<Texas has been a tease for Democrats. Despite being a diverse, urban, multicultural state, the last time it elected a Democrat as governor was Ann Richards in 1990. And the last Democratic U.S. Senator elected in Texas was in 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen won another term while simultaneously losing as Michael Dukakis’s running mate.

Beto O’Rourke came close to victory in 2018, finishing within 3 points of Ted Cruz. But since then, Texas has slid backward for Democrats. Joe Biden lost the state by just under 6 points in 2020, a year when pre-election polling had suggested a close contest. But Donald Trump blew out Kamala Harris by 14 points in the Lone Star State last year. As in Florida, Democrats have discovered that electoral improvement in the suburbs doesn’t outweigh the combination of a shift among Latino voters back toward Trump plus a solid base of Southern religious conservatives.

Still, if you had to design a Democratic candidate in a lab to break through the red wall in Texas, someone like Colin Allred might come pretty close to the ideal in a football-obsessed state. A civil rights attorney and former linebacker for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans — sure, the Cowboys or Texans would have been better — Allred has a strong electoral track record. In 2018, he upset Republican incumbent Pete Sessions in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District by an impressive 6.6-point margin in a district that Democrats hadn’t even bothered to contest two years earlier.

Indeed, in 2024, Democrats gave Allred a try as their U.S. Senate nominee. He performed considerably better than Harris, losing to Cruz by 8 points. It was a loss, but election nerds like me are inclined to point out that this was actually a pretty good performance. Last year obviously wasn’t a great electoral climate for Democrats, but outperforming Harris’s baseline by 6 points might be enough in a “blue wave” year, a distinct possibility next year considering Trump’s unpopularity and what is likely to be a substantial Democratic turnout advantage, as demonstrated by an excellent set of results for Democrats in off-year elections last month.

On Monday, however, Allred quit the Senate race to run for the House instead. Although he attributed his decision to wanting to avoid a “bruising” primary, the primary is likely to be contentious anyway between state representative James Talarico and a new entrant into the race, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who opted into the Senate contest on Monday after a long deliberation. Although the polling is slightly messy here, and Texas's use of a runoff system adds further complications, Allred had generally trailed both Crockett and Talarico in recent surveys.¹ So Allred is leaving the race for the same reason that most candidates quit: he was probably going to lose. (Plus, the few Democratic U.S. House seats that remain in Texas following Republican redistricting are creating a game of musical chairs.)

I’ve seen some centrist and/or electability-minded commentators criticize Crockett for running, accusing her of using the Senate race to build her national profile in a race she’s unlikely to win. I agree that Crockett probably won’t be a strong general election candidate, although her margins in her very blue Dallas district have been impressive enough.² To be honest, though, I find this attitude a little undemocratic. I generally don’t think parties should be in the business of denying voters choices — and the electorate, if you trust the polls, had already shown a considerable amount of lukewarmness toward Allred.

As a sports guy, I understand why the case for Allred’s superior electability wasn’t that persuasive. Voters, like casual sports fans, pay attention to the W’s and L’s. (Try explaining to Bears fans why their team isn’t that good despite being 9-4.) That Allred lost in 2024 — and that O’Rourke did in 2018 — was the headline, rather their relative performances by some value-above-replacement-candidate metric, as much as I think WAR is a smart approach.

Talarico might be more the man of the moment anyway. As a devout Christian and former public school teacher who went on Joe Rogan, he “reads” as a moderate. In practice, Talarico’s issue positions are almost uniformly progressive. But the profile isn’t that dissimilar to a Texas version of Graham Platner in Maine, another candidate who is more progressive than you might expect based on his outward appearance. (Though unlike Platner, Talarico doesn’t have a history of “problematic” tattoos and Reddit posts).

Meanwhile, if you go to Talarico’s campaign website, here’s what you get:

“Flipping tables” is a Biblical reference, but also a message of rightful indignation. It’s a different vibe than Allred’s website, which features him smiling and, although it refers to “corrupt politicians like Donald Trump”, is full of messages about teamwork, public service and how “Colin’s campaign isn’t about partisanship.”....>

<....Crockett also struck a defiant theme in her launch video, which consists of 45 seconds of silence — halfway through, she turns from profile to stare at the camera, then crosses her arms before she finally flashes a smile — as disparaging comments by Trump play in the background.

Crockett isn’t going to strike anyone as a moderate. That voters come in with different assumptions about Black women than white men plays a role in that. But Crockett also has a voting record that is more liberal than 92 percent of the current Congress, and she’s a social media star and frequent cable news guest who pretty much wears that on her sleeve. Her theory of the case is that she can win the election by turning out Democratic base voters even in a state where Trump won 56 percent of the vote last year.

Even if moderation wins, a moderate temperament might not sell well to Democrats Just in case this isn’t clear, today’s newsletter is meant to be descriptive, not proscriptive. Yes, I agree with those who say Democrats ought to place a heavy emphasis on “electability,” especially in states like Texas. In fact, the greater the threat that you think Trump is to the future of American democracy, the less you can afford to nominate only candidates who pass a progressive purity test. I also agree that moderation usually helps. Not necessarily being a down-the-line centrist, but at least vibing with your local electorate rather than the MSNBC (excuse me, MS Now) audience.

Some 44 percent of Democrats feel angry toward the federal government, a far higher percentage than even in the midst of COVID during Trump’s first term. And the sense of anger is palpable on social media (especially on Bluesky) and across other platforms. Substack newsletters like The Contrarian, aimed at what I think of as “resistance libs” — older Dems who are highly politically engaged — routinely express a lot of anger, both toward anything and everything that Trump does and toward Democrats when they’re seen as insufficiently combative. Podcasts like “I’ve Had It” also often strike an exasperated mood, often with little restraint. Cohost Jennifer Welch recently called Erika Kirk (Charlie Kirk’s widow) a “grifter” and Kirk an “unrepentant racist.”

This anger doesn’t always come attached to a logical political strategy. Personalities like Simon Rosenberg, who always spin every piece of news as good for Democrats, are celebrated at outlets like The Contrarian, no matter how much false hope they gave Democrats about Joe Biden’s condition and other things last year. Indeed, some of these outlets still fiercely defend Biden’s decision to run for re-election and blame the media for forcing him out, even though nobody did more than Biden to put Democrats in their current predicament. And the shutdown was driven by base anger rather than by any coherent game plan or broader buy-in within the Democratic caucus, producing an eventual capitulation.

Meanwhile, “I’ve Had It” recently had California Gov. Gavin Newsom on as a guest for a very friendly interview, even though the hosts purport to be furious at the Democratic establishment. It’s hard to think of a more establishment-y figure than Newsom, who was first elected mayor of San Francisco while George W. Bush was still in office, who has a mostly conventional set of progressive policy positions and some of the same California baggage that Kamala Harris had last year, and whose Twitter account recently endorsed a statement that Biden — not Barack Obama, who remains far more popular — was “THE BEST PRESIDENT IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY!”.

Newsom, although he has shown a few heterodox stripes lately, routinely embraces the message that “we have to fight fire with fire.” Sometimes this is smart: even as someone who’s not a big Newsom guy, I thought he handled Prop 50 extremely effectively. But at other times, the “fight” takes the form of cringy all-caps tweets meant to imitate Trump’s style.

The notion of fighting smartly is less often seen in the resistance-lib-o-sphere. People like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein are detested for advocating for a more measured, moderate approach or for trying to find common ground with conservatives. Nor are the resistance libs happy to hear critiques of Biden or Harris from people like me, even if they’d have been better off if they’d listened to those concerns.

“Electability” is becoming a harder sell

That doesn’t mean the “happy warrior” modality can never work. Zohran Mamdani has been a notably affable figure, even finding common ground with Trump in a recent White House meeting. But Mamdani’s progressive bona fides are well-established, and he’s a smart politician who recognized that, even in New York City, a Muslim democratic socialist from Uganda had some work to do to soften his image. (He also created an effective contrast against the frequently angry Andrew Cuomo.)....>

<...But the resistance libs aren’t likely to be receptive to any message that some of their ideas are unpopular, or that the Democratic Party could stand to shave off some of its rougher edges. To be fair, thermostatic public opinion is making many liberal ideas more popular again instead of producing a conservative vibe shift, especially as Trump’s popularity lags.

Still, partisan Democrats have lots of coping strategies. First and foremost is what I’ve called The Big Cope, or “the belief that Democrats would win every competitive election if only it weren’t for unfair media coverage”.

Crockett has also invoked an older coping mechanism, namely the belief that Democrats would win every competitive election if only they turned out their voters. There used to be a grain of truth in this back when “marginal” voters were more likely to be Democrats: Obama won by a solid margin in 2012 despite losing independents to Mitt Romney in many swing states, for example. However, as Trump has gained ground among younger voters and racial minority groups who are less reliable voters, it’s now usually Republicans who benefit from higher turnout — whereas Democrats clean up in low-turnout special elections. Nor was turnout the main cause of Harris’s loss.

However, I think we have to acknowledge the argument that moderation = winning more elections (other things being equal) isn’t an easy sell. Some of the academic work suggesting that the benefits of moderation have evaporated is extremely dubious if you kick the tires on it. But this requires sorting through arguments about regression analysis and model specification. Because there aren’t many moderate Democrats left with people like Joe Manchin and now Jared Golden retiring, there aren’t a lot of favorable examples to cite. A moderate Democrat who outperforms the baseline by 6 points in an R+10 state or district is still usually going to lose except under the most favorable conditions for the party.

There’s also the elephant in the room: Trump. How was he elected twice if moderation matters, progressives might ask? It’s a fair question, and the answers offered by electability types like me aren’t likely to be entirely satisfying. In 2016, Trump was actually seen as more moderate than Hillary Clinton, in part because he eschewed some unpopular Bush/Romney-era conservative positions like on gay marriage and rolling back the welfare state. After Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare anyway, they paid the price in 2018 — and then in 2020, Trump lost. But in 2024, in an echo of 2016, more voters said Harris was too liberal than that Trump was too conservative.

I personally think that assessment is wrong, but Harris left a lot of very progressive-coded baggage from her primary campaign in 2019. And she was fighting an uphill battle against both broad voter dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration, partly for ignoring the polling on issues like immigration, and the fact that self-identified conservatives still considerably outnumber liberals in the electorate.

Talarico might still be a favorite against Crockett

Ironically, however, there’s one electability-related trope that’s more common among resistance libs than among number-crunching types. And it could wind up hurting Crockett. Namely, it’s the belief that women underperform men. (Especially women of color.) I mostly agree with research suggesting this idea is overstated, though a fuller examination is well beyond the scope of today’s newsletter. Still, it’s inevitably going to have some intuitive currency. Democrats can point to the scoreboard and detect that Harris and Clinton lost, while Biden and Obama won. Even before Harris’s loss last year, with the possible exception of Amy Kloubuchar, nearly all women candidates, from Harris to Elizabeth Warren to Kirsten Gillibrand, notably underperformed expectations in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

<Americans are being failed by their government.

As it stands, Congress will go home for the holidays without rescuing millions of people whose health insurance premiums will double or more next year. This will mean agonizing dilemmas over already stretched family budgets. Or even decisions not to have any health insurance at all.

A typical day Thursday of congressional dysfunction, blame shifting and an absence of political courage failed to solve the impasse. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a disinterested president had other things to do.

With Covid-era health insurance subsidies due to expire on December 31, a bitter dispute is unfolding, broadly between Republicans who’ve always hated Obamacare but want to tackle costs and Democrats who are demanding the extension of subsidies but are unwilling to talk about reforms to the law.

This gulf was laid bare when, in classically futile fashion, the Senate voted on two bills that everyone knew would fail to solve the issue.

Republicans put forward a measure to give certain Affordable Care Act policy holders money for two years to put in health savings accounts rather than subsidies to avoid further enriching insurance companies. Trump supports such a plan but has done nothing to make it happen. The problem, however, is there is no guarantee these payments would meet the full costs of health care. Patients might also be left with huge bills in the event of medical emergencies.

Democrats wrote their own bill that would have handed out Covid-era subsidies for another three years. Four Republicans voted with the Democrats, but the bill fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass. The plan would have continued a system that allowed some low-income Americans to get coverage with $0 or near $0 monthly premiums and enabled middle class consumers to qualify for aid for the first time.

The imbroglio has been exacerbated by the continued rise in health care costs, that is not just stalking Obamacare enrollees but also citizens who get their health care through employer plans — and is worsening the affordability crisis shaping the run-up to the midterm elections next year.

Another complication is the GOP’s tiny House majority, which makes it hard to pass any bill on any issue. So is the fact that Democrats are loathe to reform the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s legacy. At the same time, the legislation passed in 2010 is reviled in the GOP. This makes it impossible for most Republicans to cast a vote that could be construed in a future primary contest as rescuing Obamacare.

But the political situation is complicated. Millions of Republican voters get their health care through Obamacare policies, so if GOP members don’t act they will be hurting their own supporters.

Moderate GOP lawmakers from swing states are meanwhile leading last-minute efforts to end the health care drama, since they are likely to pay the price first for any voter backlash over the issue.

Democrats, Republicans blame each other

Sometimes in Congress, it takes a period of venting to widen the political space in which a deal can be made. So it’s never over, until it’s over. It’s also frustrating that as is often the case, the potential area of compromise is in clear view — even if it’s impossible for most lawmakers to reach it.

Several Senate bills are floating around still, including one by GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno that would extend ACA subsidies for two years with some reforms on income gaps and mandated premiums.

Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted said Thursday on CNN that he had a measure that would extend subsidies for two years in return for action to fix what he described as fraud in the Obamacare system. “I talked to pastors, small business owners who (are) seeing their premiums skyrocket. I want to intervene and do something about it,” Husted said. “We know that the current system is broken. The ACA doesn’t work. It’s been getting bailed out. I don’t want to continue to bail it out, but I also don’t want people to suffer these premium increases.”

Democrats typically view Republican reform efforts as the latest in a string of attempts over nearly a decade-and-a-half to kill Obamacare entirely or to introduce provisions that would slowly poison it from the inside. There’s some justification for their suspicions since while Republicans are now focused on costs and reforms just before subsidies expire, they’ve not managed to come up with a workable plan to fix health care during multiple presidential administrations and through various periods of congressional control....>

<....If Congress leaves town without fixing the issue, Democrats would have failed to achieve their ostensible goal — getting an extension of subsidies — despite intense efforts to do so, including the triggering of a government shutdown that lasted a record 43 days. A cynic might note that Democrats could have made Obamacare subsidies permanent when they controlled Congress and the White House. And many of their political consultants would relish the chance to attack GOP candidates next year for callousness if the subsidies are allowed to expire.

The action — such as it is — will return to the House next week.

“Stay tuned. There’s more to come,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN on Thursday evening, promising a plan that will reduce premiums for “all Americans, not just 7% of them.”

But Johnson’s plan seems likely to fall victim to splits in his party over health care and the improbable math in the majority.

Conservatives want complete reform of Obamacare and reject any vote to extend subsidies. But some moderate Republicans in swing districts say there is no alternative to extending subsidies because there’s no chance a complex new system could debut by the end of the year.

The last hope for Obamacare policy holders might be several plans by GOP moderates for discharge petitions — a way to force votes against the wishes of party leadership. This was the same method that rebel Republicans used to secure a vote requiring the Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told CNN’s Jake Tapper Thursday that Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries should release his members to vote for one of the measures so that they could pass.

“The immediacy requires action,” Lawler, one of the most endangered Republicans next year said, but acknowledged both that his own leadership had not allowed a vote on the subsidies and that he needs every Democratic lawmaker to sign up to make the plan work.

“This is a moment to show the American people that Washington can function,” Lawler said.

The well-being of millions of Americans depends on it.>

<The decline from a glorious peak is one of the most unsettling things in life, and sadly, the modern world is full of them. The deterioration of local town squares as small businesses shut down, the enfeeblement of loved ones as they age, the morning after a good buzz, and the uneasiness of daily life in a decaying empire are just some of the obstacles most of us have to navigate through on a rather relentless basis.

But fear not! We have sports, the ultimate distraction that somehow not only allows us to temporarily escape the crushing reality, but also connects us all simultaneously. At their best, sports, and in particular baseball, provide such an uplifting and communal experience that they can force the surrounding hellscape to fade into the background, even if only for a few hours. (I can attest firsthand that this magnificent dynamic is one of the reasons I’m alive today.)

But unfortunately, the Red Sox experience of late — as in the entire first half of this decade — has largely been one resembling the greater decline and decay. Not exclusively in the on-field product, which has actually gotten much better over the last 12 months and should continue to be solid over the next couple of years, but in the way the Red Sox operate as an entity.

Perhaps nowhere has this unsettling existence been on display more grotesquely than over the past week in Orlando at the Winter Meetings, where ownership and the front office allowed both Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso —by far the two biggest power bats on the free agent market in an offseason in which the Sox are desperate for power — to end up in the Mid Atlantic instead of New England. In a vacuum, that’s not the end of the world. But against the progressively problematic backdrop of needs and empty promises, it’s a font of exasperation.

Here’s my gripe: Last year, Trevor Story led the Red Sox in home runs with just 25. The Yankees, in comparison, had five guys hit more than 25 home runs in 2025, and a sixth in Giancarlo Stanton who hit 24 of them in just 77 games. Going back over the last 33 years, there have only been three seasons in which the Red Sox failed to to have at least one guy hit more than 25 home runs. One was the Covid year, so that doesn’t count, and the other two were in 2012 and 2017.

Do you remember how the Red Sox responded the last two times they had a power deficiency like this in their lineup?

After 2012, they spent in free agency by re-signing David Ortiz (who only played in 90 games in 2012 and thus only had 23 home runs that year), and also signed Mike Napoli. Those two guys then went on to lead the Red Sox in homes runs in 2013 on the way to a World Series title.

After 2017, the Red Sox spent in free agency by signing J.D. Martinez to a five-year, nine figure contract. He went on to lead the 2018 Red Sox in home runs with 43, and once again the Red Sox went on to win the World Series.

The formula was simple: Needs naturally appeared on the roster each offseason, and then the team would use their enormous financial resources, largely supplied by the equally enormous Red Sox fanbase, to address those needs on the free agent market. But since 2019, the machine has stopped functioning — or at least the part of the machine where fans get a sizable free agent return on their investment has stopped functioning.

This winter, there’s a clear need for a power bat in the Red Sox lineup, and not only did they not get either of the two guys on the free agent market who were far and away the best candidates to address that need, but they got blatantly outbid by the Baltimore Orioles in both years and dollars.

Following this news, I think NC Hellrazors beautifully summed up fan frustration in the comment section if our Over The Monster Open Thread thread from yesterday. Here’s the post:

Anyone else remember the days of waking up in the morning, turning on ESPN to see if (the Sox) made an overnight deal/signing and getting excited to see something awesome happened? It was like Christmas. Man, so long ago.

Once again, we’re living through the decline from a glorious peak. The Red Sox have more than enough resources to get aggressive in free agency. They simply choose not to do it because “it’s expensive to have (good) baseball players” according to John Henry. And hey, how else are billionaire sports owners supposed to make money without exploiting the passion of their fanbase?

Disgusting and infuriating!>

<....But do you know what I personally find almost equally disgusting and infuriating? The way the Red Sox continue to feed everybody a line of bull about how they’re prepared to operate like the 2004-2018 Red Sox when they very clearly have zero intention of swimming at the deep end of the pool when it comes to top end free agent targets anymore. It’s been so long since they actually delivered on this front that they now have zero of the 35 largest contracts in the sport on their books. (Garrett Crochet’s $170 million deal comes in at No. 36 on the list in case you’re wondering.)

All of this brings us to what happened with Will Flemming this week. Being the play-by-play voice on WEEI, Flemming is tapped into the Red Sox messaging, and like many others who are also tapped into the Red Sox messaging, I believe he’s being fed a big steaming pile of horse manure.

Here’s how Flemming relayed what he’s been hearing to starving Sox fans on Twitter, and how it proceeded to play out in three acts:

I can’t speak for everybody, but I’m pretty sure that when we get to Friday afternoon and those 72 hours are up, I’m not going to be smiling. Because what I really want from the Red Sox is for them to pair their formidable financial muscle with their blossoming farm system and put the fear of God into the rest of the American League. This is not a guns vs. butter situation. They can do both!

This is true even if you subscribe to the idea of pulling back during lean times and rebuild years and then ramping back up once again as a strong foundation solidifies in place. At some point, you have to shoot for the moon and go for it. And honestly, the fact we’re specifically not seeing action at this stage of the game is where much of my personal anger comes from on this topic. If you’re not going to invest in top-shelf free agents at this point in the team’s success cycle, when are you going to invest in them? Without that, the Red Sox as we once knew them are officially dead.

But their ghost is still very much alive, because every winter, like clockwork, we get these annual fraudulent declarations and intimations passed down from on high. My favorite came at the end of the 2023 season when Tom Werner told us the team was going “Full Throttle” that winter, and we all had to conclude at different points in the proceedings that it was complete bogus. Then, after they backtracked, Craig Breslow tried to do some damage control in early 2024 by suggesting it would make more sense to truly invest in additions after the young players arrived and were making an impact. See if you can get through this round of gobbledygook:

But I think the reality is that it’s going to require a step forward from the young position players. It’s going to require the build-out of a talent pipeline of arms that we can acquire, we draft, and we can develop internally.

And it’s going to require aggressive player development in the minor leagues and the major leagues so guys that we think are the next wave — Mayer and Anthony and Teel, that group — are not just big leaguers but impact big leaguers.

Well, the kids are here and I still don’t see any big free agent splashes. But do you know what we did see when the kids arrived? Rafael Devers and his $300 million contract being shipped out the door. In the moment, we were led to believe it was predominantly about the player needing to be moved out of the clubhouse and not about the value of the contract. But if that were the case, don’t you think it might have been a good idea to invest, oh say about half the money saved on that “malcontent” on one of the power bats that just went off the board in free agency? If it really wasn’t about the money, those funds would have been reinvested and used to replenish the power lost in the lineup during Devers’ departure.

Instead, we’re getting the latest tsunami of deception, distortion, dishonesty and deceit from Red Sox higher-ups who pass down disinformation in an attempt to defend the existence of a reality they no longer care to preserve....>

<....The bottom line is winning the World Series is not the main objective for them in 2026. It comes second to winning the gathering labor war with the players next December, and they’re willing to make people who respect them look like fools to pretend that’s not the case.

Unfortunately for everybody involved, the evidence just keeps piling up. Remember this gem from last year when the greatest need was an ace?

The only reason this didn’t end in disaster like things have in previous winters is because the Red Sox got to a point where they could turn around and trade for a high-end starter from their deep farm system. And you know what? That’s fantastic when it’s paired with real investment on free agents. Heck, the Red Sox are even likely to still make a pretty big impact trade this winter, and I mostly trust Breslow to do that because he’s gotten pretty darn good at these.

But sadly, that still leaves us with a missing piece. The Red Sox are only collecting value players, and if nothing of value is available, they move on and don’t get anything good. Now, some might say this is a brilliant strategy because if you do it for long enough, you’ll eventually compile the most value-filled roster top to bottom anywhere in the sport. But here’s the problem, I don’t think that approach wins championships. I’d love for the Red Sox to prove me wrong, but running an MLB team isn’t just akin to managing a portfolio. It also has aspects of the following imperfect real world scenario sprinkled in:

Suppose you’re taking a cross-country road trip and you’re goal is to get there in the most economic way possible. So you start your journey on the east coast and you decide you’re going to be really good about only filling up at the cheapest gas stations possible. It works great for a while, but then you start to encounter more and more remote stretches of highway with larger gaps between towns and more treacherous terrain. You skip by places to fill up because the gas there wasn’t a good value, and then eventually you get to the point where you have less than a quarter tank left and there’s 146 miles to the next station on the other side of the mountain pass. You’re options are either to pay for what you need, even if it’s not good value, or chance the success of the entire trip because you were too cheap to pay for it.

That’s where we’re with the Red Sox. It doesn’t matter how well Roman Anthony can drive the bus if you run out of gas in a blizzard in the middle of Mooseball, Montana. In baseball, sometimes you have to deviate from the initial plan and go after guys who are good and not cheap to address a need, and if you don’t like that, you’re in the wrong industry! The key is finding the right balance between maximizing the value on the roster and when to cross the line. Or as Andrew Friedman so succinctly put it a decade ago:

“If you’re always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.”

Oh, and if you’re not willing to do what it takes to finish first on any of the big free agents, stop feeding good people in the industry steaming piles of bull. Either that or you go on Twitter and face the toxic (but entirely justified) masses yourself. I’d be willing to pay Fenway Park ticket prices to witness those fireworks!>

<Don’t Flop the Flop

To get flop play right, you need sound preflop fundamentals. To get turn play right, you need both. Ensuring you play the flop well protects you from getting wrecked on the turn when facing your opponent’s probe.

Let’s say you’re playing 50bb effective stacks and you open J5s from the Button. The Big Blind defends and checks to you on:

6s 6h 5d

You want to protect your pair of 5s and get some value from their A-highs and straight draws, so you go ahead and deploy a small 30% pot bet, and they fold.

No harm. No foul. WP.

Well, actually, it’s not all well and good. Take a look below.

Lucid Poker flop strategy for BTN at 50bb effective facing BB check on 665r board. J5s is a high-frequency check-back.

In the above output, you can see that a lot of Button’s 5x is meant to check back (green) reasonably often. Since these are mixes, there is no expected value (EV) loss if you bet. At least, not yet.

An issue arises if you always c-bet your 5x mixes.

Let’s say you had a hand you would normally check, like AQo. They check. You check back. The turn is the 4.

The board now reads 6s 6h 5d 4

On this card, the solver has Big Blind probing for a 75% pot size 43% of the time. What’s your response?

Lucid Poker turn strategy for BTN 50bb effective facing turn probe for 75% pot bet after flop check check on 6s 6h 5d 4d

The above output shows how Button is supposed to defend versus Big Blind’s 75% pot bet.

Look at the 5x in your range.

What happens when you c-bet all your 5x on the flop?

You incapacitate yourself from defending the turn, opening yourself up to all sorts of exploitation and error.

How you defend versus turn probes is, in no small way, determined by your opponent’s bet sizing. Bet sizing affects not only how often (frequency) you defend but also in what manner (morphology). This is to say, defending is very elastic.

In today’s example, the Big Blind probes for a large 75% pot bet. This is the dominant bet size in their strategy. However, the small 30% pot bet is still included (3% frequency).

While you shouldn’t anticipate it often, how do you respond when they choose that size?

Lucid Poker turn strategy for BTN 50bb effective facing probe for 30% pot after flop check check on 6s 6h 5d 4d

What happens when they probe for the small size?

You fold a lot less (14% vs 36%).

Now your earlier mixes (versus the 75% pot bet) become high-frequency (if not pure) calls, earning EV where before they were worth zero.

This point, while a bit obvious, is absolutely critical. You need to be careful not to overpay while also being careful not to underdefend when getting a good price.

Knowing how often you should continue is one thing, but how to continue is another.

Interpreting Bet Sizes

How you construct your continuing range should be done in relation to how your opponent constructs theirs. That’s the great thing about your opponent’s use of split sizing. By choosing one size or the other, they telegraph information about their hands, which allows you to make the appropriate adjustments with yours.

Playing vs. Large Turn Probes

By choosing a large size, your opponent polarizes their range. On the 6654 board, this means their value hands will be trips, straights, and boats. Their bluffs will be equity-driven, looking to make a big hand on the river (7x or flush draws) or barrel.

This means your range should be constructed in such a way that it can take some heat.

Static hands like AQo are ahead of the bluffs but have no way of improving versus the Big Blind’s value range. Instead, the solver calls with 7x and flush draws. These perform well versus Big Blind’s value range, able to suck out. For reference, Jc 7c

(jack high but drawing to the second-nut straight) is worth .85bb, while AQo (strong A high) is worth 0–0.03bb.

While your made hands are static (5x, QQ–AA), they bolster your flop check-back against Big Blind’s bluffs and worse value (75, K4s). Remember, you should also have full houses too....>

<....Playing vs Small Turn Probes

Conversely, when they choose the smaller size, you are priced in with a lot of your range. The lack of polarity means your defense doesn’t need to be as dynamic or as resilient against future aggression. Facing a weaker range means you don’t need to defend as strongly.

However, there is a further application here.

The merged-ness of the Big Blind’s range means the threshold for value-raising goes down. Remember, you didn’t c-bet, eliminating the top of your range. This greenlights the Big Blind to probe a wider range.

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AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Lucid Poker turn strategy for BB 50bb effective after flop check check on 6s 6h 5d 4d filtered for 30% pot bet range only. These are low frequency (3% total), highlighted for emphasis.

Since Big Blind is probing a wide range, including their bottom pairs, straight draws, and overcards, a reasonable (20%) 2-betting range emerges in the Button’s response. Button hands like Q5s and 85s eke out EV from the Big Blind’s weaker holdings.

And you have the nut straight, boats, and some overpairs to go along with your 5x. These should keep your opponent from going too bananas.

However, the predominant action in your response is to call (66%). Getting such a good price, you really only fold your worst Qx and Jx.

You defend greater than minimum defense frequency (MDF).

Exploiting Nits and Maniacs

In real life, your opponents will struggle to get frequencies and combos right most of the time. Leaning one way or another, they will imbalance their range, opening the door for you to pounce.

Take a look at the Big Blind’s turn strategy.

Lucid Poker turn strategy for Big Blind 50bb effective after flop check-check on 6s 6h 5d 4d

Yellow: Check, Orange: Bet 75% pot, Light Orange: Bet 30% pot.

Does this range look like what you’d expect from a nit? And for a 75% pot bet? Seems unlikely.

They may not have even defended these hands preflop (J3o, Q3o, J4o, T5o, etc.). Moreover, having a showdownable hand like 5x or 4x will not feel strong enough for them to bet.

If this nit bluffs, will they choose the large sizing with K8o? “King high could be good at showdown, no?”

If you face a probe from a nit for 75% pot, beware. Calling with AQo would torch.

Maniacs, on the other hand…

Unlike the nit, a maniac may overdefend the Big Blind. They might push all their mixes (32o, 22, 83s, offsuit 8x) into the betting bucket. They might even take some pure checks (QTo, 92s, K2o, T9o) and fire away.

When this happens, AQo starts to look pretty.

As always, play the player.

Key Takeaways

Defending versus turn probes well requires sound preflop and flop fundamentals. This means playing a balanced, board-covering check-back range on the flop.

Common mistakes in defending versus turn probes include calling too large a bet with static holdings like A high and overfolding versus small bets.

Here’s some shorthand advice:

• Versus large bets, continue with your made hands and strong draws.

• Versus small bets, continue MDF or greater (since you’re in position).

• Exploitatively, determine if your opponent’s probing range is too value- or bluff-heavy, folding more to the first and calling or raising more to the second.

<The speed and scale of Jared Kushner’s re-emergence can’t be overstated. In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his son-in-law is casually consolidating economic and political power with staggering speed. Kushner has positioned himself at the center of the biggest media merger in years and at the fulcrum of White House foreign policy, all while taking in multi-billion-dollar investments from autocratic governments.

On Monday, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, a billionaire Trump has openly urged to reshape the news industry in his favor — launched an unprecedented bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery by initiating a hostile takeover after losing an earlier bidding contest to Netflix. Paramount’s offer draws heavily from Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. These Middle Eastern autocracies are principal investors in an acquisition that would give them — and Kushner — influence over some of America’s most powerful news and cultural engines: CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures and the vast library of Warner content that shapes the national (and international) imagination. The partnership is unprecedented. Not even Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.

After leaving the first Trump administration, Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners, including $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The Saudis’ own advisers reportedly warned Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Kushner’s record did not justify such an investment, but the crown prince overruled them. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, adding another $1.5 billion to the pot. As of late 2024, Kushner had still not produced meaningful returns for these foreign governments, yet he had paid himself at least $157 million in fees. Forbes now calls him a billionaire.

The breathtaking scale of the Paramount–Warner bid makes the stakes even clearer. The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar are collectively offering around $24 billion to help the takeover, more than the entire current market value of Paramount itself.

These are autocracies investing in the infrastructure of American political communication, and they are doing so through the president’s son-in-law. You could not design a more direct conflict of interest. Paramount is even trying to structure the deal to avoid federal review by arguing that foreign investors would have no “voting rights,” a fiction so flimsy it should insult the intelligence of any serious regulator.

After the Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison had promised to deliver political obedience, telling Trump he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN once the deal closed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sneered that CNN “would benefit from new ownership.” Both she and Trump also publicly berated CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins this week.

Taken together, this is the authoritarian playbook in its purest form. Trump has not even attempted to disguise his intentions. He has said outright that he believes CNN should be sold, that its current leadership is “corrupt or incompetent” and that no media company should be allowed to continue “spreading poison.”

The president has long been obsessed with CNN. Before Trump first took office in 2017, Kushner, whose application for a top-secret clearance was initially rejected after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence, was the point person for securing favorable coverage from right-wing outlets like Sinclair. Kushner, who owned the iconic New York Observer for a decade, personally solicited then-CNN head Jeff Zucker about changing the composition of the network’s political panels — but Zucker refused. Beyond CNN, Kushner is credited with orchestrating Spanish-language network TelevisaUnivision’s rightward shift ahead of the 2024 election, which saw Trump’s electoral performance among Hispanic voters subsequently improve.

Now, members of Congress from both parties have raised alarms about this new deal. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who leads a Senate subcommittee on antitrust, said on X that the deal raised “a lot of antitrust red flags” and that he would hold “an intense antitrust hearing.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Justice Department should take a “hard look” at the deal. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., noted that the deal “looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare.” If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, it would own two of the top three largest streaming services, Netflix and HBO Max. This market power could allow Netflix to raise prices for its subscription services, which have already been rapidly increasing....>

<....But Kushner’s influence is not limited to the media; it reaches into the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Just weeks ago, he re-emerged as a central actor behind Trump’s new Gaza initiative, a plan that has produced a fragile ceasefire, a prisoner exchange and a partial Israeli withdrawal. Kushner has taken a victory lap, claiming that his “deep personal relationships” in the region made the deal possible. And in a marked convergence of his political and economic interests, the Gulf states underwriting Kushner’s private equity fund are the same governments now partnering with him on Middle East diplomacy.

Kushner has also quietly inserted himself into Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy. In late November, he and White House envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for five hours. Kushner and Witkoff, neither of whom hold formal government positions, were allowed to meet with the Russian president before even some Cabinet-level officials. The pair then joined Ukrainian officials in separate talks in Geneva and Miami. This is privatized foreign policy: diplomacy conducted by men whose incentives are not in the public interest.

Kushner’s Affinity Partners — again, funded primarily by autocratic regimes — is also behind the largest leveraged buyout in history, a $55 billion effort to purchase video game giant Electronic Arts. The deal, announced on the same day Trump revealed his 20-point plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza, will require approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the same body Trump allies have spent years attacking when it targeted Chinese investments.

All the while, as Kushner maneuvers behind the scenes, the right-wing assault on media independence continues to escalate. Ellison, who settled a $16 million lawsuit with Trump earlier this year over former Vice President Kamala Harris’ October 2024 interview with “60 Minutes,” has overseen a political makeover at CBS. He created an ombudsman role and filled it with a longtime Trump ally with no journalism experience, hired conservative pundit Bari Weiss to run the newsroom and even bought Weiss’s The Free Press for $150 million.

And despite giving what was seen as a peacemaking interview to Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes,” Trump has continued to berate CBS publicly, furious that the network recently aired a “60 Minutes” interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whom he now considers insufficiently loyal following her recent critiques of him. In Trumpworld, there is no such thing as editorial independence — only obedience or betrayal, which are the hallmark of state capture in regimes like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. There, over a period of more than a decade, Orbán worked to successfully weaken the independence of the judiciary, leverage control over independent media outlets, wear down and cripple independent institutions — including universities — funnel government funds to regime loyalists and redraw the electoral system to his favor.

Since Donald Trump returned to office in January, he has been doing the same at lightning speed.

This is unfolding as the Supreme Court considers cases that could severely weaken independent federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and CFIUS, which exist precisely to prevent the sort of conflicts of interest that Kushner embodies. If the Court hobbles those institutions, as many predict will happen, Trump and Kushner will inherit both the power and the regulatory vacuum to reshape the American economy and media environment with virtually no oversight.

Republicans spent years screaming about former first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties. And yet here stands Jared Kushner: a man who has made a small fortune from a large one, who positioned himself as a “deal-maker” while outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder, who now wants to help pick which news organizations survive and which are purged.

Kushner’s sudden, sweeping reappearance is not a coincidence or a comeback. It is a consolidation. He’s back to lead a hostile takeover of our information ecosystem.>

<President Donald Trump declared last week that House Speaker Mike Johnson “has been a fantastic speaker,” making it clear that he considers Johnson to be one of his most important subordinates. Trump wasn’t doing Johnson any favors. With his latest approval ratings firmly in the thirties, the president is increasingly seen as more of an albatross than a benefit to the GOP. And right now, with House Republicans on the verge of a full-scale mutiny, Johnson needs all the help he can get.

In fairness, Johnson is not the first Republican speaker to find himself in that situation. In fact, it has become something of a ritual sacrifice for the leader of the House GOP to be unceremoniously deposed by his own members. Johnson himself won the post after his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Ca., was removed from his post after a painful series of votes in which the caucus finally settled on the virtually unknown congressman from Louisiana to lead them.

McCarthy had a tumultuous nine-month tenure after the Republican members staged a raucous spectacle by taking an historic 15 votes to elect him to the job. Before him, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, had been pushed to take the job when the caucus forced out former Speaker John Boehner. But Ryan was so disillusioned that he ended up quitting politics altogether after just three years. Boehner abruptly quit when he lost support after deigning to compromise. His predecessor, Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert — now a convicted sex offender — resigned due to scandal, as did Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich before him.

Republicans eat their own. And apparently a speaker of the House is a delicacy. So it’s not surprising that Johnson would find himself on the run at this point in his term.

Republicans govern in total chaos. But Johnson’s case is unique in one important respect: In the past few years, the reason GOP speakers failed was because the most extreme conservatives in the caucus would not accept any kind of compromise with Democrats in order to pass legislation. And even when the “compromise” was really a win, they refused to take yes for an answer. They wanted to dominate the opposition, to pound them into submission, and if they couldn’t have that they would rather have nothing. Boehner, Ryan and McCarthy all fell prey to that puerile intransigence. Johnson was one of those guys himself and, for the most part, he’s been able to keep his hardcore tea party types in line. His resistance is coming from a number of other directions.

One of the biggest thorns in his side, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been trying to depose him almost from the beginning. Back in March, she filed a motion to vacate the chair — essentially, a no-confidence vote — because Johnson “betrayed our conference and broke our rules” by working with Democrats to pass a bill to fund the government. The fractious right-wing did not join her in rebellion, instead opting to express support for Johnson.

Nevertheless, Greene persisted. She complained about his support for FISA reauthorization and the foreign aid bill, making demand after demand until she finally triggered a vote that resulted in the Democrats stepping in to save him with a vote of 359-43. The 10 Republicans who voted with Greene included a few of the usual right-wing suspects, but the rest were unpredictable cranks; most of the conservatives stuck with Johnson. He is, after all, one of their own....>

<....That quieted the restiveness among the ranks for a time, but Johnson has always had to look over his shoulder. Now, Greene has now decided to turn in her MAGA hat and will be resigning next month. True to form, she is planning to take one more shot at Johnson before she departs. According to MSNOW, she’s once again trying to round up the nine votes needed to bring up a motion to vacate the chair and oust Johnson. While most people think she won’t succeed, her complaints about Johnson are now being echoed by many in the caucus, most pointedly by some of the women who are very unhappy about his dismissive attitude toward them.

Greene complained to CNN that Johnson has sidelined them and doesn’t take them seriously. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., took to the pages of the New York Times to rail against his leadership. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of the House leadership, called Johnson a habitual liar and told the Wall Street Journal that she doesn’t think he would have the votes to survive if a vote were held. “It’s that widespread,” she said.

Although they have been the most vocally defiant, it isn’t just the women. The New York Times’ Annie Karni reported on a number of others who have soured on Johnson’s leadership. Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican facing a loss of his seat due to redistricting (precipitated by the snowball effect from Trump’s demand that Texas gerrymander five more seats for Republicans) said that “the overriding issue is the House has not been at the forefront of driving policymaking, or the agenda in Washington.” In other words, they’ve become a rubber stamp for Trump’s increasingly unpopular agenda.

Members are still angry about Johnson’s decision to send them home for two months during the shutdown, and those in vulnerable swing districts are desperate to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, knowing that allowing them to lapse will be the kiss of death. Johnson, following his own deep hostility to any kind of government health care program, is refusing. Even Trump was briefly willing to extend them for a couple of years, but the speaker and others quickly informed him that plan was a non-starter with the right wing, which is excited by the idea that people on the hated Obamacare will lose their insurance.

Johnson’s caucus has had enough. They’re rebelling with discharge petitions to force votes against his will and tanking rule votes that would bring bills Johnson wants to see passed to the floor. Until recently, such actions were unheard of. Discharge petitions like the one that made the administration release the Epstein files were always seen as a desperate Hail Mary that never worked. Washington insiders would roll their eyes and scoff when anyone would suggest that it be tried. Not anymore. As POLITICO has reported, since Johnson took over, members have managed to defy him by “getting the required 218 signatures needed to force votes on legislation he had blocked — more than in the prior 30 years combined.”

Mike Johnson is in trouble, and as the GOP stares at the likelihood of a possible electoral bloodbath in the 2026 midterms, he may not last through the next year. While he won’t have to deal with his nemesis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, any more, the rebellion she started has become a full-fledged insurrection. In what’s become a GOP tradition, “the ousting of the speaker” is likely to come sooner rather than later. The only question is: Who in the world would want the thankless job?>

<Anyone who has paid close attention to Donald Trump’s utterances over the years is acutely aware of his black-and-white perspective on America’s history and its current trajectory. It’s a tale of incredible heroism matched by incredible villainy with Trump representing the summit of national achievement and his opponents and detractors motivated strictly by malice, dishonesty, and even treason. There is no nuance in his publicly expressed worldview, no room for honest disagreement. And up until recently, there has been no doubt that the 47th president believes he is the true champion of the values and interests of the overwhelming majority of the American people, who have (in his estimation) lifted him to supreme power three times now by ever-increasing margins that reached epic, unprecedented levels in 2024.

And that’s why it’s startling to see a new note of anger toward those same American people emanate from his soapbox at Truth Social:

Assuming Trump believes half of what he says, this aggrieved astonishment makes some sense. Throughout the 2024 campaign, he regularly depicted the Biden administration as utterly depraved and consciously evil — a nation-destroying enterprise with not a bit of redeeming value, having wrecked the living paradise Trump was busily building during his first term. The 47th president fully resumed and even accelerated his American-greatness project in 2025 and is already so satisfied with his success that he is devoting a great deal of time to building monuments to himself and demanding global recognition of all he has done. Yet instead of being able to bask in his accomplishments and glory in his plans, he’s being told by the political experts in his orbit that the people aren’t happy. Indeed, even as he claims that in one year the country has gone from Weimar levels of hyperinflation to a dizzying climb in real wages and living standards, he’s being pushed out on the road to exhibit concerns about affordability, a term he has mocked and repeatedly called a hoax.

It’s not just the White House political staff who are worried. Off-year elections are regularly showing troubling signs for Trump’s party. The lockstep machinery in Congress that gave the president his One Big Beautiful Act is showing some wear and tear. The U.S. Supreme Court majority he helped forge is reportedly poised to deny him the beloved tariff powers that stand at the very center of both his economic policies and his foreign-relations strategy. Worse yet, Trump seems to fear, the people themselves have turned on him. Don’t they get it? Don’t they “understand what is happening”?

The president’s growing dismay over the ingratitude of the American people may help explain his determination to insulate his party from public opinion via an unprecedented wave of pre-midterm gerrymandering of congressional seats. If so, you can imagine the level of fury he must feel toward the Republican members of the Indiana state senate who just thwarted his demands for a new map giving Republicans a monopoly on representation in the U.S. House. He personally met with and spoke to many of these people. He sent J.D. Vance to lobby and threaten them some more. His allies in MAGA-land joined the Hoosier pressure campaign, some of them going over the brink into threats of violence and others treating the gerrymander as a necessary tribute to the late Charlie Kirk. Yet they defied the man who has already restored American greatness, distracting him from his divinely blessed work. How dare they!>

<....Your normal politician experiencing the sort of setbacks Trump has recently encountered would privately complain, maybe cry in a beer or two, and then buckle down to the work of restoring public trust and improving the poll numbers (which Trump regularly denounces as “fake” but seems to follow closely). It’s unclear if he has that in his makeup. A successful presidency is not an aspiration for him; it’s an accomplishment worth celebrating with some extra gilding of the White House and a few more international peace prizes. In reality, every second-term president loses some altitude as lame-duck status sinks in — the wise chief executives give their underlings some slack to distance themselves from the incumbent and prepare the way for a succession. But Trump isn’t just a president; he’s the leader of a movement that has remade American politics and saved a country headed straight to hell. So the MAGA prescription for the GOP in the remaining three years of the Trump presidency is to hew ever more closely to his wishes and stand proudly in his enormous shadow.

If his current grumpiness about public opinion persists or even intensifies, Trump would not be the first leader to be undone by the sense that his country didn’t deserve him. It is, in fact, an occupational hazard for those who view themselves as world-historical figures instead of mere elected officials with limited horizons, operating within constitutional boundaries. Given his famous unmanageability, it may be vain for Trump’s advisers to urge him to admit some shortcomings in his policies and show some empathy for those who believe they are suffering in this greatest of all moments in U.S. history. It’s going to be a long three years if he simply cannot adjust to adverse public opinion and grows contemptuous of the people whose adulation he believes he has earned.>

<MAGA conservatives have suggested that the fatal shooting at Brown University was a politically motivated attack, even as the manhunt for a suspect and motive continues.

As the authorities revealed new surveillance footage on Monday after FBI director Kash Patel’s controversial handling of the case, conspiracy theories swirled about the tragedy, which killed two people: Ella Cook, the vice president of the university’s Republican club, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzoko, an aspiring neurosurgeon.

President Donald Trump said on Monday afternoon that it was not known whether the attack was targeted. However, some of his supporters have been quick to suggest it is another case of political violence by those on the left.

“Ella Cook was just 19 years old—a Conservative, a Christian, and Vice President of the Republican Club at Brown University. She was brutally killed by a shooter in what appears to be a targeted political attack,” conservative podcaster Benny Johnson wrote on X, alongside a list of violent attacks against right-wing figures such as Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk.

“If you still don’t see what’s happening, you haven’t been paying attention.”

MAGA Congressman Andy Biggs agreed, declaring: “Enough is enough. Political violence must come to a swift end.” Actor and Trump supporter James Woods also weighed in, claiming: “They will keep assaulting and murdering conservative Americans until we are wiped out or start fighting back.”

And William Branson Donahue, founder and chairman of the College Republicans, claimed to have been “told” that Cook was “allegedly targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood.”

“This was an attack on our family,” he said.

The Brown University attack took place on Saturday, when an active shooter opened fire at the Rhode Island campus, killing two people and injuring about nine others.

Also at the campus were two students who had also experienced mass shootings before: Mia Tretta, who was shot in the 2019 shooting at Saugus High School, and Zoe Weissman, who attended Westglades Middle School, adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a student killed 19 people in 2018.

But this, too, fueled conspiracies and questions surrounding the attack, with some asking “what are the odds” of people surviving the Brown attack while a Republican was killed in the latest shooting.

“Both have already been making the rounds on CNN and MSDNC, pushing the gun control agenda in the immediate aftermath of surviving yet another mass shooting,” noted Joshua Hall, a self-described “libertarian for Donald Trump.”

“Does anyone actually believe that this is a coincidence?”

With the investigation into its third day, police on Monday afternoon released two brief videos of the possible gunman—whose face is not visible in the footage—in the hopes that someone might recognize him.

But the investigation has come under fire after a man initially detained over the incident was released, in yet another embarrassing twist for FBI Director Kash Patel.

Patel had posted about tracking the person of interest down, claiming on X that the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team had used “critical geolocation capabilities” to detain the man in a hotel room in Coventry.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha later came out to declare the evidence in the case “now points in a different direction.”

It was not the first time Patel, who critics say is highly unqualified for his job, had come under scrutiny for premature social media announcements.

Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk earlier this year, Patel also posted that the suspect was in custody, only to say less than two hours later that he had been released.

Asked on Monday afternoon if Patel had explained why it had been so difficult for the FBI to identify the shooter, Trump sought to defend his MAGA acolyte.

“It’s always difficult. So far we’ve done a very good job of it,” he said.

“But you’ll have to ask the school about that because this was a school problem,” he added.

“They had their own guards, they had their own police, they had their own everything.”

Asked if a motive had been identified, Trump said no, but “hopefully they’re going to capture this animal.”....>

<Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sparked the ire of President Donald Trump’s political advisors in the White House with his latest push to focus on pro-life messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections, reported Axios on Monday.

Axios’s Alex Isenstadt reported on the fury inside the Trump White House over Hawley’s announcement last week that he and his wife, constitutional lawyer Erin Hawley, are launching a new dark-money political group named the Love Life Initiative.

“Trump’s lieutenants believe the move by Hawley — a vocal populist who speaks up for the working class — is part of a plan to position himself to challenge Vice President Vance for the presidency in 2028,” explained Isenstadt on the impact of top Trump advisors speaking out against Hawley, albeit anonymously.

“Clearly, Senator Hawley and his political team learned nothing from the 2022 elections, when the SCOTUS abortion ruling [overturning Roe v. Wade] resuscitated the Democrats in the midterms,” said one of the two advisors Axios spoke to.

Isenstadt reported on his conversation with a “second Trump adviser who’s deeply involved in midterm strategy said the GOP needs to focus instead on ‘aggressive action focused on positive gains in the economy.’” The adviser told him:

That alone will be the driving force behind the next election. Picking a fight on an issue like abortion in a midterm is the height of asinine stupidity.

While pro-life messaging remains popular within the GOP base, strategists looking to win key swing states and the national popular vote are undoubtedly worried about the 51% of Americans who call themselves pro-choice, according to a recent Gallup poll. Only 43% of Americans view themselves as pro-life, making the issue a tenuous one for the GOP.>

<House Speaker Mike Johnson’s unenviable situation got a little worse on Wednesday when four centrist Republicans — all from competitive districts — joined a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending the Affordable Care Act’s expiring health insurance subsidies. Alongside last month’s successful push to override his obstructionism on the Epstein files, Wednesday’s revolt adds to a growing chorus of GOP lawmakers rejecting their leader’s bad political judgment.

Unlike his predecessor, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Johnson’s tumultuous two years as speaker have been marred by embarrassing withdrawn votes and high-profile party defections. He ends 2025 in perhaps the worst political position of any speaker in recent memory, facing down both internal party dissent and the likelihood of an electoral bruising next year. Wednesday’s revolt isn’t a one-off — it’s a sign of things to come for a broken Republican Party.

Johnson’s time in the speaker’s chair coincided with some of the least productive terms of any Congress in history, including presiding over the longest-ever federal shutdown. That’s not just bad timing on Johnson’s part — it’s a direct result of his inability to lead the House at a moment when voters want swift action from their representatives. Johnson’s colleagues now worry his tone-deafness to the problems facing voters will ultimately cost them their jobs.

In other words, Johnson is weaker than ever — and his Republican colleagues know it.

The speaker’s latest face-plant came after Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, along with Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, lost patience with Johnson’s unwillingness to compromise on extending the ACA’s popular health care subsidies.

Health care affordability has been a burning issue for voters this year, and anger over the threat of skyrocketing health insurance premiums played a prominent role in Democrats’ resounding overperformance in Virginia’s and New Jersey’s statewide elections. Fitzpatrick, Lawler, Bresnahan and Mackenzie all represent districts Democrats aim to flip next year.

Support for the ACA, also known as Obamacare, has never been higher. A recent Gallup poll showed national approval of the program at a record 57%, driven by a surge in support from crucial independent voters. An NBC News Decision Desk poll published this week found that voters trust Democrats (57%) more than Republicans (43%) to address rising health insurance prices.

Americans are also sure of where to lay the blame if Congress fails to protect their health insurance premiums from shooting through the roof. A December survey by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, or KFF, found that most ACA enrollees would blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for failing to act. Fitzpatrick, Lawler, Bresnahan and Mackenzie all fear that Johnson is providing voters with the perfect image of a powerful GOP leader visibly failing to act.

“As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”

But Johnson’s headaches didn’t start in December. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., have been vocal critics of Johnson’s refusal to release the thousands of documents connected to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Johnson’s stonewalling led Massie to launch his own discharge petition, which ultimately forced the speaker’s hand....>

<....Even before the ultimately successful vote, plenty of Republicans openly fretted that Johnson’s myriad evasions made Republicans look like they had something to hide. Far from tempering voter fury over the GOP’s Epstein Files hypocrisy, Johnson only guaranteed the issue remained at the top of international headlines. For Republicans facing tough reelection races, Johnson’s spectacular failure to navigate the Epstein Files seriously damaged their confidence in his ability to read the political winds ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Those suspicions only worsened when Johnson dug in his heels against an ACA subsidy extension despite pleas to compromise from within his own caucus. Now that Republicans realize how easy it is to go around their leader, why would any of them feel obligated to tie themselves to Johnson’s bad political judgment? Instead of marching off the electoral cliff with Johnson, embattled Republicans such as Massie, Lawler and Fitzpatrick are turning to an unlikely collaborator: Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

In contrast to Johnson’s reflexive and often wrong political gambits, Jeffiries’ decision to stand firm behind Democrats’ proposed three-year ACA subsidy extension now looks shrewd. Not only has Jeffries managed to get his proposal to a floor vote without surrendering key elements to Johnson, he succeeded by going over Johnson’s head with his own colleagues. Jeffries now puts Johnson in the nasty position of rejecting a bipartisan proposal supported by four Republican lawmakers who Johnson has consistently praised as serious policymakers. To borrow a popular MAGA phrase, Jeffries’ move feels a lot like 5D chess.

Johnson now looks so unreasonable that even his own colleagues would rather work with Democrats to solve Americans’ problems. The political ad practically writes itself. But Johnson isn’t done making missteps, because he’s now fallen back to the last-ditch play of a desperate man: delay, delay, delay.

In remarks to NBC News chief Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles, Lawler urged Johnson to bring Jeffries’ three-year ACA extension to a vote before the House leaves for its holiday break. That’s a direct challenge to Johnson, who earlier in the day refused to specify when the vote might take place. Lawler and his rebel Republicans don’t want voters to spend the long holiday break blaming Republicans for how much their health care costs are about to increase. Johnson, it seems, doesn’t share his colleagues’ concerns.

Increasingly ignored and overruled by his own caucus, Johnson will enter the new year with none of the influence and power traditionally associated with the speakership. If 2025 proved to be a headache for him, 2026 is shaping up to be a migraine. Effective leadership requires strong character and firm values. Johnson lacked both, and now his caucus is moving on without him.>

<Evita Duffy-Alfonso, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's daughter, declared that the Transportation and Security Administration was "unconstitutional" after she was forced to wait 15 minutes for a pat-down.

"I nearly missed my flight this morning after the TSA made me wait 15 minutes for a pat-down because I'm pregnant and didn't feel like getting radiation exposure from their body scanner," Duffy-Alfonso wrote in a Thursday post on X. "The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman into just walking through the scanner because it's 'safe.'"

"After finally getting the absurdly invasive pat-down, I barely made my flight. All this for an unconstitutional agency that isn't even good at its job," she ranted. "Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I'd handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country. Is this freedom?"

"Travel, brought to you by George Orwell—and the privilege of convenience based solely on your willingness to surrender biometric data and submit to radiation exposure? The 'golden age of transportation' cannot begin until the TSA is gone."

Duffy-Alfonso later took a shot at DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

"TSA is under DHS, which is run by Kristi Noem. If [my father] did have TSA, he'd radically limit it and lobby Congress to abolish it," she told one commenter.>

<Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, was willing to be the team player with the stiff upper lip.

But everyone has their limits.

After a series of public humiliations delivered to her by President Trump — his yanking of her nomination to serve as U.N. ambassador; his Oval Office love fest with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, during which the president undercut her; and the coup de grâce of his refusal to endorse her in the Republican primary for governor — Ms. Stefanik on Friday afternoon announced she’d had enough.

She was done with the governor’s race, for which she had raised more than $12 million from donors who may now be frustrated with her decision to pull out. And done with Congress altogether: She said she would not seek re-election next year.

Now, at war with Speaker Mike Johnson, privately livid at Mr. Trump and deeply frustrated with her job in Congress, it is not clear whether Ms. Stefanik even has any interest in finishing her term, although people close to her said she planned to stay until the end of her term.

“My most important title is Mom,” she wrote in a long post on social media on Friday.

People close to Ms. Stefanik said she was not upset with the president, noting that the two had spoken multiple times, including in person, over the past few weeks, conversations in which they saw eye to eye about Ms. Stefanik’s decision and her future.

To detractors, Ms. Stefanik’s shoddy treatment by the president amounted to karmic comeuppance for a Republican lawmaker who came to Congress as a Harvard-educated moderate but tacked unapologetically to the MAGA right when it suited her political purposes. They said she personified the opportunistic shape-shifting that gripped her party.

“My greatest disappointment is Elise Stefanik, who should know better,” Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, said in an interview last year, describing her as a one-time friend. “She went off the deep end.”

Her tumble from grace crystallized the limits of MAGA loyalty and the risks of building a political identity around Mr. Trump, who can turbocharge or torpedo a career — sometimes both. Once one of the president’s most stalwart defenders, Ms. Stefanik, who referred to herself as “ultra MAGA” and styled herself after Mr. Trump, ultimately found herself undermined by him and politically adrift.

In truth, Ms. Stefanik, first elected in 2014 as the youngest woman to serve in the House, has been burned out on Congress for years.

Instead of seeking to rise in the House, Ms. Stefanik set her sights on serving in a second Trump administration. When every other member of House Republican leadership ran for speaker in 2023, she sat it out. Instead, she looked in the mirror and saw a cabinet secretary looking back.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican who was a true believer but dared to break publicly with the president on a variety of issues, recently experienced the inevitable falling out with him for doing so.

But Mr. Trump’s treatment of Ms. Stefanik was more surprising because no one had ever viewed her as a true believer, and she still never dared to vent frustration or disagreement with the president.

“Resilience is one of my strengths,” she said in a brief interview last April, after the president withdrew her nomination to serve as U.N. ambassador. “We have bounced back pretty quick. The reality is almost everyone prominent in American politics has a twist and turn.”

At the time, people close to her said, Ms. Stefanik was able to convince herself she had been the victim of difficult political circumstances. Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson at the time were concerned about losing another seat in the House when the majority was already too slim to govern. Plus, Mr. Trump was privately telling her that he would reward her down the line with something much better. Her political future still looked bright.

In casting about for something else, Ms. Stefanik looked to the governor’s race. Winning a statewide race in New York was always going to be an uphill battle. But Ms. Stefanik viewed Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, as weak, and she thought she could enhance her own profile even if she only came within striking distance....>

<....But without Mr. Trump’s endorsement, people who spoke to her said, the entire premise became ludicrous. And Mr. Trump, who famously hates to back a losing candidate, was holding out.

“They’re both great people,” the president said in the Oval Office earlier this month when asked whether he had a preferred candidate in the Republican primary for governor. It was a punch in the gut for Ms. Stefanik. To add insult to injury, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, had not officially entered the race.

Still, Ms. Stefanik said nothing, choosing to channel much of her anger at Mr. Johnson.

In 2019, former Speaker Paul Ryan described Ms. Stefanik in a Time magazine spotlight as “the future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America.” For a time, it looked like his statement would hold true.

When the party transformed itself under Mr. Trump, Ms. Stefanik seemed to have no qualms about doing what it took to remain the face of its future.

She took off in February 2020, when Mr. Trump hosted the House Republican conference in the White House East Room after his acquittal in his first impeachment trial. He credited Ms. Stefanik with that victory.

“You were killing them, Elise. You were killing them,” he said, asking Ms. Stefanik, clad in a bright red dress, to stand up and be recognized. She beamed as the president and all of her colleagues applauded her. From there, she rose to serve in House leadership and underwent a vetting to serve as Mr. Trump’s vice president.

But things did not turn out exactly as planned.

Part of the strategy of her long-shot bid for governor was to make Mr. Mamdani the far-left face of the Democratic Party. On the campaign trail, she referred to him as a “jihadist,” the kind of incendiary moniker Mr. Trump favors. Given all that she had done to remain loyal to the president, Ms. Stefanik figured he would back her.

Mr. Trump did no such thing. When asked if he agreed with Ms. Stefanik that the mayor-elect was a “jihadist,” he responded: “No, I don’t. She’s out there campaigning, you know. You say things sometimes in a campaign.”

With Mr. Mamdani standing beside him, he added: “You really have to ask her about that. I met with a man who is a very rational person.”

At least one ally was trying on Friday night to give Ms. Stefanik a reason to keep fighting.

“Elise needs to keep her seat and challenge Mike Johnson immediately,” Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, said, calling her “one of our real warriors.”>

<JohnBoy....Where I live, MAGA nutzoid Trumpanzees roll coal on the streets from their pick-ups festooned with American flags desecrated by portraits of our beloved leader....> I too live in a blue state (with a Republican guvnor, no less) but we have been spared this sort of manic tripe.

<....They turn every school board or town council meeting into hunts for Woketopia witches....>

It is bad enough reading of states such as Oklahoma where the game is on to root out all resistance, but this is pathetic. I guess these monsters forgot that educating our children was the purpose of schools rather than using them as vehicles of Far Right indoctrination.

<....Keep it to yourself.>

With ya there, but don't hold your breath.>

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