Ay-eye-ay-aye — Oh! August 29, 2026August 29, 2026 But first . . . This week’s Indivisible “What’s The Plan” — How to Fix This MAGA Supreme Court featuring Elie Mystal — was really, really interesting. If you can find time, I think you’ll learn a lot. I did. Listen! And now . . . Perhaps even more consequential (and that’s saying something): AI is making everything worse. The least of it (but I can’t resist): Here’s a fun fact for you: More cops have been arrested for stalking women using Flock cameras than there are trans athletes in sports. The one thing Garrett Graff doesn’t address — a very big thing — is what to do about A.I.’s downsides. Hard as it is to imagine our getting one, the world clearly needs a really smart international treaty to try to give humans a chance to control how A.I. develops before it decides that for itself.
Taking Back Religion — And Trump’s Attempt to Annex Canada August 27, 2026 ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS Adam Hamilton and Taking Back Religion from the Right Snippets: . . . While many observers are focused on the emergence of the Democratic Socialists of America (who boast a total membership of just over a hundred thousand), a more important trend in the Democratic Party may be the resurgence of the once dominant and long-dormant mainline Protestant tradition [which may be more like 45 million]. . . . The first public moment of resistance in Trump’s second term came immediately, during the Inaugural prayer service, when the Episcopal bishop of the District of Columbia, Mariann Budde, asked him to “have mercy” on gay, immigrant, and other marginalized Americans. The President, naturally, responded by saying that the bishop was a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who owed him an apology, and whose service had been “very boring and uninspiring.” . . . At sixty-two, [Adam Hamilton] has been a minister for thirty-six years. He’s running for Senate, he says, to “build bridges” across political divides, and he seems more likely than most to have a shot at succeeding. He’s not just a Methodist pastor, he’s the founding pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. . . . [Hamilton’s] kind of progressive theological clarity is showing up in many places. Another prominent American Christian, Pope Leo XIV, has been straightforward in condemning both the Trump Administration’s treatment of immigrants and its prosecution of the war: the Gospel says to welcome strangers; Catholic teaching back to Augustine says a just war must be defensive. “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” the Pope said in April, not long after Trump had posted and then deleted an artificially generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure. Worth reading in full. (In case you’d like to meet Reverend Hamilton at a small gathering in New York next month — with David Letterman — me-mail me.) OH, CANADA When [Prime Minister Mark] Carney stood at that podium Saturday and said the Americans “asked too much and offered too little,” everyone assumed he was talking about dairy quotas and hockey stick tariffs. He wasn’t. This was an annexation attempt with a cover page . . . . . . I want to be precise here because there’s a document floating around on social media claiming to summarize the US demands, and about half of it is fabricated. Ignore it. You don’t need the fake version. The real version, confirmed by Carney’s own mouth and sourced reporting, is damning enough on its own. . . . Again, worth reading in full. If this writer is correct, Trump’s trade war on Canada will prove to have been one of his bigger mistakes. And that’s saying something. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
The Mar-A-Lago Mafia August 25, 2026 MUST SHARE The Solo cups never lie: Here’s which party is better on the economy, jobs, and the debt. MUST SHARE II The President of Kazakhstan calls Trump, don of the Mar-A-Lago mafia (2 minutes). R.I.P. Though I never met her, I felt I knew Dolly Parton; and, like everyone, I really liked her. Here she is with my then-partner Scot Haller, whom we lost to AIDS 36 years ago: And here’s a remembrance that has to make you smile. Especially the part about her entering — and losing — a Dolly Parton look-alike contest. CLEAR THINKING ON IRAN From Foreign Affairs: Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail. I hope they’re wrong; but then I had hoped he’d make good on the bonds he once issued, too. I figured: with his own name on the bonds, he’d never let them default. Plus — how can lose money running a casino? Everything Trump Touches Dies. Bad news for almost everyone — though not China, Russia, North Korea, or the measles. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Has The WSJ Gone Commie? August 24, 2026 Anyone who opposes our great leader — anyone who denies he had the largest Inaugural crowd in history or that he won the stolen election of 2020 or that the reflecting pool was slashed by vandals . . . anyone who doubts he has the concept of a plan for “great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost” or who wants to see the redacted parts of the Epstein files or who questions his bulldozing of the White House or his going to war with Iran without Congressional approval . . . or who doesn’t agree the economy he was handed (“the envy of the world,” as The Economist described it) was a disaster — all those people are scum and vermin, or, at the very least, radical lunatics (and, “low IQ” if they happen to be black). And now the Republican line is that Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders (who is not a member of a group called the Democratic Socialists of America, which has platform planks like getting rid of police and prisons that no one actually running for office supports) are all full-on socialists or communists. So I wonder: IS AOC A COMMIE? Watch her answer here. (Sorry to shout, but I really hope you watch — 90 seconds). HOW ABOUT THE FAMOUSLY RIGHT-WING WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD? Sunday, the Journal’s editors reiterated their February, 2025, headline — The Dumbest Trade War in History — with The Dumbest Trade War Revisited, finding it, if anything, even dumber. It’s a sad day when the Wall Street Journal editorial board has gone communist. Or could it be that they’ve just gone anti-stupid, anti-incompetent, anti-reckless, anti-thug, anti-fascist? BONUS QUESTION: COULD ANNIE ANDREWS BEAT LINDSEY GRAHAM’S SISTER? Pete Buttigieg thinks so (50 seconds). Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Vaguely Related Good News August 23, 2026August 23, 2026 IT’S THE DATA CENTERS, STUPID Or so argues Ryan Busse here. What Democrats should do, he says (in effect) is demagog this issue. That might certainly work in specific districts where voters — quite reasonably — oppose data centers. But as a nation we are surely going to need them, because artificial intelligence is the future, scary though that is in many ways — I’m an apocaloptimist, as you may recall — and ceding the future to China is probably not the best idea. So, no: it’s not the data centers, at least as a national policy plank. (Vaguely related good news: China will not be invading Taiwan any time soon. For more, ask your A.I. Which is why we need data centers.) (More vaguely related good news: the harder it is to find sites for data centers, the more valuable, I like to think, RNGE‘s business model of reclaiming abandoned Appalachian mine sites for use as data centers becomes. I think the stock, though up five-fold from where we bought it, could climb another ten-fold over the next few years — though a bet to be made ONLY with money you can truly afford to lose.) AI APOCALYPSE . . . NOW? A discussion on Pod Save America that might be of interest: Is AI set to destroy the world, or could it all just be a bubble? Why does Sam Altman want ChatGPT to monitor everything you do on your computer? Who is set to win the AI Game of Thrones? Casey Newton, editor of the tech newsletter Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, joins Tommy to talk about the hype and doom surrounding the world-changing technology and to unpack what could happen to us now that AI models are learning to outsmart their creators. The two discuss the eccentric billionaires recklessly promoting the industry, how far behind the United States is when it comes to AI guardrails, and why Silicon Valley doesn’t seem to understand what Americans actually want from the technology. Have a great week. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Socialism and Spam August 22, 2026 The main thing I got from this long, interesting piece in the Times . . . Moderates See Socialists as a Threat to the Democratic Party. Socialists Agree . . . is that the DSA — the Democratic Socialists of America — is a small membership organization, not a political party, and that Bernie Sanders does not belong to it. Many of its aims are wonderful — who doesn’t want a crime-free society that requires no police or prisons? — but no Democrats I know of advocate crazy stuff like that. It would be so much easier if Bernie, AOC, Zohran, et al, simply said, “because we don’t embrace all the platform planks of the Democratic Socialists of America, we will henceforth call ourselves Social Democrats to avoid confusion . . . while working hard to advance the many DSA aims, like universal health care and taxing billionaires, with which we do agree.” But now let’s talk about socialism for a minute — this dread word Republicans love to scare people with. Most Republicans are socialists! They support public roads and public schools and public police forces (though billionaires have private security) and public fire departments. They support Social Security! They support Medicare! (17 Years Later, ‘Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare’ Guy Still Wants Government Hands Off His Medicare.) All these things are socialist. Not to say that, as a practical matter, Democrats should embrace the label. It’s just too toxic. But c’mon: think about it. Political ideology is a continuum that runs all the way from pure communism on the left, which always leads to economic failure and tyranny (e.g., North Korea today, and China before it went largely capitalist and started minting billionaires) — no one wants that — to pure cruel unregulated untaxed Darwinian libertarian capitalism on the right (no one wants that, either; well, maybe Elon Musk when he’s on acid). Most Democrats want to nudge us a little further left — more like Canada and Europe and Australia and Japan, say; plus a pluralistic society that celebrates diversity, agrees with Ronald Reagan on immigration, values civility, competence , and compassion . . . while Trump and the Epstein class who currently control all three branches of our government want to nudge us more toward what I guess might be called the Putin model of oligarchy, nationalism, and intolerance. Note that economic growth under the socialist-style 90% percent top tax rate of Eisenhower — and under the only moderately less socialist-style 70% top tax rate of JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford — was significantly stronger than it has been since Reagan started cutting taxes on the rich. Those cuts, amplified by Bush 43 and Trump, have accompanied slower growth, weaker wage gains, and massively higher National Debt. Not to mention social-fabric-destroying inequality. So if you’re a MAGA Republican who wants to see our economy — and your personal economy — thrive, and our national finances gradually brought back from the brink, you just might want to vote Democrat. Which brings me to: SPAM PACS Yesterday’s I offered this piece about what underlies the swarm of texts and emails we all get — like a swarm of mosquitos — asking urgently for $15 by midnight. It may not be worth your time to read in full, but the highlights, I think, are important: “I’m a political scientist who studies money in politics,” writes Adam Bonica, “but I’m also a lifelong Democrat. I believe my party is doing itself a disservice by following Republicans down this dark path.” Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. . . . [From 2011] through 2025, Harry Pascal’s network of eight PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself. “Among the fundraising ads run by the largest spam PACs,” Bonica found, “between 70 and 85 percent of impressions are delivered to users 65 and older.” Whether or not those who operate this fundraising model recognize or intend it, fundraising spam runs on similar psychological levers to those that the FBI and AARP identify as hallmarks of elder financial exploitation: manufactured urgency, emotional appeals engineered to trigger guilt or fear, false exclusivity, fabricated account or profile statuses that look like official notices, and relentless pressure to give before there’s time to think. Why stamp “FINAL ATTEMPT” on a message and warn that “the deadline is just hours away” if not to manufacture urgency? Why claim that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hakeem Jeffries have emailed you, then demand an answer to their “desperate pleas” if not to trigger guilt? Why warn that Social Security checks will be “SLASHED by $500/month?!” — up from the $460 in the email sent two days earlier — if not to stoke fear? Why tell someone they are “the only Democrat in your city who hasn’t responded” if not to single them out? Why announce a recipient’s “appointment to the Social Security Advisory Board” above a picture of a Social Security card if not to dress a solicitation as official business? Why the midnight deadlines, the countdown timers, the “400% MATCH” that applies only if you give right now, if not to force a decision before reflection can intervene? Even someone with no moral objection to these tactics should mind their cost. They poison the entire Democratic ecosystem, warping incentives for organizations and candidates alike. For campaigns, the draw is fundraising without the traditional work of fundraising — no grueling hours dialing for dollars, no donor dinners, no need to build genuine grassroots enthusiasm. Simply hire a digital firm and let the consultants tap into the pipeline. It’s some comfort that . . . Only about 20 percent of Democratic congressional candidates hire the high-volume digital fundraising firms used by spam PACs. But those candidates raised a combined $570 million from captive spam donors. The remaining 80 percent of Democratic candidates who stayed outside the spam ecosystem raised just $37 million from these donors. And yet . . . This fundraising model is a parasite on the party, enriching outside consultants while steadily starving the host. Republicans succumbed to it first, watching their own grassroots donor base hollow out in real time. If Democrats don’t change course, they are headed into the exact same donor death spiral. Not great to read that . . . The party’s platform champions protecting the vulnerable. Its fundraising apparatus exploits them. The party’s official campaign committees, which should set the standard, are instead some of the worst offenders. Emails and texts from the DCCC and the DSCC feature similarly aggressive fundraising pleas and draw heavily from captive spam donors. (A lawyer for the DSCC and DCCC whom I admire pushed back that the committees do not target the elderly — which I believe. But Bonica responds: “This piece makes no claim that either committee targets donor solicitations by age; the finding concerns who responds, not whom they are aimed at.”) Note that Bonica did not include the DNC with its sister committees. The good news is that change is possible. After I published a series of articles on Substack last summer about deceptive fundraising practices, ActBlue leadership reached out to me to discuss the platform’s response. Soon after, ActBlue announced its most significant crackdown on deceptive fundraising to date. . . . There has been other movement in the right direction. The Democratic National Committee, led by Ken Martin, launched an effort to stop PACs from trading on the Democratic name without actually supporting Democratic candidates. But these reforms have not been enough. . . . More is needed. Beware spam PACs. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
I Was Duped August 20, 2026August 22, 2026 But first, and most important . . . AVOID HOLY WARS! We didn’t vote for this war, and we sure didn’t vote for a Holy War. Watch! (90 seconds) Also . . . AVOID SPAM PACS! Hook and Squeeze: How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations. Be sure you know whom you’re giving to. Which leads me too . . . OOPS Bill Clinton’s wonderful speech I posted yesterday turns out to have been fake. Fortunately, whoever wrote it, human or otherwise, did a great job — and in a just cause! — so it’s still well worth watching. But it’s scary to think how people like me, who’ve known the guy for 40+ years, could watch for 21 minutes and not have a clue. (In hindsight, there were some tells — why was he plugging The Bluebill . . . I guess that’s likely who wrote the speech — but my guard was down and I lapped it up.) Scarier still to think AI will be twice as powerful in 6 months, and twice again more in a year. Boy, do we ever need honest, thoughtful, brilliant people to lead us into the future. A couple of you sent helpful suggestions: → “When you click on a YouTube video, select ‘description.’ They disclose when it’s made with AI.” → Steve Brill’s latest venture: NewsGuard AI. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!
Three Cool Things August 20, 2026August 20, 2026 1. KENTUCKY GOVERNOR BESHEAR ON THE DSA: 60 seconds Skip straight past the first 98 seconds to 1:38 and watch as he opines on the Democratic Socialists of America. Executive summary: It’s a big tent. What divides Democrats Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner (say) is NOTHING compared with what unites them. (And, yes, some of the DSA platform planks, though well-intentioned, are cuckoo.) He says it so well. Beshear 2028? Or perhaps Ossoff 2028? 2. PRESIDENT CLINTON ON SENATOR OSSOFF ON TRUMP Remember when we had a president who balanced the budget, raised the minimum wage, oversaw the creation of 22 million new jobs, saw dictators as our adversaries and diversity as our strength? A president who signed the Assault Weapons ban, staffed his administration with serious, competent people — and led the free world with dignity and grace? Never belittling adversaries as scum or vermin? Never mocking the disabled? Try to take the time to watch. A really important 20 minutes. AND — ASTONISHINGLY — IS FAKE. Scary what AI can do. Though in this case, whoever wrote that speech, whether human or AI, did a heck of a job. 3. HAVE DRINKS WITH DAVID LETTERMAN? He once made me sit on a whoopee cushion, way back when he had a morning show. Now, in recompense — and to help save democracy — he is very graciously special-guesting a small gathering with Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the country, who just might be the next junior Senator from the great state of Kansas. Me-mail me in case you had some luck with HYMC or CHRB or RNGE and could be in New York September 15. Otherwise, meet Adam virtually and — if you become as excited as I am — toss some more-human-size contribution into the pot. Kansas has a Democratic governor, after all, so this is hardly a crazy idea.
Socialism Is So 1845! August 19, 2026 NOT INTO POLITICS? 55 seconds you’ll enjoy. NOT LEAVING MAGA 4 minutes you won’t. Scary. NICK HANAUER Long-time readers know he’s one of my heroes. I can’t count the number of times I’ve linked you to his 2012 must-watch 6-minute TED talk (it is the middle class, not the rich, who are the job creators) . . . and to his 2014 TED follow on (“Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming”). If you’ve never watched them, perhaps today’s the day. But it’s also the day to consider watching yesterday’s 83-minute interview (“A traitor to his class”). I know that’s a LOT of time to give to anything — we’re busy! — but it’s one of the most interesting, consequential things I’ve listened to in a long time. His personal story is itself interesting — how he became a multi-billionaire. As is his assessment of Jeff Bezos. But his call for “market humanism” and “middle-out economics” are worth the scrutiny of every concerned citizen, and certainly those engaged in the public discourse. “Socialism is so 1845,” he says. After listening, you might even decide to read his just-released Markets Built for Humans: A new story of how economic prosperity is created—and how we can create it for everyone. Free download. No signup or login required. Because as angry citizens on the left and the right have made clear — many of them living paycheck to paycheck while the Epstein class piles up ever more billions — the current system needs some pretty radical change. One side thinks it can come from a strongman who tells them he “alone can fix it” (though in fact everything he touches dies). The other side thinks we should go back to the Clinton/Obama/Biden days, when, as the economy was being handed off to Trump, it was “the envy of the world” — yet still far short of what Nick Hanauer argues persuasively it can, and must, be. Your thoughts?
Let’s Bring This Baby Home August 18, 2026 But first . . . “THE ECONOMIC SCOREBOARD THEY NEVER SHOW YOU” If you missed this last week: The Solo cups never lie — or, as this grandfather in short pants puts it: “Cups talk, bull—t walks” (150 seconds). Watch! FAREED ZAKARIA The Iran war is a master class in squandering a superpower’s credibility. Worth reading in full, it concludes: Credibility is an asset, painstakingly accumulated over generations and astonishingly easy to spend and squander. During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy sent former secretary of state Dean Acheson to Paris to brief Charles de Gaulle on the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Acheson brought reconnaissance photographs to prove the case. De Gaulle, hardly an American supplicant, waved them away. He said he did not need the evidence. The word of the president of the United States was enough. That scene is unimaginable today. SETH MYERS Knowing that you may not have 12 minutes, I start the clip here . . . after Myers’ wonderful takedown of MAGA film critics (and their prediction that The Odyssey would totally flop) . . . to bring home Fareed’s point about our squandered credibility. Otherwise, start here. So now . . . “LET’S BRING THIS BABY HOME!” That’s how the irrepressible Terry McAuliffe wound up his remarks to the DNC membership in Austin Saturday (15 minutes). He is a great cheerleader — and if we all continue to lean in, we’re going to have a lot to cheer about 78 days from now. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!