The Worst Of The Worst May 30, 2026 WHAT KIND OF NATION ARE WE? If you want your baby to have clean water at the Dilley, Texas, internment camp, you have to buy it from the private company charging taxpayers $180 per night per bed. But don’t click that link, click this one. You may conclude that “the worst of the worst” are not in the detention camps but in the White House. INSIDER TRADING Martha Stewart went to jail for a single trade. Senator Murphy makes the case (3 minutes) that Trump has done something far worse. HARVARD Inspired by Harvard’s 375th Commencement Thursday, Peggy Noonan wrote this beautiful essay. Have a great weekend!
45 Must-See Seconds May 29, 2026May 28, 2026 SHE’S DONE HER RESEARCH The Earth is not flat (45 seconds) — it’s concave. She may be wrong about Trump and the planet’s shape, but she seems harmless and friendly enough. Not so . . . “CHUD THE BUILDER” The Right’s Worst New Star Just Shot Someone [His} gimmick is that he films himself walking around calling black people the n-word or accusing them of “chimping out”—a racial slur comparing black people to monkeys. When the people he’s accosting get understandably mad, he encourages them to attack him so he’ll have an excuse to defend himself with mace or a gun. Whatever shape he thinks the Earth is, he’s clearly awful and dangerous. But he’s just one guy. Not so . . . A WIDE AND ENDURING CONSTELLATION OF WHITE SUPREMACIST GROUPS As described by Steven J. Ross in this important interview with Rachel Maddow. Ross is the author of: > Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city’s Jews and to sabotage the nation’s military installations: Plans existed for murdering twenty-four prominent Hollywood figures, such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis B. Mayer; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast. And his latest: > The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy Americans today like to believe that the end of World War II brought a new era of tolerance in the United States. But antisemitism and racism went up—not down—after the war’s end. Violence broke out in cities across the country, and the number of organized hate groups more than doubled from 1940 to 1946. . . . . . . and are much more numerous than just the Klan, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers — listen to the interview.
Oh, My! May 28, 2026May 27, 2026 KANSAS! Yesterday I wrote: So we have a real shot at flipping Senate seats in Ohio, Maine, Alaska, North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Florida and Mississippi and Nebraska. Imagine if the number of Republicans in the U.S. Senate shrank from 53 to 44! I’m not saying it’s going to happen — but it could. But wait! I forgot Kansas! Adam Hamilton, our likely nominee, trailed the incumbent 54-46 in a January poll. But watch his launch video, imagine a big blue wave, and tell me that he doesn’t have a real shot. Maybe it’s the Frank Capra in me, but I just pitched in a little to his campaign. So I’d like to amend the above: Imagine if the number of Republicans in the U.S. Senate shrank from 53 to 43! I’m not saying it’s going to happen — but it could. RNGE First suggested here at around 15 cents in January, 2024, RNGE has recently traded above 45 cents. I’m not buying more here — I own a lot — but I’m not selling any, either. Here’s the top line of what I know: It remains a speculative microcap to be owned only with money you can truly afford to lose. It’s in the business of reclaiming and repurposing old coal mine sites, which is good for everybody and potentially quite profitable. I have a lot of confidence in the CEO. I don’t expect anything dramatic to happen any time soon but believe the next few years could be quite rewarding. EPSTEIN Any news? Every day that goes by without compliance, the Trump administration is violating Public Law 119‑38, formally titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by the House 427-1 and the Senate by unanimous consent. Why is MAGA okay with that? OH, MY! Ronan Farrow reports on competing AI worlds . . . 3 minutes not to be missed.
The Battle For American Identity May 27, 2026 TEXAS REPUBLICANS CHOOSE PAXTON Charlie Sykes: For Trump, Ken Paxton Is the Whole Package It’s hard to name a political figure more publicly and egregiously corrupt than Paxton. Which is precisely why Trump endorsed him. For Donald Trump, Ken Paxton is the whole package. In Paxton, Trump has found an accomplice nearly as corrupt as he is himself; and who comes close to matching Trump’s own dishonesty, immorality, and anti-democratic impulses. Indeed, Paxton is a layer-cake of scandal, including felony indictments for securities fraud, allegations of bribery and abuse of office, whistleblower retaliation, and extramarital affairs. Don’t take my word for it. Paxton’s fellow Republicans found his conduct so repugnant they impeached him and temporarily removed him from office. (Much like his political godfather, Paxton was acquitted in the senate.) His own staff reported him to the FBI, and resigned en masse accusing him of bribery, abuse of office, and misuse of state resources to benefit a fat-cat donor.1 His wife divorced him “on biblical grounds”, accusing Paxton of committing adultery, based on “recent discoveries.” Any or all of this would be disqualifying for any politician not named Trump. But Paxton endeared himself to the president by his zealousness in launching bogus lawsuits challenging the 2020 election and leading the effort to overturn the outcome. In the end, this was the qualification that mattered to Trump: Ken Paxton would be willing to break the law for Trump; John Cornyn might not. Ken Paxton would provide cover for any act of corruption Trump might commit; John Cornyn might not. And most important: If needed, Ken Paxton would join any Trump coup attempt; John Cornyn might not. In other words, Trump was looking for a henchman, not a statesman. And he found the whole package in Paxton. It’s good news for James Talarico, who now has an even better chance of representing Texas in the United States Senate. Texas Democrats and Independents will vote for him, as some of the Republicans who voted for Cornyn in the primary just might, too — or at least stay home. So we have a real shot at flipping Senate seats in Ohio, Maine, Alaska, North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Florida and Mississippi and Nebraska. Imagine if the number of Republicans in the U.S. Senate shrank from 53 to 44! I’m not saying it’s going to happen — but it could. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition! 15 SPEECHES If you have time, this interview with Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes is just terrific. It’s about his new book, All We Say — The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches.
In Defense Of Ken Martin May 25, 2026May 25, 2026 Because we’re all beside ourselves that Trump is destroying our country while enriching himself, it’s only natural to want to find people to blame for Kamala’s loss, and to blame “the party.” One person not to blame is Ken Martin. Trump’s win is something Ken had nothing to do with. He was Minnesota party chair at the time (a state Kamala and every other statewide Democrat won in 2024). By and large, from what I can see — and having worked with 10 of them over the last 27 years — he is doing a good job as DNC chair. (I’ll get to the “autopsy” in a second.) Nor was “the party” to blame for the disaster. “The party” doesn’t tell the candidate or her campaign what to do. It’s not like China, where the head of the party commands total obedience. It’s unrealistic to think that then-DNC-chair Jaime Harrison could have ordered the president to drop out a year earlier (as he should have) . . . or prevented him from urging his pledged delegates to coalesce around Kamala, which they quickly did, giving her more than enough delegates to win the nomination, thus avoiding the quickie primary that a lot of us wanted, and out of which Kamala or someone else would have emerged with more perceived legitimacy. And by the way? Until the debate, it was clear that Joe was old, for sure — but also clear that he and his team were doing a really good job, making good decisions, with inflation and interest rates dropping back to desired levels, and finally getting their worst issue — the border — solved with a tough bipartisan bill that had a majority in both the House and the Senate . . . that Trump killed. Many of us were nervous about his ability to campaign, but not his ability to continue to make good decisions and lead his much younger, passionate, competent team to yet more accomplishments. That said, he and Jill should have decided in early 2023 to take the win and pass the torch; but that’s not on the DNC or Ken Martin. People understandably think the DNC chair, as leader of the party, should — lead! But, again, that’s how it works in China. Here, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the rest of the progressive ecosphere don’t look to the party chair for instructions; they look to him or her to provide infrastructure that all 50 state parties and 8,000+ candidates rely on. Here is an overview of what Ken’s DNC is doing, if you have a few minutes (and if I’ve embedded the PDF properly . . . give it a few seconds to load, then page through with the arrows that appear when you hover over the bottom margin). 2026 DNC Pitchbook And here is the 197-page DNC Playbook his team has prepared for those running campaigns. I’m not competent to judge what grade these deserve — I would think someplace between a B-minus and an A-plus, but surely not a C or a D. Whereas, by contrast, the “autopsy” released last week deserves — in Ken’s own estimation — a D or an F. Which is why he resisted releasing it. > In hindsight, one can certainly ask whether he should he have commissioned an “autopsy” at all. Stuart Stevens argues not. It’s a compelling clip worth watching. > Having committed to do the autopsy, one can certainly fault him for choosing someone not up to the task. > And having received the report, one can question whether he should have given in to pressure to release it — albeit with a bright red disavowal at the top of literally every page. The very same people who called on him to resign for NOT releasing it now call on him to resign because he did release it (without noting in their petition drives and fundraising appeals that he agrees it sucks). But, as noted, there is so much more to the job of DNC chair than producing an after-action report and finding people, decisions, and missteps to blame for Kamala’s loss. (It doesn’t take a genius — or a report — to know that Jill should have urged Joe to go out with glory a year earlier than he did; or that Kamala should have had a better answer on “the View”; or that, egged on by consultants who get a piece of the spend, the Harris campaign skewed too heavily toward TV versus social media. But the Chairman had nothing to do with those decisions.) So, look. I have not talked to Ken about any of this. I basically just work with the finance staff asking people for money. (Click here!) And I’m not arguing Ken is perfect — or that any of the chairs I’ve worked with has been perfect. But he works harder than anyone . . . has “organizing” — and winning — in his bones . . . and I think would willingly step aside if he determined it were in the party’s interest for him to do so. I don’t believe it is. Rather than working to depose Ken Martin, I’d love to see those enraged by the autopsy report focus on helping him depose the Republican leadership. No one is more committed to that task than he.
The DNC Autopsy May 23, 2026 Everyone — including DNC chair Ken Martin — is lambasting the “autopsy report” he reluctantly released this week. Which is why he didn’t want to release it — and has posted a bright red disavowal at the top of every page. I love Stuart Stevens’ perspective. So worth 10 minutes. BONUS He raised a donkey — and THIS happened (3 minutes). Have a great weekend as we remember those like my mother’s brother, shot down over the Pacific, who gave their lives for democracy.
Seven Days In June May 22, 2026May 21, 2026 THE DEBT — DON’T MISS THIS GRAPHIC And share it with your “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” friends. HE FOUNDED THE AIDS QUILT — AND NOW THIS Heather Cox Richardson’s remarkable interview with Cleve Jones So worth your time. He’s rolling out Seven Days In June: A National Call to Elevate Health as a Governing Priority. Be sure to scroll down to see the staggering statistics. Or just listen to the interview. The Big Ugly Bill was designed to decimate health care only after the mid-terms. They knew the pain and suffering would be so enormous and widespread they couldn’t let people feel the effects before they voted. Listen to this interview and, if it strikes you as it has me, spread the word. WHAT WENT WROING IN 2024? A Message from DNC Chair Ken Martin on the DNC’s 2024 After Action Report
Barney Frank, Water Volleyball Player — and More May 21, 2026May 20, 2026 Sixty years ago, my college roommates and I had the great good fortune to be assigned to a dorm whose five resident tutors included a 25-year-old Bayonne-born cigar chomping grad student named Barney Frank. Although he was an order of magnitude smarter and more important, we had a lot in common (I, too, am a left-handed, Jewish, gay Democrat) and enjoyed a 60-year friendship. I thought yesterday’s New York Times obit was magnificent: Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86 Subhead: Often voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House, he was also the first to come out voluntarily and helped normalize being openly gay in public office. Lead graph: Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86. I think you’ll enjoy reading it. It ends with reference to his forthcoming book, The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy. The book is — don’t hate me for saying this, Barney — a little dense in this age of short attention spans. And it doesn’t come out until September 15. But Jamie Kirchick’s piece in the current Atlantic — Barney Frank’s Second Coming-Out — solves both those problems. You’ll get the essence of the book in just a few minutes and without having to wait. In his final act, the liberal stalwart wants to save his party from ideologues. Every Democrat should read this piece — especially our wonderfully idealistic Democrats on the far left, to whom the book is largely addressed. Barney shared almost all their goals but realized that, all too often, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” It’s that old Ralph Nader thing again. Ralph was SO much better than Gore (at least in his own mind and the minds of his voters) . . . yet by not settling for Gore, he got Bush ’43, the war in Iraq, giant tax cuts for the rich, an exploding deficit, and (among other things) a right-leaning Supreme Court that ultimately paved the way for Trump. If you read the Times and then the Atlantic, you’ll know Barney well. (If you’d like the full story in his own voice, listen to his autobiography. Or watch Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, a 2014 documentary. Here’s the 2-minute trailer.) A few things I might add: > In the dining hall, everyone wanted to sit with Barney, especially the Government majors. Tables of 8 would regularly have 12 or 14 people crowded around, trays on laps, straining to hear, as one bright Harvard student after another tried to challenge Barney on whatever was in the news — and got destroyed, leaving the rest of us in tears of laughter. I was never brave (or informed) enough to try, but I loved watching . . . and came to notice that Barney looked at the same guys I did. So there was someone else among the 5,000 undergraduates and 10,000 grad students who was mis-wired like me — a regular guy attracted to regular guys! (There were more like 1,500 of us, but all of us too deep in the closet to reveal ourselves.) Barney didn’t figure me out, and I didn’t say anything to Barney until much later, after my book came out. (Not the investment guide.) > CUT TO: Barney visiting on Fire Island, where a bunch of us play water volleyball on sunny weekends. (“If you can stand in five feet of water and have a sense of humor, you’ll be a star.”) At first we figured that Barney, by then Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would be our “Celebrity Ball Boy” but in fact he jumped in and turned out to be quite good. We called him “the Gavel.” > CUT TO: a week of his recovery spent back out at the beach after his quintuple by-pass. His father had died very young of a heart attack, and he seemed to be headed in the same direction. But damned if he didn’t power through to 86, accomplishing so much along the way. > CUT TO: a dinner with six or eight of us where I was making some pro-Democratic pitch, and maybe getting a little carried away in my enthusiasm — we were all just friends having fun and I was trying to make my friends laugh — when suddenly Barney slammed the table with his fist and said “No! Don’t oversell!” We were all a little startled. I had needlessly exaggerated something. But hey — I was just having fun, among like-minded friends — but NO! he slammed his hand again. “Don’t ever do that!” It’s a terrible mistake in arguing your case, he bellowed, to exaggerate and give the other side something on which to prove you wrong, calling into question everything else you said. Long before he finished berating me, I knew he was right: I hate when our side does that, as we occasionally do. > CUT TO: I am a groomsman in Barney’s wedding to Jim. Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry with Barney’s family, friends, and colleagues are on one side of the aisle; Jim’s surfing buddies on the other. The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is presiding. And then dancing after the dinner — you can see great photos in the Times obit. And all I could think of was how far we had come from 1965, when no one dared even say he was gay . . . to this joyful wedding. Which I got to talk about a few weeks later in front of thousands of delegates and press at the Democratic National Convention. So much of this progress was because of Barney. I am so proud to have been his friend.
Quick Takes . . . May 20, 2026May 20, 2026 LEAVING MAGA This guy voted for Trump 3 times but calls in to C-SPAN to say he’s had it — he’s leaving MAGA (3 minutes). I love that he plugs LeavingMAGA at the end. It’s catching on. This is not what they voted for. We’re gonna win. PROTECTING PEDOPHILES Nothing is more important to Trump than defying the law requiring release of the Epstein files. So nothing was more important than wreaking vengeance and retribution on Republican Thomas Massie for co-sponsoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Massie’s defeat last night was a sweet victory for adjudicated rapist and alleged pedophile Trump and for all his loyal followers. As for Epstein’s partner in crime, imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump “wishes her well” and may pardon her once all this dies down. He’s already moved her to a more comfortable cell. WINNING IN TEXAS James Talarico may be facing Ken Paxton in the general election, thanks to Trump’s endorsement. And I do mean thanks: I believe Talarico will beat Cornyn if he wins the Republican primary run-off; but Paxton is clearly the guy we’d prefer to run against. LOSING IN CRYPTO “Before You Invest in Crypto,” David Korn headlines his Our Land newsletter, “Watch This Film” — Everyone Is Lying To You For Money, a documentary by Ben McKenzie. KORN: There’s a chilling moment in the film when you ask Dan Davies, the economist and fraud expert, whether all of crypto is a scam, and he does not challenge that idea. It that your bottom-line belief? It’s just a con and eventually there will be a reckoning? McKENZIE: Crypto is only good for two things: gambling—is the price going to go up or down?—and crime. The amount of crime that crypto facilitates is staggering. There’s a crypto company, Chainanalysis, that estimated $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via crypto last year alone. There’s the bubble idea that the price could, over time, keep going up, as new people flock to crypto as the story continues to spread. And then crime gives it a use case, a reason to be valuable. In my congressional testimony, I described as a Ponzi scheme. What is Trump’s thing, if not a Ponzi scheme, right? His meme coin is down 96 percent. It’s all a penny stock, a pump-and-dump, a Ponzi scheme—pick your metaphor. It’s not a legitimate investment. That’s 99 percent of it. Then there’s crime on top of it. And what’s most troubling is that if crypto gets further into our regulated system, as it’s threatening to do this with the Genius Act that passed and the proposed Clarity Act, then the repercussions could be huge. Because if it does crash again—and I will remind people that crypto has crashed many times in its brief but sordid history—it could contribute to the next version of a subprime crisis. That would be incredibly ironic, given the crypto was supposedly a reaction to that crisis. → Not yet streaming — but you get the gist. TEACHING CIVICS Reacting to yesterday’s post (Teaching Civics, Not Dogma): Kris M.: “Totally agree. Civics education is absolutely vital to democratic governance. If I were in charge, every school in the country would be required to post the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in every classroom, grades 2 -12, and provide age-appropriate lessons and discussions on government. Younger students could have it read to them, as they read along, and learn vocabulary words. Higher grade levels could have group discussions, write short papers on what the amendments mean, research the writers of the document, etc. The Preamble tells us who the government is and why it was created, and the Bill of Rights tells us what our government cannot do. The rest of the Constitution is likely more appropriate for the higher grades and high school. Equipping everyone with a knowledge of how our country was designed to function is critical to keeping this experiment going. There’s a lot of power in the words we read and say every day from childhood on. One of my favorite protest signs: ‘I didn’t pledge liberty and justice for all every day to settle for anything less.’ Maybe embedding the opening words of the Preamble in the minds of our people will create more engaged citizens: ‘We the people….in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility . . .’ ”
Teaching Civics, Not Dogma — Some Actual GOOD News May 18, 2026 RELIGION* Heather Cox Richardson: Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity. . . . Rather than basing the United States on religion, the nation’s founders and framers, as well as Americans of later generations, sought to instill in Americans reverence for the nation’s core political values, especially the right of self-government and the checks and balances that made that self-government possible. . . . That civic religion unified the nation, but it did more than that. It also instructed Americans on the rights and duties of citizens who live in a nation that rests on “We the People.” They must think for themselves, question elected officials, and take an active role in their government. Replacing Americans’ civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects. The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America. As with anything HCR writes — and even more so than most — it’s worth reading in full. (And as with almost anything Trump touches, it’s worse than you think.) CIVICS The solution to our problems, a wise friend noted upon reading Ms. Richardson’s column, is that we should teach civics! So true. And, as if on cue, the New York Times offered this yesterday: Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education . . . Frequently, when people decry the state of our politics, the conversation always lands in the same place: a lament that we just don’t have civic education any more. I want people to know that this is no longer true. The decline of civic education hit bottom about a decade ago and is at last on the rebound. That fact brings me hope. . . . Most shocking to me: my students had never previously encountered the Declaration of Independence. When I saw the power of that text for them and registered that their inheritance had been withheld from them, I made it a crusade to change that for others. After I subsequently published a book about the Declaration, educators all over the country began reaching out asking me to make resources for their classrooms. That is what showed me the hunger for renewal in civic learning. Eventually I set up an organization to develop civic education curricular materials. . . . Also so worth reading in full. Not least to see how the left and the right in their group found common ground on what to teach and how to teach it. Reflective patriotism (as opposed to reflexive — “my country right or wrong”). Successful civic education teaches students to defeat polarization not by teaching nonpolarizing answers to hard questions, but by teaching how to form relationships with people who may disagree with them, to identify shared values despite difference, and then to wrestle their way to new solutions and, when necessary, compromises. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor liked to note that democracy is not “passed down through the gene pool.” Rather, “it must be taught and learned anew by each generation.” . . . The arc of civic education data indicates that in 2016 this country hit a low in our failure to transmit love of democracy to the next generation. Now we’re on the rebound. Hats off to you for being involved. *Have you found time to listen to (or read) Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds? As oft-noted: it’s so interesting and informative.