Politics, News, and opinion. “Authoritarians do not come to power alone. They come to power on the backs of men like Kevin McCarthy. Men too weak to adhere to any principle. Too hungry for power to say or do what's right. And too cowardly to tell the truth." - Adam Schiff
The outcome pits a longtime Democratic official against President Donald Trump's pick for the job.
Li Zhou at HuffPost:
Conservative commentator Steve Hilton is projected to advance out of California’s top-two gubernatorial “jungle” primary to compete against former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, setting up a faceoff between a longtime Democratic official and President Donald Trump’s pick for the job.
Becerra, who ran a campaign focused on his government experience, was already projected Friday evening to advance to the general election. He’s served as the state’s attorney general, a U.S. representative and a member of former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. He leaned heavily on this track record in the primary, citing his prior efforts suing the Trump administration during the president’s first term.
Hilton, meanwhile, established himself as a Fox News pundit and previously worked as an adviser for conservative U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. He was endorsed by Trump earlier this year and has committed to working with the president on a slew of issues, including immigration enforcement.
Given the state’s Democratic lean, Becerra is widely seen as having the advantage going into the general election.
Hilton was ultimately able to edge out billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who ran as a progressive candidate trying to take on the status quo.
The outcome follows a tumultuous and crowded primary that saw former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a high-profile Democratic candidate, drop out of the race after he faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied. Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) also fielded scrutiny after viral videos raised questions about her temperament and treatment of staff.
The top two field is set in the California Gubernatorial election for the November general: former Rep. Xavier Becerra (D) and former Fox “News” host Steve Hilton (R).
See Also:
Democracy Docket: Steve Hilton, Trump-backed supporter of California voter ID, advances in governor’s race
A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artif
An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.
Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.
Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026
🟩🟦🟦🟩🟩🟩🟥🟦🟦🟩
79,001 · top 3% of players today!
The culture keeps rejecting what politics is trying to impose.
Mike Nellis at Endless Urgency:
There is a jealousy at the heart of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement that I find endlessly fascinating. More than anything else, they crave cultural relevance. They want to be seen as cool, influential, and admired in the broader culture, but the conservative movement in this country simply doesn’t have that kind of juice—because they’re dorks.
And that’s why Trump and his movement feel the need to insert themselves into everything.
Yesterday, Trump went to the NBA Finals to see the Knicks. The Knicks were on an incredible run, and there were a bunch of genuinely fun storylines surrounding the team. As a sports fan, I’ve especially enjoyed the story of a professional wrestler named Danhausen whose character is a demon that can curse people and who supposedly “uncursed” the Knicks before their winning streak. Sports are fun because of weird little stories like that.
But Trump couldn’t just let the day belong to the teams and the fans. The most corrupt and least popular president I’ve seen in my lifetime needed to make himself part of the story. And the result was predictable. Instead of the focus being on the game, the attention shifted to Trump. Security became a massive operation. Fans dealt with additional disruptions. The conversation became about him, and the Knicks lost, I would argue, in part because of that.
There he was, sitting behind layers of security and glass, eating French fries and pretending to be part of a culture that has never really embraced him.
When cameras showed him, he got booed. As he should be.
People are angry. They’re angry because he promised to make life more affordable and failed. He promised to challenge the corrupt Washington establishment and became the corrupt Washington establishment. He promised transparency. He promised to release the Epstein files. He promised not to drag the country into another forever war. Instead, people look around and see rising costs, political chaos, regressive and hateful politics, and a president more interested in his own wild fancies than solving problems.
Which brings me back to the cultural relevance issue.
It wasn’t that long ago that Barack and Michelle Obama showed up at the NBA All-Star Game and received overwhelming applause. And that’s the kind of thing that drives Trump absolutely crazy. He wants that admiration. He wants people to genuinely love him the way they love figures who have earned public respect.
But the difference is that admiration for Trump has to be manufactured.
He gets it on friendly media outlets like Fox News. He gets it from cabinet members who seem obligated to praise him every time a camera is present. He gets it in controlled environments where criticism is unwelcome. But when he enters spaces that aren’t built around him, reality tends to intrude.
That’s why the boos bother him so much.
For all of Trump’s wealth and power, he’s never escaped the fact that what he’s always wanted to be is a respected New York socialite and cultural figure. He wants the acceptance. He wants the invitations. He wants to be viewed as one of the people who matter.
And despite becoming president twice, he still can’t reach what he actually wants.
The same thing is true of the broader MAGA movement. They’re constantly fighting culture wars because they’re obsessed with cultural relevance. They’re angry about movies, television shows, athletes, celebrities, corporations, and social media trends. They’re perpetually upset that the culture keeps moving in directions they don’t like.
Despite all of Donald Trump’s efforts to dominate pop culture, he has been getting rebuffed in that field.
I think the OP is right about a lot of this, though I have a few small thoughts.
MAGA does have support, though not usually all that much outside of the deep red areas of the country. Their media makes it seem that the only people who dislike them are in the big cities. They want to make it seem that they are relevant and a strong cultural force inside the country that has broad support.
They don't. It is an illusion based upon spatial representation. They see the "area" that has their representatives (the low populace rural areas that cover the majority of the country) and equate that with popularity. But even in those rural states and areas there are cities where their influence and ideology is rebuffed.
That all boils down simply because of what their ideology is based on. Control through hatred and coercion. They hate gay people, non Christians (and some Christians), they hate everyone who doesn't respect them "enough," and they hate anything that contradicts the belief that they are the foundation of everything. Many of these people aren't bad, by themselves, but get them into groups and they let that hatred and cruelty be known. It is fundamental to their belief. If you won't conform you MUST be punished until you do, and the more cruel the better.
The culture keeps rejecting what politics is trying to impose.
Mike Nellis at Endless Urgency:
There is a jealousy at the heart of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement that I find endlessly fascinating. More than anything else, they crave cultural relevance. They want to be seen as cool, influential, and admired in the broader culture, but the conservative movement in this country simply doesn’t have that kind of juice—because they’re dorks.
And that’s why Trump and his movement feel the need to insert themselves into everything.
Yesterday, Trump went to the NBA Finals to see the Knicks. The Knicks were on an incredible run, and there were a bunch of genuinely fun storylines surrounding the team. As a sports fan, I’ve especially enjoyed the story of a professional wrestler named Danhausen whose character is a demon that can curse people and who supposedly “uncursed” the Knicks before their winning streak. Sports are fun because of weird little stories like that.
But Trump couldn’t just let the day belong to the teams and the fans. The most corrupt and least popular president I’ve seen in my lifetime needed to make himself part of the story. And the result was predictable. Instead of the focus being on the game, the attention shifted to Trump. Security became a massive operation. Fans dealt with additional disruptions. The conversation became about him, and the Knicks lost, I would argue, in part because of that.
There he was, sitting behind layers of security and glass, eating French fries and pretending to be part of a culture that has never really embraced him.
When cameras showed him, he got booed. As he should be.
People are angry. They’re angry because he promised to make life more affordable and failed. He promised to challenge the corrupt Washington establishment and became the corrupt Washington establishment. He promised transparency. He promised to release the Epstein files. He promised not to drag the country into another forever war. Instead, people look around and see rising costs, political chaos, regressive and hateful politics, and a president more interested in his own wild fancies than solving problems.
Which brings me back to the cultural relevance issue.
It wasn’t that long ago that Barack and Michelle Obama showed up at the NBA All-Star Game and received overwhelming applause. And that’s the kind of thing that drives Trump absolutely crazy. He wants that admiration. He wants people to genuinely love him the way they love figures who have earned public respect.
But the difference is that admiration for Trump has to be manufactured.
He gets it on friendly media outlets like Fox News. He gets it from cabinet members who seem obligated to praise him every time a camera is present. He gets it in controlled environments where criticism is unwelcome. But when he enters spaces that aren’t built around him, reality tends to intrude.
That’s why the boos bother him so much.
For all of Trump’s wealth and power, he’s never escaped the fact that what he’s always wanted to be is a respected New York socialite and cultural figure. He wants the acceptance. He wants the invitations. He wants to be viewed as one of the people who matter.
And despite becoming president twice, he still can’t reach what he actually wants.
The same thing is true of the broader MAGA movement. They’re constantly fighting culture wars because they’re obsessed with cultural relevance. They’re angry about movies, television shows, athletes, celebrities, corporations, and social media trends. They’re perpetually upset that the culture keeps moving in directions they don’t like.
Despite all of Donald Trump’s efforts to dominate pop culture, he has been getting rebuffed in that field.
After decades of alienating working-class and rural voters from the Democratic party, it’s time the left bridges the divide
Anthony Flaccavento for The Guardian:
The politics of being dismissed
I ended up losing that congressional race. But it forced me to rethink a lot of what I thought I knew about voters like him, and about where we’ve gone wrong.
Virginia’s ninth congressional District, where I ran in 2018, had long been politically competitive, even slightly Democratic. Running as one wasn’t a political death sentence.
The “fighting ninth”, as it’s often called, was represented by Democrat Rick Boucher from 1982 to 2010. Known as a friend of working people – farmers, coalminers, small business owners – he focused relentlessly on using federal resources to build prosperity, helping constituents navigate everything from Black Lung benefits to small business loans.
But over time, rural Americans didn’t just experience different problems, they began living in different economic worlds. When I launched my campaign, our reality had already been fraying at the seams for a long time. The “trickle down” economics unleashed by Ronald Regan in 1981, in combination with the investor-driven trade policies of the ensuing four decades, made people in the top 0.1% fabulously wealthy.
During the same period, Republican and Democratic administrations alike punted antitrust enforcement, crushing family farms and independent businesses and facilitating extreme corporate concentration. To top it off, changes in labor law and enforcement made it easier for large corporations to crush union drives and punish or fire the workers leading them, helping drive private-sector unionization down from more than 30% to single digits.
Winners and losers: that’s what decades of bad policies in trade, antitrust and economic development have led to, as author Michael Sandel has pointed out.
The result: large swaths of workers, farmers and rural communities have lost, while urban and suburban Democrats have been more likely than us to accumulate wealth. And losers always resent winners.
When most liberals think of elites, they picture Wall Street executives and corporate CEOs. But where I live, the term reaches further – to academics, media figures and professionals who are seen as talking a lot but not understanding much, have never worked with their hands, and scold people for their supposed backwardness or tell them they “vote against their own interests”.
Sometimes, it also extends to economists, health officials or other policy experts who aren’t always right. Bill Clinton promised that Nafta would create 1m net new jobs within five years of its passage. How should the workers who saw their textile mill close in North Carolina, or their auto parts plant leave Michigan for Mexico, feel towards the politicians who made it happen?
Or what of the people in Appalachia, who were assured by health professionals more than two decades ago that OxyContin was completely safe and non-addictive, only to see an opioid epidemic ravage their communities?
Anti-elitism here isn’t just about taking on the oligarchs. It’s about rejecting a professional class that many believe has helped sustain a system rigged against them.
[...]
Rebuilding trust
Three days after my election loss in 2018, I had car trouble on my way back from Christiansburg, Virginia.
The repair shop nearby was big, so much so that they called your name over an intercom when your vehicle was ready. After my name was called, the mechanic who had worked on my car told me that he had followed my campaign and liked what he had heard about me.
“But,” he said, “I could never vote for a Democrat.” Words I’d heard dozens of times during my campaign.
Democrats just couldn’t be trusted, even when the betrayal of rural America – and working people more broadly – was bipartisan. So why has the GOP fared so much better with these voters?
Clearly there’s a significant segment of Trump voters motivated by some combination of racism, homophobia and anti-immigrant hostility. But that explanation alone cannot account for the fact that an astounding 37% of working-class voters of color moved towards Republicans from 2012 to 2024; or that 13% of 2012 Obama supporters – nearly 9 million people – voted for Trump in 2016.
What moved many of these voters to the GOP was that they felt seen and heard by some of its leading figures. Rightwing populists spoke directly to the millions whose jobs and communities had been shredded, telling them that they were right to be angry, right to rage against a rigged system that had failed them.
Democrats, by contrast, largely dismissed their concerns or scolded them for “voting against their own interests”.
But during my campaign, I saw glimpses of what is possible when trust is built – when people feel respected by your words and deeds.
[...]
They must learn to think differently
Thinking differently begins with the recognition that millions of rural and working-class people believe that the system is rigged against them, that the economy has failed them and the wider liberal culture despises them.
Whether or not we believe this to be true, it is our starting point. The Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (Rubi) provides training to Democrats and progressive groups that dives deeply into the underlying causes of this alienation and what we must do to overcome it.
Many people come into Rubi’s trainings trying to understand “why do these people vote against their own interests?”, but leave with a fundamentally different understanding of the problem and needed solutions.
Examining core assumptions we often make about rural people – their beliefs, motivations and priorities – is one tool that helps us think differently. An example of this is our misunderstanding of many rural people’s resistance to big, top-down programs that position the federal government as the solution to our problems. “We have to show them how our programs take care of them,” is a sentiment I often hear.
But most working folks don’t want the federal government to take care of them; they want the government to level the playing field by reining in big corporations and by investing in local communities so that they can solve their own problems.
They must learn to talk differently
Talking differently begins with talking less, listening more. Our own research and experience has shown how essential it is that this listening be done with respect and a desire to learn from people different from ourselves. This is true whether it is happening on the phone, at someone’s door during a political campaign, or in everyday conversations. Listening with respect opens doors.
To keep them open, we encourage people to adopt a few rural-friendly communications habits: first, get rid of the jargon and the esoteric language of politics, non-profits and movements. That terminology tends to confuse and alienate people outside our choir.
Second, speak clearly, plainly and as succinctly as possible. More words, whether written or spoken, usually confound the listener and dilute your message. Third, use concrete examples that illustrate the point you’re trying to convey, avoiding the tendency of many college-educated people to speak in the abstract. These communication habits are part of what Rubi calls “talking like a neighbor”, and they work.
They must act differently
We’ve had extraordinary results by focusing on organizing regular, collaborative group work that solves local problems and is not overtly political.
This can be deceptively simple – such as getting community members together from all political paths to pack and distribute food, pick up trash, install smoke alarms or cut and distribute firewood.
This kind of concrete, locally focused work changes the way rural liberals view their neighbors, and improves the view of Democrats among people in the countryside. It’s a critical step towards rebuilding trust and overcoming the divide. This Community Works strategy is one of the core elements of Rubi’s work and is proving to be a very effective approach to rebuilding trust. More on that in a future article in this series.
And while local action is key, policies matter too. The Rural New Deal, which we wrote with Progressive Democrats of America, provides a comprehensive, bottom up platform to build rural prosperity. It includes rebuilding small town centers, investing in rural healthcare, funding rural schools, dismantling monopolies, relocalize small town banks, and more.
Good column by Anthony Flaccavento in The Guardian on how Democrats should do to regain trust in rural areas.
He needed to inconvenience hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, & ruin the experience for lifelong fans so he could fall asleep in the luxury box. It's the perfect image for the sloth & the corruption, the decadence & the rot that has descended over America.
To Republicans, voter fraud is voting for anyone who isn’t a Republican.
Emily Singer at Daily Kos:
D-List reality television villain Spencer Pratt fell into third place in the Los Angeles mayoral election primary over the weekend, as election officials tallied late-arriving mail-in ballots that pushed Nithya Raman, a progressive city councilwoman, into second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
While there are still ballots to be tabulated, Pratt is unlikely to retake the second-place spot, which would not only end his mayoral hopes but also lock Republicans out of the fall’s general election.
Of course, Pratt was never going to be mayor of LA. A Republican, he embraced President Donald Trump and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and planned to use the office to further his own television career. In LA, Trump got just 26% of the vote in the 2024 election—a number that could go even lower in 2026 amid Trump’s massive unpopularity.
Yet Republicans convinced themselves in their social media echo chamber that Pratt’s weird AI-generated campaign ads—which pushed the GOP lies that Democrats were to blame for the devastating wildfires that burned large chunks of Los Angeles and surrounding areas in 2025—would help them win control of the heavily Democratic city.
But now that their dreams of capturing control of LA are likely dead, Republicans have resorted to spreading baseless and dangerous voter-fraud lies to explain away their defeat, rather than admit that running a right-wing, reality-TV freak in dark blue Los Angeles was a bad choice.
The lies about voter fraud come both from right-wing personalities and social media accounts that profit off lying to Republican voters, as well as from elected officials who know better but need to pander to their easily duped base of MAGA morons.
[...]
If Democrats really had the power to cheat, you think they’d cheat in the Los Angeles mayoral race but not the 2024 presidential election, which put Trump back in charge?
What’s more, some Democrats would likely prefer Pratt to advance. For all intents and purposes, it would have ended the election that day since Republicans have zero shot of winning a race in LA when Trump is as unpopular as he is.
Instead, Democrats now have a battle between Bass and Raman that is sure to turn into a proxy battle between establishment Democrats and the insurgent progressive wing of the party.
Sore-loser crybaby Republicans go to their usual bag of tricks when election results don’t go their way: scream “fraud”… and that is because their favored Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt won’t make the top 2 general.
Blanche, one of Trump's former personal lawyers, has outraged both Democrats and Republicans while leading the Justice Department in an acti
Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket:
President Donald Trump has nominated Todd Blanche — a staunch loyalist who has aggressively targeted the president’s enemies for prosecution and backed the idea of sending federal agents to the polls —to be attorney general.
With the nomination Monday, Trump is doubling down on a figure who has proven extremely controversial — even among some Republicans — since he became attorney general in an acting capacity two months ago.
Since taking the helm of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Blanche has attempted to prove to Trump that he’s the right man for the permanent role by accelerating sham criminal probes and cases against the president’s enemies and progressive organizations that have long drawn the ire of conservatives.
In one of his first public statements in his acting role, Blanche said Trump had a “right” and “duty” to order the DOJ to target specific people, clearly indicating that he views the department as the president’s personal law firm and not as the politically impartial and independent law enforcement agency it has traditionally been.
Blanche, who was formerly deputy attorney general, assumed the acting role after Trump dismissed former Attorney General Pam Bondi in April. The president was reportedly frustrated that Bondi had failed to target his political enemies aggressively enough during her chaotic tenure.
Perhaps learning from those criticisms of Bondi, Blanche quickly moved to execute Trump’s political agenda and pursue his longest-standing personal grievances.
[...]
Trump’s nomination of Blanche was the second divisive designation he made in recent days.
Last week, Trump also named loyalist Bill Pulte, a top housing official who has unexpectedly become one of his main political attack dogs, to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard in an acting capacity.
Trump taps Todd Blanche to be his next Attorney General, pending Senate confirmation. Blanche has used his DOJ tenure to conduct partisan politically-motivated sham probes against Trump’s foes and cover up Trump’s crimes.
Let me tell you something, and I’m gonna say it slow so it sinks in for the Jennifers in the cheap seats.
I am a mother of three. I have a fifteen-year-old, Lily, who can lie to my face about whether she finished her homework while the unfinished homework is physically on the counter between us. I have a twelve-year-old, Cole, who memorized the entire Bill of Rights for fun and corrects the pastor. And I have a seven-year-old, Jake, who once swore on the family dog that he did not eat the last cookie while there was literal chocolate on his goddamn chin.
So when the President of the United States goes on national television, looks Kristen Welker dead in the eye, and says he “didn’t promise anything” about not starting wars, every single mama in this country felt her eye start twitching at the exact same time.
Donald. Sweetheart. Bless your heart. I was THERE.
You stood up on election night, November 6th, 2024, down in Palm Beach, grinning like Jake with the cookie, and you said it. Out loud. On camera. It is in a presidential library, which is fancy talk for “Mama’s got the receipts”:
They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Stop wars. You said STOP WARS, you orange son of a bitch. I have heard cleaner denials out of a second-grader holding a broken lamp.
And it wasn’t a one-time slip, either. No no no. You said it in Pennsylvania, working that crowd of good hardworking people like a man selling above-ground pools out the back of a van:
I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never end. I will not send our sons and daughters to go fight for a war in a country that you’ve never heard of. We’re not going to do it.”
“We’re not going to do it.” Your words. And then back in 2021 you patted yourself on your own back so hard I’m surprised you didn’t dislocate something:
“Especially proud to be the first president in decades who has started no new wars.”
Now there is a war. Operation Epic Fury, a hundred days deep, gas prices climbing like a toddler up a bookshelf, and your story all of a sudden is this:
“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
I’m sorry, WHAT did you just say to me?
Honey, I have heard that exact tone of voice before. I heard it from Jake the day he flooded the upstairs bathroom and tried to tell me the toilet “did it by itself.” I heard it from Lily the night the car came home after driving lessons with a dent that she swears “was already there.” That smug little “I never said that” voice is the universal sound of a guilty party who got caught and is BETTING you didn’t write it down.
Well, I wrote it down. We ALL wrote it down. The whole country’s got it on tape, you walnut.
Now let me take a second to talk about Kristen Welker, because that woman deserves a standing ovation and a casserole. She sat there calm as a Sunday morning, didn’t raise her voice, didn’t flinch, and did the one thing that turns a powerful man into a cornered toddler: she read him his own words right back to his face. No theatrics. No gotcha. Just the receipts, delivered with the steady patience of a woman who has watched somebody lie to her before and lived to tell about it. That is the exact energy of every mama, every nurse, every teacher, every church-committee chairwoman who has ever looked a grown man in the eye and said, “Now we both know that’s not true.” Kristen, honey, you can run my PTA any day of the week. You held the line and you held it with grace.
And how did the leader of the free world repay her? When she read him the truth, you know what he did? He QUIT. Got up, said “I’ve had enough, thank you darling,” and walked his happy ass right out the door. Called her “darling” on the way out like that was gonna soften it. Threw a fit and stormed off. In MY house that’s an automatic loss of screen time and you’re explaining yourself to your father.
My twelve-year-old put it best. Cole looked up from his homework, watched ten seconds of it, and said, “Mom, if you have a recording of someone saying the thing, and then they say they never said the thing, that’s just lying. That’s the whole definition.” Out of the mouths of babes. A child knows. Even my SEVEN-year-old with chocolate on his chin knows you can’t beat the tape.
So here’s the deal, Mr. President, from one parent to whatever the hell you are. You don’t get to make the promise, break the promise, AND deny the promise all at once. Pick a lane. We raised our kids better than that, and frankly we’d ground every last one of them if they tried this stunt.
You promised no new wars. You started a new war. And now you want us to act like we got collective amnesia.
Not in this house. Not in this state. We’ve got the tape, baby. Mamas always do. And thank God for the women like Kristen Welker who keep the tape rolling.
On Monday, Trump demanded that Senate Republicans fire the Parliamentarian. It was a sign of sheer desperation.
Trump knows a blue wave is coming. He has tried for more than a year to force congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which would require them to abolish the filibuster (at least as it applies to voting rights legislation).
Senate Republicans have refused to abolish the filibuster because they know doing so would end the stranglehold that 20% of the population has on legislation in the Senate. Without that stranglehold, Congress could pass voting rights legislation to end gerrymandering in federal elections. The Republican reign of terror would quickly end.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said that Republicans would not override the legislative filibuster because “the votes are not there,” though Republicans, with Thune’s blessing, have already used the nuclear option to lower the threshold for confirming groups of executive nominees.
It takes 51 votes to abolish or limit the filibuster (a counterintuitive notion since the filibuster requires 60 votes to allow legislation to proceed to a final vote on the floor). There are 53 Republican Senators, meaning that at least four (and probably more) oppose ending the filibuster. (Vice President JD Vance, as President of the Senate, can break a 50–50 tie on a motion to end the filibuster, so Republicans can afford to lose three but not four of their 53 senators.)
Republicans tried an end run around the filibuster by asking the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, if the SAVE Act could be included as an amendment to the reconciliation bill for supplemental funding for ICE and Border Patrol. McDonough ruled that if the SAVE Act was attached to the reconciliation bill, Senate Republicans would need 60 votes to overcome the filibuster. Rather than overruling the Parliamentarian, Senate Republicans abided by McDonough’s ruling and passed the reconciliation bill without the SAVE Act.
Trump now blames the Senate Parliamentarian for the refusal of Republicans to pass the SAVE Act and has demanded that Republicans fire the Parliamentarian. See The Hill, Donald Trump demands John Thune fire Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
The Hill explains the procedural move as follows:
The parliamentarian ruled that the SAVE America Act did not comply with the Senate’s Byrd Rule, which determines what legislation is eligible to be included in a budget reconciliation package that can pass with a simple-majority vote, thereby avoiding a filibuster and 60-vote threshold.
As a result, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — two Trump allies — had to ask for 60 votes to waive the budgetary objections in order to consider their proposals to amend the budget reconciliation package with the SAVE America Act.
Both motions fell well short of sixty votes.
When Graham first offered a motion to suspend the budget rules, four Republicans voted “no”: Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
What Trump misapprehends is that the Parliamentarian’s ruling is not the obstacle preventing passage of the SAVE Act. It is the four (or more) Republican Senators who refuse to overrule the filibuster. Firing the Parliamentarian to change her ruling that the filibuster applies to the SAVE Act is, effectively, the same thing as abolishing the filibuster—which Republicans in the Senate do not want to do.
Let’s stop talking about procedure and discuss significance: Trump is willing to blow up the Republican Party’s long-term minority control so that he can prevent a Democratic majority in the new House (which is sworn in on January 3, 2027).
Trump rightfully fears that a Democratic House will impeach him as soon as possible. Indeed, he has said so, repeatedly. And there are ample grounds for doing so.
In short, Trump’s immediate goal is to avoid a third impeachment. When a bar that low defines your agenda as president, you are desperate, indeed.
The good news is that there is an inverse relationship between Trump’s desperation and our success. Trump is losing support at a blistering rate as Democrats are mobilizing as never before. We must be confident and smart enough not to confuse his desperation with our success. We are winning; it is just a matter of time before we are able to hold Trump and his surrogates accountable. Speaking of which, read on!
Democrats have opportunity to block Todd Blanche and Bill Pulte.
Trump is moving forward with a nomination of Todd Blanche as Attorney General, and Bill Pulte remains as Acting Director of National Intelligence. Democrats (and some Republicans) are in a position to stop both.
As for Bill Pulte, Hakeem Jeffries has said he will rally Democrats to block the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (authorizing warrantless searches) until Pulte is no longer acting Director of National Intelligence. See The Hill, Hakeem Jeffries says he won’t back FISA until Bill Pulte is removed by Trump as acting DNI.
There may be enough Republicans in the House to join Democrats in blocking FISA—either because of opposition to FISA or to Pulte. See The Hill, Republican lawmaker says Trump can save FISA by canceling plans to put Pulte as acting DNI.
As to Todd Blanche, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been openly equivocal about his confirmation chances, telling reporters last week that it was ‘hard to say’ whether Blanche could survive a confirmation fight. See CNN, Thune: ‘Hard to say’ whether Blanche can win confirmation as attorney general.
Given that Blanche will be testifying under oath, I suggest that when he is sworn in, he also be given his “Miranda Warning” against self-incrimination. I suspect that his Senate testimony will feature prominently in proceedings concerning Todd Blanche’s future ability to practice law and exercise the right to vote. (Convicted felons cannot vote while in prison (in most states). See Voting after a felony conviction | Vote.gov.)
ICE head Tom Homan says that “New York City is next” for immigration crackdown.
Proving that the Trump administration is completely out of touch with how its mass deportation policies are affecting support for Trump, so-called “Immigration Czar” Tom Homan says that ICE is targeting New York for its next round of unlawful and brutish efforts to detain anyone who looks like their ancestors did not voluntarily immigrate to America from Western Europe four hundred years ago. See The Hill, ICE to ramp up operation in New York City: Tom Homan.
I have one question for Tom Homan: Has he met New Yorkers? If he thinks they will be intimidated by ICE’s “show of force,” he needs to think again. The brave people of Minnesota and Minneapolis stared down ICE and defeated Trump, at great cost to support for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. The same thing will happen in New York.
Concluding Thoughts
Speaker Mike Johnson has joined with Trump in claiming that the California elections are “rigged” because votes are still being processed according to the election law and regulations. Trump, Johnson, and the US Attorney in Los Angeles are vaguely threatening legal action.
Let’s have that fight—sooner rather than later. The claims by Trump and Johnson are baseless conspiracy theories that will evaporate as soon as they darken a federal courtroom in Los Angeles or San Francisco. As in 2020, where Trump filed 60 unsuccessful challenges, he will lose his claims in California—and the US attorneys who file those claims will likely be referred to the California State Bar for discipline. That will be a good lesson for U.S. Attorneys who file meritless lawsuits over the 2026 midterms.
It is unnerving to have the president and the Speaker of the House claiming election fraud. They are both clowns who are generating fodder for Fox News anchors who will be remembered in the same breath as the propagandists who gave voice to the fascists of the last century.
We are going to win in the courts. The sooner we move from the couches and empty suits on the Fox News set and into the courts, the better off we will all be.
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The photo (below) shows a worn, somewhat tattered flag on display at the Greyfriar’s Kirk (Church) in Edinburgh. The flag, which flew over the White House, was presented to the Kirk in 1970 by the US Consul to mark the 350th anniversary of two events that occurred in 1620: The founding of Greyfriar’s Kirk and the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Upon entry to the Kirk, a greeter asks, “What country are you from?” If the answer is “the United States,” the greeter says, “The US flag is in the front of the church near the altar.” It was an unexpected moment of respect for the US flag in the center of Edinburgh, in a church now four centuries old and still home to an active congregation.
A Call to Arms @poorrichardjr - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
