump won the district by 37 percentage points in 2024. Mr. Fuller’s lead over Shawn Harris, a Democrat, in Tuesday’s special runoff in the district is expected to be about 12 percentage points once all votes are in, according to estimates by The New York Times. That would amount to a 25-point shift from the 2024 presidential race.

In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, liberals extended their majority to 5-2 on the court when progressive Judge Chris Taylor won by 20 points (!) over conservative Judge Maria Lazar, 60-40. Wisconsin statewide elections are almost always won by single digits, close races in a state that is always on a knife’s edge. The spring Supreme Court races, however, have seen liberals winning by 10 points over the past few years, including in last year’s race when Judge Susan Crawford won, beating back Elon Musk’s millions that were poured into the race.

But a 20-point win is just phenomenal, showing the GOP’s continued demise. And the surge toward Democrats happened in elections all across the battleground state, including the mayor’s race in Republican-leaning Waukesha, where a Democrat, Alicia Halvensleben, won. As polling analyst G. Elliot Morris observes, in both Georgia and Wisconsin Democrats saw their greatest swings in the 2026 election cycle.

All of this is coming after Democrats have won decisively in special elections for over a year, flipping seats from red to blue, and just months before the midterms.

Trump’s disaster in Iran and the lingering economic turmoil including surging gas prices, on top of everything else from tariffs to ICE’s brutality, are only further pushing the GOP into a ditch while building the Democrats’ coming blue wave.

It’s insane how we could go from despair only 24 hours ago—and again, stay alert because Trump could take us back there at any moment—to relief, hope, and even excitement now. But that is America today. Be prepared for anything, always make noise, and keep fighting.

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We surely can’t diminish the clear threat of nuclear destruction that Trump has made, posting this morning that a “whole civilization will be wiped out tonight” if Iran doesn’t accept his “deal.” This followed his deranged 1.5 hour press conference yesterday that showed how much of a lunatic he’s become, ending with “We want Greenland.”

Trump is threatening to kill millions of civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, engaging in blatant, pre-announced war crimes. And J.D. Vance backed him up on a trip to Hungary this morning, stumping for the authoritarian Victor Orbán, who is embattled, facing a tough election next week (and is getting both Vladimir Putin’s and Trump’s endorsements, which tells you everything you need to know).

“We’ve got tools in our tool kit we haven’t used,” Vance said, demanding the Iranians bow to Trump’s wishes or else.

Iran’s response, according to Reuters, was to close all diplomatic and indirect channels of communication with the U.S.

If that’s true, Trump’s threat clearly didn’t have the desired effect.

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As you read this, he is either planning to actually engage in a scorched-earth military operation that could end in mass death. Or he’s bluffing again—it would be the third time—and will soon announce some sort of “breakthrough” in the supposed negotiations and say he is giving Iran more time.

But, even as we can’t rule out that Trump will engage in unspeakable war crimes and perhaps even use nuclear weapons—and we surely don’t want to see anything like that happening—whatever Trump does is an unmitigated disaster for him and the GOP.

Surely if Trump follows through with his threat, the entire world would be enveloped, the entire region of the Middle East catastrophically so. There aren’t enough conventional weapons on hand for Trump to “wipe out” an entire civilization within hours. But even if there were, Iran has threatened to destroy bridges, desalination plants, and infrastructure all through the Gulf states. And if Trump used nuclear weapons, well, it goes without saying that the Gulf allies would face horrific ramifications as well.

The blowback politically would be astounding for the GOP. The wiping out of entire cities, peoples, and countries—all for oil—and the escalation of war that MAGA voters are already opposed to. Gas prices would surge out of control, too—to prices we’ve probably never seen before.

If Trump backs down, however, and claims a big “win” with a “deal” (however real it is) it will likely be one that keeps Iran’s regime in tact and brings things back to the status quo, with the Strait of Hormuz open, but still threatened by Iran at any time. The entire operation will be seen as having thrown the economy into chaos for nothing. Gas prices will only continue to go up as the fallout continues. Moody’s Analytics predicts gas prices will not ever recover, certainly not this year, or next, and will stay at the current prices or rise, into next year and beyond. The price of everything else will go up too.

Trump has caused a disaster for himself and Republicans, and he keeps looking for a way he can “win”—to the point now of threatening civilizational destruction. We can only hope that he sees that this would be an even bigger loss for him—he doesn’t care about the people killed, so hoping on that one is useless—and accepts the smaller loss, even though it’s still a bleak picture for him and the GOP.

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Days after Donald Trump once again claimed that the U.S. has already won the war in Iran—in a primetime address to the nation that was five weeks late and drove the markets into chaos rather than calm them—Iran has shot down two U.S. planes, and one crew member is missing. Two Blackhawk helicopters were also hit. Of course, Trump said in the speech that the war was won but also said if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal, he’d blow them “back to the Stone Ages” and threatened what amounts to war crimes, including attacking power plants. Not exactly offering an olive branch.

This week, after Pam Bondi was axed as attorney general—though reportedly pleaded with Trump not to fire her—and after the removal of Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary, Trump may be on an all-out purge. We could see other prominent members of the administration gone. One reason is that Trump sees he’s losing on major initiatives and operations and can’t bring himself to blame the one person responsible: Donald J. Trump. The other reason is that the White House has realized it could lose the Senate to Democrats—pretty amazing that we’re here!—and thus lose the ability to put in place its chosen Cabinet members.

And could Pete Hegseth be among those Trump will ax next? As the war in Iran continues to be a disaster, Trump is reportedly finally being informed by White House staff about how badly it’s going, which could cause him to realize he made a massive mistake. But again, he can never blame himself, so he may turn to the person who has led this dangerous operation and told Trump it would be a piece of cake. Losing Hegseth would not be the worst outcome of the war.

A Weekend Report for you all to read up on the news and join the discussion if you like...

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In case you missed it, Donald Trump responded publicly to a whipped-up claim that some of his aides and advisers planted in the New York Post two weeks ago: that “spy agencies” have determined that Iran’s new Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the hardline ultra-conservative who was installed after a US strike killed his father, is gay and closeted.

As the Post described it on March 16, Trump “laughed out loud” upon being briefed about it in the White House shortly after Khamenei took power, while others in the room found it “hilarious.” The idea seemed to be that gay equals weak, and thus this guy is going to be a pushover, which tells you everything you need to know about what Trump thinks of gays. (All the more cringy that people like Scott Bessent and Richard Grenell work for him.)

The unverified story went relatively nowhere after the right-wing tabloid published it—clearly because it was hatched by some in Trump’s inner circle as a psyop, according to Zateo.

That is, until Jesse Waters raised it on Fox a few days ago.

“Did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Jr. is gay?” Watters asked.

“Well, they did say that, but I don’t know if it was only them. Which puts him off to a bad start in that particular country,” Trump replied, alluding to Iran’s brutal death penalty for homosexuality.

Then Trump quickly went off on a tangent about his shock that there are “gays for Palestine,” and eventually landed on a typical, full-blown lie, claiming he “did well” with the gay vote in the U.S., better than any Republican president. (In fact, he did worse in 2024 than any president—Democrat or Republican—including worse than himself in 2016 and 2020, getting only 14% of the vote, as Kamala Harris took 86% of the queer vote).

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As reported in Zeteo, where Asawin Suebsaeng has great White House sources who always spill the tea, the tale of the gay ayatollah was a fabrication, “a plan to run a psyop against their Iranian enemies and the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei,” four sources tell us.

The idea was to plant a public narrative about how US intelligence agencies had classified information strongly indicating that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is gay and closeted…to sow discord, chaos, and division among the Iranian people and their government.

There is one issue, though: There is no intel, certainly no credible intel, indicating he’s gay – the idea was fabricated and pushed behind the scenes in the past several weeks by a cohort of Trump advisers, US government personnel, and MAGAworld associates, two people with knowledge of the matter and another two sources briefed on it tell us.

Some of them have been having a good laugh about it ever since. “We wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” one of the knowledgeable sources says. Another source – a Trump administration official familiar with how this all went down – adds that one of their MAGA group chats is titled, simply: “gayatollah.”

So lame.

As noted, the group first planted this baked-up claim in the New York Post, likely hoping it would take off from there into actual news outlets—which it did not. That story included Trump’s reaction of laughing out loud. It was typical tabloid salaciousness, innuendo, and idiocy, devoid of any evidence:

Mojtaba, who is believed to have been wounded in the same Feb. 28 airstrike that killed his father and other members of his family, has made “aggressive” sexual overtures to men caring for him, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication, one of The Post’s sources said.

US spy agencies do not have photographic evidence of Mojtaba Khamenei’s alleged sexual attraction to men, but the sources insisted the tip is solid, with one saying it was “derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has.”

Some of the Post’s “evidence” of “whispering” among Iran’s leaders about Mojtaba Khamenei’s sexual orientation includes the fact that he married “late in life”—around age 30!—and had an “impotency problem” that was “treated and resolved during a three-month stay” in the UK. (He and his wife did then have a child, who grew to be a teenager who was reportedly killed in the strike that killed his grandfather and also his mother.)

“His father and others suspected he was gay, and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension,” a source apparently told the Post.

Seriously, if the elder Khamenei believed his son was gay, do you think he’d be alive in a country that kills gay people—or at the very least not shipped out far away? And if, as the Post claims, everyone in the government knew about it, would he have been installed? And, if the new ayatollah is so badly injured and may not even be conscious—as the White House and Trump aides keep telling us—how was he making “aggressive” sexual overtures to the men taking care of him?

Beyond all that, the idea that somehow this would sow dissent and chaos within the Iranian leadership—when Trump and the U.S. have steadfastly lied to the Iranians, even during negotiations, during which they then began bombing Iran—is pretty ludicrous.

Even Trump, when Waters brought it up, shifted quickly onto other things—“gays for Palestine” and his falsehood of doing well with gays in the U.S.—obviously knowing he was promoting fiction created by MAGA operatives. These are the masterminds surrounding Trump, and that’s why all of this is a continued disaster.

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Another Monday morning, and it’s as insane as every Monday in recent memory.

Donald Trump saw the market tank on Friday, following days of plummeting numbers. And then, over the weekend, after over 50,000 troops gathered in the Middle East, he saw the price of oil spike over the military buildup.

So this morning he basically claimed there is a “new regime” in Iran and the oil is flowing but then threatened this supposed new regime with obliteration if the oil stops flowing. Of course, the Dow futures rose because traders are delusional and grasping for any hope.

So, if this supposedly “NEW AND REASONABLE REGIME” doesn’t allow the oil to keep flowing—which is not happening in any big way, though he claimed over the weekend it was—he will be “blowing up and obliterating” Iran’s power plants and oil refineries. On Sunday night he claimed Iran had shown “respect” to the U.S. by supposedly allowing oil to get through the strait. Then he showed reporters on Air Force One a rendering of his new ballroom—which he’d rather be focused on, because he’s “bored” with Iran—with “bulletproof glass” and “drone-proof” construction. Reporting from the New York Times on Sunday night:

President Trump said on Sunday night that Iran had agreed to release 20 more cargo ships of oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, in what the president insisted was a “tribute” to the United States and a “sign of respect.”

But it doesn’t appear Iran agreed to anything nor showed a “sign of respect” to the U.S., and is controlling the strait and allowing ships from countries not supporting the U.S.—like China—or its own ships to pass through. It’s all still at Iran’s behest.

Obviously Trump knows this because he is now threatening once again to bomb Iran if it doesn’t surrender to his idea of peace. This comes after Iran seriously wounded U.S. military members at a base in Saudi Arabia over the weekend in a missile and drone attack.

Iran has also vowed to set troops on fire if there’s a ground operation, while Pete Hegseth is praying to Jesus for “overwhelming violence,” and President Zelensky of Ukraine says Russia has been giving Iran satellite imagery of U.S. bases since the start of the war, something the U.S. surely knows. And Trump curiously just allowed Russia to deliver oil to Cuba, though Trump had a blockade in place. Putin and Netanyahu seem to keep calling the shots as Trump is scrambling.

Meanwhile, the troops just keep building up as the Pentagon prepares for a ground invasion with “weeks of ground operations.” Another Monday in Trump’s war on Iran, which is still a growing disaster.

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We talked about my piece on the Epstein files about Steve Bannon working with Jeffrey Epstein—per their email exchanges—to take down the Catholic Church by trying to turn the book “Inside the Closet of the Vatican” into a movie.

We also discussed the new media landscape for progressives on so many new platforms, some of the history of queer media, and much more.

Sign up for Raw America, another great place for news.

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One of the most serious breaches of American air defenses during the war in Iran occurred in a missile and drone combo attack on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. Twelve service members were injured, two of them seriously. This adds to the 13 deaths of American service members and nearly 300 injured as Donald Trump faces the fact that Iran is not crumbling and is actually continuing to extract blood from the U.S. The markets plummeted as oil surged to $110 a barrel on Friday. On Saturday, the Houthis, who control much of Yemen, joined the war, defending Iran by striking Israel.

Reports out of the White House, meanwhile, are that Trump is “bored” with the war and wants to move on to other issues. In other words, Trump is losing and wants to find something he can win on. This is his dangerous motivating force. Sources say he wants it done but can’t seem to get out. This is coming as he canceled his speech at CPAC—the first time he’s skipped the far-right confab, where he gets his narcissistic fix, in 10 years—apparently fearing being heckled by young conservatives. And at the event, cheers rang out in the audience when the suggestion of Trump’s impeachment was raised. Not a good look.

And today, just as Trump’s approval numbers have cratered and the war drags on amid long lines at airports and surging gas prices, millions of people will be protesting all across the country in the third No Kings protests. Organizers report that there will be over 3000 events.

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It’s time, once again, to march! Protest always brings enormous attention to the issues, galvanizes more people, and helps turn people out in upcoming elections.

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the groups mobilizing people, joined me on my SiriusXM program to talk about the upcoming No Kings protests this Saturday, March 28th.

He is expecting it to be the largest of the No Kings events and the largest mass protest in U.S. history, with millions joining in over 3000 events nationwide. You can find an event near you right here.

And he has a simple ask. Bring someone who hasn’t gone before or who might not normally attend protests. Make the numbers as big as possible.

Bring people together so that they connect and organize, and then help turn out to vote in November.

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As with many MAGA callers, she claimed she just happened upon the show and just had to call in to correct me on some supposed falsehoods.

First she claimed studies showed that requiring voter ID didn’t suppress the vote, when in fact there are studies showing that onerous demands under some state laws do suppress the vote.

But that’s beside the point, I explained. Democrats do support voter ID—they’ve included it in voting rights bills—just not forms that burden people and cost them money. And I explained that the SAVE Act doesn’t accept a driver’s license.

Christine didn’t know that and seemed to be surprised. And that was the time for her to say, “Okay, I’m misinformed. Thank you for your time, good bye.”

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Instead, when I told her that you need a birth certificate or passport to register to vote, she defended getting your birth certificate, refuting that people lose their birth certificates or that many women, for example, are forced to jump through hoops because they changed their names from their birth name when they got married—which Christine herself did.

And she claimed driver’s licenses can be fake, though she couldn’t provide me with any stories of people using fake driver’s licenses to vote. She also couldn’t answer why a birth certificate couldn’t be forged either.

But the bottom line— Christine couldn’t produce any evidence of voter fraud, because it is so rare and has never affected the outcome of an election. There was much more in this exchange, so check it out.

Some of these people, like Christine—who was much more polite than most—almost seem reasonable.

Until they’re not, locked in the MAGA cult.

Watch the clip and let me know your thoughts!

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