Steven Beschloss/America America:
Trump Wanted This Escalation
Trump's calling for 2,000 National Guard soldiers to spread fear and crack down on dissent. This is a time for non-violent defiance.
Trump’s directive yesterday stated, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Note the words: “a form of rebellion.” And note the further escalation by Defense Secretary and Trump sycophant Pete Hegseth who posted this on social media: “The DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”
Gov. Newsom’s response: “The Secretary of Defense is now threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens. This is deranged behavior.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ response to the federal actions: "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”
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A spectacular indictment of Medicaid work requirements by 2 lawyers who saw the impact up close and won a lawsuit to kill them in Arkansas. Every single member of Congress should read it. And everyone else should read it and call their member of Congress. Gift link 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...
— Jill Lawrence (@jilldlawrence.bsky.social) 2025-06-08T17:43:10.611Z
Ryan Cooper/The American Prospect:
Trump’s Beautiful Bill Will Kick 11 Million People Off Their Health Insurance
It will also increase the national debt by $2.4 trillion.
The suffering from these cuts will be concentrated among the poor and working class, including perhaps 51,000 preventable deaths per year, according to researchers from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. That makes this bill considerably worse than Trump’s previous attempt to repeal the ACA during his first term, which would have caused “only” an estimated 24,000 to 46,000 deaths annually.
It’s worth pointing out that four Republican senators, namely, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine, have all promised not to cut Medicaid. And others, like West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice, have expressed concern about the impact on rural hospitals, which operate on thin margins and would near collapse if many of their patients lost insurance coverage.
Good Authority:
Will the U.S. intelligence community be politicized?
A Good Chat about the Trump administration’s Tren de Aragua assessment.
To ask about this episode and intelligence politicization more broadly, Good Authority editor Christopher Clary chatted with Joshua Rovner, associate professor in the School of International Studies at American University and author of Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Cornell University Press 2011).
And, in your view, do you think the facts as we understand about the Tren de Aragua assessment might represent politicization? If so, how might that be consistent with other episodes of politicization?
As I wrote in Fixing the Facts, politicization is most likely when policymakers make controversial public pronouncements – despite inconclusive or even contradictory intelligence. In these cases, policymakers have strong incentives to pressure the intelligence community to toe the line. Because people tend to view secret information as credible, secret intelligence is a powerful public relations tool. Thus policymakers can win support by pointing to intelligence that bolsters their arguments.
Some reports suggest that the director of national intelligence removed key intelligence officials from the National Intelligence Council for offering estimates that contradicted administration statements. Subsequent reporting suggests that at least one senior leader tried to manipulate intelligence assessments to manufacture the image of support. If this was indeed the case, then it would be a clear-cut case of politicization, and a troubling precedent.
The reporting described above is consistent with past cases of politicization, both in terms of officials’ conduct and their motives. But while I am concerned about these reports, one thing I’ve learned from studying secret intelligence is that details are often murky for years after the fact.
Many questions remain unanswered. For example, were the NIC officers removed because of the Tren de Aragua assessment – or were there other reasons they fell out of favor? Is it possible that they were caught up in the Trump administration’s feverish attempt to reshape the executive branch? The White House, after all, hasn’t been shy about cutting federal personnel. If this was the case, then the Tren de Aragua affair may have been a pretext for decisions that were already in the works.
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Since 2016, 1 notable pro-GOP shift has come from Latinos.
How did Latinos shift towards a party taking strong positions against unauthorized immigration?
@wpmarble.bsky.social & I use population-based panel surveys to help answer that in a new paper:
osf.io/preprints/so...
Quick 🧵
— Dan Hopkins (@dhopkins1776.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T18:18:39.757Z
New York Times:
Once Champions of Fringe Causes, Now in a ‘Trap of Their Own Making’
Top leaders at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are struggling to fulfill Trump campaign promises often rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino, partisan showmen placed in positions previously held by people with greater experience, earned their bona fides in Mr. Trump’s camp by promoting conspiracy theories, making promises of what they would accomplish under Mr. Trump when he returned to power based on fictional or exaggerated premises, pledging to reveal deep-state secrets and vowing swift vengeance on their enemies.
It has now fallen on Mr. Patel, Mr. Bongino and Attorney General Pam Bondi to make good on the promises explicit and implied — or show how hard they are trying. But they are running what amounts to a conspiracy theory fulfillment center with unstocked shelves, critics say.
Jonathan Cohn/The Bulwark:
The One Thing Elon Musk Is Right About
He threw a fit about EV credits getting nixed in Trump’s bill. But he’s not wrong that they’re good for America (and Tesla, too).
Now ending federal EV support isn’t just a slogan, it’s a set of real policy changes in the works, including provisions in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that the House passed last month and the Senate is debating now. That legislation would eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of tax credits to support EV production and purchases that Joe Biden and the Democrats put in place back in 2022.
And far from helping the company, Tesla stands to lose big. More than a billion dollars in revenue a year is at risk if those tax credits go away, J.P. Morgan projects. The timing couldn’t be worse, because Tesla sales have been plummeting, thanks in no small part to the way Musk’s embrace of Trump has tarnished the brand.
So while it doesn’t take a ton of imagination to come up with alternative explanations for Musk’s pique—Trump nixing his choice for NASA leader? assumptions that administration officials dished to the New York Times about his personal life?—it’s hard not to believe that Trump’s war on EVs is somewhere on Musk’s list of grievances.
But you don’t have to like Musk, or approve of what he’s done in (and to) government,2 to think he might have a point about EV subsidies. Here’s why.
New York Times:
The ‘Manosphere’ Just Wants Trump and Musk to Get Along
The public spat between the billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump has captivated MAGA-friendly podcasters, including Joe Rogan and Theo Von.
Several other MAGA-friendly podcasters took a similar stance, expressing gratitude to Mr. Musk for his support so far of the Republican agenda, but urging him to fall in line.
Their continued embrace of Mr. Trump underscores just how central a role the president plays in the so-called manosphere, an unruly world of online content targeting male audiences.
The administration has also continued to treat these shows as a critical messaging tool — extending their relationship far beyond the election, when the Trump campaign famously used manosphere creators and channels to reach politically disengaged men.
New York Times:
Breaking With Trump, Bacon Says He Won’t Follow His Party ‘Off the Cliff’
The Nebraska Republican’s dissent makes him one of a disappearing breed in the G.O.P. — and suggests he may head for the exit.
In the coming weeks, Mr. Bacon, who represents a center-leaning district in the otherwise deeply red state of Nebraska that both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Vice President Kamala Harris won by more than 4 percentage points, plans to announce whether or not he will seek a sixth term in Congress.
His retirement would be welcome news for Democrats, who have long viewed Nebraska’s Second Congressional District as one of their best opportunities to pick up a seat. They have consistently been denied because of Mr. Bacon’s strong independent brand and unique electoral strength. Last month, a Democrat unseated a three-term Republican in the Omaha mayor’s race. The morning after that race was called, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and minority leader, told the House Democratic Caucus that they were officially on “Don Bacon retirement watch,” and the room erupted in cheers, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
Terry Moran was suspended by ABC for this post:
David Shuster covers Democrats Jared Moskowitz and Jasmine Crockett going after Congressional Republicans:
