Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Frank Bisignano, the chief executive officer of the I.R.S., signed Monday's “settlement agreement.”

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Since the early stages of President Donald Trump's Iran war, Fox News personalities and guests have parroted his administration's assertions that Iran's military has been severely decimated or destroyed. Yet on May 12, The New York Times reported that those assertions are “sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors” and that Iran has “restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz." Liberal Fox host Jessica Tarlov was met with interruptions and deflections on May 13 after citing both the Times' reporting and an earlier Atlantic piece discussing Vice President JD Vance's concern about dwindling U.S. missile stockpiles. Co-host Jesse Watters dismissed the reporting as "deep state leaks." Fox continues to paint a rosy picture of U.S. efforts against Iran more than two months after the initial attack: Since the early days of the war, Fox News has pushed the Trump administration line that it has destroyed Iran’s military.  ( 8 min )

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The president designed his settlement with the IRS to do something he could not otherwise accomplish—and to shield his actions from judicial review and congressional oversight. The post The Trump IRS Lawsuit Settlement Will Use Your Tax Dollars to Make January 6ers Rich appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 8 min )

The administration’s view is that the mere presence of students of color at elite schools is incontrovertible proof of discrimination against white people. The post Trump DOJ: Yale’s Medical School Has Way Too Many Black Students appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 6 min )

Confusion reigns ahead of Alabama’s post-gerrymander primary a.cta_button{-moz-box-sizing:content-box !important;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box !important;box-sizing:content-box !important;vertical-align:middle}.hs-breadcrumb-menu{list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-item{float:left;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-divider:before{content:'›';padding-left:10px}.hs-featured-image-link{border:0}.hs-featured-image{float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px;max-width:50%}@media (max-width: 568px){.hs-featured-image{float:none;margin:0;width:100%;max-width:100%}}.hs-screen-reader-text{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;width:1px} 96 …  ( 5 min )

96 *{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0} @media (max-width:670px){.row-content{width:100%!important}.stack .column{width:100%;display:block}.mobile_hide{min-height:0;max-height:0;max-width:0;display:none;overflow:hidden;font-size:0}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{display:table!important;max-height:none!important}.social_block .social-table{display:inline-block!important}} sup, sub { font-size: 100% !important; } sup { mso-text-raise:10% } sub { mso-text-raise:-10% } Join LDAD tomorrow for a discussion with UCLA Law Professor Scott Cummings and LDAD Executive Director Lauren Stiller Rikleen on what lessons American lawyers can learn from Hungary's experience of democratic resistance to autocracy. There is still time to register for tomorrow's webinar, a discussion with UCLA Law Professor Scott Cummings and LDAD Executive Director Lauren Stiller Rikleen on what lessons American lawyers can learn from Hungary's experience of democratic resistance to autocracy.    Webinar Details:  Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026   Time: 4:00 pm ET    Register here (there is no charge to attend): Webinar Registration   Thank you, Lawyers Defending American Democracy   Please follow, like, and share our posts on social media:   Donate to LDAD, a 501(c)(3) organization:  Online donations welcome. Checks may be sent to: Lawyers Defending American Democracy P.O. Box 1922 Framingham, MA 01701 United States     If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe. Kill the Newsletter! feed settings  ( 1 min )

The legacy media ignored this. Democracy Docket prepared for it. a.cta_button{-moz-box-sizing:content-box !important;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box !important;box-sizing:content-box !important;vertical-align:middle}.hs-breadcrumb-menu{list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-item{float:left;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-divider:before{content:'›';padding-left:10px}.hs-featured-image-link{border:0}.hs-featured-image{float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px;max-width:50%}@media (max-width: 568px){.hs-featured-image{float:none;margin:0;width:100%;max-width:100%}}.hs-screen-reader-text{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;width:1px} …  ( 5 min )

As anyone reading my blog knows, I’m a big fan of Dired. One of its killer features is the set of marking commands, which allow marking files based on their extensions, names (regex-based), contents (also regex-based). There is also a “universal marking command”, dired-mark-sexp, which allows the user to provide an Elisp expression serving as a predicate and marks all files satisfying that predicate. What’s even more, you can use several symbols in that predicate, like size or name (head to the docs to learn more). What I found lacking is an easy (that is, not requiring me to type a convoluted expression each time) way to mark “recently modified” files.  ( 3 min )

oantolin's tip about using Eww. It's always interesting to see what people can do when they apply Emacs's power and composability to all sorts of things, including evaluating code snippets from webpages. Outside Emacs, there was a lively conversation on HN about personal software. Enjoy! Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed May 20 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat May 23 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs Berlin: Emacs-Ber…  ( 3 min )

Of all the built-in editing commands in Emacs, the commands that work with rectangles delight me the most. Once understood, they can save effort in many situations. That said, the biggest downside to rectangles is the amount of setup it takes to use them. As with many things Emacs, by default you have to memorize a bunch of keybindings to get anything done with them. In Casual, I addressed the above downside by providing a Transient menu for rectangle commands. Since building that, I've come to use rectangle commands routinely. But even then, there is ceremony to set up a rectangle selection. With my recent work on mouse-driven interactions in Anju, I’ve learned that rectangle selection is trivial via C-M- dragging. Once selected, having a menu of rectangle commands makes working with them even easier. So I made one for the latest v1.4.0 update for Anju, now on MELPA. The “Rectangle” sub-menu is available via the main menu bar “Edit” menu (as shown in the screenshot above) or via context menu. Using rectangle commands in conjunction with the align-regexp (“Edit › Align Regexp…”) and whitespace-cleanup (“Edit › Delete › Whitespace Cleanup”) can make short work of editing text that is laid out in columns. Anju makes both of these commands available from the main menu. Side note: on using C-M-, sometimes Emacs will only read M- and do a secondary selection, leaving an unwanted highlight. Enter M- to dismiss the highlight. If you find Anju to be useful, please support its development by buying me a coffee. I’ve got a number of new features planned for it.  ( 1 min )

C-x v bindings. I never really felt the need for Magit, honestly. VC-mode just works, right? Until it does not. Or rather, until you need something that is not quite available. As vc-mode is source code control agnostic then there were always going to be some limitations and my git usage is now starting to become a little more advanced. Recently I hit a divergent branch situation, remote had moved on, I had local commits, and git refused to push, I reached for C-x v m (vc-merge) to pull in the upstream changes, and that worked fine as a merge. But what if I wanted a rebase instead? Clean linear history, no merge commits? Turns out there is no vc-rebase at all in Emacs! You can use vc-pull and it will rebase if pull.rebase is set in your git config (I think, although I …  ( 2 min )

The Oklahoma City Thunder are the defending champions, with a talented roster that should set them up for years of success, so it makes sense that they'd have their share of detractors. A team at the top always does. There are other reasons why a neutral observer might not root for them: the origins of how OKC got an NBA team, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's reliance on drawing fouls, that "What a Pro Wants" commercial. That's just sports writ large: You can accept that people will hate your team for some rational or irrational reason, or you can try to argue with all of them and achieve the same level of success as trying to fight the ocean. If you pick the latter option, at least try to make sure your argument doesn't sound insane. According to Eitan Reshef's bio, he's a native Oklahoman now based in Chicago, and works in digital commerce. He's not a regular columnist for the Oklahoman. While Reshef's article appeared under the publication's URL, it's a guest column for the opinion section and carries the following disclaimer at the top: "This piece expresses the views of its author(s), separate from those of this publication." Actually, it was a guest column; the article was deleted sometime Monday afternoon, hours after it was published. You might understand why when you see the headline: "Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated." Here's the opening paragraph:  ( 21 min )

Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano fought for 17 seconds longer than they should have over the weekend. Their brief Saturday encounter in a Southern California hexagon, a comeback for both after ridiculously long layoffs yet still promoted by Jake Paul’s MVP outfit as the biggest women’s MMA fight in history, ended as soon as Rousey set Carano up for an arm bar, the ex-judoka’s trademark finishing move from back when she was relevant. Carano, who gave up the cage for acting and right-wing mouthpiecing, tapped quicker than Fred Astaire.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg4OWWAEoCY  ( 19 min )

There are many ways that Donald Trump is currently making your life worse, not to mention generally waging war on the concept of "the future": accelerating the death of the biosphere, doing his best to eliminate the federal government and university as sites of middle-class employment, driving up the price of energy now and food in the immediate future thanks to the idiotic war with Iran he's losing alongside his buddy Benjamin Netanyahu (who, if you are Palestinian, Lebanese, or Iranian, is trying to kill your family with Trump's help), and making it impossible for you to vote against any of this. He is also straight-up stealing your money to redirect it to the freaks and sex offenders who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. In January, Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organ…  ( 18 min )

For tennis fans who do not know how to be normal (i.e. me), rooting for Jannik Sinner is as comforting as it can get. There is an aspirational calmness in Sinner's rituals—not elaborate enough to be Nadal-like, but consistent enough to be a little Nadal-lite—that, though it can't eliminate fan neuroses, at least soothes them. He goes to the towel after making a poor error. One can count as he bounces the ball seven times on first serve (four bounces, a glance up at the opponent, then three more) and five times on second serve (three, glance, two). Also, at some point this year, he forgot how to lose. Sinner beat Casper Ruud 6-4, 6-4 at the Rome Open on Sunday. It was his first-ever victory at his home tournament, following a loss to Alcaraz in the final last year. Sinner became the first I…  ( 29 min )

The Washington Nationals won their Rivalry Weekend series against the Baltimore Orioles. This was their second consecutive series win; they have won eight of their last 13 games overall. The plucky Nats today have the top performing offense in the majors by runs scored, and that is despite having played the second-strongest schedule to date among all MLB teams. Where's the hoopla? Clearly they don't want you to know about the surging Nats. What they do want you to know about—and by "they" I am referring to several of the very worst people to have ever been born, grown up and positioned in the upper-deck seats of Nationals Park for Sunday's series finale—is white genocide. Three MAGA freaks unfurled a large banner in the stands above the first base line during the home team's regular "Salute to Service" segment, seeking to direct attention to the website of a group called Crusader Active Club, with the URL of whitereplacement.org. Allow me to save you the click: The group's website claims that they are standing up "against the 3rd world invasion" and boasts that Crusader Active Club is the No. 1 "Christian/Conservative activist app in the world." There's a ridiculous doomsday tracker on the website's home page, which when I checked it this morning showed that there were more than "90,000,000 million" total foreign-born immigrants, labeled "invaders," in America today.  ( 19 min )

Solve our Monday crossword, bit by bit. This week's puzzle was constructed by Paul Leistra and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Paul is from Hamilton, Ontario where he works as an instructional designer. Paul first started constructing crosswords for his four children to solve, particularly on long road trips. Replacing "Are we there yet?" with "Any know what 18-Across is?" was a delight. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE. The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sample the goods with a two-month free trial: "With an AVCX subscription, you get access to weekly themed and themeless crosswords, minis, cryptics, and trivia, by email or in your favorite app. We have no corporate overlord, and we publish top-flight stuff only. We also pay our people fairly, always. Check us out."  ( 14 min )

Tom Dundon readily admits his parsimony. I guess no one ever got turbo-rich by being profligate, but few billionaires brag so much about how they pick up pennies from the ground or turn off unused room lights. He claims he does not display this behavior when it comes to putting the sports teams he owns in position to win. This is a questionable assertion. As the owner of the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, his philosophies manifested in offering league-low salaries for GM and head coach. That coach, Rod Brind’Amour, was initially making less than many assistant coaches around the league. Many successes and one extension later, Brind’Amour got a raise that kept him in the bottom half-dozen coach salaries. Now on his second extension and in his eighth straight postseason, he's somewhere in the middle of the pack, salarywise—all he had to do was put together the league's most consistently successful team for Dundon to pay him like a normal coach. The Hurricanes' victories are entirely due to their canny front office and uniquely coached systems, and one suspects that the lesson Dundon has taken from striking gold while mining for tin is that he is a genius, and that everyone else is overpaying for talent. When Dundon finalized his purchase of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers earlier this spring, he almost immediately started putting the screws to the budget. He is reportedly offering well below market rate for a head coach. Interim coach Tiago Splitter, who did a fab job since taking over unexpectedly in October, is reportedly getting lowballed already. Jared Dudley, architect of the Nuggets' disastrous defense, is reportedly a candidate, presumably because he'd come cheap; he surely won't have other suitors.  ( 23 min )

After federal law enforcement officers shot and killed two people in Minnesota earlier this year, Maryland Governor Wes Moore got busy talking and typing. Moore went on Fox News to blast the DHS forces as “untrained, unaccountable, and unqualified—and, by the way, armed.” He brought the same wording and vitriol to MS NOW. He posted…  ( 40 min )

There was a moment early in the first quarter of Sunday's Game 7 between the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers when James Harden had the ball and was isolated against Tobias Harris. "James Harden, acquired from the Clippers, this was the big move that the Cavaliers made for moments like this," said play-by-play man Ian Eagle moments before Harden drove to the lane and kicked a grenade out to Evan Mobley in the corner, who missed a shot as the clock expired. I smiled to myself when this happened, and did so again a few possessions later when Harden committed the first of his two shot-clock violations. I was thinking about the blog you are reading right now, and how the story of this game, as it has been so many times before, would be about Harden melting down in the playoffs. Well, I was partially right. Harden did indeed submit what might have been his worst performance yet in a big playoff game—nine points on 2-10 shooting, 0-6 from three—but the Pistons unveiled a surefire method for squandering a vintage "Big Game" James performance: simply have your entire team play like James Harden did. The Pistons got absolutely rocked, 125-94, in what might have been the most dispiriting loss in a postseason that has been full of them. Game 7s rarely live up to expectations, but this one fell especially short. A nervy, low-scoring contest full of exhausted players can still be fun if the score remains close, and even a blowout can be neat if it happens in front of a raucous home crowd or is the result of the superior team accruing tactical advantages over the course of the series. This was the worst kind of blowout, though: a wire-to-wire domination in front of a crestfallen home crowd that offers little explanation aside from "The Pistons played like shit."  ( 21 min )

The Royals announced that left-hander Kris Bubic has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to left elbow soreness. Right-hander Eli Morgan has been recalled in a corresponding active roster move. More to come.  ( 6 min )

I-70 Let Down @media (max-width: 1024px) { .typography .pullquote-align-left, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-left, .typography .pullquote-align-right, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-right, .typography .pullquote-align-wide, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-wide, .typography .pullquote-align-center, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-center { float: none; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; max-width: 100%; } } @media all and (-ms-high-contrast: none), (-ms-high-contrast: active) { .typography .markup table.image-wrapper img, .typography.editor .markup table.image-wrapper img, .typography .markup table.kindle-wrapper img, .typography.editor .markup table.kindle-wrapper img { max-width: 550px; } } @media (min-width: 1024px) { .typograp…  ( 11 min )

The Other World Cup You Need To Know About96 :root { color-scheme: light; supported-color-schemes: light; } body { margin: 0; padding: 0; min-width: 100%!important; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-transform: scale(1) !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; } .body { word-wrap: normal; word-spacing:normal; } table.mso { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0; table-layout: fixed; } img { border: 0; outline: none; } table { mso-table-lspace: 0px; mso-table-rspace: 0px; } td, a, span { mso-line-height-rule: exactly; } #root [x-apple-data-detectors=true], a[x-apple-data-detectors=true], #MessageViewBody a { color: inherit !important; text-decoration: inherit !important; font-size: in…  ( 8 min )

The resistance holds.

BREAKING … In a new filing this morning, President Trump attempted an end run around a federal judge by purporting...  ( 12 min )

March 3, 2026, 6:02 a.m. ET  ( 9 min )

Everyone’s laughing at my president, Donald J. Trump, because he cast a mail-in ballot for a March 24 special election in Florida. They think it’s funny that the GOP candidate he endorsed, in a district that contains the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, lost. They find it hilarious that Trump, who has bravely and boldly and incessantly criticized mail-in voting and suggesting it was “Rigged,” just went ahead and voted that way anyway, even though the polls were open when he was in Florida. Well, hah-hah-hah, you chuckling losers. Very funny. Once again, you’ve proved your own ignorance. Trump used mail-in voting to PROVE that mail-in voting is fraudulent! Is Trump pushing the SAVE Act, which would make it much harder to vote by mail, like a man facing an existential crisis? Yes. Did he say …  ( 13 min )

I’m proud of President Donald Trump and his loyal Republican lawmakers. After years of pretending, it seems they’ve finally grown confident enough to flatly admit they don’t give a rip about regular Americans. This is real progress! Asked May 14 about how gas prices have soared since Trump dragged America into war with Iran, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio channeled his inner Frank Sinatra and said, “that’s life.” Trump admits to not caring about anyone's financial situation That came on the heels of the president himself saying that when it comes to Iran, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.” There it is. It’s the thing many Americans have known for so long, deep in their guts, but haven’t heard the man himself say out loud. Trump doesn’t think ab…  ( 15 min )

Federal immigration agents, hot off their success at being widely despised on the streets of American cities, will soon be loitering around airport security lines to lend a not-helping hand.  This is great news if you’re a fan of chaos. It’s less-great news if you’re a fan of going to the airport and getting somewhere in a safe and timely fashion without being kidnapped and wrongly deported to an El Salvadoran prison. President Donald Trump announced this extremely not-wise plan on March 22. That same day, White House border czar Tom Homan went on CNN and said, “I'm currently working on the plan. … We’ll put together a plan today and we’ll execute it tomorrow.” Wow, one whole day to plan the movement of immigration agents not trained in airport security to hundreds of airports across the c…  ( 16 min )

President Donald Trump has talked endlessly and inaccurately about how his predecessor’s economy was a “disaster” and a “catastrophe.” He even once said, “You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our nation in just a few short years. Not even close.” Well, Mr. President, I have some bad news. You’ve bungled your second term so thoroughly that voters are wishing they could return to the halcyon days of “Sleepy Joe” Biden.   A new Harvard CAPS/Harris survey found that more than half of U.S. voters think the economy is worse under Trump than it was under Biden. And 62% blame the current state of the economy on Trump rather than Biden. To adopt a bit of Trump’s typical patter: “They’re beg…  ( 14 min )

Republicans have made it abundantly clear, from behind the presidential seal and in the halls of Congress and on all manner of news networks, that the extremists in America are liberals like me. We are, in the oft-repeated words of President Donald Trump, “radical left lunatics.” We are agitators. Insurrectionists. Thugs. Our ideas are extreme, always. “Radical left climate extremism.” “Extreme gender ideology.” “WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology.” Really, MAGA Republicans? You think liberals are the extremists? To all of that, I say: Seriously? You all kneel at the altar of a narcissistic conman who eviscerates every democratic norm he comes across and slaps his name on things like a dollar-store Mussolini. And you want to gaslight people into thinking liberals are the extremis…  ( 16 min )

If California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal is to become liberal America’s least likable Democrat, he’s doing a bang-up job.  On March 25, responding to some babbling social media post by MAGA influencer Benny Johnson, Newsom’s press office wrote: “We got a call from Grindr after this and said your team was their biggest users. Congrats!” Grindr is an LGBTQ+ dating app. So the joke is that Johnson and his right-wing team are gay! And being gay is embarrassing! What a sick burn here in the year 2026! On behalf of decent people everywhere, allow me to say to Newsom and his team: Get lost. Keep your low-brow, high-school-bigot nonsense to yourselves and stop trying to pretend there’s some mythical “middle” in American politics that wants a Democrat unafraid to make homophobic jokes.  Americans are…  ( 15 min )

A time of war is a time of sacrifice, friends. So I’m sorry to report that the war we already decisively won against Iran, the country whose military we 100% obliterated, is going to cost an additional $200 billion, presumably to ensure extra decisive winning and a side of further obliteration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said March 19 the new load of cash ‒ which is almost enough to fill your tank at current gas prices ‒ is necessary because: “It takes money to kill bad guys.” Who am I to question a former Fox News host who routinely uses the words “lethality,” “kinetic” and “warfighter”? All must sacrifice during war, so Trump will hand over his ballroom money As Republicans have told the American people repeatedly since the Iran war began, for no apparent reason, we must all sacrifi…  ( 14 min )

Everyone’s laughing at my president, Donald J. Trump, because he cast a mail-in ballot for a March 24 special election in Florida. They think it’s funny that the GOP candidate he endorsed, in a district that contains the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, lost. They find it hilarious that Trump, who has bravely and boldly and incessantly criticized mail-in voting and suggesting it was “Rigged,” just went ahead and voted that way anyway, even though the polls were open when he was in Florida. Well, hah-hah-hah, you chuckling losers. Very funny. Once again, you’ve proved your own ignorance. Trump used mail-in voting to PROVE that mail-in voting is fraudulent! Is Trump pushing the SAVE Act, which would make it much harder to vote by mail, like a man facing an existential crisis? Yes. Did he say …  ( 11 min )

Oh, they laughed when I lined the backyard with kiddie pools and filled each one with gasoline and covered them all with evaporation lids. And they mocked me when I built an above-ground structure to house even more kiddie pools filled with gasoline. “What the heck is Huppke thinking?” they said. “Didn’t he hear President Donald Trumpbragging about gas being less than $2 per gallon back in February?” Oh, I heard it, all right. In fact, I voted for Trump because I believed he would bring gas prices down. But, because I’m smart and have studied “The Art of the Deal,” I knew the president would first bring prices down, then start an unprovoked war with Iran in an effort to patriotically distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files, sending gas prices soaring. The gas I hoarded in my backyard will …  ( 15 min )

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in a space I didn’t know existed. He’s turning out to not be unhinged enough to please the Make America Healthy Again crowd he nurtured with years of anti-vaccine nonsense and crackpot health theories. But at the same time, he’s acting too loony for the always-whackadoodle Trump administration. What’s a longtime conspiracy theorist who guzzles raw milk and swims in sewage supposed to do?  Kennedy is stuck between an army of MAHA loyalists and wellness influencers who specialize in mistakenly thinking they’re smarter than all of science and a president who very mistakenly thinks he’s smarter than everyone. An explosion of measles made Trump and Co. rethink RFK Jr.'s high profile The Wall Street Journal recently reported: “Aides c…  ( 15 min )

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but President Donald Trump, the guy who catapulted America into a war of choice with Iran, doesn't seem like he’s doing well in the think-y/speak-y cognitive department.  In just the past few days, the leader of our new mission-less war has: boasted of a conversation with a former president that doesn’t seem to have happened; forgotten the gender of two world leaders, including one he helped put in place; and forgotten the “drill, baby, drill” line he has used endlessly, instead slurring out a bizarre three-word motto used by a New York City energy company in the 1950s. During a March 16 news conference, Trump talked about whether other countries will provide help to secure the Strait of Hormuz, saying that “we want them to come and help us with the strait,” a…  ( 15 min )

Like most Americans who express themselves primarily through carefully arranged seashells, I was shocked and frightened to learn the Trump administration has indicted former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post showing the numbers “86 47” written in our favorite medium. Throughout my life, when spoken words have failed me, I’ve turned to seashells. I gather them from whichever beach is nearby, then use them to write words, generally on the part of the beach just out of reach of the incoming waves, allowing me to capture a bit of water in the photo I’ll inevitably post on social media. “I’m Sorry,” I wrote once when I was feeling sorry, using scallop shells and shards of broken conchs. “Spin Doctors Rule,” I wrote on a South Florida beach in the late 1980s when I thought the band…  ( 14 min )

You know, now that I can’t afford hamburger meat or gasoline and America is stuck in another war in the Middle East, I’m starting to think putting some of the worst people in politics in charge of the country may have been a mistake. I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Granted, Donald Trump had previously proved himself incompetent and tried to overturn a free-and-fair election, but I thought, “Maybe giving a guy this corrupt and unqualified a second chance at being leader of the free world is just what America needs to shake things up.” And then when Trump started his second term by appointing a Cabinet that was a “who’s who” of “who’s nuts,” I rolled with it. Sure, the president selected a wildly incompetent Fox News host like Pete Hegseth to lead the military, but I thought,…  ( 15 min )

For every decision President Donald Trump makes, some nearby patsy invariably gets blamed when that decision goes south. Trump throws people under the bus so often that there’s not a single bloodless bus undercarriage left in Washington, DC. Knowing that, I think Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host cosplaying as a U.S. Defense secretary, might want to don his nicest bus-exhaust-pipe-viewing suit and prepare to get tossed. On March 23, Trump was speaking about the Iran war – the one he says is going great even though it’s not going great – and he referenced Hegseth, slyly detailing a new version of how the whole thing started: “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”  I’ll pause here so you can have…  ( 13 min )

My fellow Americans, our nation is at war, and so it is vital that we set aside our political differences and patriotically rally around our president’s ballroom. President Donald Trump did not demolish the East Wing of the White House for nothing, and if we allow our war with Iran to draw attention away from the president’s planned $400 million ballroom, even for a moment, the enemy wins. On March 29, the president spoke briefly about the Iran war aboard Air Force One before pivoting to the more important subject: ballroom. “I'm so busy that I don't have time to do this,” he said, speaking at length and showing reporters a slew of large ballroom illustrations printed on poster boards. “But I'm fighting wars and other things. But this is very important, because this is going to be with us …  ( 16 min )

As Donald Trump behaves more and more like a mad king than a president – forcing America into an already disastrous war with Iran without congressional approval, targeting political enemies, babbling about building ballrooms and arches – the third round of aptly named "No Kings" protests arrives to highlight just how much our president is disliked. Spoiler alert: It’s a lot. Millions are expected to turn out on March 28 to more than 3,000 planned No Kings events nationwide, filling the streets of big cities and the parks and sidewalks of small towns. And they will be angry with Trump’s version of America, one that is unrecognizable, unpopular and crumbling. War, skyrocketing gas and food prices, now airport chaos. Way to go, Trump! We are at war with Iran for no clear reason. Gas prices h…  ( 14 min )

It was a whirlwind weekend of failure for the Trump administration, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from having a great time at our expense. On April 11, while Vice President JD Vance used his sparkling personality and boundless likability to fail at reaching a peace deal with Iran, the president was at a UFC fight in Miami with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which makes perfect sense if you don’t care about anything. On April 12, while the endorsements of Trump and Vance failed to help right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán win in the country’s general election, Trump was golfing in Florida, in between threats to use the U.S. Navy to block off the Strait of Hormuz, which, if you’re keeping score, has already been blocked by Iran. Delightful! Life is fun when you ne…  ( 14 min )

I don’t mean to sound controversial, but a president shouldn’t be able to walk away from threatening to wipe out an entire civilization ‒ even setting a deadline, as if Armageddon is a bloody reality show ‒ and then carry on like he’s a normal president. Even if Republicans want you to think it's normal. In the sweep of less than 24 hours on April 7, Donald Trump went from threatening genocide to agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, a ceasefire that appears to give the Middle East nation a lot in return for nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m damn glad he stepped away from mass murder. But let’s be honest: America can’t continue with this kind of “Look at me, I’m a crazy former reality show star, tune in to see what I’ll do next?!?” insanity. The world just spent an entire day not know…  ( 12 min )

As attorney general, Pam Bondi lied for President Donald Trump. She hurled insults at Democrats for him. She tried to shield him from the Jeffrey Epstein files. She groveled and doused him with praise in Cabinet meetings. But in the end, doing everything the president wanted, selling her soul and whatever shards of dignity she had left, just wasn’t enough. Trump fired Bondi on April 2, making her the second female Cabinet member Trump has dispatched as his presidency spirals. The first was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whom Trump canned and then named “a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” which I’m still not convinced is a real thing. I assume Bondi will now become assistant to the regional special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. Or maybe she and Noem can start…  ( 13 min )

I don’t mean to sound controversial, but a president shouldn’t be able to walk away from threatening to wipe out an entire civilization ‒ even setting a deadline, as if Armageddon is a bloody reality show ‒ and then carry on like he’s a normal president. Even if Republicans want you to think it's normal. In the sweep of less than 24 hours on April 7, Donald Trump went from threatening genocide to agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, a ceasefire that appears to give the Middle East nation a lot in return for nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m damn glad he stepped away from mass murder. But let’s be honest: America can’t continue with this kind of “Look at me, I’m a crazy former reality show star, tune in to see what I’ll do next?!?” insanity. The world just spent an entire day not know…  ( 14 min )

There has always been one thing, and one thing only, that President Donald Trump is good at: lying. He has conned and audaciously dissembled his way into a fortune and into two terms as president, always leaving chaos in his wake. Well, it appears the tornadic chaos of the moment – war with Iran, high gas and food prices, a president with a Caesar complex – has finally overwhelmed Trump’s lies, rendering him impotent against collapsing poll numbers and setting the Republican Party up for disaster in the coming midterm elections. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released April 21 showed only 30% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, something that was once his strong suit. That’s down from only 38% approving in March. In the same po…  ( 15 min )

If there’s one thing I’m sick of, it’s liberals and their radical views on how math works. For ages, President Donald Trump has been heroically claiming he cut prescription drug costs by, as he said during a Cabinet meeting in December, “500, 600, 700, 800, 900 percent depending on the drug.” He said last August there has been a “1,000 percent decrease” in drug costs. And in September he said: “I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000 percent, by 900, 600, 500, 1,200. We're going to be reducing drug prices at levels never seen.” Why do liberals refuse to accept Trump Math, as RFK Jr. explained Left-wing knowledge nerds keep claiming those levels will never be seen because they constitute numerical gibberish. They whine that you “can’t” reduce the cost of something more than 100%. At …  ( 15 min )

Once again, President Donald Trump is right. MY PRESIDENT wrote in a long and totally sane social media post that Pope Leo XIV is “Weak on Crime” and “Weak on Nuclear Weapons.” That truth bomb riled up a bunch of radical leftists and people who’ve “read the Bible” and such, leading many to say it’s a bad look for the president of the United States to insult the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics. Well, let me ask you this, libs: Has the so-called pope made a single arrest since he became the Vicar of Christ in 2025? The answer is no. He has spent his time spreading a message of peace and love, encouraging people “to promote a culture of peace, helping those around us to overcome divisions and hostility and to build communion between individuals, peoples and religio…  ( 14 min )

As NASA’s Artemis II mission continues and the four astronauts in the Orion capsule prepare to leave Earth’s orbit, one of my numerous cislunar sources asked that I relay the following note from the moon, our planet’s only natural satellite. Dear people of Earth: Hey there. It’s me, your moon. Hope you all are doing well and not getting too dizzy! (That’s a planetary rotation joke. Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve communicated with anyone.) I can’t help but notice you’ve launched one of those tin-can-looking thingies into your orbit again. That’s cool. Yeah. Definitely cool. Anyhoo, I get the sense you all might be aiming that thing in my direction. In fact, I noticed a little write-up on the whole Artemis II mission that says you’re planning to whizz by my dark side and snap some pictu…  ( 12 min )

Is it just me, or does it seem like Pope Leo XIV won’t stop talking about religion? He’s all “the Gospel says this” and “Jesus taught us that” – dude, we get it, you’re head of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. But does that really make you an expert? As our Catholic Vice President JD Vance, who has a book coming out on his conversion to Catholicism, said, “I think it's very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” Exactly. Vance has been a Catholic since 2019, the year Lil Nas X’s "Old Town Road" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, so I’d take his warning seriously, Pope. He’s seven years deep into the Catholic faith – you don’t wanna mess with him. He’s part of the new Catholicism, the one that’s afraid to say “transubstantiation” beca…  ( 15 min )

Melania Trump, fresh off new polling that shows she’s America’s least-popular first lady, has come out of nowhere and positioned herself to be President Donald Trump’s least-popular wife. With no advance notice or even context, the usually invisible first lady materialized on April 9 and gave a statement at the White House, distancing herself from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has plagued the Trump administration. You remember the Epstein files, right? They were the subject of all the “notorious child sex trafficking” headlines President Trump tried to bomb out of existence by starting a war with Iran. Trump pushed Epstein files into a closet. Melania brought them back. If I’m being honest, the war gambit kind of worked. News about the Epstein files and Trump’s connection therein had l…  ( 15 min )

I’ve been struggling to understand the Republican Party for quite a while, but watching conservative lawmakers trip over themselves to say President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom is the most important issue facing America? Well, it’s got me thinking the cheese has fully slid off their crackers. The pro-ballroom fervor erupted after an armed man tried to get into the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at a Washington, DC, Hilton, where Trump and most of his Cabinet were glad-handing with the journalists they despise. The man, accused of targeting Trump and other administration officials, was stopped by security, thankfully, and arrested. One might think the reaction to this disturbing event would be to figure out how the person obtained guns and got that close to a sitting…  ( 14 min )

It’s a proud day for American toughness! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has officially done away with the U.S. military's WOKE flu vaccine mandate, and I applaud that decision from the bed I currently can’t get out of due to a high fever. TRUE warfighters know their lethality is only enhanced by bacterial pneumonia, and soft and so-called proven public health tools like vaccines are for weenies. Simply put, the libs will never understand that a fever is just God warming your body for the battle ahead. On April 21, in a video posted on social media, Hegseth said: “We're seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capabilities. In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it.” Hegseth says flu vaccine manda…  ( 15 min )

I was born and raised in Florida, home to the world’s busiest cruise-ship ports. While I abide by most of the rules native Floridians must follow – I know the complete Jimmy Buffett discography, I’ve been to Disney World enough times to hate it, I’ve been uncomfortably close to an alligator – I have never understood cruises. I was reminded of this for the one millionth time while reading about three recent deaths suspected to be from hantavirus, a virus carried by rodents, aboard a cruise ship sailing the Atlantic Ocean. Others onboard have gotten sick, and as of May 4, the ship is anchored near the West African nation of Cape Verde with about 150 passengers still on board. Call me a cruise coward, but that does not sound like a fun vacation. But maybe I'm wrong. This is your opportunity t…  ( 14 min )

By proudly announcing “a whole civilization will die tonight,” President Donald Trump appears to have moved on from his dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize and embraced historical infamy. On the morning of April 7, the actual president of the United States of America directed these words to the people of Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Those are the words of a tyrant. They are the words of a madman promising genocide. They are the words of a sick human being unworthy of the position he holds. Trump's civilization-threatening words are shocking, even for him No matter how dulled our senses have become to Trump’s unhinged behavior, those words sent shockwaves across the country and the world. Democra…  ( 13 min )

SEATTLE — You may not have heard it yet, but America’s legal community recently let out a roar here in the Emerald City, a collective call from retired federal judges and a bipartisan array of academics and legal organizations: The rule of law matters, and it will be protected. The two-day symposium, “Neither Sword Nor Purse,” held at the University of Washington School of Law, was necessary because of one person: President Donald J. Trump. His threats against the judiciary and the ease with which he and his administration ignore or boastfully refuse to follow the law are without precedent. He is, quite simply, a threat to judicial independence, and he shows no hesitation to jackhammer the very foundation of our democracy. J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge and an icon in the conser…  ( 15 min )

Inflation has surged to the highest level in three years, the cost of living is up and we’re stuck in a war with Iran. But don’t worry. President Donald Trump is busy painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue. Hopefully, this new $13 million pool project doesn’t distract him from his now more than $1 billion White House ballroom project. Or from his $100 million Triumphal Arch project. Or from putting his face on U.S. currency and passports. And his name on buildings and airports.  That sounds like sarcasm, but I’ve settled into what may be a controversial opinion: Let Trump build his vanity projects. Let his Republican boot-smoochers etch “President Donald J. Trump” into marble facades and slap that moniker on whichever edifice or coin or government document they see fit. Let his…  ( 15 min )

Hey, do you all remember “Sleepy Joe” Biden, the president whose age and cognitive decline Donald Trump and his plague of MAGA lemmings routinely mocked? Well, I have some news. In a living example of turnabout being fair play, 79-year-old President Trump himself is now viewed by a majority of Americans as being mentally and physically unfit to lead.  A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that nearly 60% of Americans believe Trump isn’t mentally sharp enough to be president, and 55% think his physical health makes him unfit to lead. Americans think Trump is just as mentally unfit as Biden was Just a few months before Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race over concerns about his age, an AP-NORC poll found 63% were not confident he had the mental capability to be pres…  ( 13 min )

I have terrible news for people who had hoped to avoid being struck by a falling steak-and-mushroom sandwich.  Papa Johns, a restaurant chain known mainly for selling circular cheesed objects it alleges are pizza, is testing out a drone delivery service in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since we live in an age when most things make no sense, the initial wave of Papa Johns drones will only be able to deliver “Oven Toasted Sandwiches.” I guess our society hasn’t achieved full pizza-delivery drone technology, so we’re left getting sandwiches from a pizza place we didn’t know sold sandwiches. The bottom line is this: Thanks to technology, the good people of the greater Charlotte metropolitan area can have non-pizza food products delivered in a way that frightens birds and increases the likelihood …  ( 14 min )

A prerequisite for serving in the Trump administration seems to be first serving as a host or contributor to Fox News. So, naturally, President Donald Trump’s third shot at a surgeon general candidate is longtime Fox News medical contributor Nicole Saphier. Given that the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary is anti-vaccine, anti-science, pro-sewage-swimming Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a caricature of a serious human being, America’s surgeon general isn’t likely to matter much. The surgeon general could take a strong anti-smoking stance and Kennedy would likely dispute it by citing a wacky study from an obscure Scandinavian cult that found smoking actually “caused significant spikes in lung-healthy midi-chlorians,” completely ignoring that “midi-chlorians” is a fictional term from the "Star…  ( 15 min )

It’s a proud day for American toughness! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has officially done away with the U.S. military's WOKE flu vaccine mandate, and I applaud that decision from the bed I currently can’t get out of due to a high fever. TRUE warfighters know their lethality is only enhanced by bacterial pneumonia, and soft and so-called proven public health tools like vaccines are for weenies. Simply put, the libs will never understand that a fever is just God warming your body for the battle ahead. On April 21, in a video posted on social media, Hegseth said: “We're seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capabilities. In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it.” Hegseth says flu vaccine manda…  ( 12 min )

Listen up, non-rich Americans. I’m growing tired of your annoying complaints about high gas prices. I guess it has something to do with U.S. gas prices hitting their highest level in four years, or people spending $81.3 billion more on gas or energy goods in March than they spent the previous month. I have people who buy gas for me, so I can’t be pestered with such trivialities. Some say the Iran war – started by my personal tax-cutter, President Donald Trump – has something to do with it all. Ho hum. What bothers me is all the noise, noise, noise coming from the hoi polloi. It’s so bad that Trump’s approval rating dropped to 34% in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, which I had my butler read to me. Can’t you ungrateful wretches just calm down and sell one of your lake houses to cover hi…  ( 16 min )

It’s college graduation season, and as I proudly watched my eldest hurl his cap into the air, I couldn’t help thinking: “Wow. I am AMAZING. What a tremendous accomplishment by me.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of him too. He did the studying and the grade-getting and the whole “make friendships that will last a lifetime” thing. But I think parents like myself should be honest about this moment. We’re the ones who toiled and stressed and dished out cash like malfunctioning ATM machines. We, long before these glorious college years, were the diaper-changers, the piano-lesson drivers, the advice-givers, the shoulders to cry on. We built these now-functioning adult humans and made sure they got an education, allowing them to go forth and fix the world we accidentally messed up, probably becau…  ( 14 min )

So a group of scientists got together and decided to give cocaine to a bunch of salmon. It sounds like the kind of fantastic idea a person comes up with while using cocaine, then talks about for 13 consecutive hours to someone who is also doing cocaine and eagerly nodding in agreement while repeating, “It makes. So. Much. Sense.” Not-at-all shockingly, the resulting study found coked-up salmon swim faster, a conclusion that didn’t really need to involve salmon. Anyway, as weird as the study seemed, there was a point to it. Cocaine and its metabolites are “being excreted and subsequently detected in aquatic environments due to insufficient removal during wastewater treatment,” according to the paper published in the April edition of the journal Current Biology. Humans are sending cocaine in…  ( 12 min )

So a slew of mean people on the internet have been rudely mocking McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski over a video in which he gingerly samples the restaurant chain’s latest offering: the Big Arch burger. Because I don’t believe rich people should be made fun of or face consequences for their actions, I’m here to defend Mr. Kempczinski and attempt to right this terrible wrong. If you missed it, the video in question shows the CEO proudly holding a Big Arch in the same way any strong, handsome, wealthy person would hold a thing meant for the poor. The substantial sandwich consists of two quarter-pound beef patties, three slices of white cheddar, pickles, lettuce, crispy onions and a special Big Arch sauce that may or may not be made of people. McDonald's Big Arch is the best food product you c…  ( 13 min )

So it turns out Americans don’t love widespread cruelty.  For the first time ever in YouGov polling, 50% of Americans now strongly or somewhat support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Only 39% of respondents strongly or somewhat oppose abolishing ICE and, in a remarkable twist, nearly a quarter of Republicans want ICE gone. That’s a mighty big shift from the not-too-long-ago days when Democrats were warned that “Abolish ICE” was an electorally risky slogan best avoided. ICE has become hugely unpopular. Maybe it's all the cruelty. Perhaps it’s the way roving bands of masked federal agents have descended onto American cities like invading forces, violently stuffing migrants and U.S. citizens into unmarked vehicles while gunning down innocent protesters and later falsely …  ( 15 min )

President Donald Trump has dragged America into a war of his choosing, attacking Iran with little public support, zero congressional approval and virtually no public justification. The path forward is unclear, and our self-absorbed leader is already speaking about the loss of American lives with the nonchalance one expects from a small man never held accountable for the consequences of his actions. Announcing the deaths of four U.S. service members following the attack launched Feb. 28, Trump said in a video posted to social media: “And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends, that’s the way it is. Likely be more.” The ease with which that man dismissed present and future casualties was sickening. “That’s the way it is,” he said. He might as well have added a “Ho-hum,” such is his …  ( 14 min )

The bad news is more than 82 million Americans are having to skip meals, borrow money or cut back on utilities so they can afford health care. The good news is the Pentagon is swimming in millions of dollars worth of ribeye steak and lobster tails, part of more than $93 billion the U.S. Department of Defense spent in September as the fiscal year closed. So while you were putting off a necessary surgery so you could afford gas, the department overseen by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was, in one month, dropping $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts, according to a new report by the nonpartisan public-spending watchdog Open the Books. It’s enough to make you want to grab a torch and pitchfork and start marching. Except marching may be out of the question if you haven’t been able to see a doct…  ( 16 min )

From the jump, there has been a crystal clear justification for President Donald Trump’s war on Iran. It involves some combination of regime change, or maybe not regime change, but definitely halting Iran’s nuclear weapon development (or possibly not), but certainly ending a war by starting a war (I think), and absolutely avoiding an imminent (or quite possibly nonimminent) threat.  OK, it may not be all that clear. But that's where we, the American people, come in. We need to help Trump and Co. decide on a justification for this now happening war. We might as well ask you to choose your own justification When Trump launched the attacks on Feb. 28, he said to the Iranian people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” But on March 2, Trump said: “An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people.” Republicans have been saying we've been at war with Iran for years, so we needed to start a war to end a war. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio uttered this assortment of random words: “We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.” The administration is clearly too busy conducting a war to find time to explain why that war is justified. So I need you to vote in the poll below. Trust me, this is how a healthy democracy overseen by a former reality television star works. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk  ( 12 min )

As campaigning for the midterm elections ramps up, I’m curious what issues Republican candidates will run on. Because at the moment, their best and only platform appears to be: “Oops.” The party of President Donald Trump has, in one quick year, left utter chaos in its wake, working hard to protect the wealthy while doing virtually nothing to improve the lives of regular American voters. GOP lawmakers have shown slavish, often embarrassing fealty to their confused and intemperate leader, overseeing shocking domestic cruelty and violence stemming from overzealous mass deportation raids. U.S. citizens have been shot and killed by federal agents on the streets of major cities. Grocery prices remain painfully high, despite Trump’s promises to lower them on day one of his second term. Gas prices…  ( 14 min )

Podcaster and man-somewhat-responsible-for-why-we’re-in-this-mess Joe Rogan has looked at President Donald Trump’s war-of-choice with Iran and declared it “insane” and a betrayal. The war is, without question, both those things. So congratulations to President Trump on getting me, other liberals, and a strong majority of independent voters who think this war is folly to wholeheartedly agree with the man-o-sphere podcasting dude who helped get you elected. Now it’s time for Trump’s MAGA base to again pay attention to their man, Rogan. Joe Rogan: 'A lot of people feel betrayed' During his March 10 show, the podcaster said of the war: “It just seems so insane, based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars, end these stupid, senseles…  ( 14 min )

As the four astronauts on the Artemis II space mission approached the moon and found themselves farther from Earth than any human has ever traveled, a thought crossed my mind: Can we marvel at this? Please? Amid all the chaos in the world right now, can humanity take one beat and acknowledge something remarkable, an exploratory achievement that pushed us deeper into the galaxy that surrounds us than we’ve gone before? Just before 2 p.m. ET on April 6, astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft were more than 248,655 miles from Earth, surpassing the previous distance record set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 astronauts. The Artemis II mission challenges humanity to do better As the ship continued its trip around the moon, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman said, “We will continue our journey even fur…  ( 13 min )

President Donald Trump has dragged America into a war of his choosing, attacking Iran with little public support, zero congressional approval and virtually no public justification. The path forward is unclear, and our self-absorbed leader is already speaking about the loss of American lives with the nonchalance one expects from a small man never held accountable for the consequences of his actions. Announcing the deaths of four U.S. service members following the attack launched Feb. 28, Trump said in a video posted to social media: “And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends, that’s the way it is. Likely be more.” The ease with which that man dismissed present and future casualties was sickening. “That’s the way it is,” he said. He might as well have added a “Ho-hum,” such is his …  ( 12 min )

Mean people on the internet have been mocking McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski over a video in which he gingerly samples the chain’s latest offering.  ( 8 min )

This week in “What The Hell Is Wrong With These People?” I give you U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Here’s Pam Bondi sitting before Congress to defend the hire of a Jan. 6 rioter to her Department of Justice (her defense is that President Donald Trump had pardoned the man, so he couldn’t have done anything wrong, you see). Here’s Pam Bondi refusing to answer a question from California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and instead staring down at her papers, as if it might render her invisible to everyone else in the room. Here’s Pam Bondi complaining, “This is so ridiculous,” when another Democratic congressmember asks her whether Trump and now-deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein ever partied with “underage girls.” Oh, and here’s Pam Bondi refusing to acknowledge the other Epstein vict…  ( 1 min )

While you were busy paying attention to the continued end of the world this past weekend, you might have missed the story that movies are officially BACK. That’s because “Project Hail Mary,” the sci-fi adventure starring Ryan Gosling, blew past initial box office projections and had the second largest non-franchise opening weekend in history, surpassed only by Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” Not only was “PHM” based on an original-ish story, but it was shot on actual sets, just like movies should be. Does this mean that you, the moviegoer, can expect more of this kind of quality cinema at the multiplex in the coming years? Well, I took my 13-year-old to the movie last night and subjected it to my patented Dad Movie Test. Let’s get right to it. What’s the deal with ‘Project Hail Mary’? …  ( 1 min )

As we no longer have a functional journalism industry in the United States, it has fallen to me, a man who’d really prefer to be filling out an NCAA bracket right now, to alert you to the various criminal losers who serve as the face of Trump 2.0. I’ve introduced you to Vice Asshole JD Vance, of course. I’ve also given you a primer on War Department chief Pete Hegseth, who’s hard at work triggering World War III while also frantically searching for the nearest open liquor store. Who else have I had to take notice of against my will lately? Oh right: alleged dognapper Pam Bondi, newly deposed Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, and Noem’s would-be successor Markwayne Mullin, whose confirmation hearings are going swimmingly as I type this. I wish that was the end of the list, because that …  ( 1 min )

Given current circumstances, the coming 2026 WNBA season is strictly a theoretical construct. It should begin on Friday, May 8. Opening night should include a late tilt between the Seattle Storm and your Golden State Valkyries. This season could even include reigning league MVP A’ja Wilson playing for a new team, because 80% of the league’s players are free agents. You and I should be excited about all of the sweet, sweet hoops action that all of this promises. The problem is that the WNBA is in some really deep s—t right now.  Thanks to circumstances tragically familiar to any lifelong sports fan, a dispute over money is threatening to scuttle the beginning of this season, and maybe even all of it given how s—tty things are going right now between players and the league. It’s a collecti…  ( 1 min )

The Oscars are happening on Sunday night, and it’s always morbid fun to see which nominees have potentially torpedoed their chances by doing something stupid during right before the ceremony. You might remember last year, when “Emilia Perez” star Karla Sofia Gascon sank her chances at Best Actress, along with “Emilia Perez’s” chances at Best Picture, by being an Islamophobic s—t for brains on Twitter.  This year’s potential backlash victim, Jessie Buckley of “Hamnet,” is a different story. In Gascon’s case, the backlash was justified because of the tweets, and because “Emilia Perez” is a horrible movie. In Buckley’s case, anyone who’s got a bad thing to say about that woman will be on the receiving end of a vicious ass-beating from me. Because Jessie Buckley earned the s—t out of her Osc…  ( 1 min )

In any other news cycle, the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie would be the biggest story in the universe. “Beloved morning show anchor’s mom was kidnapped, and now the ransom negotiations are playing out in full public view” is full-on unprecedented. But you and I are living in the Trump age, in which cries of “this should be the biggest scandal ever!” are a daily occurrence, to the point of fatigue. Thus, it’s been difficult for me to focus on the plight of Savannah Guthrie and her family when I’ve also had to keep tabs on ICE agents killing people in broad daylight, the Trump administration actively suppressing information about history’s most star-studded human trafficking ring, a looming megawar with Iran, and — Christ, I’m tired. The human mind has only so much bandwidth. Yet: HOLY S—T, …  ( 1 min )

If you’re reading this post this afternoon and you happen to be Iranian, congratulations. Your civilization didn’t die last night. I know it got a little bit dicey there for a minute, what with President Donald Trump promising that full-scale Armageddon would arrive at the stroke of 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday night. But Donald Trump’s arbitrary deadline came and went last evening and you and I are still here. The nation of Iran is also, thankfully, still here. And it has kicked Trump’s sorry ass up and down the block. The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire last night. This tenuous détente came after our president committed a glaring war crime by declaring that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if Iran didn’t reopen the Strait of Ho…  ( 1 min )

If you and I could find even the slightest bit of comfort in what has been yet another truly, truly awful year in America, it was that 2026 is an election year. The 2024 election went disastrously, of course. But in the wake of that tragedy, the American people have been sending out clear signals that they would like a correction. Current polls show that voters despise President Trump’s ongoing desecration of the White House building, that they rightfully see the Iran War as a needless disaster, that they think President Naptime has made their economic prospects significantly worse, and that they’ve grown tired of Trump himself.  Under normal circumstances, these polls would presage the mythical blue wave, with Democrats seizing control of both the House and Senate in this fall’s midterms…  ( 1 min )

(ALERT: This article contains plot spoilers for “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” Although, judging by its box office receipts, you’ve already seen the movie.) “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is a solid movie. It’s not a great movie. It’s certainly not as good as the original, but it scratches a lot of the same itches. For the price of admission, you get Meryl Streep treating other characters with ultimate disdain. You get Stanley “The Tooch” Tucci being his adorable self. And hey, there’s Emily Blunt reprising the role that made her a star to begin with, with newcomer Simone Ashley on hand as a successor to Blunt in the gorgeous, sharp-tongued British lass department. Most important, “Prada 2,” despite being set in the present day, harkens back to the innocent, NYC-set romantic comedies of the 2000s.…  ( 1 min )

The Portland Trail Blazers host the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 of their opening round playoff series Friday evening, and you might think that would be cause for excitement in the City of Roses. After all, the Blazers gained home court advantage over the heavily favored Spurs by defeating them in San Antonio two nights ago. The Blazers’ roster also features ascending guard Scoot Henderson, the kind of franchise player the team desperately needed after Damian Lillard left town in 2023. But no one’s really paying much attention to the Blazers players at the present moment. That could be because Portland won that game after Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama left Game 2 early with a concussion after having his face rearranged by the hardwood floor. More likely, however, it’s because their own…  ( 1 min )

A quick disclaimer before we get to the take: The Milan Winter Olympics have been a godsend. It’s the dead of February, there’s no more football on, and every news story coming out of Washington makes me want to take a swan dive off the Golden Gate Bridge. So thank God that you and I have been blessed with two weeks of profoundly exciting winter events (plus cross-country skiing), all set behind the best scenery porn that any live event could possibly offer. I want to go skiing in Italy now. I have to go skiing in Italy now, or I will die. I’ve seen NBC’s drone cam footage of those slopes, and you have, too. No one could possibly deny the attraction that footage elicits. So long as you and I get to actually, you know, watch it. This is where our take begins. Because while NBC’s aesthetic…  ( 1 min )

The Golden State Warriors have their first play-in game Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Clippers, and there’s a very good chance that you, the Dubs fan for life, would be quietly relieved if they got crushed. And that’s not merely because the Warriors have had a miserable season, punctuated by Jonathan Kuminga getting shipped to Atlanta. It’s because seeing them play in person would leave you penniless.  I just checked prices for Warriors home playoff tickets, should they advance to the big-boy tournament. The cheapest seats are going for $270 a pop on Ticketbastard, and that’s if you want to watch the game from the Chase Center lighting rigs. If you’d like to sit on the lower level, with a nice view of center court, that’ll run you over $3,500. That’s a down payment on a car just…  ( 1 min )

We’re at a stage with prestige TV now where a series that might have dominated online small talk 15 years ago will, thanks to an ever-splintering entertainment landscape, go unnoticed. Take “Your Friends & Neighbors,” for example. No, I’m not talking about the 1998 Neil LaBute film featuring one of the most unnerving monologues in film history. I’m talking about an Apple TV series that, perhaps unbeknownst to you, is booting up its second season this Friday. It’s a good show, and not merely because it’s NOT based on LaBute’s misery-fest. It’s because it stars Jon Hamm: the silver screen’s handsomest cad. You know Hamm, of course, from “Mad Men,” one of those early prestige TV dramas that did monopolize the virtual water cooler over its seven-season run. Hamm was perfect on that show as Do…  ( 1 min )

You would have thought that getting their ass handed to them in the Super Bowl would be the most embarrassing thing to happen to the New England Patriots this year. My dear reader, it turns out that would be a deeply, deeply faulty assumption. No, the team that gave you Spygate, Deflategate and Bob Kraft Hand Job-gate has once again chosen to show its ass to the whole world. And just before the NFL Draft, no less! How exciting! The scandal this time centers around Pats head coach Mike Vrabel, who just this past season washed away the stench of Bill Belichick’s final years in Foxboro by winning the AFC title in just his second season on the job. He’s cultivated a “he’s your kind of asshole!” vibe that his players and the media appeared to find appealing. One specific member of the media, D…  ( 1 min )

scenes from another stark barking batshit event

Justices may soon testify at a Senate hearing for the first time since 2011. The practice used to be more common; there are good reasons for bringing it back.

The siren call was apparently irresistible. “Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants,” read a New York Times headline from early May — phrasing that seemed to normalize Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-science, roadkill enthusiast who is currently running the Department of Health and Human Services, and to assume that he wants to help everyday Americans. But reading the article should disabuse anyone of the notion that Kennedy has sincere, much less helpful, motivations in shepherding an event called the “Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit,” held by the MAHA Institute, a far-right group organized to wage war on responsible healthcare systems. “No major medical organizations were represented at the gathering,” Times reporter Ellen Barry noted, and it’s not a sur…  ( 10 min )

At commonplace.org, Oren Cass interviews Ruy Teixeira: The Democratic Party continues to reel from its 2024 electoral defeat and struggles to connect with the American people. But the party remains captured by special interests and sacred cows that its leaders refuse to confront. Few understand this dynamic better than Ruy Teixeira, author and senior fellow... Read more »  ( 7 min )

Watch on YouTube – (America/Toronto) = Fri May 29 1030H EDT / 0930H CDT / 0830H MDT / 0730H PDT / 1430H UTC / 1630H CEST / 1730H EEST / 2000H IST / 2230H +08 / 2330H JST Related links: Omar Antolín Camarena: a researcher at Instituto de Matemáticas, UNAM in Mexico City M-x apropos Emacs oantolin/emacs-config: My personal Emacs configuration · GitHub oantolin (Omar Antolín Camarena) · GitHub Omar Antolín (@oantolin@mathstodon.xyz) - Mathstodon u/oantolin on Reddit https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/05/may-29-emacs-chat-with-omar-antolin-camarena/ Find more Emacs Chats or join the fun: https://sachachua.com/emacs-chat View Org source for this post You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.  ( 1 min )

Now you can change the todo keyword of a task directly from the notification tray of your phone

can do a lot and a ”real“ browser is only a keystroke away.” In another May Emacs Carnival entry, Omar Antolín Camarena offers his reasons for using EWW. He agrees with the conventional wisdom that EWW isn’t a replacement for a normal browser but that it is useful in many situations and even has some advantages over your default buffer. He believes that one of the chief advantages of EWW is that it doesn’t run JavaScript. That’s ironic, of course, because EWW’s lack of support for JavaScript is one of its most oft cited shortcomings. But Camarena says that lack is often an advantage because JavaScript is often used to load ads or a paywall or to reconfigure your display preferences often choosing low contrast colors that are hard for anyone but the young to read. His second reason for using EWW is that it brings the power of Emacs to your Web browsing. Among the advantages he lists are: You can easily resize images without changing font and other sizes. You can read the Web site content in multiple columns using follow-mode. You can use occur for a search and keep a list of results and easily navigate among them. You can evaluate ELISP directly in the EWW buffer and many other language as well with a bit of plumbing. You can use eww-readable to eliminate a lot of the junk that comes with many Web pages. eww-browse-with-external-browser, bound to & by default.  ( 5 min )

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Philip Kaludercic wanted to continue the conversation from YE24: Sacha and Prot Talk Emacs - Newbies/Starter Kits. He's spent a lot of time thinking about this as one of the main contributors to newcomers-presets. View in the Internet Archive, watch or comment on YouTube, read the transcript online, download the transcript, or e-mail me. Related links Chapters Transcript Chat Some types of new users to think about Sketching out their learning journey Other notes Some screenshots of a fresh Emacs Trying pkal's Emacs Configuration Generator Related links A proposal for a "beginners" (user-option) theme - Philip Kaludercic Re: some file-related options to consider for newcomers-presets - Philip Kaludercic A newcomer's feedback on newcomer presets - Abdulnafe Toulaimat Emacs Config…  ( 49 min )

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It came in the top of the eighth, with the Dodgers already ahead of the Angels by four on Saturday night. Shohei Ohtani walked to the plate with two outs and runners on first and second, thanks to a Max Muncy single and an Alex Call walk. On the second pitch, Ohtani looped the ball off the end of his bat, the baseball dropping just inside the line then bouncing off the ground and over the wall. Ground-rule double, right? Except the ball didn't go into the stands. It hit the netting that now sits atop the wall and bounded back onto the field. That netting is new, the Associated Press reported, added to Angel Stadium this year. (This is as good a time as any to pause and remember that netting is good—it makes going to baseball games safer for fans.) So was it out of play, or a live ball? On the replay, you can see Angels right fielder Jo Adell, a noted home run thief, throwing his arms in the air, signaling the former. The broadcast team thought the same, at first believing the ball had gone into the seats until it became clear that it had not. Because the moment felt so much like that routine ground-rule double, the broadcast didn't stay on Ohtani for long, necessitating a sudden zooming-out of the camera to capture his sprint toward home and easy slide into the plate.  ( 18 min )

From the Adriatic Sea up into the heart of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, the peloton tirelessly chased the breakaway. Stage 9 of the 2026 Giro d'Italia tempted a strong, organized group up the road and away from the bunch, yet Felix Gall's Decathlon CMA CGM team invested heavily in bringing them back in order to set things up for their leader. With three kilometers left and only a flagging Giulio Ciccone up the road, Gall made his move. The maglia rosa was shot out the back, along with every other general classification contender except for Jonas Vingegaard. Gall spent the next two kilometers turning around in a futile attempt to get Vingegaard to work with him, which he did not, only going to the front with 800 meters left to drop Gall like a stone. It was exactly how Vingegaard likes to race: clinical, efficient, and ruthless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhO3_roH_mg Depending on how you look at it, Vingegaard is either settling in to an impressive ride for the pink jersey, or he's confirming to the world that he no longer has it. He is either flying toward a sweep of all three Grand Tours, or he's cementing his status as a second-tier contender by failing to win the race against Tadej Pogacar's ghost. As we hit the second of somehow three rest days, Vingegaard is first among GC contenders, with 35 seconds on Gall and more than two minutes on the rest of a below-average pack of hopefuls. He's taken both summit finishes. In terms of the 2026 Giro alone, he's crushing it. The problem is, he's going to be judged against the impossible standard of Pogacar's 2024 Giro.  ( 23 min )

Now that we are one game away from the halfway point (by one metric) of the NBA playoffs, it is time to review them as a whole, on both aesthetic and competitive grounds. I think this is a useful exercise at this point, as the process of considering the eventual champion's worthiness or luck is a matter of confirmation bias that both overemphasizes the Finals and elides what is actually great about this postseason: the process. For example, last year's Finals were great, masking a middling-to-bad playoffs. We have not had what this reviewer would term a great playoffs since before the pandemic, with some notable stinkers (2021, when everyone got hurt, and 2024, which had precisely one good series) in the intervening years. Not anymore. This year's playoffs have been fantastic. We've had close games, wild series, and game-winners. Both legends and frauds have been forged. Here is the evidence, in three parts. Case Study 1: Cavaliers-Pistons, And What Follows  ( 27 min )

Justice Jackson: "I cannot understand the Court’s rush to extinguish [life], much less in the circumstances of this case." And, for paid subscribers: Closing my tabs.

Kash Patel holds a fucked-up Pearl Harbor snorkel party

There's never been a better time to get WIRED /* resets */ p {margin:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding:0px;} table {border-spacing:0;} table, td {border-collapse:collapse;} * {-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;text-size-adjust: none !important;-ms-text-size-adjust: none !important;-webkit-text-size-adjust: none !important;} /* end resets */ /* outlook / hotmail */ .ExternalClass{width:100%;} table, td {mso-table-lspace:0pt;mso-table-rspace:0pt;} img{-ms-interpolation-mode:bicubic;} .ReadMsgBody {width: 100%;} /* end outlook / hotmail */ /* gmail */ u + #body a {color: inherit;text-decoration: none;font-size: inherit;font-family: inherit;font-weight: inherit;line-height: inherit;} img + div {display: none!important;} /* end gmail */ /* ios */ body…  ( 2 min )

Americans United for Separation of Church and State 96 @font-face { font-family: 'Overpass'; font-style: normal; font-weight: 300; font-display: swap; src: url('https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/overpass/v19/qFda35WCmI96Ajtm83upeyoaX6QPnlo6ovPbPpqKl8Kuo8Az.woff2') format('woff2'); unicode-range: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153, U+02BB-02BC, U+02C6, U+02DA, U+02DC, U+0304, U+0308, U+0329, U+2000-206F, U+20AC, U+2122, U+2191, U+2193, U+2212, U+2215, U+FEFF, U+FFFD; } @font-face { font-family: 'Overpass'; font-style: italic; font-weight: 300; font-display: swap; src: url('https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/overpass/v19/qFdU35WCmI96Ajtm81GgSdXCNs-VMF0vNLBdeqqIncOMp9gyUsE.woff2') format('woff2'); unicode-range: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153, U+02BB-02BC, U+02C6, U+02DA, U…  ( 8 min )

Trump is raising a voter intimidation army a.cta_button{-moz-box-sizing:content-box !important;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box !important;box-sizing:content-box !important;vertical-align:middle}.hs-breadcrumb-menu{list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-item{float:left;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-divider:before{content:'›';padding-left:10px}.hs-featured-image-link{border:0}.hs-featured-image{float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px;max-width:50%}@media (max-width: 568px){.hs-featured-image{float:none;margin:0;width:100%;max-width:100%}}.hs-screen-reader-text{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;width:1px} 96 …  ( 5 min )

Eleven states, twenty-three attorneys general, four federal judges, and a country that decided to fight

“I believe wholeheartedly that you can’t force revival,” Lucas Miles declares in his stump speech for the Make Heaven Crowded tour. Miles is the director of TPUSA Faith, a spinoff of the late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization, that is dedicated to equipping Christians “who are prepared to defend our God-given rights.” And he’s been on the road this spring and summer, insisting to one audience after another that he does not believe you can “manufacture a revival.” The irony of this is thick — manufacturing a revival is exactly what Miles is trying to do. The Make Heaven Crowded tour, Miles explains to congregations and the press along the way, was started after a late September memorial service for Kirk, who was killed by a gunman’s bullet earlier that month. At …  ( 9 min )

The Royals have placed reliever Matt Strahm on the 15-day injured list with right knee inflammation, MLB.com’s Jeff Jones reports. Bailey Falter (left elbow inflammation) was reinstated from the IL in Strahm’s place. Strahm has dealt with right knee inflammation in the past. The first occurrence was in September 2020, and in that case, Strahm […]  ( 8 min )

the Space Nazi rolls it, Dear Leader doles it, and so much more...

interesting contribution to May’s Emacs Carnival, which this month is on the topic “If I may recommend…” His notion is that Emacs is an effortless bloom. The “effortless” part is because Emacs—contra conventional wisdom—is easy to use and can, in fact, significantly simplify your work flow by providing a uniform interface to several different computer programming languages and their environments. If you’ve ever had to negotiate such a collection, you know that this is not a trivial thing. The “bloom” part is more nuanced. The idea is that like a rose whose roots “fan in” water and nutrients and whose flower “fans out” its petals and beauty to encourage pollination, Emacs has its own fanning in and out. The center of this action is the text buffer. Data from various sources can be fanned into a buffer from which it can be fanned out to various functions for processing. The altered text buffer can then be fanned out to other targets. Holland’s post is a bit lyrical so you need to read it to get the full impact of his fan in, fan out metaphor. He considers whether any other editor could achieve the same power as Emacs. He concludes that any editor could, in theory, achieve the same power but in order to do so it would have to replicate the idea of the buffer as the single important data structure on which everything else operates. It’s an interesting post worth a few minutes of your time.  ( 5 min )

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What are Americans worried could go wrong in the 2026 midterms?96 :root { color-scheme: light; supported-color-schemes: light; } body { margin: 0; padding: 0; min-width: 100%!important; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-transform: scale(1) !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; } .body { word-wrap: normal; word-spacing:normal; } table.mso { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0; table-layout: fixed; } img { border: 0; outline: none; } table { mso-table-lspace: 0px; mso-table-rspace: 0px; } td, a, span { mso-line-height-rule: exactly; } #root [x-apple-data-detectors=true], a[x-apple-data-detectors=true], #MessageViewBody a { color: inherit !important; text-decoration: inherit !imp…  ( 11 min )

96 *{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0} @media (max-width:620px){.row-content{width:100%!important}.stack .column{width:100%;display:block}.mobile_hide{min-height:0;max-height:0;max-width:0;display:none;overflow:hidden;font-size:0}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{display:table!important;max-height:none!important}} sup, sub { font-size: 100% !important; } sup { mso-text-raise:10% } sub { mso-text-raise:-10% } Join our US Civil Rights tour this fall ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌…  ( 2 min )

96 Virginia used to be for lovers. Now, it’s for data centers. p{ margin:10px 0; padding:0; } table{ border-collapse:collapse; } h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{ display:block; margin:0; padding:0; } img,a img{ border:0; height:auto; outline:none; text-decoration:none; } body,#bodyTable,#bodyCell{ height:100%; margin:0; padding:0; width:100%; } .mcnPreviewText{ display:none !important; } #outlook a{ padding:0; } img{ -ms-interpolation-mode:bicubic; } table{ mso-table-lspace:0pt; mso-table-rspace:0pt; } .ReadMsgBody{ width:100%; } .ExternalClass{ width:100%; } p,a,li,td,blockquote{ mso-line-height-rule:exactly; } a[href…  ( 5 min )

How Trump and His Famous Golfer Buddy Are Trying to Sportswash the Presidency#outlook a { padding:0; } .ExternalClass { width:100%; } .ExternalClass, .ExternalClass p, .ExternalClass span, .ExternalClass font, .ExternalClass td, .ExternalClass div { line-height: 100%; } table td { border-collapse: collapse; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; } .editable.image { font-size: 0 !important; line-height: 0 !important; } .nl2go_preheader { display: none !important; mso-hide:all !important; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; visibility: hidden !important; line-height: 0px !important; font-size: 0px !important; } body { width:100% !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust:100%; -ms-text-size-adjust:100%; margin:0; padding:0; } img { outline:none; text-decoration:none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; } a img { …  ( 13 min )

He plastered his name on everything. We’ll bring the sledgehammers

Rewrite Bun in Rust, there's something that needs to be said, because no one is saying it.  ( 4 min )

I walked into the Sphere in Las Vegas expecting something transcendent—a marriage of ’90s ska-punk energy and the most advanced immersive venue on the planet. What I got was an enjoyable, heartfelt reunion show that delivered plenty of hits and warm fuzzies but left me wondering why this band needed the Sphere at all. It...  ( 8 min )

Election denial group releases blueprint to severely restrict voting a.cta_button{-moz-box-sizing:content-box !important;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box !important;box-sizing:content-box !important;vertical-align:middle}.hs-breadcrumb-menu{list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-item{float:left;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px}.hs-breadcrumb-menu-divider:before{content:'›';padding-left:10px}.hs-featured-image-link{border:0}.hs-featured-image{float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px;max-width:50%}@media (max-width: 568px){.hs-featured-image{float:none;margin:0;width:100%;max-width:100%}}.hs-screen-reader-text{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;width:1px} …  ( 5 min )

96 *{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0} @media (max-width:670px){.row-content{width:100%!important}.stack .column{width:100%;display:block}.mobile_hide{min-height:0;max-height:0;max-width:0;display:none;overflow:hidden;font-size:0}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{display:table!important;max-height:none!important}.social_block .social-table{display:inline-block!important}} sup, sub { font-size: 100% !important; } sup { mso-text-raise:10% } sub { mso-text-raise:-1…  ( 2 min )

The messy and unpredictable California gubernatorial primary is causing renewed heartburn among Democrats about non-partisan “jungle” primaries like that state’s top-two system, as I explain at New York. For decades, many Democratic and Republican centrists (along with good-government types) have blamed partisan primaries for a lot of our political system’s ills. In 2009, one Republican... Read more »  ( 10 min )

From “The New Civil Rights Movement Starts Now” at The Contrarian: Democracy is not a spectator sport. Whether you want to exercise your right to vote, join a protest, call your elected officials, run for office, or keep tabs on the week’s hottest issues and protests, The Contrarian has you covered. Here are our top... Read more »  ( 7 min )

Kansas City scored six or more runs in five consecutive home games, forcing Hawaiian Bros to give out thousands of free lunches to HB Rewards members.

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This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

Right-wing evangelical Christian media personalities — including figures who claim to share prophecies, or messages from God, with their audiences — are hailing “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall. They are celebrating that the government is going to “rededicate the land to the Lord and build an altar to almighty God,” calling it “the culmination” of “three to four decades of work to see this happening in the public arena,” and saying the event is “like the prodigal son where he's returning to God.” Rededicate 250, scheduled to take place on May 17, will reportedly feature “a slate of political, military and religious leaders” and “will be rooted in giving thanks for God’s presence” and “asking for his guidance for the next 250.” Notably, the religious leaders scheduled to speak appear to be “mostly evangelical” and the speaker list does not feature any “leaders from mainline Christian or historically Black denominations,” or “representatives from other non-Christian faiths, such as Islam or Indigenous spiritual traditions.” Republican leaders scheduled to speak include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The event comes at a fraught moment in Trump’s relationship with some segments of Christians — especially Catholics — while some journalists and religion scholars have noted how “charismatic Christian prophets have gained new influence since becoming identified with” Trump.  ( 10 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:  As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage.  Right-wing figures are spreading “plandemic” conspiracy theories about the hantavirus.  If you want to see how the costs of high fuel prices are adding up for Americans, look to local media.  The Fox News cabinet through the looking glass: A Trump cabinet official and his Fox News host spouse are producing a reality show in which they drive across the country. The ethical issues are legion. If you want this delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.  ( 5 min )

A Debacle on the South Side @media (max-width: 1024px) { .typography .pullquote-align-left, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-left, .typography .pullquote-align-right, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-right, .typography .pullquote-align-wide, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-wide, .typography .pullquote-align-center, .typography.editor .pullquote-align-center { float: none; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; max-width: 100%; } } @media all and (-ms-high-contrast: none), (-ms-high-contrast: active) { .typography .markup table.image-wrapper img, .typography.editor .markup table.image-wrapper img, .typography .markup table.kindle-wrapper img, .typography.editor .markup table.kindle-wrapper img { max-width: 550px; } } @media (min-width: 1024px)…  ( 13 min )

96 *{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0}.row-2 .column-1 .block-7 .button:hover{background-color:#16688b!important;border-bottom:0 solid transparent!important;border-left:0 solid transparent!important;border-right:0 solid transparent!important;border-top:0 solid transparent!important;color:#fff!important} @media (max-width:660px){.social_block.desktop_hide .social-table{display:inline-block!important}.mobile_hide{display:none}.row-content{width:100%!important}.sta…  ( 2 min )

96 Swept out of Chicago @media only screen and (max-width: 620px) { table.body { width: 100%; min-width: 100%; } table.body .content { padding: 0 !important; } table.body .container { padding: 0 !important; width: 100% !important; } table.body .main { border-spacing: 10px 0 !important; border-left-width: 0 !important; border-radius: 0 !important; border-right-width: 0 !important; } table.body .img-responsive { height: auto !important; max-width: 100% !important; width: auto !important; } } @media all { .ExternalClass { width: 100%; } .ExternalClass, .ExternalClass p, .ExternalClass span, .ExternalClass font, .ExternalClass td, .ExternalClass div { line-height: 100%; } .apple-link a …  ( 8 min )

Dylan Harper Is The Post-er Child For The NBA’s ‘Clip It’ Gen96 :root { color-scheme: light; supported-color-schemes: light; } body { margin: 0; padding: 0; min-width: 100%!important; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-transform: scale(1) !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; } .body { word-wrap: normal; word-spacing:normal; } table.mso { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0; table-layout: fixed; } img { border: 0; outline: none; } table { mso-table-lspace: 0px; mso-table-rspace: 0px; } td, a, span { mso-line-height-rule: exactly; } #root [x-apple-data-detectors=true], a[x-apple-data-detectors=true], #MessageViewBody a { color: inherit !important; text-decoration: inherit !impor…  ( 8 min )

Today is Sean Kuhn’s last day at Defector. Sean has been our Head of Subscription Strategy for the last four years, and in that time he has become one of our favorite dudes. The only reason we’re not furious at him is because he’s leaving us for a dream job: doing fancy math crap for…  ( 76 min )

Around 59,000 years ago, somewhere in the Altai Mountains of southwestern Siberia, in lands prowling with woolly rhinos and cave hyenas, a Neanderthal had a toothache. The tooth was a molar, rooted in the lower left corner of the Neanderthal's mouth, and it had begun to rot. Such a dilemma is diabolically familiar to us modern humans, but at least we are fortunate to have dentists, who inflict upon us mild pain and terror in exchange for lasting relief. But a new paper in the journal PLOS One suggests that this Neanderthal had a dentist all of their own. After analyzing this ancient molar, which sported a strangely deep hole at its center, a team of researchers suggest this tooth is evidence of the world's earliest dental procedure, which, if true, might hold the superlative of being the w…  ( 25 min )

This article originally appeared May 11 on The Small Bow. Early on Saturday mornings, Amy Wallace would be yanked out of bed by her big brother, David. He was determined not to miss the start of the cartoons. At their home in Urbana, Illinois, the siblings situated themselves in front of the television and waited for the color bars to turn to The Road Runner Show, David eager, impatient, full of energy. Eventually, he would splay out on the carpet and Amy would sit behind him on the couch. More than 50 years later, Amy is still haunted by the sensory experience of that couch. It was pea-green and scratchy, yet she dutifully—and gladly—sat there as part of their sibling ritual.   Their mother, Sally Foster, described the scene this way: Amy spent her mornings watching David watch TV. But that’s not quite right.  ( 59 min )

Donald Trump was in China this week for a series of meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In order to cover the historic summit, major American broadcasters sent their newscasters overseas to broadcast from Beijing. Even the dolts from Fox News managed to get over there and commit a parking violation. Absent from the party, however, was beleaguered CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, who at this point really seems to be cursed. "Right now, I'm just about 100 miles off the coast of mainland China," is how Dokoupil began Wednesday night's broadcast from the balcony of a hotel in Taipei, Taiwan. Tony was being kind to himself: Taipei may be very close to mainland China itself, but it is 1,000 miles away from Beijing, where all of the important stuff was happening. The reason Dokoupil was stuck on that hotel balcony is that CBS failed to secure a visa for its man. Semafor's Max Tani reported that as a result the network had to send Dokoupil to Taipei at the last minute. Not content with personally fucking with her handpicked anchor's teleprompter and crashing his show's ratings, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss now seems to have robbed the network of its ability to complete basic logistical tasks. Things didn't get better for Dokoupil once he got over to Taipei. Wednesday night's broadcast was brought to a strange and sudden end when Dokoupil's cameraman collapsed (CBS later released a statement saying the cameraman is OK):  ( 16 min )

The Corruption: IRS Edition A corrupt agreement is in the works between President Trump and his underlings at the Justice...  ( 11 min )

Plus, the resistance stopped the GOP’s election scheme cold

her job is to keep Donny stupid and happy

After Donald Trump blasphemed the Christian faith by posting what any fool could see was an artificial intelligence-generated illustration of himself as Jesus Christ, many members of the Beltway chattering class hoped the religious right would finally quit the president. The answer, of course, was a robust “heck no,” and this weekend, the White House is offering a reminder why. Trump is devoted to a blasphemy that is far more important to them: rewriting history to push the false claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. On Sunday, May 17, the White House will kick off the celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary with an alarming event: Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, an all-day prayer festival featuring administration offici…  ( 10 min )

Prot as an Emacs coach to help with doing review passes over my upcoming ffs package as I work on polishing and documenting it in preparation for offering it for inclusion in GNU ELPA. Today we had our third session where we started by reviewing and talking about my recent changes to ffs, then ventured to other Emacs-related topics with the overarching theme of the flexibility and extensibility of GNU Emacs, including display-buffer-alist, keyboard macros, defining a custom ox-bhtml Org export backend derived from Org's ox-html for ultimate flexibility when exporting my site's pages from Org to HTML, Org capture, plain text files and Emacs's diary and how it compares to org-agenda, and keeping a journal with the help of Emacs. Here is the video recording of our session, which I share with Prot's permission: Sorry, this embedded video will not work, because your web browser does not support HTML5 video. [ please watch the video in your favourite streaming media player ]​ You can view or download the full-resolution video from the Internet Archive. Lastly, here is the snippet Prot shared for having Isearch treat space as a wildcard, helpful for more easily matching multiple parts of a line: (setq search-whitespace-regexp ".*?") (setq isearch-lax-whitespace t) (setq isearch-regexp-lax-whitespace nil)  ( 1 min )

Yesterday I met with Amin Bandali to talk about Emacs. Amin asked me if he could record the session, which I agreed to. The video is available on Amin’s website: https://kelar.org/~bandali/gnu/emacs/ffs-emacs-ext-prot.html. We started with a review of the latest changes to the ffs package that Amin has been developing. We had looked into it before and wanted to check on its current state. Amin then asked me about the display-buffer-alist, which I had mentioned before. To me, this is the single most important variable for making Emacs feel more like your own. The reason is that it allows you to control the placement of buffers to match your expectations. I demonstrated some of the main ideas. Another nice little feature is the built-in isearch. I explained how it is especially helpful while recording keyboard macros. Though it is nice to use in general. One tweak for it is to display a counter with its matches. Another is to change how it treats spaces, so that it can match any character in-between. This is not as flexible as, say, consult-line (from the consult package) when combined with vertico and orderless. Though it still has its uses. [ I have lots of little extras for isearch, but those should be good for most users. ] Amin told me about rediscovering the value of Org in the context of statically generating his website. He showed me the custom Org HTML export backend he has been working on. Org has so many nice features which can be used independent of each other. In this light, we also discussed the diary compared to the Org agenda. Find all of Amin’s publications on his website: https://kelar.org/~bandali/.  ( 1 min )

the choice between Bazaar and Git as the new version control system for Emacs. Twenty years ago, Emacs was still using CVS, a venerable RCS that was well past its sell date.. It was clear to everyone that a new system was needed. The question was which one. The two contenders were Bazaar and Git. On the technical merits the choice was clear. Git was faster and more reliable and most, if not all, of the developers wanted to move to it. But there were political considerations. Bazaar was a GNU project and Git was not. RMS felt strongly that the GNU project should support its own applications and insisted that Bazaar be used and given a chance to improve. It was maintained by Canonical but they eventually abandoned the effort. Even though the development was stalled and error reports were piling up unresolved for years, RMS insisted on staying the course. The saga would probably still be going on were it not for Eric Raymond (ESR). He had been working for some time on a utility to import various RCS systems into Git while maintaining whatever metadata the old system offered. At one point he decided to convert Emacs to Git. It was a particularly difficult problem because there was more than one source RCS in play and because some of the records were old and incomplete. Nonetheless, ESR managed the conversion and in 2014 announced that he had the conversion scripts ready and was set to go. In November 2014 he ran his scripts and suddenly Emacs was available as a Git repo. The developers started using it and the battle was over.  ( 5 min )

My Summer Kalshi Portfolio96 :root { color-scheme: light; supported-color-schemes: light; } body { margin: 0; padding: 0; min-width: 100%!important; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-transform: scale(1) !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100% !important; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; } .body { word-wrap: normal; word-spacing:normal; } table.mso { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0; table-layout: fixed; } img { border: 0; outline: none; } table { mso-table-lspace: 0px; mso-table-rspace: 0px; } td, a, span { mso-line-height-rule: exactly; } #root [x-apple-data-detectors=true], a[x-apple-data-detectors=true], #MessageViewBody a { color: inherit !important; text-decoration: inherit !important; font-size: inherit !important…  ( 7 min )

Thomas and Alito each authored a separate dissent.

The Justice Department keeps handing massive taxpayer-funded settlements to President Trump’s political allies. The post DOJ Used To Fight Public Corruption. Now, It’s Facilitating Public Corruption Instead appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 6 min )

In the years since his 1996 conviction, the state’s case against Carruthers has collapsed. But courts have repeatedly rejected his requests for a new trial, leaving him with no recourse. The post Tony Carruthers Was Forced to Represent Himself at Trial. Tennessee Is About to Execute Him appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 9 min )

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This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

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Our first new video bonus for paid subscribers walks through the two rulings in argued cases that the Supreme Court handed down on Thursday, May 14, 2026.

As we enter the OT2025 homestretch, we're introducing two new features as a thank you to paid subscribers.

Here's a little secret about elite performers: They're always working to get better at their craft. The example I tend to use is Patrick Redford, who hosts both the Nothing But Respect and Only If You Get Caught podcasts here at Defector, but who is also always in the lab. He blogs. He has a lucrative sideline in the canine protein supplement space. And this week, with the NBA playoffs at full tilt, he joined us on The Distraction. The grind never stops, although it sometimes takes an ad break. Both of Patrick's podcasts are really good, although we focused most of our conversation on Nothing But Respect, which has quickly carved out a unique space in the basketball discourse as a place for ball-knowers who do not work in the ball-knowing space to get some shots up. Nothing But Respect has surely hosted more Pitchfork Best New Music honorees than any other basketball podcast, and the show has become a refuge and resource for people who would otherwise be forced to keep their basketball sicko opinions to themselves.  ( 18 min )

When you lay out the chain of events that have led to Mark Vientos playing first base for the New York Mets every day, it becomes less surprising that the Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball this season. During the winter, the organization made the decision, which will likely seem pretty smart in the long term but was highly unpopular in the moment, to let another team pay full price for Pete Alonso's next five seasons. To replace the franchise's all-time home run leader, the Mets signed Jorge Polanco, with an eye on moving him to first base. Vientos, along with fellow not-quite-busted corner infield prospect Brett Baty, was surely a trade candidate during the offseason, but wound up on the Opening Day roster as depth and a platoon-specific option at designated hitter. That t…  ( 23 min )

SAN FRANCISCO — Stuffed with dumplings, walking off the 22 bus past my neurologists' office and across Third Street up to the Golden State Valkyries' arena with the sun at our backs, I told my friend that the first thing he needed to know about the Chicago Sky is that they were a clown organization. These were not serious people. We were going to roll them. Though the Sky had signed a bunch of veterans and traded for one of the realest hoopers in the WNBA, they had also done an astonishing amount of losing on the margins. Olivia Miles, the coolest player in college hoops, was suiting up for the Minnesota Lynx instead of the Sky. The two expansion teams, one of whom was about to secure the first win in team history that night, fleeced Chicago for second-round picks in exchange for not taking any of the young players they were about to cut anyway. Had Golden State also made a strange draft-night move? Sure, but it had earned the benefit of the doubt, because it is a smart organization that knows how to conduct itself. As I warned of the Valks' questionable depth in the middle and detailed the steep competency gradient among WNBA ownership, I grew even more confident that my first trip to Ballhalla this season to be a glorious one.  ( 24 min )

Plus, courts tell ICE no 10,000 times, and a failed gerrymander in Mississippi keeps Rep. Bennie Thompson on the ballot

Judges Rein in the Administration and … I want to give you the flavor of a handful of new smackdowns...  ( 11 min )

In the early weeks of 2026 massive popular outrage triggered by the clearly unjustified shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti forced the Trump administration to significantly slow its grotesque campaign of mass deportation. The violent, storm trooper like abductions of ordinary pedestrians and workers—frequently involving brutal assaults on women as well as men—were curtailed... Read more »  ( 7 min )

From “Working Class Weekly: Cracks Emerge Among White Working Class Voters in North Carolina” at The Working Class Project: “In late April, we conducted two virtual focus groups with white working class swing voters in North Carolina– one with women, one with men. Most participants voted for Trump in 2024…As one of two Republican-held U.S.... Read more »  ( 10 min )

remember when we used to be proud of our national monuments?

The intersection of fame, unchecked desires, and risky sexual practices has produced some of the most shocking and tragic celebrity deaths in history. While many stars have passed away during or immediately after consensual sex from natural causes like heart attacks, a subset involves extreme fetishes—particularly autoerotic asphyxiation (AEA), where individuals restrict oxygen to heighten...  ( 8 min )

At least seven judges have blocked invasive administrative subpoenas targeting gender-affirming care for minors, so DOJ appears to be trying a new tactic to get the info it wants.

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Fox News and Fox Business have completely ignored President Donald Trump’s statement that he isn't considering Americans' financial situations during negotiations with Iran, as gas prices and inflation continue to soar in large part due to his ongoing war.  ( 3 min )

As concerns about the spread of hantavirus emerge, right-wing and far-right figures are spreading conspiracy theories on podcasts and social media that the virus came from a lab and may be a new “plandemic” (planned pandemic) created to push vaccines, disrupt upcoming elections, or achieve other nefarious goals. The conspiracy theories are similar to those spread among the right during the COVID-19 pandemic that harmed efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus and contributed to declining vaccination rates.  ( 5 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 4 min )

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PBS surpassed every other broadcast TV news network in coverage of LGBTQ issues last year, accounting for 66% of weekday evening news segments about the topic and airing over 4 times the coverage in minutes of CBS, NBC, and ABC combined. Discussion across networks frequently mentioned legislative or policy challenges to LGBTQ rights and subjects related to the transgender community, but networks largely failed to feature trans voices in their coverage. LGBTQ rights faced unprecedented rollbacks at the federal level in 2025, with trans and gender-nonconforming Americans particularly impacted. President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders in the first weeks of his second term that undermined the legal recognition of trans people, as well as their ability to serve in the military, access gender-affirming care, and play on sports teams that align with their lived gender.  These executive orders followed a recent surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation at the state level, and legislators continued to challenge LGBTQ rights in 2025, with an emphasis on restrictions targeting trans Americans. Some bills faced legal scrutiny, including at the highest level, where the Supreme Court upheld a 2023 Tennessee ban on youth gender-affirming care and ruled with Maryland parents aiming to opt their children out of LGBTQ-inclusive public school lessons. Meanwhile, broadcast networks experienced significant pressures. ABC and CBS faced legal challenges from Trump or his administration in late 2024 and 2025. The president also cut federal funding to PBS and threatened to revoke NBC’s and ABC's licensing. Nevertheless, according to a 2025 LA Times report, an estimated 18 million people watched ABC's, CBS', or NBC's evening news program every night, and the most recent data available shows that nearly 2 million people watched PBS' News Hour nightly in 2022.  ( 8 min )

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Local news outlets across the country are covering how communities are trying to provide support to families losing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits due to newly imposed restrictions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Fox News, which advocated for work requirements and other restrictions and celebrated the resulting loss of benefits for millions, is also helping the Trump administration push other changes to the food stamp program that experts say are likely to reduce beneficiaries’ access to groceries and kick millions more people off the program.  ( 9 min )

Watching with horror the Supreme Court-enabled assault on majority-Black districts made me tremble with fear for the 2026 midterms, but also tremble with fury at the GOP, as I explained at New York: Republicans from Donald Trump on down are excited that the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais has invited a wave of partisan gerrymanders in states they... Read more »  ( 9 min )

The guys at “Pod Save America” have a mission for Democrats, especially 2026 candidates. It is to make the Republicans, particularly their candidates, repeatedly own Trump’s ballroom. The Pod guys insist, with good reason, that the ballroom is the perfect symbol to highlight GOP arrogance and coddling the super-wealthy. Trump’s Ballroom may be the biggest... Read more »  ( 8 min )

A Court that claims to be skeptical of “judicial tinkering” with elections has no problem allowing Republican lawmakers to re-gerrymander their states—even when voting is already in progress. The post The Alabama Redistricting Fight Is Exposing the Supreme Court as a Farce appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 7 min )

After starting to make use of the GitLab/Codeberg sync approach for various repositories, I found that my muscle memory in Magit was getting the better of me and, on occasion, I'd push a new branch to backups when I wanted origin. I sensed there had to be a way round that. Here's what I settled on: (advice-add 'magit-list-remotes :filter-return (lambda (remotes) (delete "backups" remotes))) Now I never see backups in Magit and now I can keep using my muscle memory (rather than actually reading what is in front of me, it seems).

a splendid post on cl-flet, cl-letf, and cl-labels. I didn’t get a chance to write about it then but his post is very useful for understanding these macros and how they differ. The macros are the replacements for the now deprecated flet, which, in turn, was imported from Common Lisp with the added feature of having dynamic scope. As Batsov points out, making the scope dynamic conflates the notion of local and dynamic scope, which can be a bit confusing. This behavior is preserved by the cl-letf macro for those who need it. The cl-flet macro is just like the flet macro from Common Lisp. It defines a local function whose definition is available only from within its scope. The salient fact is that its definition is not available from within the function definition so it can’t be called recursively. The cl-labels macro is like labels from Common Lisp. It’s similar to cl-flet except that its definition is available from within the function definition so it is recursive. Finally, the cl-letf macro largely replicates the behavior of the old (Elisp) flet macro with the addition that it can dynamically replace the definition of any setf-able definition. This can complicate its use a bit. See Batsov’s post for the details. If you’re like me, you don’t use any of these macros that often so it’s easy to forget the details. For that reason it’s worthwhile bookmarking Batsov’s post so that you can refresh your memory whenever you need to.  ( 5 min )

1. About Figure 1: JPEG produced with OpenAI gpt-image-1 Consulet regarding Romeo Montagnu "Emacs is an Effortless Bloom," or at least, this is what my brain has been screaming into its own void for the past few months…. I have recently been publishing posts to my blog as part of a composite series on the usage patterns that make Emacs powerful to its most fluent users. I don't know if "Emacs is an Effortless Bloom" will be the name of the series when all is said and done…. Maybe it's more of a mantra, or perhaps even a haunting brain spasm at the moment. At least, this phrase has been popping involuntarily into my mind since I started this series, and I think it's worth thinking about why. In this post, I'll discuss, among others, two core patterns that make Emacs easy…  ( 28 min )

W in dired, which is bound to dired-do-async-shell-command, type mpv (or accept the default guess that my dired-guess-shell-alist-user provides for video files), and the video starts playing. Great. But when I close Emacs, the video dies too. The whole point of an async command is that it runs in the background, right?, so why does it disappear when Emacs goes away?, this is most perplexing! Now I should say, the answer is obvious in retrospect, but it took me a little while to actually stop and think about it properly. The command dired-do-async-shell-command adds a trailing & to the shell command and passes it to async-shell-command, which creates a shell process - Emacs is the parent of that shell, and the shell is the parent of mpv. When Emacs exits, it kills its child pr…  ( 2 min )

Keyboard Commands I ran out of keyboard commands. OK, that sounds weird. Let me explain. In Alfred, I have the following keyboard assignments: ⇧⌃A: App Store ⇧⌃B: BBEdit ⇧⌃E: Emacs I had covered the alphabet. Every letter had an application associated with it. I started a second layer. I assigned ⇧⌃⌥B to Better Finder Rename, ⇧⌃⌥E to EagleFiler and so on. Soon I was running out of choices again. Over a period of almost 15 years, I made do. I loved Alfred, I also loved keyboard commands. I wanted to be able type a keyboard command and then choose from a list of applications which were tied to that keyboard command. I wanted to be able to type something small to be able to navigate this list and launch the application I wanted. I didn’t know how to do this in Alfred. I had hacked together a …

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Welcome! Hello to the 300+ new Morning Memo readers who have signed up after seeing Josh Marshall and Kate Riga...  ( 12 min )

and he verbally abused another woman reporter

Plus, a phone call stops ICE

Let’s be clear up front: There is no evidence that Donald Trump has staged any of the three high-profile attempts on his life in the past two years. I’ll likely get some angry reader feedback to that assertion because a lot of people believe at least one of the would-be assassinations — and quite possibly all three — were false flag operations. A new survey from NewsGuard shows that 54% of Americans are open to the theory that at least one of the attacks was staged, with only 38% saying definitively they believe all three were real. When asked about each separate assault — the 2024 shooting that grazed Trump’s ear at a Pennsylvania campaign stop, the arrest of the armed man at the president’s West Palm Beach golf course later that year and the recent incident at the White House Corresponde…  ( 9 min )

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Anju comes in. He says that the introduction of context-menu-mode in Emacs 28 made it possible to provide cotentxt sensitive menus for Elisp development and he has added it to the latest version of Anju. His post has a couple of screen shots of his menus in action. In the first, the point is on a function definition and the menu, among other things, offers the choice to instrument that function. In the second, the function has been instrumented and now the (context sensitive) menu offers things you can do—such as step into, set a breakpoint, and others—with the function. Naturally all of this is dependent on where the point is. That’s the point: the menu is context sensitive. Choi says that the use of the context menus has markedly improved his Elisp development. If you do some but not a lot of Emacs development, it may be a win for you. On the other hand, Choi certainly does do a lot of Emacs development and still finds it a win. Perhaps—no matter your normal workflow—you will too.  ( 5 min )

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For ages I’ve had “add prepl support to CIDER” sitting somewhere in the back of my head. CIDER is built firmly around nREPL, but prepl ships with Clojure itself, and the appeal of dropping the external REPL server requirement is obvious. Recently, as part of a broader internals cleanup “mini-project” in CIDER, I finally sat down and put a prototype together: cider#3899. The good news is that the prototype sort of worked. The bad news is that the more I poked at it, the more I kept running into the same pattern. CIDER assumes ops, sessions, request ids, and a whole structured protocol that prepl simply doesn’t have. The amount of CIDER code that would need to grow “is this nREPL or prepl?” branches added up quickly, and I’d be papering over prepl’s limitations in dozens of subtle places. T…  ( 5 min )

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This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

According to GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan, the war has caused gasoline prices to increase by $1.35 a gallon, and added $28 billion more to Americans' gasoline costs.  ( 2 min )

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Following last week’s mayoral debate in Los Angeles, right-wing media have praised candidate Spencer Pratt, a Republican, as a “star” and a “political colonoscopy for California politics.” Some even compared Pratt to Trump as a reality TV personality-turned-politician. Pratt is running against Democrat incumbent Karen Bass and LA city council member Nithya Raman.  ( 6 min )

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has caused oil prices to surge, spiking gas prices across the country. Local news outlets have spotlighted the various impacts these record high prices have had on Americans and the people and industries we rely on, from farmers and truckers to first responders, small businesses, and even our schools, among many others.   As of May 11, as the war enters its eleventh week, the national average for a regular gallon of gas is above $4.50, with some states paying nearly or above $5 per gallon. Experts continue to warn that even if the war ended today, the resulting “worst energy crisis ever faced by the world” would keep prices elevated for months to come.  One reporter from South Bend, Indiana, station WSBT 22 noted that “many are worrying about how they will adjust their budget just to buy gas,” while another reporter from Peoria, Illinois, station WEEK Peoria 25 heard from a local resident that “she has had to cut down on her trips to visit her husband in his nursing home from weekly to once every two weeks.” All over the country Americans are feeling the pain at the pump. Below are more examples from local media outlets spotlighting the people and industries that have been upended.  ( 3 min )

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This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 2 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

Amid a rise in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, some influencers and media figures have cast doubt on the routine vitamin K shot given to newborn infants – and new reporting from ProPublica suggests such rhetoric may have had deadly consequences.  Though the shot is not a vaccine, it has “been swept up in the same post-pandemic tide that has led to a drop in key childhood vaccines” and other medical interventions, with ProPublica writing that “more than 5% of newborns in the U.S. did not receive vitamin K shots in 2024” — a 77% increase since 2017. The publication further warns that “hundreds of children die each year from spontaneous bleeding in the brain, a common result of vitamin K deficiency.”  For years, some influencers and media figures have described the warnings of potential health consequences of not getting a vitamin K shot as “emotional blackmail” and claimed those that refuse the shot are “more responsible” parents.  ( 7 min )

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Dunder-Gets, Django Tasks in Prod, Codex CLI, and More body,#bodyTable,#bodyCell{ height:100% !important; margin:0; padding:0; width:100% !important; } table{ border-collapse:collapse; } img,a img{ border:0; outline:none; text-decoration:none; } h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{ margin:0; padding:0; } p{ margin:1em 0; padding:0; } a{ word-wrap:break-word; } .mcnPreviewText{ display:none !important; } .ReadMsgBody{ width:100%; } .ExternalClass{ width:100%; } .ExternalClass,.ExternalClass p,.ExternalClass span,.ExternalClass font,.ExternalClass td,.ExternalClass div{ line-height:100%; } …  ( 5 min )

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Callais allows Republicans to gerrymander Black people out of electoral existence, as long as they say they are doing so for partisan reasons. Ralph Norman didn’t take the hint. The post South Carolina Republican Briefly Tells the Truth About the GOP’s Redistricting Push appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 6 min )

Plus, Hawaii makes it easier to vote

the Nodfather snoozes again

‘Treason’ Rattled by leaks from within his own administration about the Iran War, President Trump has directed acting Attorney General...  ( 12 min )

The main reason I started this blog was as a way to work through my ever-growing hip-hop vinyl and CD collection. I have thousands of vinyl and CDs, and have only listened to about a fourth of them to date. … Continue reading →  ( 20 min )

From “Concrete Local Work Moderates Partisanship Among Rural Residents”  by Rural Urban Bridge Initiative: “In a time of widespread partisan animosity across much of the United States, a just-released study of the Community Works initiative demonstrates that sustained, concrete, non-political work in rural communities reduces the intensity of partisan polarization when compared with similar “control... Read more »  ( 10 min )

The music industry has always had a dark romance with self-destruction. Talent, fame, excess, and inner demons often collide in spectacular fashion, creating legends who burn brightly but briefly. For some artists, their downward spirals were so public, so relentless, and so thoroughly documented by tabloids, friends, bandmates, and even themselves that their deaths felt...  ( 8 min )

Justice Sotomayor, for the three Dem appointees, noted in dissent that the majority acted "without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue." The primary election was to be held May 19.

I work on developing features and fixing bugs in the Linux kernel in areas specific to IBM Power. I use a number of Emacs’ facilities to get my work done. Magit I use Magit extensively with clones of various Git repositories from https://git.kernel.org/. I keep learning new (to me) things about git and Magit and using them. I’ve found it useful to learn how things work with the command line before attempting to use them in Magit. Compilation This work being with C source code, I make heavy use of M-x compile. I’ve made my life easier by preloading a couple of items in compile-history. I don’t need this everywhere, just in my Linux trees, so I put all of my Linux repositories under ~/linux, and there I’ve created a .dir-locals.el for directory local variables: ((nil . ((compile-history …  ( 2 min )

Since I had no interesting books to read today, nor interesting films to watch, I decided to scavenge for the most intriguing content one can find online. I ended up reading the Linux kernel mailing lists, but those discussions seemed to be 18+, so I settled for the comparatively civil emacs-devel. For those unfamiliar, emacs-devel is the primary development discussion list for GNU Emacs – where design decisions get made, patches get reviewed, and occasionally where people spend 200 messages arguing about version control software. This is the story of that last one. 2008: “This question is over and decided” In March 2008, Emacs was migrating from CVS (yes, CVS) to something more “modern”. The two contenders were Git and Bazaar. Git, created by Linus Torvalds for the Linux kernel. Bazaar …

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As celebrated as Emacs is for its programmability, I find the actual process of developing Emacs Lisp (Elisp) to be quite underwhelming. Developing in Elisp has meant learning its libraries and idioms, which is to be expected. What I really don’t care for though are the arcane keybindings associated with doing basic things like evaluating, navigating (Xref), and debugging (especially debugging). While I’ve already committed to muscle memory most of said keybindings, I’d argue that having a mouse-based “point and click” interface is beneficial for both novice and experienced Elisp developers alike, as it lets one focus on the code and not on recalling the right key incantation all the time. The addition of context-menu-mode in Emacs 28 has provided the opportunity to build a mouse-based UI …  ( 2 min )

F9 mapped to Emacs capture so that I can invoke any Org capture template from anywhere on my system. That’s really handy and I use it several times a day. I also have a shortcut to invoke Emacs Everywhere so that I can escape into the comfort of Emacs when entering data in some other app. Today (Sunday, as I write this) I received a notification that a new version of ICanHazShortcut was available. It’s completely rewritten in Swift from Basic and has some new capabilities. You can read about them at the above link. For me, not much has changed. The new version continues doing what ICanHazShortcut has always done. ICanHazShortcut is a minimal app that simply provides a shortcut for any command that you can specify in the terminal. There are plenty of more full featured key mappers available that may be better for more complicated situations but I find ICanHazShortcut perfect. It’s light weight and easy to configure. I almost never mess with ICanHazShortcut’s configuration. The last time I changed it—to add HomeKit, I think—was years ago. It truly is a set it and forget it app. If you want a simple app for invoking Emacs—or anything else—in various ways, take a look at ICanHazShortcut; it’s worked very well for me.  ( 5 min )

emacs/etc/NEWS.31 for details. Lots of posts for the Emacs Carnival theme of "May I recommend…", yay! Emacs 31: The emacs-31 branch has been created! (Irreal) openSUSE package for emacs-31 (@thaodan) Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): London Emacs (in person): Emacs London meetup https://www.meetup.com/london-emacs-hacking/events/314540885/ Tue May 12 1800 Europe/London Emacs Berlin: In-Person-Only Emacs-Berlin Stammtisch https://emacs-berlin.org/ Tue May 12 1900 Europe/Berlin OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed May 13 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1800 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May 14 0000 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed May 20 0800 America/Vancouv…  ( 4 min )

Most Linux distributions ship generic binaries compiled to run safely on a vast array of older hardware configurations. While this ensures broad compatibility, it sacrifices the speed that comes from using the specific, modern instruction sets of your processor. Compiling Emacs directly from source allows instructing the compiler to generate machine code explicitly targeted at your CPU architecture, resulting in a faster and more efficient runtime environment. Before we dive in, please consider sharing this article on your website/blog, Mastodon, Reddit, X, or your preferred social media platforms. Sharing it will help fellow Emacs users discover better ways to manage code folding. Beyond raw hardware optimization, building from source enables dropping decades of legacy compatibility layer…  ( 17 min )

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This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising gas prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

This post is part of a series chronicling news coverage of rising gas prices in the United States. See more here.  ( 3 min )

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Local and national news reports have documented that the trucking industry is struggling amid Fox-endorsed Trump administration actions and policies that have caused diesel prices to skyrocket, forced hundreds of thousands of truckers off the road, and increased the cost of trucks and replacement parts.  ( 11 min )

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Previously, loyalty to Trump’s agenda was an implicit requirement for aspiring federal judges. On Sunday night, he decided to make it clearer than ever. The post There’s an Easy Way to Tell That Trump’s Judicial Nominees Don’t Belong On the Bench appeared first on Balls and Strikes.  ( 5 min )

A photographer stopped the border wall, a whistleblower forced ICE to fold, and Hungary rejects Trump’s blueprint

The Tilted Playing Field The impact of the redistricting decisions by the U.S. and Virginia supreme courts is beginning to...  ( 13 min )

but also a short rant about our dumbfuck president

The Supreme Court has not only accelerated the race to the partisan redistricting bottom; it is directly responsible for the chaos we're seeing on the ground.

You may have seen one of the news reports over the weekend regarding  the buzz about Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2028.  So, what if Rubio suddenly resigned from the Trump Administration? As Secretary of State, Rubio has undoubtedly gotten a taste of what it feels like to... Read more »  ( 9 min )

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interesting post on the describe-personal-keybindings command. The idea is that the command lists the keybindings that you have set in your configuration. It’s convenient, mbork says, for checking that new Emacs releases haven’t stolen one of your bindings. It’s also interesting to see what bindings you’ve added and what, if anything, they’ve replaced. But there’s a catch. In order for a personal keybinding to show up, it must have been set with the bind-key macro. That’s a problem for those of us who are long term users. Those who use use-package exclusively have no problem since the :bind command uses bind-key automatically but bindings set with, say, define-key will not appear in the describe-personal-keybindings output. That’s inspired mbork to refactor his init.el to use use-pacjkage and for stand-alone bindings, the bind-key macro. The minions are insisting that I mention what they consider the best part of mbork’s post. That, of course, concerned dark mode. Mbork begins his post by mentioning a Web app that provides a Web based cheat sheet of Emacs commands. Mbork says it’s a cool command but not for him because if I were to create something like that, it would run in Emacs and not in the browser, it would definitely mention transpose-.* commands, and it would never be dark-mode-only;-). The minions haven’t been causing much trouble lately so I thought it only fair to indulge their desire to get mbork’s dislike of dark mode on the record.  ( 5 min )

Joshua Blaise wrote about his eww setup and use, I read it with interest and stole most of his ideas for my own config. The important one for this little hack is that I set up URLs with endings like .mp3, .mp4, .m4v, .mkv etc to launch in mpv when browsing to them. This makes watching videos and listening to audio content easy with EWW. EWW is also good for browsing local files where the URL is file:// and so forth. In dired, I usually launch external programs for photo editing, media playback etc by pressing & with point on a file name. This brings up the completing-read interface in the minibuffer which asks me if I would like to use dired's guess as to which program to use (which I have set to guess xdg-open first) or something else. I press return and then mpv, gimp, darktable or wh…  ( 2 min )

and Péter Magyar gets sworn in as Hungary’s PM

Inside the collapse