Blanche is the perfect name for a white supremacist group. (Look it up.)

An Extra-Embarrassing White House Correspondents’ Dinner Why is Donald Trump breaking bread with the “enemy of the people”?

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner “has always been a bit of an embarrassment”—but this year’s gala figures to be more awkward and embarrassing than usual.

A regime of idiots: A complete inventory of Trump stooges They will remain, festering, awaiting the next opportunity for soul-selling.

open.substack.com/pub/aaronrup...

This is really smart stuff from @davidsirota.com explaining how a Dem victory in the midterms could create an opening for a major recalibration via a revitalized exercise of Congressional power.

Transcript:

newrepublic.com/article/2092...

“We are winning “BY A LOT,” say the New York Mets, borrowing from Queens’ biggest hometown loser.

“I see my reputation is at stake; my fame is shrewdly gor’d.”
“Troilus and Cressida”

Deservedly so

“You shall mark many a duteous and knee-crooking knave that (doting on his own obsequious bondage) wears out his time much like his master’s ass for naught but provender, and when he’s old, cashiered,” said Iago.

“[Trump] didn’t win in spite of who he is. He won because of it. If you carried resentment, he gave it a microphone. If you harbored prejudice, he wrapped it in language of patriotism. If you saw the world where cruelty is strength and empathy is weakness, he didn’t challenge you, he crowned you.”

Trump can’t work with anyone smarter or braver than he. Hence, his advisers are sycophants, yes-men, and craven opportunists.

Trump Accidentally Admits What He Really Thinks of MAGA Voters Podcast Episode · THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent · April 20 · 21m

Trump is losing young voters and non-white working class voters—voters he won in 2024—in huge numbers over the war and other things. “How does MAGA elect people without those voters? Can MAGA survive if it keeps getting whittled down to a more and more fanatical core?”

Adding up to gross incompetence, from timorous editors and broadcast executives to stenographers in the press pool, not one of whom ever follows up on or repeats a colleague’s question that is deflected or goes unanswered.

When “media landscape” is not jargony enough, use “media ecosystem.”

An 12-inch shelf from Home Depot should be sufficient for all the books Trump has read, with room on it for a plant.

The New York Times has a complicated relationship with telling the truth about the powerful, especially 45/47.

The Worst Justice Ever His attack on progressivism last week was the last straw

I’ve long assumed that Samuel Alito was the worst Supreme Court Justice in recent history. But I’ve come to revise my view in light of recent comments made by one judge in particular. Let me explain... robertreich.substack.com/p/the-worst-justice-in-m...

SCOTUS in its current configuration isn’t just bad for democracy, it’s actively working against a livable environment

A Breakdown of Five Days of Secret Supreme Court Memos

A Breakdown of Five Days of Secret Supreme Court Memos www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Republican Nerves Are Fraying Ahead of Midterm Elections High gasoline prices, the war in Iran and recent Democratic victories are fueling the angst.

Republican Nerves Are Fraying Ahead of Midterm Elections

“Landscape” is a word favored by cliché lovers, language manglers, and the unimaginative. It’s everywhere—the political landscape, the sports landscape, the business landscape, the sports business landscape—except in horticultural writing. When “landscape” isn’t pretentious enough, use “ecosystem.”

Don't be fooled, Mike Lawler was never a "moderate." Any House member voting consistently with Trump is full on MAGA. Voters are fed up, and the GOP can expect more town halls just like this one heading into the midterms.

"President Trump made a righteous and courageous decision" -- Mike Lawler is on Maria's show kissing Trump's behind

Trump Thinks He’s Become Orange Jesus In Trump 1.0, people mocked the President by calling him Orange Jesus. In Trump 2.0, he actually thinks he’s become Jesus, Susan B. Glasser writes.

“Cheney, No. 3 in the Party leadership in Trump’s first term, concluded that her colleagues suffered from a ‘plague of cowardice,’ summed up by their willingness to go along with Trump’s false claims about the “rigged” 2020 election despite understanding full well that he had lost fair and square.”

‪Was Hannity absent from theology class when they discussed not bearing false witness, not lying, not having false gods, not coveting the neighbor’s wife?‬

“Democrats, if they have a majority in the House and possibly Senate, need to start laying the predicate for a major accountability agenda. They[‘d] have the power right at the outset to start referring things for criminal prosecution that puts down on paper what all these people are doing wrong.”

“[Blanche] said he’d make it a priority at DOJ to ‘get rid of all the pure weaponization.’ Given the degree to which Trump’s DOJ has been turned into a political arm of the White House with Blanche’s support and encouragement, this might be the most ironic comment of the president’s second term.”

“He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool… He has everything that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, he has nothing.”
“All’s Well That Ends Well”

“Nobody who has not experienced [teaching] can fully imagine the peculiar drain which this activity makes on one’s energy, nor its unique rewards,” wrote the great prose stylist Kingsley Amis, born on this day in 1922. Cheers to the teachers for all you do.

Trump can’t stop the war between what he thinks he knows and what he knows.

“The perversity of Johnson invoking just war doctrine: Trump and Hegseth are violating that doctrine’s most basic tenets, which involve prohibitions on needless wars without imminent threats. Yet Hegseth has talked about killing people who surrender; this war has killed well over 1,000 civilians.”