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The Washington Post reports the partial government shutdown under President Donald Trump is driving airline passengers to dig even further into their pockets to grab a plane.“I’ve seen parts of the airport now that I didn’t even know existed,” said Steven Dial, a Houston resident who accepts payment for standing for hours in notorious airport lines resulting from unpaid YSA workers quitting or staying home for lack of pay.Dial told the Post that his job standing in line began at 6:30 a.m.“While the vast majority of travelers have braved lines or missed flights, grimacing at

For a time, MAGA had its own “Catholic Coalition” manned by right-wing stalwarts over issues like abortion and similar traditional values,” said Letters from Leo writer Christopher Hale. But President Donald Trump’s self-imposed war in Iran is now blasting even that MAGA alliance to pieces.“For years, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester has been the Catholic right’s most careful diplomat — a man who built a media empire by threading the needle between orthodoxy and the MAGA movement, rarely picking fights he didn’t have to pick,” said Hale.Barron was careful to neve

Former George Bush speechwriter Tim Miller is not an optimist. When the Bulwark podcaster steps in as a visiting panelist on cable news shows he is not the one spouting gold and rainbows and skewing optimist in every scenario involving Democrats.“I'm not that guy,” insisted Miller. “There's other YouTubers out there where people have been like, ‘the walls are closing in on Trump every day. Trump's going to be in jail.’ That was never me. I've been negative. I'm still negative. I'm still worried. I'm still concerned. But as a political analyst, I think that people are slow to recognize wh

Public sympathy for Erika Kirk, the widow of assassinated MAGA mega-influencer Charlie Kirk, appears to have spun off into something quite different.“In recent days, Erika Kirk has become the subject of viral jokes and commentary — from a segment on Joe Rogan’s podcast to a skit by comedian Druski that has been viewed more than 100 million times,” said Newsweek writer Marni Rose McFall.This is a long jump from the MAGA universe and Republicans rallying around Kirk like a

Trump officials say they are confident their behavior and deeds will bring down a firestorm of indictments and investigations after Democrats take the House (and possibly the Senate) in November — and later the White House.“Everybody’s afraid that the next administration — if we don’t win, we’re all going to be investigated and indicted,” said Deputy AG Todd Blanche at Friday’s CPAC event in Texas. “Think about that.”Republicans in charge of the White House and Congress are desperate to ramp up enthusiasm as MAGA voters

As poll after miserable GOP poll continues to rack Republicans the MAGAsphere has entered a phase of existential dread, tempered with bitterness.“MAGA will lose the midterms. MAGA will lose 2028,” wailed Bryce M. Lipscomb, a defender of President Donald Trump’s policies, on X. But not without also dropping a parting barb of contempt at his fellow opportunistic MAGA influencers he helped push Trump to victory in 2024.“MAGA

WASHINGTON — A host of celebrities outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday kicked off a weekend of protest against President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power and his administration’s pressure on freedom of expression — from theater programming in the nation’s capital, to late-night television.More than a dozen activist performers and creators rallied for Artists United for Our Freedoms, an event organized by the advocacy group Committee for the First Amendment.Anti-Vietnam War movement icons Jane Fonda and Joan Baez, actors Billy Porter and Sam Waterson, musicians Maggie Rogers, Crys Matthews and Kristy Lee, and authors Ann Patchett and Bess Kalb were a

Attorneys representing Fulton County faced off against the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court Friday, seeking the return of more than 650 boxes of 2020 election records that FBI agents seized from a county elections warehouse in January.The hearing, which was held in a federal courthouse in Atlanta, was scheduled last week after the judge announced that attempts at mediation had been unsuccessful.Justification for January’s raid, which was authorized by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas, relie

What should the American people, especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?These former presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “…take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.Our former presidents all get

Bulwark editor Sam Stein and podcaster Tim Miller took turns agonizing over Iran’s timely hack of FBI Director Kash Patel’s email. The attack, they said, revealed the mess of President Donald Trumpo’s low-quality staff and laid another case for his people’s lack of preparation for the Iran war.“… [W]e picked the time of this war and yet simultaneously the FBI fired their Iranian experts and then a week after that the FBI director gets h