Then there was that piece in the New York Times that noted the way he was greeted.

The Chinese understand that we are a global superpower in decline. Tim Snyder coined an excellent description of what electing Trump a second time has turned out to be: Superpower Suicide. And our demise continues, every single day.

Just look at the stories that broke just before we went live yesterday, including ABC’s report that Donald Trump plans to settle his lawsuit against the government for $1.7 billion to benefit the January 6 insurrectionists.

Share

Karoli’s response to that was a gesture (instead of one of our usual f-bombs).

“I’m speechless. I can’t even think of anything else to say. It’s either this or punch a wall,” she said.

The Supreme Court also decided that Americans may continue to access mifepristone via telemedicine and mail while the 5th Circuit decision (to ban it nationwide) is on appeal. This was good news - but temporary.

And it’s all happening with the backdrop of the post-Callais frenzy to redistrict away all minority representation.

“I really want people that are listening to this or watching this or whatever, not to be discouraged about the fact that these all these redistricting efforts are going on, said Karoli, “because at I don’t know if you’ve watched any of like Joyce White Vance or any of these people but as they do this they are liquidating and and diluting their own strength in these districts… Anti incumbent energy is high. There’s no reason to expect that even if they do these redistricts and these things that it’s going to matter that it’s going to make a difference.”

She continued with what I thought was an excellent rant:

“People are mad and it’s time, you know, I mean, look at me. I’m mad. I’m mad about all the money he’s spending on the reflecting pool. I’m mad that he’s trying to make heroes out of insurrectionists. I’m mad that he embarrasses us on the world stage every damn day. I’m mad that he obsesses on his ballroom and the stupid arch instead of like paying attention to the things that are really important in this country. And I’m mad that he’s even in there. Every day that he’s there, he defiles the White House and our government every day. And so, by the way, does the Supreme Court. They defile their position. The six radical Republicans on the Supreme Court defile their position every day.”

View the podcast, or listen below.

During the discussion, we referenced a piece in the Bulwark that we feel is a must-read: from Harris deputy digital director Rob Flaherty, where he offered his own autopsy on the 2024 campaign and thoughts on how we should be campaigning now.

We also recommend Brian Beutler’s commentary on Democratic timidity at a time when the other side respects NO rules.

On Monday, the United States launched “Project Freedom” in the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday, it was all over.

We’re not any closer to ending Donald Trump’s foolhardy war against Iran. But the S&P 500 is up 11% since the bombs started dropping, and that’s really what it’s all about, right?1

The three of us were in a mood yesterday, with Aliza threatening to take up smoking and Karoli just utterly disgusted with the avalanche of corruption. And I confessed to being kind of checked out, because I’m embarking on a big vacation next week and instead of reading my stack of Rick Steves books I have to pay attention to what the big orange dumb**k in the White House is doing daily and I’m tired.2

Share

But we did manage to cover some news:

• The new price tag for Trump’s ballroom

• The new price tag for the war (it’s costing us a LOT more than the government has told us

• The Callais decision, redistricting, and the sheer racism underpinning it all

• More 2026 election news (fallout from Indiana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Chedrick Green in Michigan, and California’s train wreck of a gubernatorial race).

We also talked about an interview Neil Gorsuch gave this week, and Karoli has a few more choice words to say about that.

View the podcast above, or listen below:

Aliza’s California Adventure

This week, Aliza mentioned how much she enjoyed visiting Karoli and me in Southern California last month - and I promised to post some photos. So here you go.

Republicans know they are going to be absolutely ROUTED in November. So it seems they seem to have decided to triple down on their dizzying pace of imposing Project 2025, hoping to lull us into losing our focus (and maybe our determination).

The regime got a huge boost this week from the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Callais v Landry, which put the final nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act.

Not gonna lie: This is BAD. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry immediately seized upon the ruling and declared a state of emergency and postponed the state’s May 16 House primary election so they can squeeze out their existing Black-majority districts - which is now legal.

“Isn’t it convenient how they timed that drop?” asked Karoli. “Like if you if you’d waited another week, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the midterms. But, you know, Alito being Alito, he just gave it enough time to, you know, drop it in time.”

Not all the red states will be able to take advantage of Callais to gerrymander the hell out of their districts in 2026. Governor Brian Kemp announced that it won’t happen this cycle in Georgia because their voting has already begun. The real damage will be felt in 2028.

Karoli points out that “the obvious solution is that we have to change this crazy court …whether we take those matters out of their jurisdiction entirely. Or whether we expand the court.”

And we can DO those things with solid majorities in the House and Senate.

Share

If we previously felt that showing up in droves to vote this year was important - it just became existentially so.

This week, we also touched upon:

• The Democrats’ win over DHS funding

• Pete Hegseth’s lame testimony to Congress

• Trump’s stupid ballroom and obsession with putting his name and face on everything

• King Charles’ visit

• Brendan Carr vs. Jimmy Kimmel 2.0

• The mishegas at the White House Correspondents Dinner

• and today’s May Day economic action (NO WORK. NO SCHOOL. NO SHOPPING.)

View the podcast, or listen to the audio below.

For years, the right wing democracy-hating right wing radicals have idolized Hungary’s Christian nationalist “illiberal democracy.” Project 2025 was modeled on Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian playbook. And among the things we learned after the election is that the Hungarian government was even funding CPAC.

We had already known that Orbán had been throwing Vladimir Putin’s monkey wrenches into the European Union for years.

The Trump regime dialed Orbán’s playbook up to 11: purging career civil servants, packing the government with loyalists, dictating policy to educational and cultural institutions, paving the way for their allied oligarchs to take over our media, and pocketing every asset that isn’t nailed down.

Orbán led the nation for sixteen years, which gave his party time to rig and gerrymander the nation’s electoral system to the extent that he could remain in power forever.

That’s why seeing him concede Sunday’s election was a political earthquake felt around the world.

Nearly 80% of the electorate voted. And Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party won a supermajority in the legislature - 137 of the National Assembly’s 199 seats - making him the next Prime Minister of Hungary.

“Everybody should really pay attention to this because it’s huge,” Karoli said in this week’s podcast. “But also it is a lesson in how one disgruntled guy who used to be a member of the party that Orban was in, decided to start his own party and go all over the country and to all the farmhouses and all the rural areas and everything else and just get people lit up. He got them protesting in the streets. I mean, it wasn’t just him, but he organized, right? And he got them to the people that were in the streets and the people that were voting in the rural areas. And he literally everywhere, basically, Orban lost, right? Like it was an undisputable loss.”

Share

Budapesting the election means to show up. Those who call No Kings Day and other mass protests merely performative are wrong - they are a visible signal that a majority of the country is not OK with losing our democracy. They reinforce the resolve of those who participate and those who see it happening. And they are kind of a gateway drug toward turning regular people into political activists.

Some of the other topics we talk about this week:

• The blockade of the blockade (of the blockade?) in the Strait of Hormuz

• Eric Swalwell and the California Governor’s Race

• The Department of Justice’s decision to try to erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of some January 6 organizers

• That weird White House DoorDash stunt

View the podcast above, or listen to the audio below.

That has never felt more true than this week, as we all needed to talk out our feelings of fear, disgust, and absolute rage over Donald Trump’s war crimes (and yes, a credible threat to commit genocide - as the ones Trump issued this week - is a violation of both US and international law).

You know it’s bad when people like Candace Owens and Alex Jones are talking 25th Amendment. (In the podcast, I also cited Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson - but they merely pronounced Trump’s Easter messages as “evil.”)

The country cannot take two more years of this. The world can’t take two more years of this.

Aliza put on her ex-teacher’s cap and reminded us of some basic Civics: The 25th Amendment can only be invoked by the Vice President and the Cabinet. But the other means of removing a dangerous government official is by impeachment, and that is done by Congress. And that is where WE come in.

Karoli reminds us that as we are still a democracy, we have some agency in all of this: We can urge our members of Congress to vote to impeach him.

This is not 2019 or 2021. We have an unhinged president with no guardrails and a cabinet of toadies. The MAGA base is fracturing under the pressure - and the politicians in Congress can read the cratering polls (even Republicans). Call your Congressperson. Call your Senators. (The 5 Calls app makes it easy.) Urge your friends to do the same.

We’re Americans and we will have to live with the shame of this moment for the rest of our lives. Let’s also remember we did something about it.

Share

Staying Sane in Hell

Thanks to the red-pilled billionaires who are trying to Victor Orbanize our media, my attempts at keeping informed involve wading through A LOT of newsletters. This weekend, many of them were absolutely terrifying.

Karoli said she purposefully chose not to read those (if only I listened to her advice more often!) She pointed out that the economics of platforms like this one push creators to emphasize the negative. This spurred a discussion of the ones we read that counter that point of view, and we promised to share with you our favorites:

Aliza is a big fan of the Thread posts of Ariella Elm, who catalogs the many successes of Democrats in office (often ignored by the media).

Karoli recommends the just-launched Substack of former CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane, who is doing what Bari Weiss does not want: straight reporting of the news without an agenda.

I am a big fan of Robert Hubbell, who explains what is going on calmly without losing sight on what this regime can and cannot do. He is generally an optimist, and I need that dose of perspective each day.

Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water newsletter is a wonderful compendium of ways to actively fight this regime. She’s positive and inspiring.

The Grassroots Connector is another one that highlights our successes and offers ideas for getting involved.

Do you have a favorite resource that’s not mentioned here? Please add it to the list in comments.

Leave a comment

View this week’s podcast above, or listen to the audio:

I have to confess: I had a lot of fun talking about this with Karoli and Aliza! (As if chattering away while the Titanic is sinking could be deemed as “fun.”)

I did not view Trump’s speech, as he did me a solid by scheduling it for the exact time of our family’s West Coast Passover seder.

So my impression of the speech has been gleaned from the news accounts I read yesterday morning. It turns out that I did not miss anything. It was just another hodgepodge of Trump’s Truth Social feed, as summarized by Robert Hubbell of the Today’s Edition newsletter:

• Trump washed his hands of responsibility for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

• Trump said (a) regime change wasn’t a goal of Operation Epic Fury, (b) the US achieved regime change nonetheless by killing the leaders of the Iranian regime in place on February 28, and (c) the “new group is less radical and much more reasonable than the previous regime.” (This is another lie)

• Trump took every position imaginable on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and nuclear capability. (t was obliterated, But in February 2026, Iran was on the verge of a nuclear attack, if Iran tries to weaponize its enriched uranium still in its possession, “We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.”)

• Trump said that his illegal war against Iran would end on the same timeframe as “infrastructure week”—i.e., sometime “in the next two or three weeks.”

• Trump threatened to commit war crimes against the Iranian people.

Share

So it’s no wonder that he picked yesterday to distract us with Bondi from his war of choice to distract us from the Epstein files.

His sinking poll numbers continue to plummet, the 2026 blue wave continues to gather steam, and his only hope of avoiding two years of investigations and impeachment hearings is to try to keep us away from the polls.

So of course, we discussed the Trump v Barbara Supreme Court hearing (otherwise known as the birthright citizenship case) - and his unprecedented presidential presence in the audience (an attempt to bully the Justices he appointed)…

And his illegal attempt to choose the nation’s electorate via executive order…

And the on-again off-again DHS funding deal, which brought us to that other fired mean girl, Kristi Noem and the apparent corruption of her (ahem!) chief of staff Corey Lewandowski.1

We even got a few moments to revel in the joy of seeing the Artemis II launch with a courageous crew that would give Pete Hegseth nightmares.

Watch the podcast above, or listen to the audio:

Donald Trump’s 2024 election win was not a landslide. It was barely a plurality: 49.8% to 48.3% for Kamala Harris. And current polling indicates that if the presidential election were held today, many of those Trump voters would choose the Democrat. ANY Democrat.

That’s why Trump’s new Florida state House representative is a Democrat, and why we’ve flipped 27 seats in special elections so far. It is why so many politicos are predicting a blue wave in this year’s midterms.

And it’s why Trump is fighting so hard to suppress our votes with the SAVE Act.

In the meantime, Trump’s poll numbers are plummeting further as his war of choice in Iran supercharges oil prices into the stratosphere.

The global economy will soon be suffering from higher food prices, scarcer pharmaceuticals, and more expensive manufactured products like semi-conductors.

And yet, there are some who are winning in this scenario:

• The mysterious traders who seem to know exactly when a Trump announcement is going to make the markets rise

• Mohammed bin Salman, who is apparently whispering in Trump’s ear to stay the course

• Bibi Netanyahu, who surely believes the war will boost his standing with Israeli voters (which may backfire on him)

• And Iran, which now finds itself able to sell its own oil on the world market because Trump lifted sanctions in an attempt to tamp down those oil prices. While we are bombing them.

• Oh, and Russia too.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Share

Aliza and I also talked about the SAVE Act, ICE in the airports, how the Senate Democrats are holding fast against funding Homeland Security, and the latest news from the House about the Epstein files.

Watch the video or use the audio player below.

We are still getting used to using Substack as our video platform. Some of its functions are really robust - but a little glitchy. We’ve had instances in the past where one of us was frozen or could not even get onto the platform (this is why we changed the time for our weekly live chat when we realized that at 6 PM Eastern time, we were competing for resources with huge publishers, like Joy Reid and Jim Acosta).

When Karoli or Aliza have frozen, they exited and re-entered and were able to continue, and Karoli urged me to try that. But as video host, the only option to exit that I could see on my screen was to hit the “End” button - which would have ended the video entirely. And we had live viewers!

So I stayed on, and listened to my brilliant partners finish the video and honestly - this is why it is important to find yourself some smart people to work with. I still participated via the chatroom function (which I don’t usually get to use much because I’m so busy yakking).

We talked about the war. We talked about Trump’s unfitness for office (the war will be over when he feels it in his bones???). We talked about the MAGA split over the war, and counterterrorism chief Joe Kent’s resignation.

There was a lot of activity in the Senate yesterday, and we had quite a bit to say about Rand Paul’s face-off with DHS nominee Markwayne Mullin. During a hearing on Worldwide Threats, Tulsi Gabbard said it’s not her job to analyze the intelligence for the president (she is the Director of National Intelligence and that is exactly what her job is supposed to be!)

Share

We talked about TPUSA is getting decommissioned by the College Republicans and why.

Popular Information

The new, bigoted leader of the College Republicans

Kai Schwemmer, a 23-year-old college student from Utah, was named the new political director for the College Republicans of America (CRA) on March 5. The appointment has drawn criticism because Schwemmer has been an outspoken supporter of white supremacist and…

Read more

2 months ago · 540 likes · 71 comments · Noel Sims

And of course, we talked about the SAVE Act, which is the Trumpists’ “Great White Hope” for suppressing enough of the vote to stave off a big blue tsunami in November.

Watch above or listen to the audio below.

It is a situation that anyone could have guessed would occur if we elected a not-so-bright, ignorant, blustery game show host to lead the most powerful country in the world. TWICE. In fact, it is the exact situation that we were warned about by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and other leaders who have actual experience in government and diplomacy.

Trump is treating our military like it’s his own personal toy (kind of how he’s treating the Justice Department and DHS and every other branch of government under his control). His administration already took a wrecking ball to institutions, policies, and alliances that have benefited Americans and others for the last eighty years. Now his unwarranted war of choice is wreaking havoc on the entire world.

Whatever the United States was - it is no longer, and will never be the same.

So I was feeling frustrated when I joined Karoli and Aliza for our weekly chat. And they are feeling it, too. After all, our Democratic leaders - who have very little power right now - have not been able to stop the wrecking ball.

Which - as Aliza points out - is not to say that some of the Democrats in Congress have not tried. Right now, the Democrats are mostly holding fast on refusing any new funds for the Department of Homeland Security. This fight has been at a standstill for weeks, and the three of us agree that this is exactly the kind of leverage the minority party should be using.

Share

But that brings us back to this unbudgeted, enormously expensive war that we started. Will Democrats be willing to hold up its funding, too? What about the nomination of Markwayne Mullin to succeed Kristi Noem at DHS? Or the SAVE Act, a voter suppression scheme that Trump wants enacted so he can steal some more elections? Right now, it does. not appear that it can get even all the Republicans on board to pass it - but the mere fact of its existence is upsetting.

This week, we also talked about how this war is using up most of the oxygen we need to continue our focus on the Epstein files (although there is still news of that to discuss, and we did). We also exulted in some more Democratic electoral wins around the country, and made plans to be part of the upcoming No Kings events on March 28.

Yes, right now we are metaphorically locked into a hotel room with Donald Trump blaring on the TV 24-7 - but it’s NOT forever. And we have the power to make it stop.

View the podcast above, or listen below.

Oh, and those expert FBI counterterrorism teams with years of expertise on dealing with blowback from our Middle East adventurism? They’ve either been reassigned to work with ICE - or fired by Kash Patel for being good at their jobs.

If we are indeed frogs being slowly boiled, surely we’ve reached the moment where we’re good and cooked?

Share

I’m grateful to Karoli and Aliza for helping me hold on to my sanity right now.

We also managed to touch upon Kristi Noem’s performance before Congress this week, and Tuesday’s primaries (especially the big one in Texas).

View the video above or listen to the audio podcast below.

It’s impossible to imagine how depraved these people are and to realize that our president is in the thick of it but immune from prosecution as long as he remains in office.

Subscribe now

That immunity gives him a pretty strong incentive to declare himself king, doesn’t it? Which is why the SAVE America Act has to fail and die forever and ever. As Aliza and I observed, it’s a poll tax on women. We plan to do exactly what men do to prove their identity, no more and no less. One thing I forgot to mention in our discussion of it is that most RealID’s don’t prove citizenship. What better way to disenfranchise voters than to accept a RealID only to reject it later?

Get more from Donna Schwartz Mills in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

When it comes right down to it, everything these crooks do is a war on women and girls. These men think they are entitled to rape girls, disenfranchise women, take our jobs and kill us by taking our access to healthcare away.

Wow, that was dark.

We do laugh, and we do find points of light, though. So I hope you’ll listen and laugh with us, and resolve to get involved somehow in the fight to be rid of this wannabe king and his court.

The next No Kings demonstration is March 28th. Please plan to attend and invite your friends and family too.

Not to be forgotten, we paid our respect to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who opened eyes and doors. He will be missed.

In the meantime, we’ll be back next week and so will Donna!

The Boris Nikolec who died young was a fashion designer and is NOT in the Epstein files. The one who was an associate of Bill Gates is very much alive.

We regret the error.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our live video!

Just about everything on listed in our show notes this week was important enough to center an hour-long discussion on its own:

• DHS/ICE and another Partial Shutdown at midnight Friday?

• Epstein Bombshells continue to drop (and a million Trump mentions in the files?)

• Also: Today’s Hearing with Bondi

• Trump’s Vendetta against his enemies not going so well

• Tariffs: Still awaiting SCOTUS and now the House may assert itself

• Voting Rights: Fulton County/SAVE Act

• Destruction of the Federal nonpartisan civil service

• The Trump Economy Sucks

• National INSecurity

• Less weighty stuff (as if we have time ☹️)

With all of that, we still began with something that was NOT on the list: The brief shutdown of airspace around El Paso. To be honest, I’d placed it in the notes when the mysterious measure was announced that it would last for 10 days.

I took it OUT of the notes when it reopened a few hours later.

But Karoli noted that this was the biggest shutdown of the kind since 9-11.

“This is not something that happens routinely,” she said. “And so they didn’t notify the military. They didn’t notify anybody. They just shut down the airspace.”

It turned out that Sean Duffy’s Transportation department and Kristi Noem’s DHS thought we were being attacked by an unknown drone… that turned out to be a party balloon.

Karoli pointed out, “That’s just like one of these things that looks like it’s going to be a really BFD, right? Big deal, and it turns out to be nothing. And then you have—and the same, by the way, is true of Pan Bondi, right? She goes in to testify before the House, and it’s all everybody’s talking about, but honestly, she’s just a bitch. She was a bitch for the whole thing.”

Share

Believe it or not, we actually did a pretty good job of working through that list - even at the end, when we finally got to marvel together about the wonder that was the Bad Bunny Super Bowl half time show… and the less than wondrous Kid Rock performance for TPUSA.

Watch the live video above. Or listen to the audio:

There would be time to gain an understanding of the issues, the actions, and the possible consequences.

And there was time to indulge in other kinds of news: profiles of interesting people. Human interest stories. Columns, advice, and comic strips.

Even if the news of the world was frightening, there was time and space to absorb it and think about it.

And the longer this Trump-fueled MAGA era lasts, the more I mourn that old way of life.

Sunday night, I watched the Grammys and was inspired to take some notes for this week’s podcast. I wanted to remember how outspoken the artists on this broadcast were, compared to the surprisingly subdued Golden Globes.

Earlier that day, Trump announced that - after spending the last year decimating the programming at the Kennedy Center for the Arts - he is closing it for two years so he can finish the job and destroy the actual building.

Last week also saw the removal of information at Independence National Historical Park about the enslaved people George Washington brought when he lived there as President.

Share

I am reminded of an exhibit I saw several years ago featuring works of “degenerate art” that was banned by Germany in the 1930’s. This regime is doing all it can to stamp out “woke” American culture it does not like. And that’s why Bad Bunny’s Grammys triumph on Sunday was so gratifying.

I jotted down some notes for this week’s podcast, thinking it would be nice to slow down a little and spend an hour talking about what the regime is trying to do to American culture.

But that was not to be, because by Monday the Grammys were forgotten and I was back to recording notes on ICE and CPB, and would they be coming for Haitians in Springfield, and DHS funding, and the SAVE Act, and threats to the 2026 election, and Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and the Epstein Files (which turns out to be the only story that has the staying power to hold everyone’s attention for more than a few days).

So Karoli, Aliza, and I discussed all of the above (including the Grammys) - but not in the contemplative way I envisioned.

Maybe some day (when this era is finally over), we will be able to slow down and focus again. In the meantime: I’m really looking forward to watching the Super Bowl.

View the full podcast above or listen below.

That was one week ago. It feels like a month.

We spent the hour talking about ICE’s execution of Alex Pretti, the heroism of Minneapolis, and how it is shaping the Senate’s budget negotiations. Not to mention the “eeeew” moment when someone brought up the gruesome twosome of Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.

View this week’s podcast above or listen on the player below.

Trump’s speech before world leaders yesterday was bonkers - even for him. And as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made clear this weekend, the predictable Western world order that centered US power (and benefited American peace and prosperity) is now over.

Other topics this week include:

• Brendan Carr’s new imposition of equal time rules for politicians booked on late night and daytime talk shows (which sounds a little like the old Fairness Doctrine, if one did not suspect that it would be enforced less than equally)

• ICE’s continuing siege of Minneapolis (and now Maine) - and how each time they hit another region, their tactics become even more fascist (i.e., claiming they have the right to enter any home without a judicial warrant - in blatant violation of our Fourth Amendment rights)

• Jack Smith’s testimony today before the House Judiciary Committee.

View this week’s podcast above, or listen to the audio:

And that’s not all.

The truth is, we are overwhelmed with reasons to be angry. (And would have expressed even more of it had we known at the time that the Senate Republicans caved on passing the War Powers resolution over Venezuela.)

The three of us today are “all over the place,” as Aliza said during our chat this week.

At least, this quote from Fox News Channel’s Will Cain made us laugh:

There’s a weird kind of smugness...in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority.

Hey, we think they’re talkin’ about US!

Misogyny appears to be a prerequisite for ICE recruits.

The latest budget deadline is January 30. We need to contact our representatives and pressure them to refuse a resolution that includes funding for ICE/DHS.

View above or listen to the audio below:

We’d already planned to have our first live chat today, and our show notes already ran about eight pages. But then we saw the video of ICE in Minneapolis kill an unarmed American in her vehicle.

So… as we expected… 2026 is starting out as an acceleration of all the crazy of 2025 (which was an acceleration of what we endured during Trump 1.0). We are still hopeful that we can turn the corner after the midterms - we just wonder what it’s going to take for all of us to get there.

Other topics on today’s chat included the fifth anniversary of January 6 and one year since the LA fires, Tim Walz’s decision to drop out of the Minnesota governor’s race (and subsequent freedom to speak his mind), and whether Democrats in Congress are up to the job of fighting this regime (that’s a conversation we’ve been having for at least the last 12 months).

Share

View the video above. Or listen to the audio:

By Sunday, we realized that wasn’t going to happen.

We spent a great deal of time today mourning the loss of actor/filmmaker/activist Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle. The circumstances of their deaths - and the reaction of our narcissist-in-chief - are still shocking to us.

Speaking of Trump, it was an easy segue to whatever-the-eff that address of his was last night.

We also talked about the discharge petition on healthcare that got passed in the House yesterday (and what happens after they get to vote on it in January), Jack Smith’s closed door testimony before the Judiciary Committee…

…and what we want for Christmas this year.

And despite the screenshot above, all three of us were on present.

Share

Watch the live video on the Substack app - or listen below.

Thank goodness for my colleagues here, because their intelligence and optimism spurred me right out of my dark mood - even though our discussion included last week’s National Security Statement (that reads like a Stephen Miller/Vladimir Putin fever dream), the Supreme Court’s apparent willingness to dismantle the Federal government and (maybe?) toppling the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment.

As for the points of light: You just have to look at yesterday’s special election results in Florida and Georgia where Democrats continued to outperform expectations. We laughed a LOT. Watch above or listen below.

Share

The bipartisan disgust at this story is just the latest thorn in the side of the Trump administration, as the economy falters, inflation rises, and their approval ratings plummet… while Democrats continue to overperform in special elections - even in the reddest of districts.

We also talked about Aftyn Behn’s over-performance in TN-17 (and her defiant NOT A CONCESSION speech), Trump’s under-performance at another one of those Dear Leader Cabinet meetings yesterday (i.e., he kept falling asleep!), and what is motivating all those billionaires (and after that discussion, I’ll never look at Peter Thiel’s head the same way).

For those who prefer audio, that version can be accessed here:

Thank you to everyone who tuned in live! Join us next week in the app.

Share