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One Racist Batshit Christo-Fascist Homeland Under God
In retrospect, Sunday's taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to "rededicate" America as a Christian nation though it's not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime's mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged "WIVES SUBMIT," zealots screeched "We welcome Jesus!", speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.
"Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving," a "constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery," sought to proclaim America "One Nation Under God," but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience "which lies solely between Man & his God," defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and "torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity" with, essentially, "a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism."
Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?
Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a "MAHA Monday."
On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself "One Homeland Under God," complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle," with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.
Sunday's Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all "glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital." "Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom," said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. "This is who we are." Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a "spiritual war," perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” "This is a battle in our day between good and evil," he said. "Our hope is built on Jesus' blood."
Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out "Jesus Saves" bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were "Thank you Jesus!" signs, a huge "Jesus Make America Godly Again" banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, "God Guns Family Freedom" and "Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk." "We welcome Jesus into this place!" declared one speaker. Another noted, "It's hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand." (Jesus.)
Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington "did not lose faith," and "let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."
Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: "The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them." He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.
Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about "naysayers" who view Christian Nationalism as "a derogatory term," he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to "bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning." But now "sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people," attacking our history as "one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure." So "grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences," says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”
Mercy. He seeks mercy.
Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren't white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?
Mercy for those killed at San Diego's biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or "pardon on steroids," in the "most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."
Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?
Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge's ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, "We don't care"?
Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US," in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother's home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin's last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito," "little one”; his father knelt by his son's bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.
Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?
Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.
May 21, 2026
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Fuel Prices Have Spiked More in ‘Energy Independent’ US Than in Nations That Have Moved Away From Oil and Gas
Average gas prices in the United States are quickly climbing toward $5 per gallon this week as US President Donald Trump's war with Iran shows little sign of resolution.
Where average prices were about $2.98 the day before the war's launch, they had shot up to $4.48 as of Tuesday, according to AAA's gas price tracker, as Iran's restriction of ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz has squeezed global oil shipping and the shipping of other fuel sources like liquefied natural gas (LNG), causing global price hikes.
And while Trump has touted America’s supposed “energy independence” as an ace in the hole, achieved by ratcheting up fossil fuel production while canceling solar and wind power projects, data shows that the US has been hit harder by the price shocks than any other major economy in the world, with those that have embraced renewable energy being especially resilient.
Although the US leads the world in oil production by a large margin, data from JP Morgan Commodities research, analyzed Friday by MarketWatch, showed that between February 23 and April 27, the US experienced about a 42% increase in gas prices, the fifth-highest in the world.
"The spike in US gasoline prices over the past two months has outpaced everywhere except Southeast Asia, the region most dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf," explained Yahoo Finance geopolitics reporter Jake Conley.
Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader and managing director at CIBC Private Wealth, explained to MarketWatch last week that while increased fuel production gives the US a "buffer," oil is a global market and "it doesn’t operate in a vacuum." She said, "Global tightness and domestic bottlenecks still show up in gasoline prices."
Meanwhile, some of the countries that have best survived the price hikes include France and Spain, which derive large shares of their power from nuclear energy and renewables, respectively.
Craig Hanson and Jessica Isaacs, a pair of researchers at the World Resources Institute, explained last month that while a mix of factors is at play, countries less reliant on fossil fuels generally "find themselves in a better position to withstand the current crisis."
"Every country has homegrown access to at least two clean energy resources—the sun shines, and the wind blows just about everywhere at some point," they said. "The same cannot be said of oil and gas, where production is concentrated in a small number of countries and exposed to geopolitical disruption."
"Renewable resources like wind, solar, and geothermal have zero fuel costs, and the fuel cost of nuclear power is quite low. Again, the same cannot be said of fossil fuels, which have costs set by volatile global markets," they added. "These two advantages are why some of the world’s clean energy frontrunners are faring better than other countries amidst the Iranian energy crisis."
As Reuters reported in late April, the contrast between Europe's biggest gas guzzlers and green energy adopters is particularly stark.
While Albania has kept energy prices in check and even lowered them compared to last year by using its large system of hydroelectric dams, which supply much of its power, countries like Germany and Italy, which still rely heavily on gas, have seen electricity prices spike.
Hanson and Isaacs noted that while clean energy investments have helped soften the blow of global price shocks, the effects are not the same across the board. While price hikes for the electricity used to power factories, homes, and cars have been blunted by the availability of alternative energy sources, others, like heat—which are more reliant on natural gas—have still been affected.
Still, though, they said the crisis has shown that in addition to environmental sustainability, "clean energy systems’ greatest benefits today might actually be price stability and domestic energy resilience."
While Trump has continued his efforts to choke off any federal investment in renewable energy and double down on oil and gas production, other nations have taken the war’s price hikes as a sign to further accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels.
Germany and several other European Union members, for example, have announced expedited timelines to expand offshore wind and solar investments, explicitly citing the volatility in oil markets caused by the war.
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the energy price shocks showed that "the only real energy independence from the Middle East is renewables."
May 05, 2026
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In Leaked Audio, Zuckerberg Tells Meta Workers He's Been Using Them to Train AI Ahead of Mass Layoffs
Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company's offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company's new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to "learn from watching really smart people do things."
A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.
"The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks," said Zuckerberg. "So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do, who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company."
LEAKED AUDIO: In an all-hands meeting on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg tells employees that he's training AI on them ahead of mass layoffs.
"The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things... The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is… pic.twitter.com/lt9eeJ3cwh
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 19, 2026
He assured the company's 78,000 employees that "no human is looking at or watching what people are doing on their computers... None of the data is being used for looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It's purely just that we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks."
Zuckerberg explained how the employees have been used to train the model that could potentially replace many of them days after Meta announced it was planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce as the company invests heavily in AI, spending $125 billion to $145 billion on the technology—more than double what it spent last year.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that employees "revolted" when they learned about the AI tracking program, and expressed fears that they had unknowingly been training a model that would ultimately replace them.
An engineering manager asked on the company's internal communication platform how workers can opt out of having their computer activity monitored to train the AI model, only to be told by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, "There is no option to opt out on your corporate laptop."
Another employee told Bosworth, “Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning."
On Monday, The New York Times reported, employees learned that in addition to the layoffs, another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to help develop AI tools.
About 2,000 employees began working this month on a new Applied AI and Engineering team, which is set to use the data gathered by the AI tracking program Zuckerberg described to build AI tools. Those who volunteered to join the group would not be included in this week's layoffs, the Times reported.
"Every company is training AI on their employees," said Chen Avnery, an independent adviser on AI governance and data platforms. "Meta just said it out loud. The question stopped being, 'Will AI replace you?' a year ago. Now it's whether you're building the agents or generating their training data."
More than 1,000 people in the company have signed the petition calling to halt the AI data program, according to the newspaper.
Software engineer Mack Ward urged his colleagues to sign on earlier this month, telling them in an internal post that "AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion."
"It’s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,” Ward said. “Speaking up is never easy, but ‘easy’ isn’t what you were hired to do.”
May 20, 2026
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Trump Officials Pushed Plan to Ban Half of US Voting Machines in Unprecedented Election Meddling Bid
A group of Trump administration officials last year pushed a plan to ban half of voting machines currently used in the US based on disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen by former President Joe Biden.
According to a Friday report from Reuters, Trump adviser Kurt Olsen asked the US Department of Commerce to declare components of machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems to be national security risks.
Reuters' sources said that Olsen's idea came as part of a brainstorming session "about how the federal government could take control over elections from US states, an idea publicly aired by Trump."
Some officials at the Commerce Department began exploring legal justifications that could be used to ban half of all voting machines, but the effort ended because "Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move," Reuters reported.
In place of the Dominion voting machines, Olsen pushed a scheme to force all affected states to hand count ballots, a process that some election experts say would be both more time consuming and prone to error.
Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor, told Reuters that "changing to hand counting would be chaotic,” adding that "it might facilitate cheating.”
Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was hired by the White House last year to investigate that very same election, which Trump lost to Biden by 4.5 percentage points in the popular vote and by 74 votes in the US electoral college.
The report on the election machine-banning effort comes as Trump has pushed an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering scheme, which has resulted in an electoral map that elections analyst G. Elliot Morris projects could result in Republicans maintaining control of the US House of Representatives while losing the nationwide popular vote by three points.
Democrats have accused the president of pushing to rig the 2026 midterm elections.
The president also issued an executive order that places new restrictions on mail-in voting, which the president has falsely claimed was used by Democrats to steal the 2020 election from him.
Additionally, Trump and allies such as right-wing podcaster Steve Bannin have suggested deploying federal immigration agents to polling places in November, a move that critics contend would be an unprecedented and unconstitutional federal voter intimidation campaign.
May 22, 2026
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'Her Charade Is Over': Platner Slams Collins for Skipping Abortion Hearings Since Roe Reversal
As part of Graham Platner's campaign to oust Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, the Democrat on Friday called out the five-term senator for skipping committee hearings on reproductive healthcare, including abortion, since the US Supreme Court that she helped build overturned Roe v. Wade.
Reproductive freedom advocates across Maine have renewed efforts to replace Collins since she voted to confirm various anti-choice judicial nominees during President Donald Trump's first term, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault, in 2018.
Kavanaugh is part of the far-right supermajority that reversed Roe with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022, which led to a fresh wave of state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
Beacon, run by the Maine People's Alliance, reported Friday that since the Dobbs ruling, Collins has not attended any Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee "meetings focused on abortion or reproductive healthcare," according to the panel's hearing reports.
They included the July 2022 hearing titled "Reproductive Care in a Post-Roe America: Barriers, Challenges, and Threats to Women's Health" and the June 2024 hearing titled "The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Healthcare Nightmare Across America."
More broadly, the Beacon noted, "Collins has also missed more than half of all possible HELP Committee meetings during her current term. Between 2021 and March 2026, she did not attend 67 of 125 possible HELP Committee and relevant subcommittee hearings."
Since launching his campaign last year, Platner has repeatedly called out Collins for demonstrating "symbolic opposition" to Trump while enabling his agenda and serving the interests of wealthy donors instead of working people. The combat veteran and oyster farmer—who's now the presumptive Democratic nominee after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the primary race last month—similarly took aim at his opponent in response to the new reporting.
"Thanks to Susan Collins' decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh, the freedom to choose was stolen from millions of women. And in the years since Roe was overturned, Susan Collins has done everything she can to skirt responsibility and avoid accountability—from skipping hearings to avoiding town halls at all costs," said Platner in a statement.
"In November, Susan Collins will learn she can only run and hide from her damaging votes for so long. Because whether she knows it or not—her charade is over," added the Democrat, who has been open about his family's fertility struggles during the campaign.
May 22, 2026
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'Go Home': Greenlanders Protest New US Consulate as Trump Envoy Makes Clear Takeover Threat Remains
Hundreds of Greenlanders demonstrated outside the new US Consulate in Nuuk on Thursday as President Donald Trump's envoy signaled that he's still seeking to control the self-governing Danish territory that straddles the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.
Various Greenlandic politicians also declined invitations to attend the opening of the consulate, with Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen telling the local outlet Sermitsiaq that "we haven't made a decision in principle, but I won't participate."
Protesters were armed with Greenland's red and white flag and signs that read "USA ASU," which translates to "Stop USA," as well as messages in English, including "Make America go away!" and "We are not for sale!" Their chants included "Greenland belongs to Greenlanders," "Go home," and "No means no."
"It's very important, now more than ever, to show the American people what we already said, that no means no, and that the future and self-determination of Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people," said Aqqalukkuluk Fontain, a 37-year-old IT account manager and protest organizer, according to The Guardian.
"The protest itself is not to provoke Donald Trump or Jeff Landry but to show the world that Greenland has its own democracy," Fontain added. Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana and the president's envoy to the island, arrived in Nuuk on Sunday.
The newspaper noted Trump's envoy traveled there "uninvited with a delegation including a doctor, who caused fury by saying he was there to 'assess the medical needs of Greenland.' Landry briefly attended a business conference with the US ambassador to Denmark, Kenneth Lowery, and left Nuuk on Wednesday night."
During Landry's "ham-handed trip," The New York Times reported, "he offered chocolate chip cookies and red MAGA hats to people he met on the street. He didn't get many takers, and Greenlandic officials criticized the visit."
It was Landry's first visit to the island of 57,000 since Trump appointed him as envoy in December. On Monday, he met with Greenlandic Foreign Minister Múte Egede and Nielsen, who called the talks "constructive," even though there was "no sign... that anything has changed" regarding Trump's position.
While polling has shown Americans and Greenlanders alike oppose Trump's takeover threats, Landry told Agence France-Presse near the end of his trip that "I think it's time for the US to put its footprint back on Greenland."
"I think that you're seeing the president talk about increasing national security operations and repopulating certain bases in Greenland," he continued. "Greenland needs the US."
The envoy made similar remarks on Friday during a Fox News appearance, highlighting Greenland's oil resources amid soaring global prices—which stem from Trump's illegal war on Iran that led the Iranian government to restrict ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route for fertilizer and fossil fuels.
In addition to waging war on Iran and continuing to threaten both Greenland and Cuba, Trump invaded Venezuela early this year, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and seizing control of the South American country's nationalized oil industry.
May 22, 2026
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Viral Video Compilation Shows Top Iran War Booster Making One Failed Prediction After Another
"He’s the Jim Cramer of Iran war predictions," said one critic.
May 24, 2026
Conservative commentator Dave Rubin, who for months has been a top booster of President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, was inundated with mockery on Sunday after a viral video exposed months' worth of his failed predictions about the conflict.
The video, which was posted on social media Saturday, begins with Rubin telling viewers to not listen to any of the prognostications being made by critics of the war, which Trump launched in late February without any authorization from Congress.
"I'm pretty good with predictions," Rubin says. "And my prediction here is that everything the media is now going to say about Iran—it's going to close the Strait of Hormuz, and energy prices are going to go crazy—none of this is going to come to pass."
Iran war: greatest hits from the last 12 weeks pic.twitter.com/9pgXyvmsgF
— Dave Rubin Clips II (Parody) - Retired Jan.20/2025 (@DaveClips) May 24, 2026
The video then cuts to Rubin wrongly predicting that gas prices during the conflict "will continue to come down," before switching to claims that Iran lacks the military capability to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed in the face of US military power.
"If the United States wants to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, which it does," says Rubin, "and Donald Trump says we'll escort ships through if we have to, it's going to stay open."
From there, the video shows Rubin hyping of the prospect of Iranian dissident Reza Pahlavi swooping in to take over the country after the war, and then getting fooled by a fake artificial intelligence-generated video of Iranians giving thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for bombing their country.
The video compilation of Rubin's failed predictions drew immediate ridicule from critics.
"He’s the Jim Cramer of Iran war predictions," joked Krystal Ball.
Commentator Adam Mockler wrote of Rubin that "it’s brutal watching him make failed predictions week after week."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that the video should be the last nail in the coffin of whatever credibility Rubin had left.
"Imagine having sat through and listened to all of this Israeli propaganda, which turned out to be (predictably and completely) false," commented Greenwald, "and then thinking there was some value in continuing to listen to this person."
The Bulwark's Tim Miller said that while he knew Rubin was "a smooth-brained hack," he still "couldn’t even fathom how bad these war takes would be."
Political analyst Omar Baddar, meanwhile, said the video should erase any doubt that Rubin is "the dumbest man on the internet."
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Report Exposes How Trump Administration Has 'Mowed Down' Regulators Overseeing Prediction Markets
The Trump administration last week sued Minnesota after it passed a law banning prediction markets from operating in the state.
May 24, 2026
A Sunday report in The New York Times revealed how the Trump administration is using a key government agency to shut down any efforts to regulate online betting markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket.
According to the Times, the administration has stacked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with industry insiders who have systematically "mowed down" staffers at the agency who have expressed interest in providing oversight on prediction markets.
Among other things, the report documented how multiple officials at CTFC have been put on leave simply for asking questions about the betting markets' ties to members of President Donald Trump's family or for having past experience enforcing regulations related to cryptocurrencies.
What's more, the Times found that even being an industry insider isn't enough to guarantee good standing in the agency. Brian Quintenz, who was tapped by Trump to lead CTFC last year, saw his nomination withdrawn after he drew the ire of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss for refusing to support their cryptocurrency exchange's complaint against the agency.
Revelations about industry insiders rolling over regulators at CTFC come as the Trump administration is fighting any attempts by states to regulate prediction markets.
As explained in a Thursday report from CNBC, the Trump administration is "fighting a multi-front battle to stop the state actions and assert its regulatory authority," with CTFC arguing that it is "the only entity that can regulate" betting platforms.
16 different states are engaged in legal proceedings against the platforms, and Minnesota last week passed a law to ban them outright, which immediately drew a lawsuit from the administration.
The new Minnesota law, which is scheduled to take effect in August, bans prediction markets "from hosting, creating or advertising in the state," according to ABC News.
In an interview with ABC, Minnesota state Rep. Emma Greenman (D-63B) said she authored the legislation because she has grown increasingly concerned about young people in the state seeing their finances drained from placing online bets.
"We're seeing studies come out that say [the companies] are targeting 18- to 21-year-olds," said Greenman, "and we are seeing gambling starting younger and younger."
CFTC Chair Michael Selig last month warned states against trying to regulate prediction markets, which he said would "circumvent the clear directive of Congress."
"Our message to Wisconsin is the same as to New York, Arizona, and others," said Selig. "If you interfere with the operation of federal law in regulating financial markets, we will sue you."
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GOP Hawks Alarmed as Trump Mulls Deal to End His Illegal Iran War
"Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz," said one critic of the war.
May 24, 2026
President Donald Trump revealed on Saturday that he is mulling a deal that would end his illegal war with Iran, and some hawks within the Republican Party are expressing alarm.
According to a Sunday report in The New York Times, many details of the agreement to end the war remain murky, with the fate of Iran's enriched uranium up in the air. US and Iranian officials have also given contradictory messages about the proposed deal's contents, suggesting there is much work still to be done before any agreement is finalized.
Regardless, three hawkish GOP senators on Saturday raised major concerns about the contents of the deal, warning against accepting any agreement that will leave Iran in a stronger position than before Trump illegally launched a war against it without any authorization from Congress in late February.
"If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq," wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who lobbied Trump to attack Iran repeatedly before the start of the war. "A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the [Strait of Hormuz] in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another longtime Iran hawk, said he was "deeply concerned" about what he's been hearing about the deal and expressed particular worry about Iran getting relief from US sanctions while still maintaining the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
"If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant 'death to America'—now receiving billions of dollars," Cruz wrote, "being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake."
Sen. Roger Wicker (D-Miss.) was even blunter in his condemnation of the reported agreement.
"The rumored 60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster," Wicker wrote. "Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!"
Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama, challenged Wicker's claims that Trump's illegal war had achieved anything of value.
"Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury," Rhodes wrote, "except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz."
Rhodes' criticism was echoed by Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote that "everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury is already for naught."
Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, accused the Iran hawks of being delusional for thinking further bombing would force Iran to capitulate.
"DC's Iran hawks got two wars, nearly every conceivable sanction designation, a blockade, threw a wrench in global economy," Vaez wrote, "and will still claim that just a little more pressure and a touch more bombing will magically yield the concessions they still won't be satisfied with."
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RootsAction Blasts Official DNC Autopsy; ‘Disgrace’ Would Be ‘Understatement’
May 21 2026 · 01:19pm EDT