It has not been a banner day for members of the Trump administration.
Evan Hill, Jarrett Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp, and Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post reported that Iranian strikes since February 28, when U.S. and Israeli air strikes began, have caused far more damage to U.S. military sites in the Middle East than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the U.S. government have admitted.
While the damage from the Iranian strikes, which have killed and wounded servicemembers, is itself important, so is the underlying story: the U.S. government is hiding the true cost of the war in Iran from the American people. The journalists note that it is “unusually difficult” to get satellite imagery from the Middle East right now because less than two weeks into the war, the U.S. government asked two of the largest commercial providers of satellite imagery, Vantor and Planet, “to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing.”
The companies complied, forcing the journalists to turn to high-resolution satellite imagery published by Iran’s state-affiliated media, cross-checking it with lower-resolution imagery from the satellite system the European Union uses.
Global affairs journalist David Rothkopf wrote today in The Daily Beast: “Not since Vietnam have we seen a more systematic effort by an administration to lie about the nature, costs, consequences, and results of a war than we have seen from the White House on Iran.”
Early this morning, Barak Ravid of Axios, who often reports information from White House insiders, wrote that the White House believed it was close to a memorandum of understanding with Iran that would end the war and lay the groundwork for future negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, although there was plenty of hedging in the article.
Once again, there were fortuitously timed trades before the story broke. Adam Kobeissi’s Kobeissi Letter, which comments on global capital markets, noted that about 70 minutes before the Axios story, someone took about $920 million worth of crude oil shorts and bet the market would drop, meaning they promised to provide about 10,000 contracts for oil at the current price. Within two hours, oil prices had fallen more than 12%, making the entity a profit of about $125 million.
On social media, Trump’s account continued to whipsaw between pressing for an end to the war and threatening apocalyptic destruction if Iran doesn’t agree to U.S. demands. “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption,” he wrote, “the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran. If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
The administration’s shifting justifications and claims about the Iran war are “dizzying,” Ben Finley, Matthew Lee, and Farnoush Amiri of the Associated Press wrote today. Yesterday, after calling the war “concluded,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent the day selling Trump’s Project Freedom to open the Strait of Hormuz, only to have Trump call Project Freedom off with a post on social media.
Mosheh Gains, Courtney Kube, Andrea Mitchell, Natasha Lebedeva and Daniel Arkin of NBC News reported tonight that Trump’s abrupt about-face came after Saudi Arabia told the U.S. it would not permit the U.S. military to use Saudi airspace for the operation.
This afternoon, the U.S. fired on an Iranian oil tanker as it tried to pass through the U.S. blockade, and Israel launched strikes on a suburb of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said today that China is “deeply distressed” by the conflict and called for a ceasefire. “We believe that a comprehensive ceasefire is urgently needed, that a resumption of hostilities is not acceptable,” he said. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in China today, where he met with Wang. Trump is due to visit China on May 14. Trump wants a solution to the Iran War before that meeting, and the Iranians know it, giving them leverage over a deal.
This evening, Iran’s foreign minister M.B. Ghalibaf posted: “Operation Trust Me Bro failed. Now back to routine with Operation Fauxios.”
Hegseth is not the only member of the administration in trouble in the news today. After journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick wrote an April 17 story in The Atlantic detailing FBI director Kash Patel’s drinking and inability to perform his job, Patel sued both The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick for defamation, asking for $250 million in damages.
The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick stood by the story, which had two dozen sources. Fitzpatrick noted that after she published the piece, additional informants came forward to corroborate her findings.
Today, Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MS NOW reported that the FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation into who talked to Fitzpatrick. Sources told the reporters that such an investigation, called an “insider threat investigation,” usually involves government officials who may have given away state secrets or classified documents. Focusing on leaks to a reporter is “highly unusual,” they say. Although it remains unclear what steps the investigation has taken, Dilanian and Leonnig note that it could allow FBI agents to obtain Fitzpatrick’s phone records and examine her social media contacts.
One of the sources told the reporters that FBI agents feel ”deep concern” about the probe. “They know they are not supposed to do this,” one source told the reporters. “But if they don’t go forward, they could lose their jobs. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the story, telling Dilanian and Leonnig: “This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists and the reporter you mention is not being investigated at all. Every time there’s a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist.”
Under Patel, the FBI has already investigated a New York Times reporter who wrote a story about an FBI security detail assigned to Patel’s girlfriend and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter.
Today the FBI raided the offices and business of Virginia state senator L. Louis Lucas, 82, a Black woman who led the movement to redraw Virginia’s districts after Republicans redrew districts in Republican-dominated states. The Fox News Channel was on the scene, suggesting it had been tipped off by the FBI.
Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick published a new story today in The Atlantic reporting that Patel travels with “a supply of personalized branded bourbon” with the label “KASH PATEL FBI DIRECTOR” and an FBI shield. She explains: “Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: KA$H. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors. In some cases, the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature, with ‘#9’ there as well.”
In what sure reads like a journalist burying a subject with evidence, Fitzpatrick lists the places and occasions on which Patel has given out bottles of the whiskey and explains that he has transported the whiskey on a Department of Justice plane including to the Olympics in Milan, Italy. When a bottle went missing during a “training seminar” with Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes in Quantico, Virginia, Patel was angry enough that he threatened to make his staff take polygraphs and face prosecution.
Fitzpatrick notes that “[s]everal current and former FBI employees, including multiple senior leaders, told me that the director regularly handing out his own personally branded bourbon, including to civilians outside the bureau, was unheard-of.” They explain: “The FBI has traditionally had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job and for its misuse while off duty.”
“Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law-enforcement agency—it makes me frightened for the country,” George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, told Fitzpatrick.
Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews noted: “The journalist who is being sued by Kash Patel and reportedly being investigated by the FBI is out with a new story. Is there a Pulitzer for being a fearless badass? If so, she should win it.”
Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg reported today that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will ask the Supreme Court to let the Department of Justice (DOJ) intervene in the case of columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won an $83.3 million jury verdict against Trump for defamation after he lied that he had not sexually assaulted her. Although the Department of Justice is supposed to represent the American people, Trump’s appointees are using the department as Trump’s personal law firm.
If the Supreme Court allows the DOJ to step in, swapping the U.S. government for Trump in the case, the case would have to be dismissed because plaintiffs can’t sue the federal government for defamation. Judges from the appeals court have already refused to permit such a swap, but Blanche is giving it another shot.
Finally, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today for a closed-door interview about his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He was not under oath for his testimony, a requirement Democrats want for those testifying before the committee and committee chair James Comer (R-KY) does not.
Lutnick had said he had cut all ties with Epstein in 2005, only to have information come out that, in fact, the two maintained contact until at least 2018, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution for a minor.
Asked why he had taken his wife and their four young children to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2012, Lutnick told the committee that he didn’t remember and that it was “inexplicable.”
Indeed.
Today Tennessee state representative Justin Jones burned a Confederate battle flag in the rotunda of the Tennessee State Capitol in protest of the legislature’s redrawing of the state’s congressional district maps to erase the majority-Black 9th Congressional District. By cracking the city of Memphis into three pieces and joining them to white suburbs, the legislature turned all the state’s districts into Republican seats.
The actions of the Republicans in the Tennessee legislature are a direct response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which found that in creating a second congressional district to enable Black voters to elect a representative of their choice, as mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Louisiana legislature unconstitutionally took race into account when drawing the district lines. Although the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days to finalize an opinion, the Supreme Court made the decision effective immediately to allow Louisiana, where the primary election was already underway, to redraw its maps.
Immediately, Republican-dominated state governments rushed to redistrict their states to eliminate majority-Black districts, thus slashing through Democratic representation in their states. As Khaya Himmelman of Talking Points Memo explained today, Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, immediately suspended a congressional primary election that was already underway in order to give Republican legislators a chance to change the maps to give at least one of the state’s two Democratic seats to Republicans.
Although a federal court injunction forbids Alabama from redrawing its maps before the 2030 census, Republican governor Kay Ivey called for the state to do so, and Republican attorney general Steve Marshall has filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to let the state revert to a map struck down in 2023 because it was racially gerrymandered.
Trump began this gerrymandering arms race last year, pressuring Republican Texas legislators to redistrict the state to help Republicans win the midterms and protect him from investigations and possible impeachment. As of today, Patrick Marley of the Washington Post noted, Republican-dominated legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida have redistricted to pick up Republican seats, while Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama are engaged in that process. In retaliation, Democrats have temporarily redistricted the states of California and Virginia.
Tennessee is now expected to send only Republicans to Congress. Just minutes after the Republicans cut Memphis into thirds to get rid of the voices of Black Democrats, Republican state senator Brent Taylor announced he was running for the new seat “to stand with President Trump and cement Tennessee’s conservative legacy for generations to come.”
In Tennessee, Representative Steve Cohen, who currently represents Memphis and who is the only Democrat in the Tennessee congressional delegation, posted: “And just like that, the TN GOP voted to enforce a racial gerrymander of Memphis and strip our city of effective representation for decades. Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has already sued to block the redistricting.
Cohen is right that the Republicans recognize the only way for them to win going forward is to skew the maps so that Democrats can’t win, because right now, at least, the administration is a dumpster fire.
This morning, Warren P. Strobel, John Hudson, and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reported that the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a confidential analysis of conditions in Iran that suggests the administration has been badly off the mark in its public statements about the war.
Although Trump insists that the war had been an overwhelming military victory and that Iran is suffering so badly from the U.S. military blockade it will have to cave to U.S. demands quickly, the CIA report assesses that, in fact, Iran can survive for at least three or four more months before having to deal with more severe economic hardship. The report also assesses that Iran still has about 75% of the mobile missile launchers it had before the war and about 70% of its missiles.
Trump has told reporters that Iran’s economy is “crashing” and that Iran was down to 18% or 19% of its former missile stocks.
The content of the analysis is important, and so is the fact that CIA analysts are sharing it with reporters, suggesting they are disturbed by the administration’s current trajectory.
The administration insists the war has “terminated,” meaning that it does not have to honor the 1973 War Powers Act that requires the president to either withdraw troops or get congressional approval for continuing military actions. Today the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran firing on three U.S. destroyers and the U.S. firing on two ships entering the strait.
While the Iranian military called the strikes a violation of the ceasefire, a U.S. official told Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios that the exchange did not mean the war had resumed. This evening, the president told Rachel Scott of ABC News in a phone call that the ceasefire is still in effect and “the retaliatory strikes against Iranian targets are just a ‘love tap.’”
As the national average for a gallon of gas hit $4.56 today, the British energy giant Shell announced its profits were up 24% in the first three months of 2026. This amounted to almost $7 billion, more than twice what Shell made in the previous quarter.
In the Wall Street Journal, John Keilman reported today that Whirlpool, which makes refrigerators and washing machines, said the Iran war has caused a “recession-level industry decline” and that Americans should expect to pay higher prices for appliances going forward.
While experts say there were about 14 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2025, Trump border advisor Tom Homan told the Fox News Channel today that there are “well over 20 million” undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and “we’re going to do everything we can to arrest as many people as we can.”
But a new Pew poll shows that 52% of Americans already think Trump is cracking down too hard on undocumented immigrants. Politico adds that that number includes about a quarter of the people who voted for him in 2024. It also includes 67% of Latino voters, who had swung toward the Republicans in 2024.
Those poll numbers came before today’s story by Lisa Song, Maya Miller, Melissa Sanchez, and Mariam Elba of ProPublica identifying 79 children injured by tear gas or pepper spray during immigration encounters. While the reporters documented federal agents throwing tear gas and shooting pepper spray into crowds, the Department of Homeland Security said the fault for the children’s injuries lies with “agitators” and parents who put their children in harm’s way. “DHS does NOT target children,” it said.
The journalists assess that their count of 79 injured children is “likely still a vast undercount.”
Americans are paying dearly for the administration’s detention of immigrants. Just today, Patricia Mazzei and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times reported that the administration of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is talking with the Trump administration about closing the Everglades detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz. The center has been called unsanitary and inhumane since it opened about ten months ago, yet the cost of housing its 1,400 detainees is more than $1 million a day. DeSantis has asked for $608 million to run the camp for a year.
And then there are Trump’s increasingly high profile attacks on the pope. Pope Leo XIV is the first pope from the United States, and Trump seems determined to challenge him. The pope has spoken out against inhumane treatment of migrants and has called for peace through diplomacy, an observation Trump has taken as criticism of his war on Iran. Last week, Pope Leo appointed Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala to become the new bishop of West Virginia. Menjivar-Ayala was once an undocumented immigrant himself.
Trump posted last month that Pope Leo was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and he has continued his attacks, saying Monday: “The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics, and a lot of people, but I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
As Sarah Ewall-Wice reported in the Daily Beast, Pope Leo responded indirectly, noting that “[t]he mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace. If anyone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so truthfully.” He continued: “The Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons for years, so there is no doubt about that.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was at the Vatican today to ease tensions. The visit did not go particularly well. While Rubio gave Pope Leo a crystal football with the seal of the State Department, Pope Leo gave Rubio a pen made from the symbol of peace: olive wood. The Vatican’s statement did not suggest the men found much common ground, saying the meeting included “an exchange of views regarding the regional and international situation, with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as to the need to work tirelessly in support of peace.”
And finally, today the president himself is in the news…or, rather, out of it. Trump, both of whose hands have been covered in makeup lately, apparently to hide bruises, was supposed to have a meeting today with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil at 11:15 that was open to the press. The reporters waited three hours, but the event never happened. At 1:22, Trump’s social media account simply posted that “[t]he meeting went very well” and that representatives from the two countries would continue to meet.
In case you’re wondering what kind of a news day it was, President Donald J. Trump announced that the “Department of War” was releasing “Government files related to Alien and Extraterrestrial Life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and Unidentified Flying Objects.” The president posted: “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
It’s hard to see the release of this information at this moment as anything more than a distraction from the many stories in the news that show the administration in an unflattering light.
The biggest of those stories was not that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy took his family on a seven-month road trip to film a television series called The Great American Road Trip while he was supposed to be doing his job as secretary of transportation, or that he told Fox & Friends this morning that “it fits any budget to do a road trip” on a day when the national average for a gallon of gas was $4.54.
It was not the story, written by David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater and published in the New York Times, that Trump gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to reseal the joints, waterproof, and paint bright blue the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Such contracts are supposed to be reviewed and put out for bids, but Trump ignored the review process and used an exemption designed to prevent “serious injury, financial or other, to the government” to award a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which has never before won a federal contract but which had worked at one of his golf clubs, because he wanted the work done before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.
The contract is for more than triple the $1.8 million Trump promised, and officials say the repairs will last for seven to ten years, rather than the 50 years Trump claimed. Even that might be generous: One expert warned that the motorcade the president took onto the pool yesterday to review the project was heavy enough to have sprung the newly-repaired joints between the concrete slabs that make up the pool bed.
It was not the story by economist Justin Wolfers in the New York Times explaining that the Defense Department’s claim that the war on Iran has cost taxpayers $25 billion tallies only the price of the 2,000 spent Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, the airplanes lost, and the other matériel used. It does not measure the lives lost, the disruption in global oil markets, companies shut down (like Spirit Airlines), heightened geopolitical tensions, higher interest rates, lower stock prices, lower economic growth, Iran’s new ability to charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz to fund its nuclear ambitions, and the new need for countries to increase military spending. Wolfers notes that the Iraq war cost about $3 trillion and estimates the Iran war “will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and very possibly trillions.”
In any case, Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic reported today that Trump is “bored” with the war and wants to move on. Five of Trump’s aides and advisors told Lemire that Trump is convinced he can sell any agreement as a win, but so far Iran is unwilling to bail Trump out of the war he started.
It was not the story in the Washington Post by Brianna Sacks and Kevin Crowe reporting that under Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which helps people prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, has been denying aid to states that have Democratic-led governments while speeding it to Republican-dominated states.
It was not the story by Mark Olalde of ProPublica reporting that the Trump administration has granted a two-year pause on compliance with the Clean Air Act to more than 180 facilities, like coal power plants and medical sterilizers, that are polluting in 38 states and Puerto Rico. The administration sidelined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by using a presidential exemption that can be tapped “if the technology to implement the standard is not available and it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so.”
This authority has never been used before, and other utilities say they are using the pollution controls the administration claims don’t exist. Trump has also invoked the national security justification for the pauses, claiming that the U.S. is in a national energy emergency out of concern that emerging industries, like AI and the data centers on which AI relies will not be able to get the huge amounts of energy they need. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Olalde: “The President has provided regulatory relief from certain burdensome Clean Air Act requirements due to national security concerns that critical industries would no longer be able to operate under such stringent standards.”
Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Adam Schiff of California have introduced a bill requiring the president to get Congress’s approval for such pauses in the future. Whitehouse noted that Trump’s exemptions show a willingness to “abuse every loophole available to pollute for free, damn the health consequences for Americans.”
It was not the story that the Court of International Trade in New York found Trump’s 10% global tariffs, imposed after the Supreme Court declared his “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional, to be illegal. Trump is expected to appeal. Yesterday, he threatened to impose “much higher” tariffs on the European Union if it does not approve a trade agreement with the U.S. by July 4.
The biggest story of the day was not even the dedication of the 22-foot gold statue of Trump installed at his golf course in Miami. Marth McHardy of the Daily Beast reported that a group of crypto investors paid for the $450,000 statue as part of a promotional push for their new memecoin.
No, the biggest story of the day was that after voters in Virginia turned out in record numbers to approve a new temporary congressional district map on April 21 to garner four more seats for Democrats, the Virginia state supreme court struck down the referendum. Virginia voters had agreed to the change in order to counter gerrymandering imposed by Republican legislators in Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, and Florida that is expected to gain them an additional 14 seats across the country. (Following last week’s Louisiana v. Callais Supreme Court decision, Republicans are hoping to change the lines in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina to take four more.) So far, voters in California have agreed to a temporary redistricting of California to pick up four seats there.
The court split on partisan lines, saying the process of passing the referendum violated the state’s constitution. With Trump’s job approval ratings in the low 30s, anger at rising prices, frustration at the war on Iran, dislike of the administration’s attacks on immigrants, and growing outrage at the extraordinary corruption of the administration, Republicans were so worried they would lose control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections that they began the gerrymandering wars. Now those wars have turned in their favor.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump gloated on social media. “The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
In the end, the UFO files red herring from today’s news dump didn’t appear to work. Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called the UFO files a distraction from the Iran war and said: “Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday.” The chair of the Michigan Democratic Party also commented: “If any aliens had flown over Epstein Island, you could be damn sure Trump would keep their secret. Whether aliens are out there or not, I’m more concerned about the American people here on Earth struggling to pay for food [and] rent.”
And Democrats certainly didn’t miss the Virginia decision. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, posted: “Today, in an outrageous outburst of right-wing judicial activism following the Roberts Court’s Callais decision, the Virginia Supreme Court has struck down the will of the voters. But democracy won’t end with right-wingers in black robes. Now is the time to campaign like never before for strong democracy, freedom and progress. The American people will have the final say in November. Organize!”
I hope izzy pays a visit to the discussion because the hundred year old establishment parties took a real beating with regional and populist parties making big gains. I assume that the Greens will find common cause with remnants of Labor but I don't know if Starmer will retain his position.
Callais, combined with today’s court ruling in Virginia, have jolted Democrats and sent commentators into bemoaning an accelerating “race to the bottom” and, to paraphrase Jeff Zeleny on CNN this afternoon, the end to norms that have organized American politics and redistricting for generations.
I’d like to offer a significantly different view of the situation. What we have seen over recent months is that Democrats have largely abandoned the mode of the last decade plus in which with one hand they fought the partisan battles of the day and with the other assume the mantle of defending the political norms Republicans have already destroyed. In other words, it was the responsibility of Democrats both to be contestants and referees. Republicans violated norms; Democrats tried to uphold them. That of course meant no partisan battle was ever on equal terms and Republicans almost always won them.
Through the redistricting battle and then with a thunderclap after the Callais decision Democrats have most abandoned this stance. There’s no race to the bottom beyond the simple fact that Democratic restraint has been removed from the equation. And that is a good things. Democrats can release the enervating, demoralizing burden of being the custodians of an already-destroyed consensus.
As for the disappearance of norms for generation to come, that’s not true. Democrats allow too much by accepting that blasé condemnation of all sides in equal measure. Democrats have and continue to support a national anti-gerrymandering law, one that establishes a uniform set of standards which places the interests of voters first. This race to bottom ends the moment Republicans and Donald Trump agree to back the fair set of rules Democrats are already on record backing.
Again, the two sides are not on equal footing. One supports uniform and fair rules, putting the bacillus of partisan gerrymandering and neo-Jim Crow Republican politics back in its bottle. This is not some distant aspiration. It can be done by a vote of Congress and a presidential signature. The corrupt members of the Supreme Court may again abuse their power and claim that such a law is unconstitutional. That only demonstrates the need for reform of the Court. The aims of the two sides here are not equal. One embraces democratic practice, the other doesn’t. We don’t have to bemoan a “race to the bottom” in which there are no good guys and bad guys. The right path forward is a national, uniform set of standards putting voters of all stripes first. The only question is whether Republicans and their corrupt allies on the Supreme Court will let that happen.
It can be done by a vote of Congress and a presidential signature.
I wouldn't have visited it had you not posted a link here.
There were two very different celebrations in Russia and in Hungary yesterday.
Russia celebrated Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Most of the Allies honor Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, on May 8, the day in 1945 that jubilant celebrations broke out as news spread of the Nazis’ unconditional surrender in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945. The Russians celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 9, for by the time the Germans surrendered to the Soviets in Berlin, the time difference meant it was already May 9 in Moscow.
May 9 is an important national holiday in Russia, marked with parades and honoring of relatives who fought in the war. In 2005, when Russia was still embracing democratic nations, more than fifty world leaders attended the sixtieth anniversary of Victory Day, including President George W. Bush; the leaders of China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Denmark; the secretary-general of the United Nations; and the president of the European Commission.
But for the past several years, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has used the event to demonstrate the nation’s military strength and to rally supporters behind him and the war in Ukraine. He has showcased troops and military hardware in a grand parade in Moscow’s Red Square.
This year, as Zahra Ullah of CNN reported, Putin followed his usual pattern of equating the troops fighting in Ukraine with those who fought in World War II. As he has often framed the war as a struggle against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he claimed today’s soldiers for Russia are “standing up to an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc.”
But the similarities between past celebrations and yesterday’s ended there. This year, the parade was dramatically scaled back. The parade included four parade units, including some from North Korea, and there was no heavy military hardware. Instead, screens spread across Red Square showed pre-recorded videos of drones, air defense forces, and submarines that state media claimed were from the front lines.
Although foreign leaders have attended the event in the past, this year there were few. As Matthew Luxmoore noted in the Wall Street Journal, Russian allies Venezuela and Hungary have recently lost their pro-Russian leaders, and Russian ally Iran is at war with the U.S. China’s leader Xi Jinping attended last year but did not attend this year. Russian officials allowed few foreign reporters to cover the event and warned people there could be restrictions on texting and the internet “to ensure security during the festive events.”
Putin’s scaled-back celebration reflects fear of Ukrainian drone strikes, which are hitting deep inside Russia. It also reflects growing discontent over the war and its devastation of the economy, and anger at the increasing repression with which Putin is trying to control opposition.
As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted in McFaul’s World, Putin’s war on Ukraine has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany and has achieved none of the goals Putin set out for the conflict. He has not subjugated Ukraine and has not succeeded in regime change. He has not “demilitarized” Ukraine; indeed, Ukraine is more militarized than ever before and has become an important player in global weapons systems. And not only has Putin failed to stop NATO from expanding, but in response to his invasion of Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden have joined the defensive alliance.
Instead of achieving Putin’s goals, the war has killed or wounded more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers and eaten up the economy. As criticism of the regime has become more outspoken, the Kremlin has curbed access to the internet, not only exacerbating that criticism but also, as McFaul notes, making it harder for people to use mobile banking, order a taxi, or use other online services. Rumors are circulating that Putin is increasingly concerned for his own safety. Rather than walking to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to lay flowers as usual, yesterday he took an armored bus.
Russia had announced a ceasefire for Friday and Saturday, but when it unraveled, President Donald J. Trump announced that he had persuaded Russia and Ukraine to agree to a three-day ceasefire that would cover the Victory Day celebration and allow an exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each country. After the announcement of the ceasefire, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky trolled Putin with a formal presidential decree to “allow” a parade in Moscow. It said: “For the time of the parade…the territorial square of Red Square shall be excluded from the plan of application of Ukrainian weapons.”
By Sunday—after the parade—the ceasefire had already broken down.
Today McFaul noted: “Ukrainian warriors have stopped the invading Russian hordes. Putin is losing his war in Ukraine…. Putin would be wise to cut his losses.”
In Hungary, a different kind of celebration was underway as Péter Magyar took the oath of office as prime minister after winning a landslide victory over Putin ally Viktor Orbán.
In his 16 years of rule, Orbán rejected the liberal democracy his country used to enjoy, saying that its emphasis on multiculturalism weakened the national culture while its insistence on human equality undermined traditional society by recognizing that women and LGBTQ people have the same rights as straight white men. The age of liberal democracy was over, he said, and a new age had begun.
In place of equality, Orbán advocated what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” “Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal,” he said in July 2018; “it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues—say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.”
Orbán focused on LBGTQ rights as a danger to “Western civilization.” Arguing the need to protect children, his party has made it impossible for transgender people to change their gender identification on legal documents and made it illegal to share with minors any content that can be interpreted as promoting an LBGTQ lifestyle. After Orbán put allies in charge of Hungarian universities, his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. According to his chief of staff: “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women.”
The American right wing championed Orbán, who called for the establishment of a global right wing to continue to work together to destroy liberal democracy and establish Christian democracy. Before Hungary’s April election, Trump not only repeatedly endorsed Orbán but also promised “to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian people ever need it.” Vice President J.D. Vance actually traveled to Hungary to campaign for Orbán.
But the Hungarian people overwhelmingly rejected Orbán and his party, giving Magyar’s party more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. This will give it the power to overturn not only the laws Orbán and his party passed, but also the changes Orbán made to entrench himself and his party in power permanently. Magyar promised to root out the corruption that has made Orbán and his cronies rich, to restore the rule of law and freedom of speech, and to repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union, which Orbán had frayed almost to the breaking point with his loyalty to Vladimir Putin.
In his inauguration speech, Magyar vowed to “serve my country, not rule over it.” He noted that the corrupt members of the outgoing government “stole from the pockets of Hungarians” and left behind a huge budget deficit and a broken healthcare system. He vowed accountability for those who plundered the country and broke its laws, and promised to rebuild the nation’s shattered checks and balances. He urged Hungarians always to criticize their leaders and hold them accountable.
“We inherited a country where politics deliberately pitted Hungarians against each other,” he said, and he explained how Orbán mobilized supporters with hatred and fear, poisoning “the collective psyche of an entire nation.” “The Hungarian state must never again do this to its own citizens,” he said. He vowed to heal the country: “We will once again learn to think of ourselves as one nation,” he promised.
Then Magyar and members of his party walked out to the crowd outside the parliament on Lajos Kossuth Lajos Square. Magyar urged them to see themselves as one community. He assured them that the story of the day had not been written by politicians in backrooms, but by them. “It was all of you. You wrote it, through your work, your hope, your concern, and your determination. This is now your transition to democracy, this is your homeland, your National Assembly, and we thank you!”
After Magyar spoke, as Roma singer Ibolya Oláh, a lesbian, began performing her anthem “Magyarország,” the crowd crossed the reflecting pool in front of the parliament building to surge forward, taking back their public spaces and their parliament, illustrating their faith in a new era for their country.
Tariffs: illegal.
Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to get around SCOTUS ruling: illegal.
Demolishing the East Wing to put up a monstrous ballroom with no door: illegal.
Pretending slavery never existed: illegal.
Deporting people to countries NOT of origin: illegal.
Sending troops to blue states: illegal.
Sending the National Guard to Illinois: illegal.
Ordering schools to put an end to diversity and inclusion: illegal.
Retaliating against law firms that hurt Trump’s feelings: illegal.
Treating congressionally approved funding like a switch Trump can turn on and off: illegal.
Arresting and detaining lawfully admitted refugees minding their own business: illegal.
Going after Mark Kelly: illegal.
Preventing Congressional oversight: illegal.
Trying to interfere with New York City tolls: illegal.
Most ICE detention practices: illegal.
Most of Trump’s firings: illegal.
DOGE trying to get their claws in Department of Labor data: illegal.
DOGE attempted power grab of USIP: illegal.
DOGE getting their claws in the Social Security Administration’s data: illegal.
Making the IRS share confidential taxpayer info with ICE: illegal.
Siccing Kari Lake on Voice of America: illegal.
Virtually all of Trump’s vindictive prosecutions: thrown out: illegal.
Issuing subpoenas because Trump’s mad at Jerome Powell: illegal.
Replacing an illegally appointed lawyer with three more illegal lawyers: illegal.
Replacing real journos with Newsmax: illegal.
Pretty obvious who the real “illegal” is...
WARSAW, May 11 (Reuters) - Poland will seek answers about how a former minister wanted on abuse of power charges managed to travel from Hungary to the United States, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday, after Warsaw's hopes of bringing him to trial were thwarted.
Former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro and his deputy Marcin Romanowski were granted asylum in Hungary by Viktor Orban, but Warsaw had hoped the former prime minister's defeat by pro-EU rival Peter Magyar in an April election meant they would soon be brought back to Poland.
[...]
"We will ask both the United States and Hungary for the legal and factual basis on which Zbigniew Ziobro left Hungarian territory," Polish foreign ministry spokesperson Maciej Wewior told Reuters.
"And specifically, what document allowed him to cross the border and gave him the right to enter the United States... We hope that this situation will be resolved and that it will not affect the very good relations between the United States and Poland."
[...]
Ziobro told private Polish broadcaster TV Republika on Sunday that he was in the U.S., confirming earlier media reports. The station, which supports the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party under which Ziobro served as a minister, said he would work for them as a political commentator.
The story of the Trump Mobile phone seems a microcosm of the Trump administration.
As Judd Legum of Popular Information explains, on June 16, 2025, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric announced the launch of a new, gold plated, Trump smartphone, “proudly designed and built in the United States.” It would be available in August 2025 for $499. Its website urged customers to “pre-order” the phone by depositing $100 toward it. Don Jr. said the phone would be “American hardware, built in America, without the potential of…[a] backdoor into the hardware that some of our adversaries have installed in there.”
And yet a disclaimer on the website said the Trumps and the Trump Organization were involved only in the branding of the phone; they had nothing to do with the design, development, manufacture, distribution, or sales of the item. As Legum notes, the idea of a superior U.S.-made phone was always a fantasy, and within two weeks the phone’s description changed from “MADE IN THE USA” to “designed with American values in mind.”
The phone never shipped, and on April 6, Trump Mobile updated its terms to say the $100 deposit was not actually a deposit for a pre-order, but rather “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It went on to say the deposit “does not lock in pricing, promotions, service plans, taxes, fees, shipping costs, or other commercial terms” and that “[e]stimated ship dates, launch timelines, or anticipated production schedule are non-binding estimates only.”
A new phone has recently gotten clearance from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Trump Mobile executives say they are waiting for approval from T-Mobile, the company whose network Trump Mobile wants to use. Legum points out that T-Mobile relies on the federal government for approval for business activities, creating an enormous conflict of interest.
Donald Trump has always ridden to power by projecting an image of dominance. He could maintain that image thanks to the people who covered for him: his father, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and in his first presidential term—as Sidney Blumenthal reminded readers in The Guardian today—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who filtered the options Trump received; chief of staff General John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always stay in the country to stand in the way of Trump’s impulses; and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, who stopped Trump from signing disastrous executive orders, sometimes going so far as to steal them off his desk.
In Trump’s second term, though, those people who curbed his worst impulses have been replaced with yes-men, and there is no one to protect him from the fallout.
Over the weekend, Trump took to social media to complain bitterly about the demise of his tariffs, about Iran, and about political opponents; to boast about his changes to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and about the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts event he plans to host in front of the White House on his 80th birthday; and to try, once again, to project dominance.
Trump complained twice that in its decision declaring his “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional, the Supreme Court had not included a sentence saying, “Any money paid to the United States of America does not have to be paid back.” That sentence, he insisted, “would have saved America 159 billion Dollars!” He complained about his Supreme Court appointees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett and suggested he should “PACK THE COURT! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
He warned them to vote his way on the question of birthright citizenship because “A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America!”
On Saturday morning, the president’s social media account posted AI images of exploding Iranian drones beside an image of blue butterflies with the caption “Drones Dropping Like Butterflies.” Then it posted another AI image of a U.S. vessel shooting down drones with the caption “Bye Bye, Drones.” Then it showed a flotilla of ships with Iranian flags on the surface of the ocean under the caption “Obama/Biden” beside an image of those ships on the bottom of the ocean under the caption “Trump.” Then it showed an AI image of Trump on the bridge of a ship watching Iranian ships exploding. Then it showed another image of “Iran’s Navy” on the ocean floor.
The account posted a long screed about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement between Iran and the U.S., United Kingdom, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the European Union to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and this weekend Trump rehashed false right-wing talking points about the deal to claim that former president Barack Obama was “a weak and stupid American President” who worked for Iran.
Trump’s account posted an AI image of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gorging on junk food under the caption “JB is too busy to keep Chicago safe!” It posted two clips of former FBI director James Comey, whom the Department of Justice under Trump has criminally charged for posting a photograph of seashells spelling out “8647.” Trump called him “A Dirty Cop!!!” He went after California representative Ro Khanna and warned: “The Radical left Dumacrats must fail—our Country is at stake!”
Trump’s account posted two AI images of a UFC fight surrounded by a stadium-style audience in front of the White House. Then it posted five images of the Washington, D.C., reflecting pool colored electric blue, one of which claimed Trump had renovated it in a week for just $2 million. A number of posts championed his proposed ballroom on the site where he bulldozed the East Wing of the White House.
But by far the most frequent postings on the president’s social media account over the weekend were praise for Trump himself. In addition to posting “Excellent Poll Numbers. Thank you!” he reposted stories saying that he had delivered “remarkable leadership” and is “Master of the Deal,” that he is one of the top three presidents in U.S. history, or “WITHOUT A DOUBT THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN.” A number of posts called him “The Greatest of All Time.”
But just as with Trump Mobile, the clock is running out and the advertising isn’t working.
On May 7, Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark called Trump “an economic serial killer, whacking firms left and right.” She noted that Trump’s tariffs, along with deportations of farm workers and cancelling of foreign food aid programs, led farm bankruptcies to rise 46% in 2025 from the previous year, and now higher costs for diesel, fertilizer, and other products because of the Iran war are putting farmers under even more pressure.
Similarly, tariffs have cut into manufacturing jobs, and corporate bankruptcies last year were at their highest level in more than a decade. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is paying almost $2 billion to stop wind projects and has cancelled or stalled dozens of other renewable energy products. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to issue tariff refunds beginning on May 12, but the money will not go to consumers. It will go to the “trade community.”
Trump’s war on Iran, undertaken alongside Israel, has not delivered the fast regime change Trump promised, either. Instead, it has mired Trump in a war Iran appears to have little interest in permitting the U.S. to leave, at least not without confirming a new global order that benefits Iran.
In The Atlantic yesterday, neoconservative foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan ranked the Iran debacle as worse than Vietnam. There will be no going back to a world in which the Strait of Hormuz is open, he writes. Iran is now a key player in the region, China and Russia are strengthened, and the U.S. is “substantially diminished.” Anyone can see that “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power” drastically reduced American weapons stocks, opening the way for aggression from China or Russia, while “the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”
Last week, the U.S. proposed a one-page memorandum to establish a framework for later talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, offering to lift sanctions and release billions in Iranian funds in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians responded over the weekend, reiterating their determination to control the strait and calling for reparations for damages caused by the war, in addition to an end to the naval blockade and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it—TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!”
Today Trump told reporters the Iran proposal was a “piece of garbage” and warned that the ceasefire is on “massive life support where the doctor walks in and says ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.’” And yet Trump is relying on that ceasefire to justify his refusal to ask Congress for authority to continue his war on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, Trump had 60 days to get congressional approval after informing Congress of the attack, and that period ran out on May 1.
Gas prices have jumped more than 50% since the war began and now average more than $4.50 a gallon. Although Trump has downplayed concerns about higher prices, today Nancy Cordes of CBS News reported that he is planning to suspend the federal gas tax to bring down the cost of gasoline. But, Cordes notes, doing so would require Congress to agree and would cost the federal government about a half a billion dollars a week in revenue at a time when the national debt is skyrocketing. It crossed $39 trillion in March just five months after hitting $38 trillion and is on track to hit $40 trillion before the midterm elections.
On Saturday, Julian Borger reported in The Guardian that tensions between Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are high. Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas noted that Trump stopped mentioning Netanyahu by the end of March and left Israel out of the loop on ceasefire negotiations in April. Pinkas noted that if Trump lashes out at Netanyahu, he will look like he was manipulated into going to war, while Netanyahu has tied himself to Trump at a time when the prime minister must hold an election before October. “This affects Netanyahu politically and this affects Trump politically,” Pinkas told Borger. “In other words, they have screwed each other pretty badly.”
Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post noted last week that, apparently determined to convince Americans all is going well, Trump is putting words in our mouths. Around Washington, D.C., signs are appearing that show Trump in a hard hat near construction scaffolding and read: “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP.”
