“No, I’m not a king,” our president said. “I-- I get-- I-- I don’t laugh": American Politics, May 2026

Boom.

here we go! Another month of chaos, high prices, and general discontent

hey at least DHS got funded

/s

And Powell is staying on for the ride!!

Trump fumes as Jerome Powell plots future at Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is drawing backlash from Trump administration figures and allies after announcing his plans to stay at the central bank beyond his chairmanship.

From the Washington Post:

Pope Leo on Friday named a formerly undocumented immigrant who was smuggled into the United States in a car trunk to be bishop of West Virginia; he also elevated to bishop Howard University’s chaplain, who has called attacks on diversity “un-American” and “un-Christian.”

Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, migrated to the U.S. in 1990 and in 2023 became the first Salvadoran bishop in the country, serving as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington. Believed to be one of the first U.S. bishops born in Central America, he has publicly called for Catholics to speak out against President Donald Trump’s treatment of immigrants.

I really, really want Trump to order this guy deported. You can do it, Donny! Go to absolute war with the Catholic Church! You know you want to...

Oh yeah, Trump would like 3 more wives.

i hope the democrats don't fight fire with redistricting fire, because that would be gauche

https://newrepublic.com/article/209830/trump-supreme-court-gerrymandering-voting-rights

love to mix some useless corn into my gasoline

bullshit!!!

sorry, i gotta say that. i represent missouri

long arms of big corn reaching right into ilx, scary

show me

do your research

*walks into corn*

Listen, Zach, do your research

show me

i like this joke btw

thank you

this state is fucking crazy

what is needed is 100% ethanol, all corn. the food and energy systems need to be completely integrated. all cereals should be used as fuels, but especially corn, or whatever missouri is good at. count chocula is banned not because of the real pain that he caused his community but instead because he is not enough of a fuel

my salary goes up every time you say corn so keep it rolling

https://i.postimg.cc/pTRVBth9/image.png

Keep it corny

xp sorry but there's no AI images allowed in the thread. you can tell it's AI because the kernels are backwards

on the other hand, if we could get corn-powered data centers, we might be on to something

name one thing that has corn in it

haha yeah, i know. take your time.

https://i.postimg.cc/jdHbZ1TL/image.png

lagoon probably wants legumes to replace corn

still makes me crack up that the guy who really kicked off the hybrid corn thing later became vice president of the US only to fumble the bag because he went from
being relatively centrist to socialist so they dumped him from the ticket. also he got into theosophy for some reason and they thought that was weird

i’m eating tortilla chips right now xxp

but what i really want to talk about tonight are the future farmers of america

also I am drinking a little whiskey but I think this one is mostly rye. should be bourbon to support corn

I was at an ag expo once and some kid who looked like he was 14 wearing FFA gear asked if I could get him one of the free samples a tobacco chew company was handing away at a booth. I told him I was there for work and they wouldn’t like that

also wtf at the free tobacco samples. they don’t grow that here

that kid is probably playing candy crush in an auto-driving john deere tractor cab now and spitting his chew into a mountain dew bottle

thats what i would do

god bless corn. it’s the perfect plant, similar to how bananas are the perfect fruit, spiritually

it’s funny, my friend I’ve known from college is so allergic that he starts projectile vomiting about twenty minutes after accidentally eating a banana. i’m only mildly allergic but it’s apparently related to a latex allergy, or so i tell the ladies?!

Sorry to bring everyone down but I have some sad news to deliver: The Daily Wire laid off half of its staff today due to declining popularity.

their leader making insanely bad movies that no one wants to watch to burn money is probably the main culprit. it’s also been floated that hungary was sending them money and oops

story just came out about a huge gop donor whos gone awol maybe he was their guy

No longer quite the audience there used to be for ultra-zionism

Only 200k views for their “Sabrina Carpenter is secretly Right Wing” video.

tough out there

when a huge gop donor goes awol it usually means they died on the toilet

maybe we should see if they got a little too weird rod dreher style

hey at least DHS got funded

But now they're gonna try to get ICE funded via a budget reconciliation bill with no Dem reforms . Their goal is to get it through in May

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5858561-funding-ice-border-patrol/

Senator Collins will ride in on an white horse to save us! Sidesaddle!

really stressing about this U.S. troop withdrawal from Germany, not sure I'll sleep tonite

1946-2026 It was a good run

Can I just get in on the corn and say that is is one of the worst things you could make alcohol from. Not only does corn liquor taste like arse but it is energy negative - you get 0.8kJ of energy out for every kJ you put in. It’s fucking moronic to make alcohol to blend into gasoline from corn.

By way of comparison, sugarcane gives you 7-8 kJ out for every kJ you put in.

It’s moronic and keeps the red states red but it also stifles change and innovation. Some of the most productive agricultural land in the world panted for the stupidest fucking purpose because of a dumb vote buying subsidy that keeps farmer poorer.

And then (as we saw recently in Virginia) we get hit with the pious scolding of "no farms, no food" and "where do you city slicker snobs think your food comes from?"

this was the height of the ethanol boom, but Martin County, MN, the county next to us, excellent farmland and a corn growing county,actually started to import corn to feed the ethanol plants in the late 90s. an absurd situation. Corn is pretty hard on the land too, you usually rotate with soybeans for that reason, but because of ethanol farmers were trying to do two or three rotations of corn on a field.

lots of people doing double duty in this administration— Marco is not just Secretary of State, he’s also the National Archivist! Richard Grennell want just destroying the Kennedy Center, he was also the Special Ambassador (whatever that meant) to Venezuela!

Republicans respond to the deeply unpopular redistricting drive

Their message is simple: Democrats started it.

“This started because we had some of our blue states that got overly aggressive trying to displace Republican representation,” said Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas). “When you look at New England, 40 percent of their voters are Republican voters, and yet they have zero representation in Congress.”

“The Constitution protects every American equally,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters last week in the Capitol. “Democrats spent decades trying to engineer electoral maps that divided Americans, and this decision from the Supreme Court hopefully ends that terrible practice once and for all.”

Vermont has exactly one seat in the US House of Representative. So, how should they arrange their state's elections to give Republicans a fairer chance to win?

Unmentioned were the red states that have no Democratic representation in Washington.

Roughly a third of Oklahoma voters, for instance, supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, but all five House seats are Republican.

In Utah, Harris won 38 percent of the vote, but Republicans represent all four House seats. Thirty-nine percent of Nebraska voters picked Harris, while Republicans control all three House seats. And in Iowa, where Harris won 43 percent of the vote, the state’s four seats are all controlled by Republicans.

I know it gets mentioned a lot here but the fact that Trump has completely captured the hearts and minds of the religious right makes me feel like I'm going insane. I can see how they'd fall for hucksters like Jim Bakker or Joel Osteen or Kenneth Copeland, people who can at least quote scripture and pretend to fear God, Trump on the other hand is not only the living embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins, he barely even pretends to believe any of that shit. its almost like the "everyone who isn't like me needs to be punished" thing is all that actually appeals to them about religion and they see a lot more of Trump in themselves than they do Jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srYfuOnmXFk

Going to post this link from a talk Tad Delay gave on “Theses on Reactionaries”, getting into the functions of what he actually provides to his most vocal supporters. Tad is an ex-evangelical who has written a lot of great stuff on this topic, a couple books, and I interviewed him on my pod 5 years ago.

I do think that partisan gerrymandering in general is pretty unpopular except with super-partisans, who are a minority of the country. So I think there's an opening to make national reform a popular issue. And why not? Democrats in Alabama would get more representation, and so would Republicans in California.

Anyway, speaking of Memphis, I spent the last week working on a long take on not just the redistricting but the whole history of the way Black Memphis has been treated by the state's white leaders. It's even in two forms! There's the podcast, and then a long article from the same script, with photos and audio clips.

Text article: https://theprogressivesouth.org/the-memphis-massacre/

Podcast: https://sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-53-the-memphis-massacre

Also, should be noted that as horrible as GOP types are, the fact that they got anywhere near where they are without getting a lot more resistance from the ostensible opposition party(or the actual hyper rich folks who backstop so much of the ruling structure) signals that there is a lot of folks in prominent positions who either don’t care much about stopping this enough to risk their own sinecures, or that they _can’t_. All of the previous check valves or levers have been systematically destroyed over decades for the stupidest reasons.

The rot has been existing for a long time, like Congress ditching its own control over war powers getting passed back in the early 80s when the Dems controlled it.

In the early 80s, because of seniority, the leaders of the Democratic party in Congress were still heavily dominated by their experiences of the New Deal, WWII, and the Cold War. They were the architects of the military-industrial complex. The major lesson they derived from Vietnam was that President Johnson had chosen the wrong war and fought it the wrong way. The War Powers Act only codified the de facto abandonment of their constitutional role, which they thought that ICBMs had rendered obsolete. The rot has been a stepwise process.

re: Ken Paxton endorsement

if this helps Paxton win the primary, it absolutely gives Talerico a boost, but it will still be a very difficult race to win, and Paxton winning would be very bad (though perhaps life in TX would be a bit better with him out at AG)

In the Senate, Paxton would simply fall into line, just as Cornyn did. His influence would be diluted as only one out of 100 votes, but he could hold onto the seat long enough to cash in on the boodle, and be set for life with little effort expended. He could also grab at the brass ring when Trump leaves.

Senate Republicans are bummed on the endorsement

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who lobbied Trump hard for months to back Cornyn in the primary, was stone-faced when he walked out of his Capitol office and into a lunch meeting with fellow Republicans.

“It’s his decision,” Thune said somberly of the endorsement.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) remained completely silent with his head bowed as he walked into the Tuesday lunch meeting, ignoring several reporters’ questions about the endorsement.

Paxton's nothing without his ability to sue his own cities.

Not surprised that Trump abandoned Cronyn in a long-winded Truth Social post that said over and over again it's because he didn't kiss my ass enough.

Bill Cassidy is officially in his spite/DGAF era.

Senate advances bill aimed at ending Iran war as Cassidy, after primary loss, flips to support it

The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday that seeks to force President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran war, as a growing number of Republicans defied the president’s wishes.

Since Trump ordered the attack on Iran at the end of February, Democrats have forced repeated votes on war powers resolutions that would require him to either gain congressional approval for the war or withdraw troops. Republicans had been able to muster the votes to reject those proposals, but Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — fresh off a primary election loss in which Trump endorsed his opponent — switched sides to deliver a crucial vote to pass the legislation.

The 50-47 vote tally demonstrated the small but crucial number of Republicans voting to halt the war with Iran. The legislation will get a vote on final passage, but the timing was not immediately clear.

Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had all previously voted for similar war powers resolutions and did so again Tuesday. Cassidy voted for the legislation for the first time.

After his primary election loss last week, Cassidy returned to Washington saying that he was proud of his work to uphold the Constitution and would carefully consider how he would vote on several priorities of the Trump administration.

To quote Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda: that spineless bimbo.

If Cornyn and a few other scum lose their primaries and grow spines in the process, it could be a fun few months between June and November.

retiring Thom Tillis has already been this guy

The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday that seeks to force President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran war, as a growing number of Republicans defied the president’s wishes.

This is his way out of the stupid war. Wonder if he even realizes it.

Massive loses

Ha ha Massie

JD Vance happily telling a crowd to "vote against the crazy leadership in Washington, D.C." because they're so used to knocking "the elite" they seem to have forgotten THEY ARE IT NOW.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jd-vance-crazy-leadership-speech_n_6a0babbfe4b0df718a16edab

Chris Rabb has a slight lead in the PA-3 results. would be very cool if he wins.

And he did win. Yay.

A story about KY GOP Senate nominee Andy Barr:

In 2019 he got mad at AOC and demanded she come to his district to visit a coal mine.

She said yes, which he didn't expect, so he withdrew the invitation.

Then it turned out there were no working coal mines in his district. Because he's an idiot.

I looked for news articles about that, and they all say he invited her to Kentucky, not specifically to his own district. I'm sure he's an asshole though.

Wherever I saw the anecdote relayed again tonight, there was also a link to a WaPo account of it (https://archive.ph/qOdzu#selection-367.143-371.144), which features this quote from a story I can't get to at the moment:

Barr then challenged Ocasio-Cortez to come to his district and “go underground with me and meet the men and women who do heroic work to power the American economy.”

But it doesn't matter really, because yeah, I'm sure he's an idiot and and asshole regardless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt3FKNujzx8

Maybe someone told Barr that AOC would probably win over any of the miners she met and end up more popular with them than he was.

Rep. Andy Barr invited AOC to come meet coal miners in his district mad that the Green New Deal will take away their jobs. She accepted. Turns out there are no active coal mines in Barr's district because it's 2019, not 1919. So now Barr is uninviting AOC. https://t.co/JOY8Mai82O

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) April 17, 2019

that GQ article says "in his state." the coal industry is definitely active in his district, even if there aren't any mines in it.

this is ryan grim’s fault!

I am admittedly somewhat surprised by Rabb’s showing, despite living in his district and voting for him. If Ala Stanford had backed out, it is almost certain that Sharif Street would have won, which wouldn’t have been horrific, but wouldn’t have been great. People are sick of political dynasties! (Street’s father was once mayor)

What this means , though, is that Rabb has the seat as long as he wants it, since this is the most blue district in the country.

Bluer than MN5?

More than $19m was spent to benefit Gallrein, with nearly $9.4m of that coming from American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel interest groups. These outside organisations targeted Massie because he had previously voted against US aid to Israel.

From Al Jazeera on Massie losing his primary

Bluer than MN5?

― einstürzende louboutin (suzy), Wednesday, May 20, 2026 4:02 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, besides two districts in the Bronx.

The 3rd congressional district of PA has PVI of D+41. The 5th of MN, Ilhan Omar's district, is D+26.

Raul Castro indicted on murder and conspiracy charges by Trump admin. Surely a pretext for an invasion.

sure let’s add another war to the list

Raul's indicted because, stories of behind-the-scenes skullduggery aside, he's irrelevant.

and as somehow pointed out: you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, it's a pretty low bar

Seth Bodnar, independent candidate for Senate in Montana, has issued a statement about the recent Iran war vote:

“I applaud the US Senate’s vote to move forward with a War Powers vote. It is time for Congress to retake its Article I responsibilities for declaring war, providing oversight of the Executive Branch, and guarding our nation’s purse strings. After weeks of inaction, I’m pleased to see a small number of Senators buck party leadership to try to reestablish Congress as a co-equal branch of government. We need more of that in Washington, and as Montana’s Independent US Senator, I will always stand up to DC bosses and put the people of Montana first.”

I'm still worried about this guy. Tester has endorsed him, but I feel like even if he wins (and he could, Steve Daines was the kind of Republican people voted for by reflex and the fact that Daines hand-picked his successor has pissed a lot of people off) he's much more likely to "go Fetterman" than Graham Platner.

I was wondering who the best plaintiffs would be to challenge this insane "weaponization" slush fund. Two Jan. 6 cops seems like a good start:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.292539/gov.uscourts.dcd.292539.1.0.pdf

Good first line:

In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.

that 'never audit the trumps again' addendum seems to be as rickety as a stack of rusted patio furniture. The Justice Dept doesn't have that kind of control over the IRS, who can just ignore it without a second thought. Probably just a lapdog gesture by Blanche so Trump will let him lick his hand

Yeah, it’s all Calvinball

I don't think anything will happen with this current government, but there's no reason the next administration can't restart it

This is probably just the first of many brazen movies to directly steal money from the treasury. The loyalty he still seems to command is remarkable. I should not have been shocked by the Massie election, but I was.

CO Gov Polis has been censured by the Dem party for pardoning Tina Peters

Ooooh that'll show him

i heard a history of cuba that makes the “what did cubans want and get thru time” that makes me have no idea what cubans or cuban americans might really want now