Ed Kilgore

Big Beautiful Bill 2.0 May Cut Health Care to Fund Iran War Republicans want a second reconciliation bill before the midterms. But another vote cutting popular programs could be disastrous.

Know what's even worse than "cutting Medicaid to give a tax cut to the rich?" It's "cutting Medicaid to fund ICE and Trump's war in Iran!" Could be coming our way soon! nymag.com/intelligence...

Long story short, the people who think you can't love Jesus unless you hate LGBTQ folk and feminists are already going to the mats to claim James Talarico (and other mainline Protestants like me) aren't Christians at all. It's going to get savage. Gird up your loins.

Working on an item about how the Republican drive to hang onto the Senate by defeating James Talarico is already turning into a holy war on liberal Christianity.

Gotta say, it was devilishly clever for Ken Paxton to promise to drop out of the Senate race before Trump could order him to do so, if only Senate Republicans would give Trump the one thing they've denied him--nuking the filibuster--to pass his beloved if bogus SAVE Act.

Thanks!

Trump’s Texas Senate Endorsement Is All About the Money The GOP can’t afford to attack Ken Paxton then rehabilitate him if he wins the runoff. So Trump is expected to back John Cornyn.

So Senate Republicans were taking a long look at having to spend hundreds of millions to smear Paxton and then hundreds of millions more to rehabilitate him if he won the nomination anyway. So they've gone running to Daddy to get him to cancel the runoff. nymag.com/intelligence...

So I've been away from this platform for a while, because it was feeling like a demolition derby. But hell, it's an election year and there's a war on, and occasionally I have something interesting to say.

Democracy’s in Danger. Will Democrats Tell Voters About It? Despite what many strategists say, it’s short-sighted and dangerous to assume kitchen-table issues matter more than Trump’s growing authoritarianism.

I guess all those millions of "No Kings" protesters are just donor-driven elitists who don't understand that "kitchen table issues" are all that matters. nymag.com/intelligence...

Democracy’s in Danger. Will Democrats Tell Voters About It? Despite what many strategists say, it’s short-sighted and dangerous to assume kitchen-table issues matter more than Trump’s growing authoritarianism.

Yes, I'm a broken record on this, but it really infuriates me that the Democratic party's strategists, left and center, keep telling Democrats that voters don't really care about democracy: nymag.com/intelligence...

The New Sign Trump Is Planning a Midterm-Elections Power Grab His latest attacks on the Prop 50 vote in California once again show he’ll do whatever it takes.

Trump keeps saying mail ballots and early in-person votes are crooked. That's 69 percent of all ballots cast in 2020 and 60 percent of all those cast in 2024. His position is carte blanche for preemptive election rigging: nymag.com/intelligence...

The Government Shutdown Will Get Very Real on November 1 SNAP benefits will run out, Obamacare premiums will spike, and Trump will no longer be able to pretend the shutdown just hurts Democrats.

People have nine days remaining to shrug off the government shutdown as a DC side-show: nymag.com/intelligence...

Democrats’ Fears About New Jersey Governor’s Race May Be Overblown Dems are spooked because the GOP beat expectations in 2021 and 2024. But jitters about gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill don’t seem justified.

I'm no expert on NJ politics, but the more I read vague takes on whatever it is Mikie Sherrill is supposed to lack, the more I think Trump just has Democrats spooked: nymag.com/intelligence...

Supreme Court to Decide If Trump Is Entitled to His Own Facts In a case before the Court, the White House claims Trump alone gets to decide when conditions in U.S. cities warrant Guard deployments.

The last person on earth who should be endowed with fact-finding authority on much of anything is Donald J. Trump. nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump Is Trying to Brand Political Opposition As Rebellion A panel of federal appeals court judges stopped a National Guard deployment in Chicago with a warning against the ultimate Trump power grab.

One point from this post I'd like to underline. We've all been so busy refuting the nonsense about a Trump "landslide" and the idea voters were endorsing what he's now doing that we've kinda forgotten to remind people there's never a "mandate" to revoke the Constitution! nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump Is Trying to Brand Political Opposition As Rebellion A panel of federal appeals court judges stopped a National Guard deployment in Chicago with a warning against the ultimate Trump power grab.

Finally, three judges say what needs to be said about this administration's demonization of any resistance to its plans: nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump’s His Own Attack Dog, So Vance Has to Bite Even Harder As shown in his defense of nasty text messages from Young Republicans, the vice-president can’t let anyone outflank him on the right.

As long a look at J.D. Vance as I could take without blinking and then closing my eyes. nymag.com/intelligence...

Dwelling on the 2024 Defeat Is a Waste of Time for Democrats Forget about the election “autopsies” for now. 2026 will be an entirely different kind of election in multiple ways.

I offer a cold shower on the obsession with 2024 autopsies among Democrats. Yes, it's worth knowing why Democrats lost. But it's not terribly relevant to a very different 2026 midterm election: nymag.com/intelligence...

New Pope Offers Same Headaches for Trump The MAGA movement wasn’t fond of Pope Francis. His American successor, Pope Leo, has been just as resolute on immigrants, poverty, and climate change.

Pope Leo XIV is making it pretty clear he's not J.D. Vance's kind of Catholic, much like his predecessor: nymag.com/intelligence...

The Schiff gambit was to consolidate the Republican vote behind Garvey in the primary so that it wasn't split between two or three hopeless candidates, which squeezed out Porter.

Trump’s Redistricting Power Grab Is Losing Momentum The longer it takes Republicans to reshape congressional districts, the more public opposition to Trump’s gambit may grow.

A quick tour through the redistricting battlegrounds, with a sense that this is now moving too slowly for GOP comfort: nymag.com/intelligence...

Katie Porter Should Have Something to Say to Trump Voters An interview with the candidate for California governor went sideways when she was asked if she needed Trump voters to win. It wasn’t a hard question.

Of all people, Katie Porter should understand why Republicans matter in a multi-Democratic statewide field, since Adam Schiff's successful herding of GOP voters to Steve Garvey knocked her out of the 2024 general election. nymag.com/intelligence...

Katie Porter Should Have Something to Say to Trump Voters An interview with the candidate for California governor went sideways when she was asked if she needed Trump voters to win. It wasn’t a hard question.

I started off just trying to explain the Top Two context of the dispute to non-Californians, but after about the 25th time I watched the Katie Porter interview, I got a mite exasperated with her. And I was a 2024 Katie Porter for Senate voter: nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump and Stephen Miller See Insurrection Everywhere The White House believes any resistance to Trump is insurrectionary and warrants troop deployments. It’s a by-product of demonizing all opposition.

MAGA folk claim that because Trump threatened to do crazy stuff on the campaign trail and subsequently won then he doesn't have to comply with the laws or the Constitution in fulfilling his "mandate." Apparently 49% of the electorate can abolish the rights of the 51%. nymag.com/intelligence...

Someone Should Inform Trump That He’s Actually Unpopular Trump claimed polls show he’s the most popular Republican president ever. He’s actually the least popular in the post–World War II era.

You can get so used to Trump lying all the time that you forget to call him out on it now and then: nymag.com/intelligence...

It’s Hard to Fight McCarthyism When McCarthy Is President Relaunching free-speech groups that fought the Red Scare is helpful. But last time, they had the White House as an ally, not an enemy.

"Today, we don’t have a Republican president willing to take down a demagogue who threatened free speech. We have a Republican president who is himself the demagogue who threatens free speech." nymag.com/intelligence...

Pleased to see an old anti-McCarthyism free speech group reactivate. But there's a problem in replicating the defeat of Tail Gunner Joe: nymag.com/intelligence...

How the Government Shutdown Will End Republicans could erode Democratic unity, or Trump may cut a deal on Obamacare subsidies. Either way, an extremely long shutdown is likely.

At the risk of getting completely over my skis (which is easy since I don't ski), here's an early projection of how the shutdown will evolve and end: nymag.com/intelligence...

thehill.com/homenews/hou...

Trump’s New Core Mission for the Military: ‘Enemy Within’ In an alarming if incoherent speech to an assemblage of brass, the president puts the military on notice that America is a domestic battleground.

Don't let the incoherent Weave keep you from noticing the clear signal from Trump to the military that his political enemies are fair game for "warfighting." Not just in an emergency, but every day. nymag.com/intelligence...

Democrats Must Address the Real Reason They Want a Shutdown Health care policy is important, but the real reason Democrats are risking a government shutdown is to curb Trump’s power, and they should say so.

Sorry, populists, but I just don't buy it: nymag.com/intelligence...