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Hours after the Republican Party suffered an upset defeat in a special election in a deep-red district in Texas, President Donald Trump falsely claimed he had nothing to do with the race.While speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday, Trump was asked what he made of the GOP losing a Texas state senate election in a district that he carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.“I’m not involved in that, that’s a local Texas race,” Trump replied.In fact, Trump endorsed losing Republican candidate Leigh Wambsganss on three separate occasions in just the last three days, including a Saturday

In a survey released in March 2023, Pew Research Center examined Americans' views on different religious groups. Pew found that 27 percent of respondents had a "very" or "somewhat unfavorable" view of evangelicals, while only 10 percent had that view of Mainline Protestants and 6 percent felt that way about Jews.But the fact that evangelicals fared badly in Pew's survey doesn't mean that they are going away.In an

Between a series of Democratic election victories in late 2025 and early 2026 and President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings in a long list of recent polls, Republican strategists are growing increasingly worried about this year's midterms —which are a little over nine months away.Never Trump conservative and New York Times columnist David French fears that Trump and his allies will use militarized U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) raids

A bombshell Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture months before the Trump administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology.According to the Journal’s sources, lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the fami

In today’s edition, I’m going to try something different. Instead of an essay or analysis or an interview, I’m going to offer diary-like entries. The reason is practical, but also artistic, if you will indulge the term. These diary entries reflect how my mind works – vestiges, observations, random thoughts – sometimes interconnected but more often not. I wrote them on Bluesky before they appeared here, but have expanded and modified nearly all of them in order to give the impression of a beginning, middle and end. Let me know what you think in the comments.Saturday, January 24, before Alex Pretti was murdered.I wish white Americans would connect the dots: between a cop m

With the United States' 2026 midterms a little over nine months away, President Donald Trump's low approval ratings are a major source of anxiety for GOP strategists. And a series of Democratic election victories has them worried as well. The latest came on Saturday night, January 30 in a special election for a Texas State Senate seat in the Ft. Worth suburbs. Donald Trump carried that district by 17 percent in 2024, but on January 30, Democratic nominee Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss (who Trump endorsed) by 14 percent.But o

MAGA Republican Steve Bannon, host of the "War Room" vodcast and former White House Chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, famously described the MAGA movement's strategy as "flood the zone with s---." The idea, according to Bannon, is to keeping opponents feeling overwhelmed by inundating them with nonsense."Real Time" host Bill Maher warned Democrats not to fall for it. Democrats, he stressed, need to pick their battles carefully with Trump and not "lose their s---" every time he says something offensive.In an opinion column published on February 1, the New York Times' Ezra Klein notes that the flood-the-zone str

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat — a history professor at New York University, author of the 2020 book "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," and a frequent guest on MS NOW — is known for her expertise on the history of fascism and authoritarianism. And she isn't shy about comparing President Donald Trump to authoritarian figures of the past.In an op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on February 1, Ben-Ghiat argues that Trump's overreach may backfire — which, she points ou

When Aztec emissaries arrived in 1520 to Tzintzuntzan, the capital of the Tarascan Kingdom in what is now the Mexican state of Michoacán, they carried a warning from the Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc.They cautioned that strange foreigners – the Spaniards – had invaded the land and posed a grave threat. The emissaries requested an audience with the Tarascan ruler, known as the Cazonci, King Zuanga. But Zuanga had recently died, most likely from smallpox brought by the Spaniards.Relations between the two empires had long been tense. They had clashed on the western frontier since 1476, fighting major battles an

The fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during President Donald Trump's militarized immigration raids in Minneapolis are fueling large protests not only in that city, but also, everywhere from New York City to Seattle to Milan, Italy — where, on Saturday, January 31, hundreds of protesters demanded that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents assisting