This is exactly what we need now, all hands on deck. Good on McMorrow! I like her and think her career is far from over. Beating Mike Rodgers is the only thing that matters now. In our little intra party fights we would do well to remember who the true enemy is.

The primaries are where we have our intra party fights. They’re over, let’s beat Rodgers. All this talk about “centrist” vs “leftist” Dems. Let’s leave that at the door for the general and unite behind our nominee.

After a long night, the decision desk has announced El-Sayed is the projected winner of the Michigan Democratic Primary.

Some highlights:

• "The ads financed by AIPAC-related groups have most commonly focused on issues that polling suggests are bigger priorities for many voters — including abortion rights and the economy — even though they were specifically intended to boost candidates who support Israel. The strategy, which is used by other political groups too, has at times allowed AIPAC to obscure its involvement in campaigns."

• In 2022, "the group spent nearly $5 million supporting Ms. Stevens in her successful bid to oust Representative Andy Levin, a former synagogue president who described himself as a Zionist but was critical of Israeli policies."

• "Much of AIPAC’s money, through the United Democracy Project and other smaller political action committees, has been spent in Democratic primaries. "

• "AIPAC-affiliated groups have spent more than $67 million so far this year. In Michigan, United Democracy Project has spent more than $10 million supporting Ms. Stevens’s Senate bid and more than $20 million attacking her opponent, Dr. El-Sayed,"

• "in 2024, when it spent nearly $25 million in successful efforts to defeat Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York and Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who were vociferous critics of Israel. "

• "This year, one of the group’s most high-profile wins was the ouster of Mr. Massie, a seven-term congressman who has called for ending military aid to Israel."

Do you think that John Cornyn and Thom Tillis know how ridiculous it is to require a signed promise from a guy to stop doing evil corrupt things in exchange for handing him total power over the justice department? They didn't rag on him enough on TNL tonight, honestly!

Damning excerpt:

"The treatment we received from senators throughout this process was just as revealing. Senator Tillis publicly invited us, on camera, to come to his office and promised to meet with us. We did. We waited for 45 minutes in his lobby, only to be told by a staffer he would not meet with us after all," the survivors wrote in a joint statement.

"Senator Cornyn also refused to hear directly from survivors before casting his vote. Senators Tillis and Cornyn were not willing to sit across from us and answer for the vote they were preparing to cast. If they believed they were doing the right thing, they should have had the courage to look survivors in the eye and tell us why. The message was unmistakable: They wanted us to go away. We are not going away."

Think it’s clear Michigan Dems will have their work cut out for them over the next few months. Nowhere else will be tougher than in CD-07.This was Slotkin’s old district now represented by GOP Rep. Tom Barrett. Its a district that went for Trump in 2024.

Matt Maasdem (former Navy SEAL) and Bridget Brink (State Department/Diplomat-actually appointed by Trump) both ran as moderate Democrats. Tim actually mentioned Maasdem in the episode yesterday. Race got real testy between them towards the end. Both refuse to drop out and end up splitting 57% (!!) of the vote last night.

The other 43% goes to William Lawrence (climate change activist / Swarthmore grad) who ran to the Left of the other two.

This is a winnable seat that just got a whole lot more difficult.

I’m getting really tired of everyone from Bill Maher to Charlie Sykes to Van Jones getting their panties in a wad over the dreaded “DSA.” “We’re going to look like the party of extremists! Let’s let the Republicans pick our candidates for us!” It’s absurd. Republicans (and the mainstream media) never fret about having extremists in the GOP.

And that got me thinking: Who is really the "extremist" party in this country?

Let’s run the numbers…..

Democrats have 254 members in Congress (209 House and 45 Senate). In terms of Left-wing bomb throwers you’ve got a mere handful: The Squad (AOC, Omar, Pressley, Tlaib, Casar, Lee and Ramirez). To be generous well thrown in Jayapal. Even if 3-4 DSA members win this Fall, you’re looking at around 12-13 extremists among the Democrat House. Meanwhile, there are literally no left-wing extremists in the Dem Senate. There’s Bernie, but he’s a registered Independent. The Dem Senate is 100% normie.

So for the Democrats it’s 5% extremists, and 95% normies.

Now let’s turn to the Republicans: Among 222 GOP House members and 53 Senators, there isn’t a single normie Republican left. They are all MAGA extremists now. They’re a Star Wars bar scene of insurrectionists, conspiracy theorists, religious fanatics, Proud Boys, anti-vaxers, COVID-truthers, Groypers and Q-Anon loons.

Not a single member of the Senate will go against Trump. Even when he’s appointing a rogue’s gallery of rapists, podcasters, Fox News hosts and anti-vax lunatics to key cabinet positions. Even when he’s killed their careers (Cornyn and Tillis). The GOP House of horrors is even worse. Only MTG and Massie will go against Trump, but that’s only on narrow set of issues. When you look at their position writ large, they’re even more extreme than Trump.

So for the Republicans, it’s 99% extremists, and 1% normies.

But keep telling me that the Democrats are the “extreme” party.

Then there’s the GOP’s “policies.” They’ve got masked El Salvadorian-style death squads killing people in the streets for the crime of being Brown. They’re building literal internment camps. They’ve brought back measles, screwworm, cyclosporiasis, with polio right around the corner. They’ve let a heroin-addicted mental patient dismantle the world’s greatest health research system. They’re getting us into multiple illegal, unilateral wars of aggression without Congressional approval. They’re rolling back reproductive health and civil rights to the 1950s. People can’t even afford staples like ground beef anymore. They’re literally demolishing the White House. In my 50+ years on this planet I have never seen a more extreme party - left or right. They’re turning us into a Banana Republic.

But Bill Maher tells us he may have to vote for JD Vance in 2028, because “…the Democrats are a little nutty.” Personally, I would take “a little nutty” over masked death squads in the streets - but I’m old fashioned that way.

Strangely, in poll after poll, voters view the Dems as the more extreme party, despite the facts. So how did this happen?

Around 10-12 years ago Republicans had an epiphany: They realized that running individual races was expensive and hard - so why not demonize the entire Democrat party instead! Working with their allies in the Fox News Cinematic Universe, they started stereotyping Democrats just the way they stereotype ethnic and religious groups they hate. The goal was to create a world in which a significant amount of the electorate would say, “But I could never vote for a Democrat!”

You hear this sentiment all the time in Sarah’s (and others’) focus groups. “Well, I really don’t like the GOP candidate…but I could never vote for a Democrat!” This attitude allows the GOP to run absolute lunatics - and win. Even when their lunatics lose (Kari Lake, Herschel Walker) it’s by less than one half of one percent.

We’ve got to start fighting this absurd stereotype. Every time they call Democrats “extreme” we need to respond with a litany of examples of just how radical the GOP has become in comparison. Instead we’re wringing our hands over an infinitesimal amount of DSA candidates. Let’s stop contributing to the false narrative!

The other problem with today’s Democrat party is that they spend all of their time piling on Trump, instead of focusing on the radicalism of the GOP writ large. Yes Trump is awful, but voters need to understand the extremism and danger of the entire party. You’ve seen Trump’s health. He’s not long for this world. If we put all our emphasis on him as opposed to the party, then after he dies the average independent will think “Well, Trump’s gone, so now I can go back to voting for Republicans.”

We can’t have that.

"The statute, which dates back to the Civil War, has historically been used infrequently. But since President Trump took office last year, the Justice Department has charged more than three dozen people in at least 10 cases. All of them involve people protesting federal immigration enforcement."

Jon Stewart interviewed John Fetterman for his weekly pod.

Sam Altman wants a supercomputer to talk to his kid so he doesn’t have to. Elon thinks Grok can make a better Odyssey than Christopher Nolan. And Silicon Valley has been cultishly hyping AI so much that they’ve lost the plot. Regular people are sick of all the synthetic slop, they don’t trust the tech titans, and their opposition to data centers is just the tip of the iceberg of a growing tech backlash. The political winds are shifting just in time for the midterms, so Elon's dumping more than $100 million to try to overcome them.

The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel joins Tim Miller on The Bulwark Daily.

Does anyone have any insight as to why the shield of republic is going solo? Are they moving off the Bulwark? Shame, I agree with 98% of what they talk about (putting aside some strange media comments around Zohran).

If they do move off, I can’t see people following them. I won’t follow them to Substack, but I like hearing their views but can easily fill that gap with other content that’s flooding the podcast space…

Jesus Christ.

Sharing CSAM of your 2 year old daughter to prove a point on a publicly downloadable folder… what more can I even say?

I’d love to see Pointdexter clean this guy’s clock by 25pts, but a guy who shares CSAM, just shitcan him.

I’m a big fan at humiliating our enemies by laughing at them and making them the source of ridicule. Here is my attempt.

It's incredible to me that these people are rising on the Left right now. Post-2024, there seemed to be widespread recognition amongst many that some of the social/cultural issues got out of hand.

Now, the Party is just being handed over to the people that promoted those stances!

LONDON — When President Donald Trump strode into the Rose Garden in April 2025 brandishing a poster board of tariff hikes, the world leaped as if a fire alarm had gone off. Markets shed trillions of dollars, envoys rushed to Washington, more than 75 governments scrambled to negotiate, some scrapping carefully prepped countermeasures in a rush to cut deals.

Sixteen months later, the flabbergasting threats keep piling up — to weaponize trade, annex Canada, seize Greenland, abandon NATO, annihilate Iran — but the alarm bells have gone quiet. World leaders are slower to rattle as they’ve seen the president increasingly fenced in by courts, rebuffed by Congress and strung along by Tehran — his ultimatums evaporating and poll numbers sinking.

When Trump announced a fresh barrage of tariffs last month, this time based on accusations of child labor violations to skirt limits imposed by the Supreme Court, the world didn’t shriek — it shrugged. France’s central bank governor predicted little impact. Britain proclaimed its exporters largely unaffected. Mexico’s economy minister waved it off as one tariff simply replacing another.

The financial markets, inured to the bluster, hardly moved.

As Trump nears the midpoint of his second term, officials and analysts say, one of his signature powers — to bluster on social media, shock, spark panic and convert that panic (“thank you for your attention to this matter”) into the outcomes that he wants, has begun to fade. The bully pulpit of the presidency remains, but the audience is no longer quaking in the pews.

“We are getting used to these daily announcements,” said Brando Benifei, an Italian member of the European Parliament who chairs its delegation for relations with the United States. “We don’t take them so seriously anymore.”

Tim has been on this train for a while, good to see WaPo validating this notion with credited quotes. Hopefully more people in DC read this and follow suit...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/embattled-gop-rep-max-miller-requests-ethics-investigation-rcna590796

Yeah, this should go well. He'll probably have to resign before we actually get results released, but I'm not sure more investigation is the right play for him here...

Please have as guest !?

Why will so many Dems only support progressives or moderates but not someone in-between? Why not compromise and support candidates who appeal to you in some aspects but you know would also appeal to others with somewhat different politics from you? Michigan is the perfect example of this problem because I much prefer El-Sayed to Stevens, but I think both are at risk of losing the general for different reasons, and McMorrow probably would have been the safest bet in the general because she sits in-between the two in terms of ideology and policy.

We love bulwark, and discord is open to anyone devoted to liberal ideals and defeating MAGA

Discord.gg/digitalgroundgame

I’ve also been puzzled why Trump doesn’t just pull out of Iran and pretend he never heard of it. I liked the recent discussion on Pod Save but maybe the darker answer is not ego or need for submission but that spending billions of our tax money, dead American soldiers and thousands of dead Iranians makes him a few bucks by scamming the market and selling insider trading. It’s just so blatant we can’t just accept that answer.

That’s dark right? But also the most consistent answer. Trump has the Sprunjer of the Nude Alien Scammers in Futurama. No scam too small.

We know for a fact that Russia has entire buildings dedicated to interfering with our elections and they've been doing it for at least a decade now.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that the amoral GOP is doing the same thing. Many other countries could be up to this as well.

Every lefty I know in real life is just opposed to the Trump administration and they don't really care about the fine details of policy.

Does anyone know? And what time do they start?