When a story broke last month about a website that featured instructions for drugging and sexually assaulting wives, girlfriends, and partners, our society should have come to a screeching halt.

It didn’t.

Share

To make matters worse, the website wasn’t some niche site lurking in the shadows. There were 62 million visits to the site where you can learn how to sexually assault your partner, or to watch or share videos of other men doing the same. Millions are implicated one way or another. Really. This is the kind of story that brings down whole societies.

Subscribe now

Give to Lincoln Square

On the surface, it's not a story of White Christian Nationalism. Except, of course, if you're a fan of this show, you know that just about everything bad involved WCN in some way, shape, or form.

Read more

Subscribe now

Susan and Sam also welcome Pam Smith, President and CEO of Verified Voting, who discusses what her group is doing to support voters in the runup to the midterm elections. Smith also talks abut what you can do to be prepared for the election, like checking your registration.

Getting your marching orders on the latest edition of The Weekly Assignment, right her on Lincoln Square.

Give to Lincoln Square

And are you planning to participate in the May Day general strike? Let us know in the comments!

Share

For an extended period, many of the 3,000 journalists, government officials and their guests attending Saturday’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner struggled to learn what had happened to cause President Trump, the Vice President and others in the line of succession to be evacuated from the room.

Even though they witnessed the dignitaries’ swift exit, most participants were in the dark as to the shots fired and the man in custody on a higher level of the Washington Hilton Hotel. Ironically, the picture was clearer for those watching from home who were privy to images, videos, and eyewitness reports of what seemingly transpired.

Yet notably, for many of those viewers, the problem wasn’t a lack of visibility, it was a lack of trust.

In the coming days we may understand more about the alleged gunman, the venue security concerns, and Trump’s continued response. Though moving forward, what we also need to understand more about is why and how so many Americans, on both sides of the political aisle – to the degree social media is even a partial indicator, instantly concluded that this incident was “staged” or “fake.”

I’d submit that while there has long been deeply distrustful language emanating from influential figures in both parties, the leader most responsible for engendering disbelief is the person who appears to have been the target of Saturday night’s violence: Donald J. Trump.

Read more

Remember when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis?” That was awesome.

At the time, I felt kind of uncomfortable at the positive feelings I had for that statement. All social media is built to keep you angry and agitated. If you accidentally land on the X “For You” feed (God help you), you’ll find yourself face-to-face with street fights, videos of muggings, men punching women, shootings, plane crashes, dash-cam footage of car crashes, wild animals mauling tourists.

I could go on. That list is actually the tamest of the bunch (please, please, please take my word for it).

In this political moment, it’s incredibly important — at least in my opinion — to be rational. You have to save your outrage for the truly outrageous, or else it loses all meaning. When the entire internet is conspiring toward making you as mad as possible, this is a real task.

Share

You only have to look at the anger of the right to know what I’m talking about. They’re pissed as hell that women are playing men’s sports (or is it the other way around?) They were outraged over a bullshit conspiracy theory that teachers were providing litter boxes for children who identified as cats. And have you heard of this guy, Hunter Biden? Don’t even get them started. Also, Benghazi and emails and Obama, and, and, and …!

Anger, anxiety, hatred — these are like viruses looking for a host. I always imagine that bad feelings like anxiety begin not with an object, but with the emotion itself, and then attach to an object to sustain themselves. Nothing made Republicans mad. They are just…mad. Do you believe that if MAGA was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that children weren’t using litter boxes in schools that their anger would disappear? No. They are angry and they will find a reason for it … somewhere. Anywhere.

On the other hand, anger is a real emotion, and it’s valid. You are allowed to be angry. It’s even better when your anger is well-placed.

The Jacob Frey thing, for me at least, represented the moment when my sadness at the second Trump term turned to righteous anger. I remembered that anger is real, and nobody has to give me permission to feel it. And the anger I felt was good and powerful.

Last week was stupid. It was the dumbest week of the dumbest year of the dumbest decade. You can claim that there were dumber weeks, and I probably won’t disagree. I don’t really care which is the dumbest week. But last week is at least in the running.

It’s gone — to me, at least — from absurd and stupid and you-just-gotta-laugh-because-you’d-cry-otherwise, to fuck these people. I’m so sick of it.

This week’s Loser is a total clown who has failed upward and I’m going to make fun of him, but make no mistake, I feel anger toward this guy. Our Winner is not so much a person as it is an expression of our collective anger in action.

Sadness is lingering and isolating. Anger, my friends, can be productive.

Hung Cao, Loser

Welcome to MAGA Loser Whack-a-Mole. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a Vietnamese-American who is also a Christian nationalist becomes our acting Secretary of the Navy.

Let me back up.

It turns out we are the middle of conducting one of the most substantial Naval blockades in decades and a hot war in the Middle East, in which our Navy is acting as the tip of the spear. So, of course, last week the Secretary of the Navy was fired.

Read more

Professor Gage visited a variety of landmarks, from museums to battlefields to amusement parks, describing the excitement of seeing destinations that shaped America. While not all of them remain front-and-center, they continue to thrive, embracing the struggles that once defined them and moving forward with a promise of tomorrow.

Subscribe now

Give to Lincoln Square

“One of the things that you realize in a deep way … is the fact that this is such a big country. You really feel that and experience that when you’re driving in a way that’s quite different than if you’re just flying around or sitting at home. … It suggests some of the challenges that have been at the core of the United States, from whose land is it actually to the incredible array of people and cultures and geographies and landscapes that are all supposed to be contained within this thing that we call the United States of America,” Gage said.

Share

Fill up the tank, grab some snacks, and buckle up for a road trip through history on First Draft with Susan J. Demas and Beverly Gage, author of This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History.

And I know just, know just, know just, know just, know just what you want

Poetic justice, put it in a song, alright

— Kendrick Lamar wrote that as a love song in 2012. He had no idea he was also writing the caption for a night in Washington when a press secretary predicted shots would be fired and the universe decided to take her literally.

I was mid-sentence.

Sitting here building what was supposed to be a straightforward analytical follow-up to my March piece about the most dangerous media consolidation in a generation — the $111 billion Paramount purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery — when Ben Meiselas broke the news on MeidasTouch and my iPad started doing exactly what the evening was about to do — interrupt everything with something nobody saw coming. Shots fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump evacuated. A Secret Service agent down. The suspect in custody at the Washington Hilton — the same hotel where John Hinckley Jr. tried to kill Ronald Reagan in 1981. The Hinckley Hilton. Because Washington, D.C. has a sense of humor that nobody asked for.

My first thought wasn’t shock.

It was recognition.

Share

Because I had spent the better part of this Saturday documenting exactly how we arrived at a place where something like this could feel — in the most sick and twisted way imaginable — not just possible but almost inevitable. So I didn’t put the merger story down. I folded the two together. Because they belong together. Because on Saturday, April 25th, American democracy didn’t just hand me a metaphor. It handed me the whole damn thesis gift-wrapped in chaos and burrata salad.

Karoline Leavitt — nine months pregnant, apparently planning to have a lovely evening watching her boss roast his political enemies like it was open mic night at the authoritarian comedy club — told reporters before the dinner began that Trump’s speech would be “classic Donald J. Trump” and that there would be “some shots fired tonight.” She was talking about jokes. Tasteless, mean-spirited, grievance-soaked jokes about whoever had the misfortune of being on Trump’s enemy list this particular Saturday. She had no idea how literal she was about to be. Famous last words, Karoline. Famous. Last. Words.

This is what poetic justice looks like in 2026. Not clean. Not satisfying. Just this — a press secretary waddling into the Hinckley Hilton expecting a comedy show and ending up in a security evacuation while 2,600 journalists abandoned their burrata and dove under tables at a dinner ostensibly celebrating the First Amendment. The same First Amendment that the guy they were celebrating has spent his entire second non-consecutive term treating like a suggestion.

Kendrick asked us to make it make sense. I’m going to try.

Let me start with David Ellison, because nothing that happened on Saturday night makes sense without him.

Read more

So Tucker Carlson is sorry. So, so sorry.

Last week on The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox powerhouse-turned-streamer populist jackanape sat across from his brother, Buckley (who, lest we forget, wrote speeches for Donald Trump) and delivered what is apparently meant to pass for a reckoning. “I’ll be tormented by it for a long time,” he said, his voice heavy with the weight of a man who just discovered consequences. “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional.”

Not intentional, my ass.

The man who campaigned for Trump. Who used the largest cable news platform in the country to nuke his audience with MAGA propaganda night after night after night. Who told millions of viewers that Trump’s critics were hysterical elitists. Who mainstreamed the Great Replacement Theory as a gateway drug for white nationalism. (I’ll leave aside his foray into testicle tanning.)

Not intentional.

Okay, Tucker. Sure.

Here’s the thing. Some corners of the internet are treating this like a homecoming, like the prodigal son has finally seen the light, and maybe we should kill the fatted calf and welcome him back to the table of Reasonable People. The Never Trump crowd should make room, the thinking goes. He’s one of us now.

No. He is not.

Share

And not because people can’t change. People can. Lord knows, many of us in the former-Republican space have taken our hits for what we did in the past. Contrition is real, and it matters. It has for me.

But Tucker Carlson’s support for Donald Trump was never the disease. It was a symptom. One of many. And if you think dumping Trump is enough to earn a seat at the adults’ table, you haven’t been paying attention to the last two decades of Tucker Carlson’s career.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

Read more

Share

If you compare it to some new national numbers — Alex explains why Mississippi is absolutely in play in 2026. When an incumbent Senator’s 20 points underwater in May ... well, that’s shaping up to be one heck of a wave year.

Read more

It’s not enough for the broligarchy to have untold wealth. They also wanted political power. Now they have that. And they want to be esteemed as philosopher kings, while simultaneously shielded from criticism. Well, that’s a taller order.

When they roll out their political manifestos, we should take them seriously, if not literally. Public statements by these actors, while often couched in statesmanlike or visionary terms, offer insights into a growing power elite: what they like, what they hate, their enemies, what they felt are entitled to.

These manifestos are relevant for governance, given Silicon Valley’s power via financial resources and platform control, and their embeddedness into government service delivery via grants, tax subsidies and contracts. They are no longer simply contractors, or one more donor class, but a powerful political class onto itself.

Subscribe now

For example, when DOGE was announced, your best bet for understanding its purpose and impact was to pay attention to Elon Musk’s anti-government conspiracy ramblings on X, which fueled the elimination of entire agencies. Or Marc Andreessen’s manifesto, which predicted an attack on government services. These manifestos are, of course, riddled with unfounded claims, contradictions and blind spots. Andreessen bemoaned regulatory capture, while embarking on exactly such a program. But even, and perhaps especially, the blind spots are telling.

Some in the broligarchy see themselves as heroic historical figures, the kind of men (its always men) who are on a heroes journey that involves quashing some foes along the way. What if you are the foe? At some point this becomes a sovereignty problem, when the people empowered to manage your government have their own distinct values they are pursuing using the guise of public power and virtue.

How Palantir’s Guardrails Failed

And so we get to Palantir, a tech company that provides support for US government intelligence, immigration, policing, defense, tax preparation, health, revenue collection and logistical functions. Given that range of competencies, they are at the heart of concerns about tech surveillance under an increasingly authoritarian government.

A senior person in the Biden administration assured me that Palantir were seen competent deliverer of contracts. They got stuff done, including with pandemic-era logistics in health care. The company grew under Democratic and Republican administrations, but the billion-dollar contracts and eye-popping stock valuations did not start to arrive until the second Trump administration. They benefited from a fertile combination of massive increases in immigration and military spending, the rise of AI, and the downsizing of the federal government.

The way in which Palantir grew caused unease within its own ranks. A year ago, some former Palantir employees wrote an open letter about the violation of the company’s prior ethical guardrails.

A Code of Conduct was crafted to uphold democracy, preserve the spirit of free scientific inquiry, and ensure responsible AI development. Guardrails were set to prevent discrimination, disinformation, and abuses of power. These principles have now been violated, and are rapidly being dismantled at Palantir Technologies and across Silicon Valley

The company’s leader Alex Karp released a manifesto, which is actually just excerpts of the “The Technological Republic” written by Karp with help from Nicholas W. Zamiska. I’m not going to go through every point of the manifesto (some of which I am sympathetic to), but do want to focus on a couple of big points

Can an Anti-Fascist become a Techno-Fascist?

A takeaway point is that on the whole, the manifesto’s vision of Palantir is that of a U.S. government and its tech allies as dominant players, unconstrained by accountability. This has caused alarm bells to go off. For example, in a series of posts on Bluesky, Cas Mudde, one of the leading scholars of authoritarianism, was blunt:

The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure! Clearly, this disqualifies Palentir as a business partner for any other country than the U.S., not just in defense and security related sector but ANY sector — as information is power. European countries should not just start new collaboration with Palentir, they should divest it ASAP! Democrats should develop an actionable agenda of democratic reform in case they return to power. This cannot be limited to institutional refoms, but must include reigning in the power and wealth of technofascist companies and individuals.

Is it possible that the underlying book, with more room to caveat and explain, is less objectionable. Not so, according to John Ganz, who slogged through the whole thing:

The book is extremely creepy: It becomes clear in the course of reading this “Technological Republic” the authors propose is essentially some kind of merger or acquisition of the United States government by Silicon Valley, a state run by an engineering elite that would be empowered to “ruthlessly” pursue “outcomes.” It’s a proposal for a kind of tech oligarchy: “no public “oversight for me, surveillance for thee.” I contend it’s a work of reactionary modernism.

The manifesto makes a straightforward case that government and Silicon Valley power must be fused in order to defend a peaceful and prosperous way of life for Americans. If we pause with AI we are merely allowing our adversaries gain an upper hand:

The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

The manifesto argues Silicon Valley has invested its efforts in frivolities rather than American military capacity — unlike Palantir! Western values, which are superior to others, must be defended with power:

Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures … have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

“Defending the West” is part of Palantir’s DNA. It was never a company that sought to please consumers, but viewed itself as aligning with U.S. military interests. It also works with Israeli military, extending “the West” to a political rather than geographical concept.

Since “The Technological Republic” was published, Karp has gone from being a partial critic of Trump, to a defender. He once declared his “biggest fear is fascism” and that “I always thought if fascism comes, I will be the first or second person on the wall.” So how is he now a Trump donor? How did an anti-fascist become someone seen as authoring a techno-fasicst manifesto?

One of Trump’s extraordinary skills is to recognize and recruit those whose greed and vanity outstrip their principles, and who are happy to shout righteously for a cause they once abhorred. Deregulation, praise and massive contracts are a powerful cocktail to help you forget your commitments, especially when your supposed allies in liberalism are now critical of you. “Being unpopular pays the bills” Karp told a biographer in response to liberal outrage.

Some speculators think Palantir is wildly overvalued due to a Trump bubble where earnings are way out of proportion with stock price, and have tried to short it. Trump praised Palantir when its stock tumbled recently. Right now, the company’s prospects, or at leasts its stock price and leader’s personal wealth, feel increasingly dependent on MAGA’s vision of the world.

But it is uncomfortable to label yourself a sellout, and so a billionaire anti-fascist write a manifesto about how, yes, they are still defending democracy, and no, they are not working for a fascist. In a thoughtful column, Michelle Goldberg noted that the German politician who was the primary subject of Karp’s dissertation went from being a fascist in the dissertation to a speaker of forbidden truths in “The Technological Republic.” Trump seems to have made the same transition for Karp.

As Palantir becomes engaged in domestic surveillance and immigration enforcement for a government that has repeatedly violated the law, “defending the West” starts to look indistinguishable from bog-standard, right-wing ethnonationalism. As part of a somewhat bizarre critique of his one-time mentor Jurgen Habermas, Karp argued that the structure of public discourse cannot be rational but “must be rooted in a more corporeal and traditional — and indeed national and cultural — source.”

Share

His biographer said that Karp’s views on the West have changed:

Judging by his own words … he does not see multiracial, pluralistic democracy as the thing about the west that should be defended ... he sees it much more as just a collection of countries bound by a shared Judeo-Christian heritage, and, to varying degrees, by an attachment to free enterprise. That’s kind of where he is, I think. And it can lead you down some pretty dark paths.

Goldberg’s profile of Karp notes that at one point his reputation as a Democrat, avowed anti-fascist, and biracial student activist worked well to dampen Democratic hostility to Palantir when they were in power. Now they are not, Karp has more reason to embrace a different version of his identity. Goldberg concludes: “I was left suspecting that the best explanation for Karp’s journey — as for most of his right-wing billionaire compatriots — is the vulgar materialist one.”

Two Types of Public Servants

One striking element of the manifesto is its incoherence. At turns it is assertive and dominant, and at other points wheedling in its pleas for grace and tolerance. But if you make some simple assumptions about who the manifesto is talking about, it becomes clearer.

Let’s take the following points together since they touch on public service:

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

Again, this is incoherent until you realize that Karp is presenting you with two types of public servants. Civil servants purged under Trump, and the tech elites who venture into government. The former deserve your scorn. The latter — the Alex Karps of the world, the Silicon Valley contractor class — merit your understanding and praise.

Few groups in American public life have suffered more material or reputational damage in the past year than federal civil servants. More than 400,000 employees have left the federal government. For many, they left a dream job, pushed out by people who knew less than they did. They worked under a government where the President declared them to be the deep state, government leaders promised to put them “in trauma” and the President’s supporters often exposed them to harassment campaigns. They were demeaned by bosses who opposed the mission of their organization.

Karp does not have much grace or understanding for this group of public servants. They are overpaid priests. The echo of “will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” may not be intended, but its there. As for the claim that government employees are overpaid, generally, white collar government workers are not overcompensated compared to the public sector, and in some cases forego a significant wage premium. We also spend much more money on contractors than employees, so if you wanted to save money ...

Another way to look at this is that billionaires have joined a war on professional administrative class of public servants precisely because of their proximity to formal mechanisms of accountability. Civil servants are sworn to uphold the constitution, report wrongdoing to officials, follow the rules. They are in most respects more accountable than our politicians to ethical and legal requirements, and more difficult to buy off. This makes government slower and more irritating for sure, and puts those officials at odds with the Musks, Andreessens, and Karps of the world, whose vision and interests benefits from reduced oversight and accountability.

I do have some sympathy for the point that procurement processes are unwieldy and political appointees are generally held to a very high standard of scrutiny that often discourages them from participating in government. But frankly, its Democrats who impose those standards, which Trump has abandoned. The Biden administration struggled to get tech elites to join government because of stringent ethical and conflict of interest barriers. The Trump administration has none. Elon Musk made clear that for the chosen few, conflicts of interest no longer exist. New tech hires can stay with their current companies that work with the government.

So the plea for grace for those who enter the public square is not about rules or formal constraints here, but public criticism of power. It has never been easier or potentially more lucrative from the Silicon Valley set to jump into government. The only penalty they face is a social one. While Karp is angry that certain cultures have not been harshly enough criticized, criticism of the consolidation of financial, technological and political power happening in America is off the table.

Public criticism offers one form of accountability. If people violate our laws and norms, should they held accountable? The manifesto’s answers is “yes…for some, not us.” Violent criminals? Yes. Civil servants? Yes. White collar criminals? Well, lets not be hasty? Tech billionaires working for government? That would be “corrosive” for the country.

I’m reminded of the Simpsons character Artie Ziff, Marge’s prom date who later becomes a billionaire. When he asks that Marge not share with others his unwelcome prom night groping, he puts his request for silence in the most virtuous terms possible:

We need to be nicer to the broligarchy …. or risk damaging the entire country.

More seriously, how will future Democratic administrations respond to an organization that might have genuinely valuable capacities, but who is not shy about pursuing a hostile ideological agenda and bristles at the slightest accountability.

Give to Lincoln Square

National Military Service

Until relatively recently, Palantir was seen as secretive, criticized more for its connections to founder Peter Thiel than anything Karp said. However, the manifesto is presented as that of Palantir, hosted on their website, promoted by their social media. There is no meaningful distinction between the leader, Karp, and the company’s policies, which is an odd thing for a publicly-traded company.

Generally its healthy to separate our sometimes weird personal opinions from the organizations we work for. There is a reason that contractors give money to both party and try to limit their ideological stances. They don’t want their values to chase off business. Once those values go beyond internal guidance for employees, and instead become political manifestos, they demand allegiance or opposition.

For example, should a tech company have opinions on military and foreign policy? The manifesto talks about the need to rearm Germany and Japan. Why? Some at the company surely have opinions on this. Others might different opinions. Thats fine. But why should we care about what Palantir thinks?

Similarly, Palantir calls for national military service. This is a common and unfortunate affliction of middle-aged and older men, akin to an interest in the Roman Empire or World War II. Its simply not something you see many men in their 20s promote for obvious “I-would-prefer-not-to-die” reasons. Charitably, it reflects a sense of a desire for creating shared meaning among the young that the elderly perceive is lacking, or to coerce the elite into sharing the cost of military conflict. Uncharitably, it is the old telling the young how to live and risk their lives.

It is easy to mock Palantir on this. How many of them completed their military service? The may sincerely believe that they are part of the greater military effort via their defense work. Indeed, the Trump administration made some of their executives officers in the Army Reserve. But all of that is beside the point. Why should Palantir have an opinion on this and why should anyone take it seriously?

There are other examples:

The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

As a statement about foreign power, this seems pretty misguided. The U.S. has dissipated its soft power to an extraordinary degree in a rapid period of time. Are we better off for it? We are, as we speak, engaged in a period of hard power and the public does not seem to like its elements — needless wars and tariffs — or its outcomes — higher prices, weakening alliances.

The problem with the manifesto is that Palantir’s worldview and business model are impossible to separate. A world where soft power has real and lasting impact is simply less profitable for a company like Palantir relative to a world where we blow a lot of stuff up. A world featuring an AI arms race is more profitable than a world with AI regulation. A world where Silicon Valley polices domestic crime is more profitable than a world that constrains surveillance on the public. A world with fewer meddlesome government employees is a world where Palantir takes on the administrative reins of the state.

In each of these cases, Palantir takes a stand that is bravely consistent with its bottom line. In an interview with Wired, Karp says that Palantir has put principles before profits, by refusing to work with China and Russia. But I’m skeptical: how exactly can a tech security firm win contracts from the U.S. government while also working with its primary adversaries? When Palantir gets into a fight with the U.S. government akin to Anthropic’s current battle about the use of Claude for violent or unconstitutional ends, they will deserve them more credit.

Subscribe now

When the Subtext Defeats the Text

The subtext of the manifesto here is so overwhelming that the text can barely stand up for itself. For example, when Karp says:

The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

A purely textual interpretation might be that he is commenting on the most powerful man in the world attacking the most visible religious figure in the world. Thats in the news, right? Trump attacks the Pope! A pretty big deal!

But of course, no-one believes that is the intent. Palantir is operating on a series of shared assumptions: that religious intolerance is only a project of the left, despite increasingly open attacks on non-Christian religions from the right; that motivated erosion of individual rights, such as abortions, are not a form of intolerance worth commenting on.

A student who once engaged in Black campus politics now argues that wokeness is a “pagan religion view” inculcated by campuses: “a new religion with sacrifices. Who’s the sacrifice? Me, I’m the sacrifice.” Again, this mix of the powerful preening as victims while blaming woke campuses is bog-standard right-wing fare.

I don’t want to be too critical. Here is a piece of solid advice:

The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

Yes. Yes! YES!

Small problem. Its hard to think of any segment of society that has been more guilty of engaging in this than the techbros. Elon Musk cooked his brain online. Marc Andreessen and others seemingly struggled with being in virtual spaces where their ideas and status were challenged, and rewired their political beliefs as a form of cope.

The Palantir manifesto reflects the worldview not of deep philosophical consideration but of a rotten information environment, one where pluralism and accountability are bad, and coercive power is the necessary and profitable price of freedom.

To what degree should our government endorse and support this worldview?

Actually — that’s not true. On Tuesday, Virginians voted to allow for a redistricting that would potentially add four Democratic seats to the House … if the courts allow it to go through.

Subscribe now

But other than that? Well … RFK Jr. tried his hand at Trump math and tech companies announced they were laying off tens of thousands of employees to make way for their AI overlords. What’s more, employees at Meta are having their keystrokes recorded in order to train those very same AI overlords that will soon be taking their jobs.

Share

But wait! There’s more!

Trump’s will-he / won’t-he with Iran continues to play itself out, while gas prices continue to climb. There will be some mid-range energy price shock baked in already, no matter when the war in Iran resolves (if it resolves).

Oil prices aren’t the only thing going up because of the war: one of the biggest manufacturers of condoms (yes, that’s right) said it will raise prices around 30% due to material and supply pressures.

Give to Lincoln Square

I guess MAGA will get rid of birth control one way or another.

That’s not all Max and Sam had to talk about. Tune in for the whole episode!

Donald Trump is functionally finished as a political force in American life. These past twelve years were the Trump years, but the Iran war signaled the dawn of a new era. The polling makes this clear: we have entered new territory. At no point in recent memory have Americans wholesale rejected Trump — until now.

Polling shows nationwide disgust at the corruption and chaos emanating from the Oval Office. To be sure, there are still many who support him. The Boomer core of MAGA is holding on for dear life, desperate to avoid any conversation about gas prices. Long-term, the diehards were never enough to sustain a lasting movement, but today they are its unshakeable core. Like Trump himself, the MAGA constituency — and older Americans in general — is finally losing its grasp on power.

Share

There is no coming back from here. Americans blame Trump for the pain they feel at the pump and at the grocery store. Per a recent AP-NORC poll, just 33% approve of his overall job performance. On Iran, Trump would have reversed course by now if he had any real control of the situation. But voters are no longer giving him the benefit of the doubt. As the Epstein saga has exploded, the President’s distractions and excuses have ceased to have their intended effect.

Throughout the spring, polls showed voters believe Trump is focused on the wrong issues. The Arch de Epstein is the perfect example — and perfectly illustrative of the national mood. Trump is daily shouting victory while Americans are feeling defeated. Voters are increasingly saying he does not have the mental capacity to serve as president. The boasting rings hollow and the Truths are terrifying.

Read more

Subscribe now

Enter Katie Paris, who had previously worked in political campaigns in Washington, D.C., but moved out of that bubble to Ohio. Shocked by the political climate we were facing, she used her campaign know-how to start organizing locally, forming Red, Wine, and Blue with likeminded women from across the state. Today, that group has grown into 800-plus networks and 650,000 women.

Katie joined Edwin Eisendrath on It’s The Democracy, Stupid to talk about how she’s been so successful with building this coalition, how organizing doesn’t have to be all doom-and-gloom, and how they’re truly engaging people as we head into the 2026 midterm elections.

Give to Lincoln Square

Grab the Pinot and find out how you can join a local Red, Wine, and Blue chapter with Katie Paris and Edwin Eisendrath, right here on Lincoln Square.

Share

Share

Subscribe now

But the big story today is ... all of it, all at once, altogether. Across the polling — across demo and issue and all things — he's falling off a cliff and could end up being the least popular president of all time.

But what does that mean for the midterms? Are Dems using this to their advantage?

Give to Lincoln Square

Read more

In an era when attention is everything, and the fastest way to grab it is through outrage, Democracy is on the block. We all know it. And if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you spend at least a portion of your day both plugged in and also feeling hopeless, despondent, and mad as hell.

Subscribe now

Simultaneously, many of us have decried the No Kings protests as performative, or token. Yes, of course, we need to do more. But the thing about protest is that it gives us a chance to rub our shoulders together. To see each other in person. To laugh. To scream. To chant.

Together.

And even more than that, protest gives us a chance to collectively imagine the world we want to live in.

Share

That is what this show is about. We can diagnose the symptoms. We can — and should — hold those guilty accountable. We can rant and rave. But if we’re going to ever live in a better world, then for f*ck’s sake we’ve got to start building it.

And we should have started yesterday.

The Revolution is your recruitment to the movement. Each week, Michael and Maya will welcome guests who have already begun. They’ll tell you what they’ve done and how you can do it, too.

This week, we welcome Skye Perryman, Director and CEO of Democracy Forward, an organization that “uses the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy for all people.” When it comes to suing the Trump administration, to actually holding them responsible, Ms. Perryman and Democracy Forward are the tip of the spear.

Give to Lincoln Square

Subscribe to our YouTube channel!

Watch, share, and join The Revolution. And tell us what you’re doing to fight back in the comments!

I’m not used to feeling disgust when I file my taxes. Most years, even though it hurts, I’m proud to support our government. I want money going to scientific research that makes us the most advanced and innovative nation on earth. I am truly grateful that we have funded medical research. Some of that is directly responsible for treatments that have literally given new life to people I love. I support spending on education and social security. I am more than willing to pay for our national defense. I prefer roads and bridges and airports that aren’t falling apart. And, I have come to know how important working independent courts are.

Of course, the government is never as efficient as I’d like. I don’t like everything it does. But in the aggregate, it does what Americans, through their members of Congress, agree it should do.

This year is different. This year you and I are being robbed by the lying thief in the White House. It is disgusting.

Subscribe now

As the rest of us filed our taxes last week, Trump and his family were “negotiating” with the Justice Department to settle his $10 billion-dollar suit against the us. That suit stems from a contractor’s release of a portion of Trump’s tax return five years ago.

Never mind that Trump promised dozens of times to release those returns himself. Never mind that the statute of limitations ran out before he filed the suit. Never mind that even if he went to court and prevailed — something every lawyer tells me would be nearly impossible — the remedy would be something quite small.

Trump doesn’t have to go trial because he is on both sides of the suit. The taxpayers have no defender. Instead, the Department of Justice and the lawyers bringing Trump’s case both have the same client. It isn’t us.

Not content with stealing our money to pay himself because of the tax return leak, he is also suing because the government had the temerity to ask for its top-secret property back when he hid it in his Mar-a-Lago loo. We taxpayers are going to write him a check for that, too.

Trump’s ugly, bruised hand is in our pockets. With a useless GOP Congress, the U.S. Treasury is his personal property. Like I said, it is disgusting.

Share

The greedy thieves haven’t just weaponized the Justice Department to hunt down their adversaries. They have turned every bit of our government into their personal cash station.

War in Iran? Don Trump Jr. is a major defense contractor. Our lead negotiator, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is on the payroll of gulf countries. Many credible reports make clear that someone is using the war to manipulate markets and line their pockets. Again, that’s not you or me.

Our hard-earned money is going into their pockets. Information about the deployment of our young men and women in arms is being used, at least in part, to rig markets to further line their pockets.

And, instead of using the government to make our lives better, they are using it to make their rich friends richer.

Do you remember when advertisers fled the X platform because they didn’t want their brands marketed right next to neo-Nazi recruitment videos and other right-wing trash? Musk sued the advertisers saying that they were engaged in an illegal boycott. The advertisers said they were just protecting their brands. Musk lost the case.

But then Trump’s FTC stepped in. They changed the rules to ban advertisers from refusing to place content next to certain “covered bases.” And they go on to define “covered bases” as politically or ideologically contested facts, journalistic or ethical standards, or anything to do with DEI. They also banned ad companies from rating, ranking, or evaluating publishers on these bases. The ad companies caved. Because Trump’s FTC intervened, money will now flow back to X and to Musk. And you will see ads for clothing and cars and movies next to content that promotes hate.

We pay taxes. They steal our money and they use the government we pay for to make their rich friends richer.

Trump doesn’t care what Congress says about taxes and spending. Never mind that the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. Trump’s tariffs were illegal. His impoundment of Congressionally mandated spending is illegal. His outlay of our money for purposes that Congress did not authorize or appropriate funds for- that’s illegal too.

Last week, Democrats on the House Science Committee released a report documenting the administration’s contempt for Congressional budgets. “[NASA] violated the basic separation-of-powers framework set forth in the Constitution. NASA’s actions derailed critical projects, demoralized its employees, and broke its trust with the scientific community and the private sector. NASA repeatedly denied what it was doing, but the facts prove otherwise. This staff report provides an overview of the evidence my team has gathered and highlights the damage NASA inflicted upon itself by yielding to pressure from OMB instead of following the law.”

It should be repulsive to every taxpayer that the President spends our money on himself, on his friends, and as he wishes without so much as a nod from Congress.

He can be stopped. But that requires a Congress that actually does it’s job- cue the exit door for that useless piece of gum on the bottom of Trump’s shoe — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Trump’s monarchical contempt is destroying our great country.

Give to Lincoln Square

He led us into a war against the counsel of his advisors, a war with a target list but without a strategy, a war that has strengthened Iran as an adversary and a regional power. Yesterday Trump announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open and the war essentially over. This morning Iran announced the Strait was closed. And we are left wondering if he’s completely at sea, or whether he is lying to manipulate markets.

The contempt is everywhere. How else are we to understand Pete Hegseth, the warmongering Secretary of Defense, who led a prayer meeting and asked everyone to bow their heads while he read a Quentin Tarantino movie script that he thought was scripture.

Our Congress didn’t hold a debate about going to war. Just as our Congress hasn’t held hearings about impoundment or illegal spending.

It’s April. We are paying taxes, Trump is stealing from the Treasury, and Congress is useless.

Americans will not tolerate a King, and we will not forgive his court. The reckoning is coming.

This is Episode 4 of History of the Present, a series from The Intellectualist in collaboration with Lincoln Square Media focused on how democracy, media, political power, and institutional incentives are converging and reshaping the present moment.

Subscribe now

Watch our previous episodes.
Episode 1 — Sree Sreenivasan on AI and media:

Episode 2 — Charlie Sykes on democracy and the Republican Party:

Episode 3 — Leta McCollough Seletzky on history and identity:

In recent years, the relationship between political actors and the media has shifted in ways that are not always visible on the surface. Coverage of power in the United States is often described as more deferential than in other systems, raising questions about how narratives are constructed, what remains outside public understanding, and how political reality is filtered before it reaches the public.

Give to Lincoln Square

Media framing, political incentives, and strategic messaging interact to produce a version of political reality that can appear coherent on the surface while masking deeper contradictions underneath.

Stanage examines how that system functions in practice, including the gap between private Republican sentiment and public positioning around Donald Trump, and how that gap reflects broader structural pressures shaping political behavior.

The conversation also looks at how Donald Trump’s public rhetoric, including references to mortality and the afterlife, becomes part of the narrative environment through which the presidency is interpreted, and how repetition, tone, and media coverage shape public perception over time.

Share

These patterns exist alongside major external pressures, including controversies surrounding the Epstein files and geopolitical tensions with Iran, both of which have affected the administration’s political position and operating environment.

We also examine how this presidency differs from Biden’s in structure, incentives, and governing conditions, and what those differences reveal about how political power operates today.

In this conversation, they discuss:

• The gap between what politicians say in public and what they actually believe
• Why U.S. media often treats political power more gently than it should
• Trump’s handling of the Epstein files and what it reveals about power and transparency
• The war in Iran and its impact on U.S. political and strategic positioning
• The erosion of goodwill toward the United States during this presidency
• How the perception of the United States abroad has weakened significantly
• How media narratives, political incentives, and institutional trust reinforce each other
• Where American politics may be heading next

This is a conversation about the gap between what appears to be happening in American politics and what is actually driving events beneath the surface.

Subscribe now

History of the Present, hosted by Brian Daitzman, Editor-in-Chief of The Intellectualist, in collaboration with Lincoln Square Media, examines not just political events, but the system that determines how those events are seen and acted upon.

Follow for future episodes, check out The Intellectualist’s YouTube.

The Intellectualist

The Intellectualist Substack delivers fact-based analysis and thoughtful commentary focused on defending democracy and fostering informed public discourse. At a time when truth and civic engagement are under threat, it serves as a vital platform.

Subscribe now

We might see Montana as a classic example of red ruralism, but Sam and the Joes know that’s only a recent development. The Joes ask Sam whether he can be the one to reignite the Democratic Party in Montana.

Share

Subscribe now

That’s what author and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told Frank Figliuzzi about just some of the similarities of the strongmen of the past and the comparisons to leaders like Donald Trump today.

Share

Ruth Ben-Ghiat joined the The Frank Figliuzzi Show on Lincoln Square. She writes the Lucid newsletter on Substack and has taught how ideologies like fascism and totalitarianism have crept into societies across modern history. And since Trump’s entrance into U.S. politics over a decade ago, she has been sounding the alarm bells on how closely he’s modeled his governing style upon authoritarian figures of the past and present, like Viktor Orban in Hungary.

“Here we’re in a process where we’re starting to fit the conditions under which today’s studies say that people start to wake up. And one is blatant corruption. If the government and the leader are just getting really rich, that was partly why Viktor Orban lost and had to concede,” she said. “Another is autocratic overreach. Either the state is on the streets being openly brutal and we have ICE, or they’re actually, we don’t discuss this enough, they’re just absent because these people don’t care. They’re in power to get rich and to amass more power. And then the third is that when they cause hardship, economic hardship, and we are getting in that zone.”

Give to Lincoln Square

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

You don’t want to miss a second of Frank’s insightful interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat on how we got here and how we can beat back the Trump’s strongman politics.

Plus, don’t miss Frank’s comments on the court’s dismissal of Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit against him on The Frank Figliuzzi Show, right here on Lincoln Square.

There’s a moment in every Trump-era career arc, and I mean every one, where the walls close in, the flop sweat starts, and the doomed apparatchik begins thrashing around like a catfish on a hot dock.

For FBI Director Kash Patel, that moment arrived this weekend with a sickening thud.

The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick dropped a devastating report on Friday night detailing what more than two dozen sources describe as a pattern of heavy drinking, chronic absenteeism, and behavior so erratic that his own security detail once had to deploy breaching equipment … the kind of gear SWAT teams use to knock down doors … just to wake him up.

Let that sink in. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was so incapacitated, so deep in his cups that the people sworn to protect him had to treat his residence like they were on a meth lab raid just to rouse him from his boozy stupor.

Patel is reported to get sloppy on weekends in private Vegas club called the Poodle Room.

Dude. Come on. The jokes write themselves.

His meetings for his day job as FBI director are apparently often pushed to later in the day because the nation’s top law enforcement officer is a liver-pickled booze sponge, reeking of hooch who has to sleep off the night before. The man entrusted with protecting the homeland from terrorism, espionage, and organized crime was, according to these sources, a national security vulnerability all by himself.

If I may use the technical term: duh.

And then came the detail that tells you everything about Kash Patel’s fragile psyche and his tenuous grip on reality: On April 10th, unable to log into his FBI computer, Patel had what sources described as a “freak-out,” convinced Trump had fired him.

Read more

Subscribe now

Republicans have been way ahead of the gerrymandering game, even before Trump. And now the Calais Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act could essentially flip 12 to 19 seats across the South in favor of Republicans.

But whether Dems do it or Republicans, gerrymandering does not make for a healthy democracy. And with changing demographics, by 2035, roughly 70% of the U.S. population will live in just 15 states, diluting Democrats’ power even further.

Give to Lincoln Square

Share

David Daley, author of RatF*cked and the new book, Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, joined Susan J. Demas to talk about the damage that could be inflicted to us all if we don’t push for fair elections.