What’s Really Going on With All the Celebrities Trying to Pinkwash AI

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

[Essay]

Rich Actresses Are Pushing AI

June brought a strange new chapter in the ongoing PR effort to pinkwash AI. Trae Stephens, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of AI defense company Anduril Industries, joined Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop podcast for an hour-long conversation about the divisiveness of modern politics, faith, and the Pope saying the war in Iran is evil. 

You might wonder why a famous actor and wellness influencer invited a Peter Thiel acolyte whose company has a $20 billion counter-drone contract with the government on for a soft-focus chat. 

The answer, according to Paltrow, is that she’s on a quest to connect with people with whom she may disagree. “I am trying to, in my journey through being an American right now, trying to, I don’t know, I guess sort of weave together lots of different points of view,” she said, “and also to get out of that place of, like, righteousness and anger and fear.” (Paltrow insists she is “not a Republican” and identifies as “completely an independent.” Cue the White Lotus memes). 

But Paltrow is not the only blonde celebrity who wants us — and, specifically, her female audience — to open up to the idea of AI. Last month, actor Reese Witherspoon hopped on Instagram while making a smoothie to urge women to start using the technology so they don’t get left behind and to “make our everyday lives easier and better.” 

Taylor Lorenz of Power User and Francesca Fiorentini of The Bitchuation Room both did smart podcast episodes questioning what’s going on with this “girlboss-ification of AI.” 

As Lorenz put it, “AI is suddenly being sold to women, especially mothers and teen girls, as helpful, creative and aesthetic tools that can be woven seamlessly into everyday life. The goal is to shift perception of AI from existential risk and labor displacement towards AI as a lifestyle accessory that aids in self-expression and convenience.” 

There’s a weirdly patronizing, faux feminist, “hey ladies” vibe to the messaging. Women are simultaneously encouraged to get on the AI bandwagon or risk losing out to job automation, or told ChatGPT is just a handy way for busy moms to recipe-plan for the week and that Claude allows teen girls to experiment with their personal style by picking out their outfits. The founders of these companies aren’t just out to make a profit off their ties to the Pentagon; they’re relatable podcast guests who worry about their kids’ personal safety and identify “most centrally” as a Midwesterner who grew up “in a lower-middle class household,” as Stephens told Paltrow. But there is of course a profit motive in marketing to women: new tech only takes off after women adopt it en masse. As Lorenz points out, that’s what happened with Spotify, Facebook, the iPod and iPhone, and fitness trackers. These services and products went from being niche, nerdy and primarily used by male tech enthusiasts to popular aesthetic and social platforms and devices used by much of the population after the companies started explicitly marketing to women.

There are legitimate reasons why women have been slower to adapt to AI. Women, who disproportionately bear the impact of environmental issues, are more concerned about the environmental and health harms caused by data centers. Research indicates they are also skeptical about the economic and employment benefits of AI, and are more likely to work in the service industry and in administrative and clerical roles that are disproportionately likely to be replaced by AI.

Those are the kinds of associations the industry is trying to shake. So don’t be surprised the next time a rich white woman celebrity shows up in your feed urging you to give AI another chance.

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By Allegra Kirkland

[Essay]

DOJ’s Disingenuous College Admissions Crusade

Under the influence of high-ranking White House official Stephen Miller, the Department of Justice has exposed the speciousness of conservatives’ stated belief in race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action. 

For years, conservative thinkers appeared to support socioeconomic status as a race-neutral admissions criterion that could help increase college diversity without the implicit consideration of color or ethnicity. Back in 2004, the Department of Education under President George W. Bush published a report highlighting “socioeconomic approaches” as one of several “race-neutral alternatives” for academic communities. After the Supreme Court in 2023 outlawed the consideration of race in university admissions, Chief Justice John Roberts touted the “efficacy” of colorblind admissions in his majority opinion.

“Universities prohibited from engaging in racial discrimination by state law continue to enroll racially diverse classes by race-neutral means,” he lauded.

In his concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested Harvard offer “socioeconomically disadvantaged applicants” additional financial aid and admonished the Ivy League for its lack of “socioeconomic diversity.” 

But farther to the right, legal groups and conservative activists were wise to the gimmick of race neutrality. Smelling blood in the water ahead of the affirmative action takedown, they, in the early 2020s, began attacking the legality of considering economic disadvantage in admissions. Today’s U.S. government, led by far-right true believers who promote white supremacy, is now institutionalizing the idea that socioeconomic status is actually a proxy for race. This idea holds that since Black people are on average poorer, socioeconomic status can’t be used in admissions. From there, one needn’t reach far to reach the foundational white supremacist belief that Black people are inferior not because of changeable circumstances like access to education and financial attainment, but because they are Black.

A DOJ memo from last July rebuked admissions criteria “like socioeconomic status, first-generation status, or geographic diversity” if they were used to prioritize admissions based on race. How would one know if these criteria were being used explicitly to promote racial diversity? Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the DOJ civil rights department, outlined the administration’s stance to Black people and higher education in a mid-May letter about Yale University allegedly preferencing Black students at its medical school. The argument goes like so: 1) socioeconomic status as a proxy for race acknowledges Black people are more likely to experience financial disadvantage in this country; 2) denying the use of socioeconomic status for admissions implies that at least that specific disadvantage cannot be made whole by addressing institutional factors like access to education and, therefore; 3) it must be inherent to the Black condition. The argument’s logical path ultimately reaches antebellum-era systems holding that “Black people are a subordinate class with intellectual inferiority,” as Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent to the 2023 affirmative action ruling. It ignores the impact of generations of well-documented federal policy that explicitly harmed Black communities like redlining, exclusion from higher education, and historically inequitable federal funding distribution for Black colleges and universities.

Madiba K. Dennie in a piece on Balls and Strikes pointed out the Trump Justice Department is flat-out saying that the 2023 Supreme Court decision should be decreasing the number of Black and Hispanic students. If the racial makeup of an incoming class didn’t change after that ruling, the DOJ says, that’s partial evidence a school must be breaking the law.

“This intent is confirmed by our data analysis below showing no change in racial disparity between admitted students before and after the Harvard decision,” Dhillon wrote.

To make its point, the DOJ highlighted the University of California, Davis’s consideration of socioeconomic disadvantage as an example of “racial proxies.”

Sotomayor spent part of her Harvard dissent highlighting a problem: socioeconomic status was not interchangeable with race. Turns out, the problem is actually that Trump’s DOJ believes it is.

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By Layla A. Jones

[Muskism]

SpaceX and the New Social Contract

Friday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX had the largest IPO in history — by a considerable amount. Musk is now a trillionaire; VC and Private Equity firms who had invested in SpaceX got even richer; and according to the New York Times, 4,400 SpaceX employees are positioned to become millionaires, with 400 of those employees potentially worth over $100 million. It’s an almost unfathomable amount of wealth generated by a company that may be better at generating hype than value. For those on the outside, though, it’s likely another indicator that “the system” is rigged and reason enough to ponder what kind of system this even is.

Authors Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff note the many, many terms used to describe our current financial system (highlights: spiderweb capitalism, chokepoint capitalism, crack-up capitalism, and neopatrimonialism) before offering their own: Muskism. The term was chosen to draw an explicit comparison to industrialist Henry Ford and what became known in the early-to mid-twentieth century as Fordism. The defining feature of Fordism was that, in exchange for the labor necessary for mass production, workers would be given the wages and quality of life needed to enable mass consumption. This system held until roughly the 1970s when globalization and other factors led to a post-Fordism model where the beneficiaries were no longer wage earners but asset owners. The financial crisis and Great Recession would damage the post-Fordism model enough to pave the way for Muskism. So what is Muskism?

The concept as laid out by Slobodian and Tarnoff is too multifaceted to summarize here (you should read their article about it — they also wrote a book), but one way they describe it is, “In place of the social contract, in short, Muskism offers a fan contract. By entering the Musk fandom, one gains access to a privileged layer of amplified and monetized communication.” Unlike in the post-Fordism era where the social contract between the capitalists and the public was that what was good for the market was good for you, Muskism says that what’s good for Musk is good for his fans. Worse, as Slobodian and Tarnoff write, “Absent the capacity to persuade others in society that his rising tide will lift their boat too, Musk has opted to hysterically warn them about the tsunami of outsiders coming to swamp them.”

Musk may have subordinated the state to help finance his rocket ships, but that doesn’t mean all are welcome. For his supporters, however, the message is clear: get in, we’re going to the moon.

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By Derick Dirmaier

[Good Twetes]

Just Like Eric Adams Said

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[TPM Trivia]

How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?

1) What reality TV show did Spencer Pratt make his name on years before he (unsuccessfully) ran for mayor of Los Angeles? 

2) Name the three major candidates in the Maine Democratic Senate primary.

3) Which billionaire had to testify before the House Oversight Committee about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein this week?

4) Where was outgoing Rep. and failed South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nancy Mace when she famously went ballistic at government employees, and what made her so upset?

Answers below

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[Words of Wisdom]

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!

“Don’t blame Republicans. I know they say we control the Senate. We don’t.” – Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, part of the 51-seat Republican Senate majority 

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[In the Cafe]

In Defense of Mormons

Prolific poster and Utah Republican senator Mike Lee went on a tear last weekend after the Pentagon released a new, condensed list of officially recognized faiths that didn’t designate the Church of Latter Day Saints as a “Christian” religion. He was citing verses from the Book of Mormon. He was sharing music videos. He was beefing with Milo Yiannapolous (remember that guy?). 

In her latest Church, Merch and State column, Sarah Posner explains how this snub of the Mormon Church is part of the bigger fight to ensure MAGA remains an evangelical Christian nationalist movement.

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[No Words]

The White House, Brought to You by Monster Energy

WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES – JUNE 10: Security forces take security measures as preparations continue on the South Lawn of the White House ahead of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event, part of the America 250 celebrations, in Washington, D.C., United States on June 10, 2026. The event, scheduled for June 14, coincides with Flag Day and U.S. President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and has been described by the White House as ‘a once-in-a-generation celebration of the American fighting spirit.’ (Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Trivia answers: 1) The Hills 2) Graham Platner, Janet Mills, and David Costello 3) Bill Gates 4) Traveling through the Charleston airport. She told airport police officers and TSA staffers that they were “fucking idiots” after they failed to meet her car in a timely way

Autocracy Building in Ohio — Keep a Close Eye on This

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We’ve talked a lot about what the Trump White House can and will do to subvert the 2026 midterms. The big picture is that with elections being run by states, based on the clear, black-letter law of the U.S. Constitution, what they can do is quite limited. And, as we’ve also noted, you build autocracies when you’re popular (often by goosing the economy in a smart and concerted way), not when you’re swirling the bowl with approval ratings in the mid-30s and falling. The point of returning to these facts is twofold. First is that a key aim of would-be autocrats is to demoralize the opposition, get people to lose hope and think there’s no point in fighting back. It’s important for democracy-defenders not to, with the best intentions, feed into that kind of psyop campaign. It is also to get people looking for the right things and not thinking in overly binary terms — elections vs. no elections, etc. This week we have news that focuses on the abuses of power we’re actually likely to see.

MS NOW broke the story that yesterday FBI agents fanned out across Ohio in pursuing some kind of investigation against a voting rights and voter registration group called Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

Continue reading “Autocracy Building in Ohio — Keep a Close Eye on This” →

The White House Is Attacking Progressive Creators Like Me. Here’s Why It Won’t Work.

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

The White House recently published a new “Media Offenders” page on its official, taxpayer-funded website with a list of reporters and independent media who have criticized President Trump or the administration. This website included progressive content creators that it refers to as “deranged leftists” and “known liars.” 

My name is on the list. 

Continue reading “The White House Is Attacking Progressive Creators Like Me. Here’s Why It Won’t Work.” →

Judge Blocks $1.776B Anti-Weaponization Slush Fund

Posted on by David Kurtz

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — In a major blow to President Trump’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund, a federal judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the fund. The Virginia case is just one of a handful of legal challenges to the slush fund, which was spawned by last month’s dubious settlement of Trump’s collusive lawsuit against the IRS.

Continue reading “Judge Blocks $1.776B Anti-Weaponization Slush Fund” →

Trump DOJ Hit With a Wild Series of Bench Slaps

Posted on by David Kurtz

Trump Judge to DOJ: ‘Give Me a Break’

The judicial branch’s response to the Trump rampage has been slow but as The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic suggests, there are signs that it’s gathering steam. The more judges that dispense with the government’s presumption of regularity, the wider the door opens to investigating irregularities.

Still, the pace is halting and often hard to visualize because it comes in so many different flavors across so many different courts. But the past 24 hours have seen a flurry of examples of judicial pushback against the Trump administration that offers a good snapshot of the emerging moment:

In Florida: U.S. District Judge Kyle Dudek of Ft. Myers, a Trump appointee, issued an apoplectic order in a habeas case after the Trump administration failed to abide by his order to give an ICE detainee a bond hearing.

The Trump DOJ had originally conceded that the detainee was entitled to a bond hearing in front of an immigration judge. “What happened next borders on the surreal,” Dudek wrote in an order first flagged by Joyce Vance.

The immigration judge refused to hold a bond hearing, the administration went along with it, waiving its right to appeal, and then came back to Dudek saying its original concession “was in error.”

Dudek was not having any of it:

The Government was right the first time. And its request for a do-over here is not just legally unsupportable, it is a masterclass in litigation cynicism. A federal court is not a testing lab where the Executive branch can pilot a concession to get a case closed, stand by silently while its own administrative process flouts the resulting mandate, and then stroll back in demanding a clean slate. Give me a break.

But Dudek wasn’t done.

Rather than just re-order a bond hearing, he ordered the detainee released within 48 hours “because the Government has shown a complete inability to follow judicial directions.”

In Rhode Island: Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. popped the Trump administration for not immediately complying with his order to resume making asylum decisions and restart immigration processing.

“It should almost go without saying—but the Court will say it anyway for the sake of ‘clarify[ing]’ the Government’s ‘current obligations’ — that court orders vacating and setting aside agency policies have immediate effect once they are issued,” McConnell wrote.

McConnell gave the administration 24 hours to file a status report on the “specific steps” it’s taken to comply with his order: “There is no excuse this time; the Government has an obligation to immediately comply with this Order.”

In Illinois: After a federal judge ordered an evidentiary hearing into possible grand jury improprieties in an unrelated fraud case by the same prosecutor implicated in grand jury misconduct in the Broadview Six case, the Trump DOJ folded.

It moved to dismiss charges against two defendants in the rather serious fraud case rather than see its prosecutors, including potentially Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, hauled to the stand to give sworn testimony about the grand jury proceedings.

In D.C.: Chief Judge James Boasberg rejected a revisionist move by the Trump DOJ to vacate his earlier order quashing grand jury subpoenas in the politicized investigation of the Federal Reserve and its then-chairman Jay Powell. In revisiting his earlier ruling, Boasberg colorfully summarized it thusly:

This Court found that the subpoenas were meant to harass Powell and to pressure him to truckle to the President’s policy preferences. It also concluded that the Government had no good-faith basis to believe that Powell was guilty of any crime other than displeasing the President and that the Government’s justifications were mere pretexts.

As he rejected the latest move, Boasberg dryly called it “a creative way to clear its loss from the books.”

Trump’s Ultimate Revisionism

It sounds like Republicans will make a push in the lame-duck session of Congress after the midterm elections to expunge Donald Trump’s two first-term impeachments.

“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) told the WSJ.

Slush Fund Ain’t Dead Yet

The Atlantic:

Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track. I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped. Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated. 

Programming alert: I’ll be in court this morning in Alexandria, Virginia, in the case challenging the slush fund where the judge has already ordered the administration temporarily to pause any movement on the fund. Stay tuned …

Kennedy Center Deadline Is Today

Under court order to remove Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center by today, the performing arts venue’s Trump-aligned board made a last-ditch effort to buy more time, asking the judge to pause his order while it appeals his ruling. The move to appeal the ruling came on the 13th day of a 14-day window to remove Trump’s name, setting the stage for a series of last-minute rulings today from the trial court and possibly the appeals court.

Live Today at 3 p.m. ET: Chris Geidner

I can’t count the number of times that the Trump administration’s crusade against transgender Americans was the last item to miss the cut for that day’s Morning Memo.

Since it’s been a recurring frustration that I haven’t been able to give this important story more consistent attention, I’ve invited Chris Geidner, the nation’s leading reporter on it, to join me this afternoon for a catch-up session.

We’ll be live here at 3 p.m. ET. I hope you can join us.

Photo of the Day: 8647 Edition

You have to squint, but it’s mostly there. The WaPo paints a vivid picture of the Keystone Cops reaction to protest: “Multiple emergency vehicles could be seen encircling the grass about 1 p.m. A team of officers stood over brown patches in the grass, wearing gloves, and collected samples for testing from the grass with materials from a yellow case. Pedestrians were not permitted to walk on the grass, and a Park Service helicopter circled overhead.”

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 11: The numbers “8647” are seen on the grass of the National Mall on June 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. The U.S. Park Police are handling the investigation into the markings in the grass. The numbers have been adopted by critics of President Donald Trump’s administration, serving as a form of protest. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

So Busted

A close friend texted me yesterday: “Hi, MM today is like Very Terrible, Very Terrible, Very Terrible, War Crimes, Ebola, THE END.”

It’s been like that a lot lately.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve drifted away from the practice of sprinkling into Morning Memo some nonpolitical reminders of our common humanity, the larger world, and … dare I say it? … joy.

So this is my pledge to try to get back to that practice and offer the occasional respite from the nonstop American carnage.

See Ya Back Here Monday

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

TPM VIDEO: David Kurtz and Chris Geidner on the Trump Admin’s Anti-Trans Crusade

Posted on by Allegra Kirkland

The Trump administration’s unrelenting anti-trans crusade has many familiar Trump II elements: performative cruelty; using the powers of the state to bully a vulnerable, marginalized, disfavored group; and outrageous misconduct in pursuit of poisonous policy objectives.

TPM Editor-at-Large David Kurtz was joined by Chris Geidner, publisher of the Law Dork newsletter and the leading American journalist covering these issues, to talk about this sweeping assault on transgender Americans.

Check out the full video on Substack Live.


60 Years Ago, a Civil Rights Icon Was Shot. A Flood of Now-Familiar Conspiracy Theories Followed.

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

On June 6, 1966, on a stretch of Highway 51 just south of Hernando, Mississippi, a portly, middle-aged white man named Aubrey Norvell stepped out of a gully, lifted his shotgun and fired three shots at James Meredith, a Black civil rights activist and Air Force veteran.

Famous for integrating the University of Mississippi four years earlier, Meredith was on the second day of a walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, with the aims of registering voters and defying white intimidation.

Bloodied by bird shot, Meredith again returned to the national spotlight. The shooting transformed his walk into a civil rights spectacle.

Activists descended upon Mississippi for a three-week mass march. It featured titans of the movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., while inspiring Mississippians to march down country roads, volunteer their homes and food, and register at their local courthouses. During these protests, the civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael introduced “Black Power,” a slogan of self-determination that marked the next stage in the Black freedom struggle.

It is a rich, intricate and evocative story — one that I tried to chronicle in my book, “Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear.”

Sixty years later, however, a mystery lingers. Clouded in the haze of a political extravaganza, Norvell never revealed his motivations for shooting Meredith.

His silence allowed for the flourishing of conspiracy theories — most notably, from those most resistant to racial equality. In a political and rhetorical strategy that echoes into the present day, many white conservative Southerners painted themselves as Norvell’s real victims.

American activist James Meredith on his way to class at University of Mississippi, escorted by US Marshal James McShane, left, and John Doar of the Justice Department, Oxford, Mississippi, October 1962. (Photo by FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

‘A quiet, Christian man’

At first, it was civil rights activists who suspected a conspiracy. Meredith’s companions testified that law enforcement had reacted slowly to Norvell’s threat. They assumed that Norvell was a virulent white supremacist, in cahoots with a racist police force.

But as reporters investigated Norvell, they found no evidence of a hate-spewing Klansman. He lived in a middle-class Memphis suburb. He had no criminal record. Neighbors described him as a “quiet, Christian man” who never mentioned civil rights, one way or another.

Upon posting bond, Norvell disappeared from the public eye until his trial that November.

The significance of bird shot

By presenting a blank slate, Norvell allowed white Southern conservatives to launch a counternarrative. The previous decade of Black activism, from the Montgomery bus boycott through the Selma-to-Montgomery march, had taught them that open violence ignited public outrage and prompted civil rights legislation. So they distanced themselves from Norvell.

Mississippi Gov. Paul Johnson noted that Meredith was attacked “by birdshot by an out-of-state resident.” It foreshadowed the language employed by a host of Southern politicians and newspaper editorialists.

Again and again, in speeches and articles and letters, they mentioned that Norvell used bird shot. If he was aiming to kill, why pepper Meredith with pellets? They claimed a conspiracy against the white South.

“The whole affair smells badly of a plot instigated by the Communist-controlled rights groups and capitalized on by the press, the government, and all the other liberal screamers,” wrote one woman to Sen. James Eastland, as I discovered during my research. Like many others, she imagined that civil rights organizations paid Norvell to wound Meredith, which would stoke a media hubbub and invite the federal government to persecute white Southerners.

(Original Caption) Dr Martin Luther King Jr, (C) leads his “Mississippi Freedom Marchers” into Yalobusha county, “one of the roughest counties in the state.” An ambush of James Meredith has ballooned his personal voter registration march from Memphis to Jackson into the King-led march.

Searching for a conspiracy

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission opened in 1956 to protect white supremacy. In an incredible twist to this tale, a commission investigator authorized a $5,000 bribe to Norvell’s attorney if Norvell would admit that liberals paid him to shoot Meredith.

According to commission files, an FBI agent from Mississippi, high-ranking officials of the Memphis Police Department and a Mississippi district attorney all agreed that Norvell’s shooting was “a hired job for the advancement of various civil rights groups.”

Segregationists kept grasping at this far-fetched scenario, exaggerating and manipulating it to serve the purpose of discrediting the Meredith March Against Fear. A Mississippi sheriff named Jack Cauthen went even further, suggesting Meredith hadn’t even been shot in the first place. He claimed to have put his arm around Meredith, who had rejoined the march for its final days.

“His back was just smooth as silk. There hadn’t been no pellets or shots in James’s back,” asserted Cauthen, as I found while conducting research for my book. “I don’t think he was shot, no sir.”

Echoes from the past

Norvell pleaded guilty and spent 18 months in Parchman Prison in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Despite being approached by many journalists and historians — including me — he never revealed his motive. He died in 2016.

In the 1960s, white southerners perceived that their way of life was under assault by big institutions, including the federal government and the media. They blamed the Civil Rights Movement on nefarious “outside agitators” determined to smash their status. Their political motivations led them down bizarre and fantastical paths, with some even fashioning themselves as the true victims of Norvell’s attack.

Racist conspiracy theories still plague American politics, from baseless accusations that Barack Obama was born in Kenya to false assertions that global elites are engineering a “great replacement” of white Americans.

Even if these notions emerge from a modern sense of dislocation and anxiety, I think they have roots in the same crass bigotry that defined the conspiratorial segregationists of the civil rights era.

The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mike Johnson Is Talking About Cutting Social Safety Net Programs — Again

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

‘They Have to be Adjusted and Fixed’

Austerity only matters when Democrats are in charge.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) signaled this week how Republicans may begin stonewalling and messaging about Democrats should the party succeed in taking back the House this fall.

Buried at the bottom of a Washington Post piece about how the Social Security trust fund will begin running low on money by 2032, an insolvency problem that President Trump’s immigration policies and tax cuts for the wealthy have contributed to, was a quote from Johnson about his supposed plan to cut social services in order to decrease the deficit and, apparently, save the program:

“The reason we are in trouble is because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending,” Johnson reportedly recently told a Louisiana radio station. “That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and then things like Social Security. They have to be adjusted and fixed.”

It is hardly worth pointing out hypocrisy at this point amid Republican leadership’s utter capitulation to the Trump regime, but for posterity’s sake: Johnson was a key figure in ensuring the passage of the first reconciliation package of Trump’s second term — the Big Beautiful Bill that slashed Medicaid funding in order to help offset the impact of making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that that legislation alone will add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. Early CBO estimates show that the immigration enforcement package that Congress just passed via reconciliation (instead of the normal appropriations process) will add another $72 billion to the national debt over 10 years. In Republicans’ eyes, the trillions of dollars that those pieces of legislation will add to the deficit are not a factor in whether or not the legislation should be passed.

But you can all but guarantee that as soon as Democrats are in a position of power again, we will be hearing a lot about how the deficit has ballooned due to social services spending. Blaming Democrats for this newly rediscovered problem will become the party’s Priority No. 1. This may be what Johnson was foreshadowing. Aware of how unpopular it is to talk about making cuts to the social safety net, Johnson also, critically, previewed a plan for Social Security to be “adjusted and fixed” — the details of which we will not know about until, conveniently, after the midterms (and even the vague remarks are already causing issues for members of his conference). Per WaPo:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) suggested Monday that he would release a plan next year to address ballooning entitlement spending, leading to Democratic attacks.

As Paul Krugman explains in a piece unpacking a recent Social Security Trustees’ report about the solvency of Social Security trust fund, Republicans will likely use these metrics in the future to slash benefits:

But this is a ploy, because while the cost of maintaining Social Security benefits at their promised level isn’t trivial, it is in fact affordable. According to the Trustees’ report, the actuarial balance of OASDI up through 2050 — the amount of additional funds it would need to keep paying full benefits for the next 25 years — is 1.06 percent of GDP. To put that number in perspective, the Trump administration proposes increasing military spending next year by $420 billion, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of GDP – without any discussion of whether that’s affordable.

…

So don’t believe Republicans’ gaslighting that it will be necessary to cut Social Security benefits. All that is necessary to preserve Social Security is political will to raise taxes on the wealthy and a sensible immigration policy.

Is Trump Hoping Jay Clayton Will Play a Part in 2020 Retribution?

Before she left as director of national intelligence to help care for her husband, Tulsi Gabbard was intimately involved in various executive branch efforts to unearth something that will help bolster Trump’s beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She was inexplicably present as the FBI raided Fulton County, Georgia, for its election records and materials — and even helped connect President Trump via phone with the agents who conducted the raid. Reporting emerged after the Fulton County raid suggesting that Trump gave Gabbard an outsized role in overseeing the administration’s investigations into the 2020 vote, reportedly because he did not believe his Department of Justice was moving fast enough in doing his bidding.

After Gabbard’s departure, Trump announced that Bill Pulte would serve as acting DNI in her stead. An extreme Trump loyalist with little to no foreign intelligence experience, Pulte’s appointment caused even some members of Republican congressional leadership to express their concerns about what might happen should he be permanently nominated to the post. On Thursday, Trump declared on Truth Social that he was appointing Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the position.

And while he has hedged himself a bit more, at least publicly, when speaking about Trump’s claims of rampant fraud — most recently, Trump is fixated on vote counting in California being slow, and therefore fraudulent (to him) — he has signaled a willingness to fuel various conspiracy theories on that front. Per New York Times:

This week, Mr. Clayton appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and raised concerns about the recent elections in California, after Mr. Trump suggested there had been fraud in the vote.

Mr. Clayton told CNBC earlier this month that the country was “doing an absolutely terrible job” on issues of election integrity, “and the American people are right to question it.” He also questioned California voting laws, including the lack of voter identification.

“I’m not saying that there is fraud,” Mr. Clayton said. “I am saying that the opportunity for fraud makes no sense to me when we can make a much better system.”

Whole States Are RSVP-ing ‘No’ to Trump’s Vanity Bday Bash

Per new reporting out today, from NOTUS:

Days after an exodus of musical acts, officials from Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Oregon told NOTUS they won’t officially send a delegation to the 16-day fair, one of the most high-profile celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday this summer.

In Case You Missed It

The lastest on the Broadview Six from Josh Kovensky: Prosecutors Left, Bogus Cases Collapsed as Boutros Charged Broadview Six

And more, inside Morning Memo today: The Broadview Six Fallout Spreads to Other Cases

New edition of The Franchise, from Khaya Himmelman: A Seasoned Big Liar May Soon be Running Elections in Nevada

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About

What We Are Reading

Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files

And Then There Were 23(ish)…

These N.Y.C. Tables Are Impossible to Get. Except During a Knicks Game.

‘Midway Blitz’ & ‘Metro Surge’ Were Always About Terrorizing Blue Cities

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I generally focus more on the iterative, step-by-step developments in a story like the Broadview Six case. So I want to make sure you see this Josh Kovensky piece on the context in which it all happened: Washington pressuring Chicago prosecutors to fall in line and abuse their power in the service of “Midway Blitz,” a U.S. attorney’s office hollowed out through high-level resignations and departures in 2025. All a mix desperation, violence and misconduct that brought us to that moment last October and today. Also don’t miss David Kurtz’s look at how the Broadview Six scandal is spreading to and endangering other cases which aren’t really tied to Midway Blitz at all.

I want to remind us of something that is easy to lose track of amidst the violence, predation and anger. Operations “Midway Blitz” and “Metro Surge” — both hideous faux-military operation tag lines — were never only or even mainly about mass deportation or even harassing immigrants (documented and not), though they did lots of both. Their aim was to terrorize blue cities, attack the communities that inhabit them and the states which are sovereign over them. This may strike some as a bold or ungenerous claim. But these operations were never efficient at rounding up undocumented immigrants. ICE has many more effective ways of doing that.

Continue reading “‘Midway Blitz’ & ‘Metro Surge’ Were Always About Terrorizing Blue Cities” →