A really important column.
I would explicitly name the Posbiecs too. Jack has been riling up hatred since he perfected doing so with a Nazi in 2016, and his lies ginned up PizzaGate which turned into QAnon which played a central role in launching the January 6 insurrection.
I noted the day of the SCOTUS decision that JB Pritzker IMMEDIATELY moved to make this point, by demanding a refund for IL. And State refunds may be the best way to politicize how Trump created the worst of all worlds. But Elizabeth Warren is, predictably, focused on it as well.
Big news if you’re an American politics political scientist doing text as data
Man, when you compare the bravery of every day Minnesotans to the overpaid cops it’s astounding
We don't know which Cabinet secretary will be forced to resign next, but we know it'll be either Brooke Rollins or Linda McMahon because they're the last two women left.
It is a delight and an honor that my rant about how chasing grants steers projects off course (maybe my favorite article I've written in a long time) came in runner-up to Melanie's wonderful exploration of gender in children's books. More curiosity & whimsy in academia, please!
SCOOP --> Paramount, Meta, and X are refusing to say what happened to their huge contributions to Trump's presidential library after Sen Elizabeth Warren raised questions about its fund getting dissolved. Ds say tens of millions remain unaccounted for.
Details here:
newrepublic.com/article/2092...
Dispatch from my demographic! Working moms have Prompt Parties to swap prompts to automate/outsource mental load. We're served content about how to make ChatGPT a house manager, virtual assistant, etc. Women's uptake isn't slightly surprising, because nothing else has fixed imbalanced mental load.
One of the Sandy Hook families lives in hiding 1500 mi away from their baby’s grave due to people stalking them.
The graves of multiple children have been defaced.
One of the fathers had to submit DNA evidence to prove his son was a REAL HUMAN BEING after Alex Jones’ book said he never existed.
The Infowars news is funny, yes. But more importantly, it is an outright rebuke of Alex Jones' evil.
It's testament to the strength and resilience of the Sandy Hook families who survived this bullshit for more than a decade as well as the Onion, which didn't give up on this for the last 18 months.
Articles about Jared Kushner's diplomatic role with Iran that mention Kushner has received billions from the Saudi government (2/28-4/19):
NYT: 5 of 58
WashPost: 1 of 43
WSJ: 0 of 40
AP: 0 of 26
CNN Wire: 0 of 18
NY Post: 0 of 17
Chicago Tribune: 0 of 4
LA Times: 0 of 4
Boston Globe: 0 of 2
From last night: Minnesota Still Cleaning Up after Pam Bondi's Trophy Stunt
emptywheel.net/2026/04/18/m...
Huh. Why would they ask for Wayne's ballots rather than the counties where Trump's people committed crimes in 2020?
🤔
2 ¶¶ of a warrant affidavit describing Joe DiGenova going on Laura Ingraham's show spewing conspiracy theories about Marie Yovanovitch, Joe and Hunter Biden, and the Mueller investigation, and Victoria Toensing pushing Lev Parnas about getting a retainer from Yuriy Lutsenko. The names are redacted but I've put them in in pink.
Here's the key reason why putting Joe DiGenova in charge of the Russian investigation is so suspect. On the same day Mueller finished Joe was spewing FALSE conspiracy theories abt Ru and the Bidens, hoping to get paid by Lutsenko for doing so.
emptywheel.net/2026/04/19/t...
The strait has been a particular source of frustration. Before the U.S. went to war, Trump told his team that Iran’s government would likely capitulate before closing the strait, and that even if Tehran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Some of the president’s advisers were caught off guard that tanker traffic would grind to a halt so quickly after the bombing began, according to a person in contact with the White House. Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the U.S. doesn’t need or want military assistance.
These two ¶¶ more than 35 ¶¶ into an adventure in sanewashing would be the entire story if reporters cared about accountability for Trump.
www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
Trump was warned abt Strait.
He ignored those warnings.
Now he confesses he was wrong.
I mean, JD is still getting royalties from his "writing" career. And probably a whole lot more than $1,643 a year.
Is it a healthy coping strategy to constantly mutter “two new states, reform the court, overturn citizens united” like you’re Arya Stark?
it is, among other things, incredibly striking to see that roberts was so solicitous of the burden the clean power plan might put on fossil fuel executives, when, a decade later, he is indifferent to the way trump’s moves have thrown hundreds of thousands of lives into turmoil.
Screenshotted excerpt from linked article reading as follows: "In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis. When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately."
OOP
New York Times got receipts on John Roberts being like, 'I know this isn't how anything works, but a Democratic president is about to implement a policy!!'
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
A federal judge in Illinois today ruled that the Trump administration improperly coerced Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking apps in violation of the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
"Those taxes you just paid? The money is going straight into Trump's pocket" would be good messaging
ZOHRAN: “TBH, I don’t think too much about how Republicans portray me. The power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery— to be told a city-run grocery store is implausible but $500 MILLION/day to kill ppl in Iran & Lebanon is necessary speaks to a broken politics.”
A convicted felon as President of the United States talking about removing criminals is the very definition of hypocrisy.
David F. Ellison
cordially invites you
to an intimate gathering
in celebration of the civil rights movement
honoring George Wallace
and the White Citizens Councils
Thursday, April 23
at an all-white country club to be named later
A photo of blossoming pink flower buds and a headline that reads “ECONOMIC POLICY - On Tax Day, Mamdani Taxed the Rich - The mayor, his supporters, and public opinion convinced their previously reluctant governor to agree to a tax on the second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) homes of their city's nonresident rich.”
A photo of a child reaching for blossoming pink flower buds and a headline that reads “Mayor Mamdani Unveils 7 New NYC Early Ed Centers”
A photo of of blossoming pink flower buds and a headline that reads “New York City to open municipal grocery store in 2027 - The store will be one of five city-owned food stores Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised to debut before his term ends.”
Blossoming pink flower buds near a trash container and a headline that reads “Mamdani To Fully Fund Trash Containerization - The new mayor is restarting the Trash Revolution”
Change is in the air, New York. Here are a few things blooming.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here.
President Trump launched an unauthorized war against Iran. Gulf countries are now under attack and desperate for protection. And Trump’s sons just signed a deal with a drone company actively trying to sell weapons to those countries.
the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system
Just got out of a roundtable at #OAH2026 on Gilded Age corruption and now it's time to see what's in the news and
The American gestapo abducted an 85 year-old widow.
Was she one of the worst of the worst? No, her step-son, a retired Alabama state trooper, got ICE to put her in a detention center to deport her because he wanted all of his father's inheritance.
Sounds like the son is the worst of the worst.
