Failing upwards, one drink at a time.

Before we jump into both cases, I want to explain the headline. In case you forgot, the United States currently does not have an attorney general. Pam Bondi - who previously occupied the post - was dismissed on April 2, 2026.

Our acting attorney general is none other than Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche. Since being appointed, he has brought indictments against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and former FBI director James Comey, amongst others.

After Bondi was dismissed, I heard a few names dropped as her replacement, with Blanche only being thought of as a placeholder. But since that time, it is seriously starting to look like Blanche could be offered the job, and it’s all thanks to his willingness to do what Bondi refused to do: Bring meritless indictments against Trump’s perceived enemies.

This is what makes Blanche a “DEI” hire: He has no other qualifications or experience other than his willingness to be servile to Trump. On the Right, there is this imagined definition of what DEI actually is, and it ranges from meritless elevation to full oppression of white people. Blanche proves that it exists for Republicans: He has no exceptional qualities that would allow him to attain a position like deputy attorney general (or a comparable job in the private sector), but he got the job anyway because he is willing to lick Trump’s boots.

You can throw lots of other members of the Trump Administration into this group too: Pete Hegseth, Lee Zeldin, and, most notably, Kash Patel.

Ka$h has had two articles written about him recently, both coming from The Atlantic. The original one details Patel’s pretty wild drinking habits, to the point where it has alarmed the FBI:

Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.

On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.

A few weeks later, The Atlantic broke another story about Patel, highlighting his lavish spending habits and his own personal, FBI-branded bourbon (seriously).

Suffice it to say, if Patel was not a full Trump sycophant, he would not be the director of the FBI. So, it’s worth noting this about two of our highest law enforcement officials in the country before we get into these cases: The head of the DOJ and the head of the FBI are both DEI hires.

SPLC, Yeah You Know Me

I want to start with this case, but I also want to let my readers know off the bat that I’m not going to bore you with deep dives here. To me, there are two obvious deficits in both cases that summarize why the DOJ will struggle to get to trial, let alone to a conviction.

To summarize the SPLC case quickly: DOJ is basically alleging that the SPLC - through paying informants who are embedded within white supremacist groups - has deceived their donors, who expect SPLC to be combating white supremacist groups. DOJ says that if you are paying an informant, then you are funding the group your informant is embedded within. It is ridiculous on its face.

For one, the FBI does the same thing all the time, and that doesn’t mean that the FBI is funding terrorism, white supremacist groups, or anyone else breaking the law. Spoiler: To get people to turn on their friends, it sometimes helps to pay them. Or, in SPLC’s case, if you want someone to pretend to be a white supremacist and hang out with them, you cannot expect them to do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

That is the short version, but I’ll still give you the deep dives. Andrew Weissmann does a great job of breaking down the SPLC case; money quote (Weissmann calls SPLC the “Center” in his piece):

But there is more reason that the indictment on its face is particularly weak. In spite of the fact this is what is known as a “speaking indictment” – that is, an indictment that tells the story of the crime, and does not simply recite the language of the particular criminal statute charged — it nowhere says what specifically the donors were told that was fraudulent. The indictment is devoid of any allegation that the Center told the donors that it would not use donor money to engage in the informant plan it devised to learn about these alleged hate groups. That is necessary to be able to prove fraud. The current Center website, for instance, states that the Center is “standing up for the most vulnerable people in society – those who have no other champion. We’re exposing hate and injustice, fighting discrimination.” Even more pointedly, the website states, “Through our Intelligence Project, we monitor and expose hate and antigovernment movements advancing white supremacy” (emphasis added). None of that would be made fraudulent by the Center’s paying informants to gather information about alleged hate groups. (I do not know what language was used at the time of the charged conduct, but it is notable that the government does not rely on any such language in supporting the charges.)

Weissmann wrote his piece before SPLC submitted their brief in the case, and in it they make a pretty blockbuster allegation: DOJ did not disclose to the grand jury that the SPLC shares its information with law enforcement. Here is SPLC:

In 2019, the SPLC provided information to law enforcement about a planned attack by a member of the white supremacist extremist group Atomwaffen Division, who intended to engage in a major terrorist attack against Las Vegas citizens. The SPLC’s information led to the individual being charged and convicted — and thwarted the planned attack.

Prior to the indictment, attorneys for the SPLC met with prosecutors and presented specific information and documents of scenarios in which the SPLC shared information from the informant program with law enforcement. That information led to a criminal conviction of an individual that the government identified as dangerous and who lied about his affiliation with an extremist group in seeking national security clearance.

That is the sort of thing that results in a dismissal of the case rather than a simple “not guilty” verdict after a trial. SPLC is seeking the full transcripts of what was disclosed to the grand jury, and if there was any deception on DOJ’s part (I’m willing to bet there was), we could see a dismissal here.

If you’ve read The Jackal for a while, you know that dismissals are extremely rare in Federal cases, and I think it is still unlikely to occur here. But DOJ is skirting really close to the line in a case that is already fundamentally weak at its core.

James Comey, Yeah You Know Me

See? I made an old reference to a Naughty by Nature song work in both segments of this Jackal. How can anyone say it’s boring?

I want to spend a little bit more time on the Comey case because I think it is (1) much more likely to be dismissed and (2) emblematic of a deeper issue within the Trump Administration.

DOJ has indicted Comey because of an Instagram post he did last year, where he took a picture of a group of seashells that said, “86 47.” DOJ is arguing that this was essentially a death threat made by Comey against Trump, who is (unfortunately) the 47th president of the United States, and “86” means “kill.”

I can’t really overstate this: Comey’s indictment is going to be dismissed. If I’m wrong about that, then it is definitely not going to win at trial. For one, “86” does not mean “kill” in most people’s understanding of the term. Merriam-Webster has an entry for it, where they explicitly say it is so rarely used as a reference to kill, that they do not include it as a possible definition on their website.

But let’s assume that Comey believed it meant “to kill,” just to fully get into DOJ’s argument. Even if you think that is true, DOJ still has an almost impossible task to prove this case. First, they’d have to prove that Comey (1) arranged the seashells and (2) intended the photo to be a true threat.

DOJ cannot prove either. Comey has already said he simply saw the seashells arranged on the beach and snapped the photo. But DOJ really cannot prove it was a true threat, because it obviously wasn’t.

The hallmark SCOTUS case in whether or not a threat against the president is actually “true” is Watts v. United States. Watts - who was 18 at the time - said about President Lyndon B. Johnson:

If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J

SCOTUS said that this statement from Watts - which directly names a person and explains how he’d want to kill them - was protected under free speech. A thing all Americans should be thankful for: Our First Amendment protections are very robust, and they protect an 18-year-old who is blowing off steam.

They also protect James Comey, but he also has an additional protection here: Todd Blanche’s stupidity. During one of the Sunday shows, Blanche was asked about a whole host of “86 47” products on Amazon, and whether or not DOJ would be prosecuting anyone selling or purchasing those. Blanche said no, which Comey’s team will 1000% cite to as evidence of vindictive prosecution when they ask for a dismissal.

Blanche’s public statements are a big problem for DOJ. A few weeks ago, Blanche was speaking at CPAC - a conservative, partisan event - and openly bragged that all the DOJ employees who had worked on the Trump prosecution cases were all fired.

There are several of these former employees - one of whom is Comey’s daughter - with active lawsuits against the DOJ for wrongful termination. Do you know who just validated their lawsuits? Todd Blanche.

And I want to be clear: None of this stuff is valid; all of it is done to satisfy Trump’s desire for revenge; no one in the Administration actually cares; and all of it costs real money.

You and I are paying for these indictments right now, while Trump makes billions off his second term. It is so incredibly frustrating, because Trump likely isn’t going to see consequences. But do you know who will? I’d bet Blanche loses his bar license in the future, along with anyone else who signed onto this prosecution.

I’ll try to come back before Memorial Day with a general update on the insanity.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, I thought certain portions of conservative media did a good job offering constructive criticism of the Administration, particularly on foreign policy. On Syria, for instance, the Administration’s lack of action was particularly bad, to the point where you can attribute a lot of Donald Trump’s rise to Obama’s fecklessness. Here is Kori Schake from back then:

The United States is long overdue to protect the grieving people of Syria from the preying vultures of Assad, Iran, Russia, and the Islamic State. President Obama worries about the cost of American involvement abroad and the risk of confronting Putin’s Russia; he ought to be much more worried about the cost of our remaining uninvolved. As Obama administration special envoy Martin Indyk put it, “not taking a stand in Syria was the original mistake that helped to open the gates of hell.”

The Syrian Civil War led to a refugee crisis, sending millions of Syrians to Europe, America, and across the globe. The influx of refugees, in turn, led to a global, anti-immigrant populist movement fueled by nationalism, which eventually attained power in Europe and (you guessed it) the United States.

Could anyone have predicted this? I’m not sure, but the conservative criticism of Obama actually had a point: Inaction can cost you something too.

Schake, of course, is stilling writing and making good points. Here is a recent piece from her, describing Trump’s foreign policy actions in his second term:

But Trump’s behavior is a difference in kind, not just a difference in magnitude, from previous American presidents. He is not simply opting out of denser webbing of international order as Clinton did, or seeking to balance American dominance with advancing cooperation as Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden did. Trump is an arsonist of the existing order, which he seems to genuinely believe is destructive to American interests.

As Daniel Drezner and Elizabeth Saunders characterize it, Trump has pioneered hegemonic instability, collapsing the post-1945 international order by making the dominant power an agent of chaos and destruction.

Schake was previously critical of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy and now recognizes Trump’s disaster on the world stage. Imagine that. And she lobbed her initial criticism from National Review, what was previously the premier conservative magazine in the country. Although it’s still chugging along, Republican voters don’t read it.

There is a reason you probably don’t see Schake’s intellectual commentary on Fox News or why you don’t see her being interviewed by Tucker Carlson: It’s because the conservative intellectual movement is dead. And the best evidence of that is Donald Trump’s ascendence as leader of the GOP.

A lot of people miss this about Donald Trump, but one of the reasons he was able to take over the Republican Party is that he studied. Trump spent hours watching cable news, specifically Fox, and would call into their shows frequently (this continued into his presidency). From there, Trump was able to learn the language of the hard Right, but he also left himself vulnerable to deception. Fox News is able to deceive the average Boomer, so just imagine what they are able to do to someone with a sub-average IQ.

To this day, Trump believes that the Obama Administration allowed Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the U.S., Iran, China, France, Britain, Russia, and Germany. He tore up that agreement in his first term based on this misbelief. Here is Stephen M. Walt, after Trump tore up the deal:

As long expected, Donald Trump has bowed to his ego, his petulant envy of Barack Obama, his hard-line donors, his new set of hawkish advisors,1 and above all his own ignorance and walked away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international agreement that prevents Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is important to understand what’s really going on here. Trump’s decision is not based on a desire to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb; if that were the case, it would make much more sense to stay firmly committed to the deal and eventually negotiate to make it permanent. After all, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (which monitors and inspects Iran’s facilities) and U.S. intelligence agree that Iran has been in full compliance with the JCPOA since it was signed.

It was Trump’s ignorance that led him to tearing up the JCPOA and it his own ignorance now that is leading us deeper into a war that we cannot win. I have shared this picture before, but it still drives me crazy. You can see where we were when we signed the JCPOA, and what happened after we pulled out:

Eventually, Trump will have to give more to Iran than Obama ever did, just to get us back to the levels we saw in 2016. The real question is if Fox News and company will spin the result as super favorable for Trump. But that sort of spin doesn’t engage with reality, and reality tells us that this war has been a disaster.

After Trump is gone, there are going to be a whole host of pro-Trump pundits who tell us he never really represented the Republican Party, and that his presidency was a failure only because he didn’t embrace True Conservative Values.™ But the same pundits who will say that are the same ones who pushed people like Kori Schake, Bill Kristol, and even Mitt freaking Romney out of the Republican Party.

If the conservative movement in America still had serious people on its side, we probably wouldn’t be enduring Trump 2.0, much less the Iran War, and while that’s super frustrating right now, it is pretty depressing when you think about the future. The consequences of an anti-intellectual GOP is permeating beyond foreign policy too: The FDA recently shelved a comprehensive study showing the COVID-19 vaccines are (and were) safe and effective. They did the same thing for a new shingles vaccine that was supposed to hit the market.

Being pro-vaccine used to be a bedrock principle within the conservative movement, but that has now faded. Here is an article from a conservative intellectual, back before the Right had embraced the lunacy of the anti-vaccination movement:

The point of mandatory vaccinations is not merely to protect those who are vaccinated. When it comes to measles, mumps and rubella, for example, children cannot be vaccinated until 1 year of age. The only way to prevent them from getting diseases is to ensure that those who surround them do not have those diseases. The same is true for children with diseases like leukemia, as well as pregnant women. Herd immunity is designed to protect third parties.

But Americans have short memories and enormous confidence in junk science. Parents will ignore vaccinations but ensure that their kids are stocked up with the latest homeopathic remedies, Kabbalah bracelets and crystals. St. John’s wort, red string and crystals all existed before 1962. They didn’t stop the measles. Vaccination did.

The title of that is called, “Anti-Vaccine Fanatics Kill,” and it was written by Ben Shapiro in eleven years ago. Now, the biggest anti-vaxxer in America is heading up the Department of Health and Human Services, all because the GOP decided to double-down on ignorance rather than tell Republican voters the truth.

We are in for two and a half more years of this and who knows what comes after that, but I’m not excited to find out.

It was Cinco de Mayo on Tuesday, one of my favorite holidays. I rarely get bored of margaritas, but a couple years ago I did and made up my own cocktail. It’s called a “Te Mire,” which goes like this:

• 1 and a half oz of Mezcal

• 3/4 oz of Cointreau

• 3/4 oz of Dry Vermouth

I stir it, serve it over a big cube, and add a spice rim and a pickled jalapeño to garnish.

As a reminder, Cinco de Mayo is much more popular in the United States than it is in Mexico. In the U.S. it is primarily a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, but the Battle of Puebla and Mexico’s stalling of France likely helped the North win the Civil War. Super fun history.

But also, who doesn’t love margaritas and tacos?

I’ll be back to talk about the DOJ as a whole over the next few days. See you all then.

Are we seriously doing birthright citizenship again? Didn’t we do this last year?

Yes to both questions: If all of this seems familiar, it’s because there was a separate case involving birthright citizenship in front of SCOTUS last year. However, the cases are a little different, and the differences are important.

Last year, the Supreme Court did consider a case that involved Trump’s Executive Order barring birthright citizenship (which is what’s in front of them now), but the primary focus was on the legality of the nationwide injunction placed on Trump’s Order from a lower court. Although there was some speculation that SCOTUS would touch on the merits of birthright citizenship, they didn’t. Now they are taking a hard look at the merits, and it doesn’t look good for Trump.

I wrote about birthright citizenship twice last year, including one time where I called it a fake debate. Nothing has swayed me since: The 14th Amendment secures citizenship for any person born here, without regard to the legal status (or lack thereof) of their parents. That has been true since the 19th Century, and the scholarship overwhelmingly says so. There is no real counterargument and anyone saying otherwise is arguing in bad faith.

And it sounds like the Supreme Court is going to agree.

Trump is going to lose. We just don’t know by how much.

Listening to the oral arguments, the universal reaction was that the Trump Administration was going to lose this case, with the final lineup being somewhere between 7-2 or 8-1 in favor of striking down Trump’s Order. Here is Steve Vladeck with a good reflection on the case:

If anything was clear during Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral argument in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, it’s that President Trump is going to lose. The justices’ questions were skeptical enough to suggest that somewhere between six and eight of the justices will hold that Mr. Trump’s executive order purporting to limit birthright citizenship is unlawful, whether because it violates an immigration statute Congress enacted in 1940 and updated in 1952, the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, or both.

In retrospect, and despite efforts by some right-wing commentators and scholars to muddy the waters, this has always been an open-and-shut case under almost any approach to constitutional and statutory interpretation.

I think it is incredibly important to note that it is an Executive Order that is technically before SCOTUS, and it was rarely - if ever - brought up. Instead, the justices focused almost entirely on (1) the constitutionality of the 14th Amendment as a whole and (2) Wong Kim Ark, an old SCOTUS decision securing birthright citizenship.

Put simply, if SCOTUS had any intentions of upholding Trump’s Executive Order, then they would have talked about it some more. Heck, if they thought the statute enshrining birthright citizenship was wrong, it seems like they would have brought that up too. Instead, they focused almost entirely on its constitutionality under the 14th Amendment. At the very least, Trump’s Order is going bye bye, but I think all the justices (yes, all) are going to want to settle this issue once and for all.

Give me the numbers.

Above, Vladeck says he thinks the decision will come down somewhere between 6-3 or 8-1. Steve is smarter than I am, but when I listened to the oral argument I didn’t clearly hear a single vote for Trump.

I think too many people are assuming Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are going to side with the Administration, because they are two of the least swingiest votes on the Court.1 But Thomas’s first question sort of suggested that the Administration was taking the side of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott, which is (generally) not where you want to be.

Likewise, Alito bailed out the attorney who opposed Trump’s Order at one point, and gave her a ladder to climb up (she declined). Alito is the best and most frequent questioner on the Court, so I think lots of people are taking his peppering of questions as an indication that he wants to side with the Administration. I’m not so sure. I could actually see a 9-0 decision here, with Thomas and Alito either writing separate concurrences or joining in one together. It just seems like they both know that - whatever their policy preferences - the scholarship on this issue is overwhelming and they do not want to ruin their reputations within SCOTUS-world by being in the minority.

As for the other conservatives, it seems to me like Amy Coney Barrett is a hard no. She spent a considerable amount of time asking about “foundlings,” which was how people in the 19th Century described orphans. Basically, if you don’t know who the child’s parents are, how do you determine citizenship?

Professor Akhil Amar addressed this in an amicus brief filed before the Court:

By contrast, parentage opens a Pandora’s box, and implicates devilish questions not always defined by uniform federal law operating in other contexts. Who are a baby’s parents? What if a mother is married to one man, but another man is the biological progenitor? What if there are disputes about biological parentage?What if a baby’s biological father is unknown? What about foundlings? In today’s world, what about a baby born from Woman A’s egg and Man B’s sperm, who issues from the womb of Woman C and is also claimed by Humans D, E, and F (A’s, B’s, and C’s respective lawful spouses)?

If Barrett is being influenced by Amar’s briefs, I think it’s safe to say she’s not a getable vote. Neil Gorsuch also seems like a no. He made various statements where he criticized the Administration’s position, and then there was this moment:

This an insane position to take for a few reasons:

1. [Solicitor General] John Sauer not being ready to explain to Neil Freaking Gorsuch what happens to Native Americans is…insane.

2. Gorsuch’s question is relevant. Native Americans were given citizenship via statute that relied on the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. Because the Amendment does not extend citizenship to Native Americans, Congress passed a law including them in the citizenship guarantee. If SCOTUS upholds the Trump Administration’s argument and finds that the 14th Amendment never granted birthright citizenship, then obviously the Native Americans all lose their citizenship.

Speaking of Sauer, there were some pretty big complaints about him at oral argument. Specifically, Evan Burnick pointed out that Sauer completely mis-cited a law review article that he said supported his position. In fact, it was the opposite:

This ended up getting a write-up in the New York Times. Spoiler: It is not a good idea to get something wrong like this in front of the Supreme Court. A lot of people think Sauer was being deceptive and should be punished, but I really don’t think that’s the case (I make no judgment on punishment). I think the reason Sauer forgot to research what happens to Native Americans if he wins; why he got a case cite completely wrong; and why he generally did such a poor job at argument (where he is usually brilliant) is because he didn’t prepare. And he didn’t prepare because he knew going in that he was going to lose. He is a smart guy and he relied (mostly) on the anti-14th Amendment side to do the work for him, so he could do his job and then go home.

As I said above, the anti-14th Amendment people are not writing in good faith, and one of them tricked Sauer with the brief. Vladeck has another good piece on how the pro-Trump side was able to get their (fake) arguments in front of the justices:

The Scottish writer Andrew Lang is usually identified as the source of one of my favorite quotes. Specifically, Lang once complained about economists using statistics “as a drunken man use lampposts—for support, rather than illumination.”

That line has been on my mind as I’ve been watching, mostly from the sidelines, a pitched battle within the legal academy over the fairly transparent efforts of a small cohort of right-wing law professors to provide a fig leaf of historical support for the Trump administration’s legally and morally odious position in the birthright citizenship case. Starting with a tweet and a New York Times op-ed last February insisting that there was already “an entire literature” supporting the government’s position, these folks have spent much of the last 14 months working hard to create the very literature they claimed already existed.

The whole thing is worth a read, but just take note of where this entire approach got the pro-Trump crowd: Having the solicitor general cite to a law review article that contradicted his own point.

Trump is going to lose this case, bigly. It’s just a matter of by how much.

Should-Reads:

We haven’t done this in a while, mostly because I feel bad giving you homework. But I read a really good piece by Elizabeth Bruenig this week on the growing scientific evidence for God’s existence that was a lot of fun.

Three Jackals within one week? That’s crazy. I know the insane person running the country is looking like he could nuke Iran tonight, so if that happens I’ll be back (or maybe we’ll all be dead).

But we have family coming into town and will be busy outside of regular work hours. So it’s touch and go for the moment, with the emphasis on go(ing to drink a thousand beers).

A few weeks ago, David French wrote a piece about James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas. Talarico is making waves nationally because he is polling well, open to debating the other side, and is a professed left-wing Christian. French gets asked about him a lot:

These days, I’m asked more about James Talarico than I’m asked about any politician not named Donald Trump. […] [I]f the primary American divide is between right and left, then Talarico isn’t that interesting. There’s a long history of progressive religious activism in the United States, just as there is a long history of conservative religious activism. White evangelicals might be overwhelmingly Republican, but American Christians are remarkably diverse politically, and we’ve been arguing with one another for a long time. Yet if the primary American divide is between decent and indecent, then the equation changes. Talarico shines.

Or, to put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.

French’s column - like many of his others - caused an uproar in the “conservative” Christian crowd, and with some of its adjacent members.1 In his piece, French outlines the reason he gets so many questions about Talarico: He actually sounds like a Christian. He is calm, patient, and speaks kindly of people opposed to him. If you watch Talarico’s Jubilee debate,2 this becomes even more clear; he engages with people who clearly want to trigger him and never takes the bait. Truly impressive in the Year of Our Lord 2026. If I lived in Texas, he would easily get my vote.

French goes on to note that Talarico’s Republican opponent will either be John Cornyn (the current Texas Senator) or Ken Paxton, a man who professes to be a Christian but who is also in the middle of a nasty, public divorce (over adultery) and who was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives for corruption. French’s whole point is that Talarico embodies the fruits of the spirit while professing to be Christian, whereas Paxton - who also professes to be one - does not. And he ultimately longs for a Talarico vs. Cornyn matchup, because he thinks both are decent men who better-reflect Christianity than Paxton.

It’s a good, insightful column on the state of what passes for Evangelical Christianity in America, but it got some Very Big Christians™ super mad.

French’s piece calls Talarico a “Christian X-ray,” which is fighting words for the Christian Nationalist crowd. A good chunk of them called French a borderline heretic. Here is Megan Basham:

Twitter’s search function is now busted, but by my count Basham has tweeted about David French 21 times since he wrote his article, almost once a day. She tweets more about French than she does about Jesus. As a bonus, she had this tweet from just before his article went live:

Spoiler: David French was right and Megan Basham was wrong, and not only about Iran.

Tough truths.

I think one of the reasons that Christian Nationalists/Pro-Trump Christians had such a visceral reaction to French’s article is because they know he is correct. Here is French again:

One reason politics has been so exhausting — and even so frightening — is that we often know that opposing politicians don’t just disagree with us but that they hate us. And if politicians hate us, then we know they won’t listen to us, they won’t care about us, and they may well actively try to harm us when they’re in office. This is what MAGA Christianity has become. In that world, cruelty in the name of Trumpism is no vice, and kindness in the name of progressivism is no virtue.

A couple weeks ago, after Robert Mueller died, Trump openly celebrated his death and hoards of Trump’s “Christian” supporters backed him up. Those celebrations came only a few weeks after French wrote, “Cruelty in the name of Trumpism is no vice.”

A set of Christian Nationalist pastors even said that they hoped God “killed” Talarico. Of course, they tried to couch their statements in deniability, but it is clear what they meant:

Father, we thank You, Lord, for Your justice.
We thank You, God, that You are not mocked.

And Lord, we lift up James Talarico to You right now.

God, I pray that You would kill him.

Lord, I pray that You would kill him—
that You would kill his influence,
that You would kill his platform,
that You would kill his voice.

And Lord, ultimately, that means killing his heart
and raising him up to new life in Christ.

But God, if it would not be within Your will to do so,
I pray that You would stop him by any means necessary.

Suffice it to say, this is a demonic “prayer” from two men who are LARPing as Christians. All they are doing is proving that David French is right and his critics are wrong. And to drive the point home, Talarico responded to them in the way you’d expect:

“Jesus loves. Christian Nationalism kills. You may pray for my death, Pastor, but I still love you. I love you more than you could ever hate me.”

This isn’t to say that Talarico should be immune from criticism. Andrew Sullivan wrote a great piece about Talarico, equating him to a left-wing version of the classic Christian scold. He nails it here:

According to Talarico, Jesus would have been particularly upset by the end of Roe vs Wade: “This summer, more than half our population became second-class citizens. Every one of our neighbors with a uterus became the property of the state. And nothing — nothing — is more un-Christian than that.”

Really? This is the same Talarico who says that Jesus said nothing about gays and so we should not bring him into the discussion. But Jesus didn’t talk about 20th century American judicial philosophy either, did he? In another amazing tidbit, Talarico used the Annunciation — God’s telling Mary she would bear His only son — as a teaching moment about “consent” in sex. That’s a scene from Portlandia.

It might have actually been too much to satirize on Portlandia. In the same way that the Bible does not support you praying for someone’s death because they hurt your feelings, it does not support an argument for abortion. That is laughably bad theology from Talarico, and a sign that his heart is more closely aligned with his own personal leftism than the Gospel.

But that makes his response to Christian Nationalists who want him dead all the more humiliating for the Nationalists: The dude who thinks God told Mary she could abort the Savior of the world if she wanted to is closer to the Biblical definition of a Christian than they are.

American Christianity is in decline.

A wild phenomenon is happening across the globe: The rise of atheism/agnosticism has stalled and people are turning back to faith. In the United Kingdom, there are some reports that church attendance has now quadrupled amongst younger Brits.3 It kind of makes sense if you think about it.

Gen Z entered into adulthood with a world of promises: Technology is making our lives easier and better. The Internet has created endless opportunities and limitless fun. You will never be bored. You will never be more connected to people. And A.I. is going to make our lives just like the movie Her, except without the bad ending.

But that all feels like a lie. We have access to everything, but we feel even more empty than before. Social media connects us to people but simultaneously makes us feel more distant. So, The Youths™ are turning back to the OG formula and there is some evidence it is happening across Europe.

But it’s not happening here. In the U.S., Gen Z is still the most un-churched generation, and overall church attendance is declining. For every new convert to Protestantism, four people are leaving the church. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this decline and failure to replicate what is happening elsewhere also comes about with American Christianity’s alliance with Trump. Americans are watching people (like Basham and the two LARPers mentioned above) who explicitly call themselves Christians go on to defend easily the most un-Christian man in public life, and are deciding that they want out. But Basham is markedly different from the Paula Whites of the world.

In his first term, a lot of media figures observed Trump’s connections to Charismatic circles (something that is still going on), but they have spread into more Reformed circles as well. A few years ago I wrote a piece on Christian Nationalism, and said that it wasn’t real because it is an oxymoron. That is still true, but I feel that Christian Nationalism as an ideology has surged since I wrote it, and it has a creeped into the “higher church” circles associated with Reformed Christianity.

Charlie Kirk was an obvious Christian Nationalist on the Right, and his popularity was only growing before his tragic death last year. Now, there are others who are mainstreaming it, like Basham (mentioned above) and Allie Beth Stuckey, who appears regularly on Fox News and openly refers to herself as a Christian Nationalist.

Years ago, Stuckey agreed with French and called him “one of the most thoughtful & respectable people I’ve read.” Now she’s a critic, and thanked Basham for her relentless attacks on French. It shouldn’t be hard to see why all these people have changed their tune: Being closer to Donald Trump is more important to them than being closer to God.

To be a Christian Nationalist is to openly say, “I don’t understand the Bible.” It negates any claim to real Christianity. But I think worse than that is that it has started a downstream effect, where even someone like Nick Fuentes - who celebrates rape, murder, and genocide - is able to call himself a “Christian” Nationalist.

The problems for what I’ll call “soft” Christian Nationalists like Basham and Stuckey is that there will be always be someone to out-Christian Nationalize them, like Nick Fuentes or…Dale Partridge.4

The Reformed movement now has a grifter problem.

It is perhaps fate that the New York Times has a write-up on Dale Partridge out this week, a “pastor” who takes Christian Nationalism to its logical endpoint. He says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, serve as judges, or really do anything aside from being a homemaker:

On social media, the Partridge has attracted a following by posting incendiary commentary: railing against feminists, Catholics and gay people, describing immigration as “national suicide,” and labeling Islam and Hinduism “demonic.” He also calls for erasing women’s suffrage, which he lists as one reason “the world is falling apart.”

The New York Times is actually being kind: Partridge also engages in overt racism and anti-Semitism. It is easy to guess what he will tweet next, because he closely follows whatever Joel Webbon - a Christian Nationalist pastor who has called “all” Jews subversive and “all” blacks lazy5 - decides to tweet about. When Webbon tweeted that interracial marriage was against God’s design, Partridge followed and agreed, even though Patridge himself is in an interracial marriage. It led to a great degree of humiliation for him, mostly because one of the best satire accounts on Twitter mocked him relentlessly for it.6

Why would Partridge debase himself and his own wife for Twitter clout? Because Partridge is a grifter. It is extremely funny that the New York Times did a write-up about him, because he has been an expert in getting media outlets to write about him for a long, long time.7

Over the years, Partridge has moonlighted as a:

• Star baseball player

• Professional skateboarder

• Photographer

• Entrepreneur

• Motivational speaker

• Millionaire8

• Rock climbing gym owner

• Software developer

• Reality TV star

• Founder of a t-shirt website

• “Health and wellness advocate” (huge surprise here)

Partridge has been accused of plagiarism and lying about his credentials. He has consistently lied about his own personal history, and has left in his wake lawsuits and accusations from former business partners. There is an excellent breakdown of his changing personalities and his timeline of deception here, and it is exhaustive.

Partridge is a con-man, and he has now conned his way into declaring himself a pastor and getting a write-up in the New York Times. He has been able to do so because Christian Nationalism now has a huge spotlight on it, thanks to people like Stuckey and Basham. The worst part is that he will not be the last one to use this model to gain popularity.

Every Christian Nationalist in public life is going to be outflanked by someone willing to go more Handmaid’s Tale than they are, and that should show us the poison inherent in the ideology.

The genesis of the poison.

When you go through all the men I mentioned above, there is a lodestar for the Christian Nationalist movement, and he’s mentioned in the Times’s write-up of Partridge:

Though it has roots in older thinking, biblical patriarchy was popularized in the 1990s and early 2000s by Doug Phillips, the influential founder of Vision Forum Ministries, who also championed household voting. He later resigned over an infidelity scandal.

These days, its best-known spokesman is Doug Wilson, the pastor who built Mr. Hegseth’s denomination and believes America should be a theocracy. Mr. Wilson’s books on marriage form a spiritual road map for King’s Way and kindred churches.

Webbon, Partridge, and the two pastors fantasizing about Talarico’s death - Josh Haynes and Brooks Potteiger - are all acolytes of Doug Wilson. He is the poisonous tree from which a lot of this fruit has fallen.

It is important to note from the outset that Wilson is not even a Christian in the orthodox sense: He does not believe in the Trinity and believes in Baptismal Regeneration (i.e., baptism isn’t just a sign of faith but is itself a form of grace).9

He is closer to a cultist than a Christian, which could help explain his support of Christian Nationalism. But he has a host of other sins (and this list isn’t exhaustive):

• He calls women cunts.

• He has presided over and hidden multiple episodes of abuse within his church, including ones where underage girls were raped.

• He calls himself a “friend of pedophiles,” because he arranged a marriage between a known pedophile and a woman in his church. When the husband confessed that he was aroused by his own child upon its birth, the wife filed for divorce. Wilson said this man was not a rapist because he was only convicted of “one count of lewd act with a minor under 16.”

• He has said that men who conquer women have a right to rape them.

• He infamously said that slavery was not that bad and was, in fact, the “peak” of the Black family, and Christians have a duty to defend slavery.

In the same way that Partridge has left a lot of scandal in his wake, Wilson has left a collection of abused women in his own. He rabidly defends the abusers who have emerged from his church, because Wilson’s real god is male dominance over women. I have no doubt that, one day, the same scandals that involved Doug Phillips will eventually be learned about Doug Wilson. You are not writing things like this in public and not thinking things that are infinitely worse in private:

Women inescapably need godly masculine protection against ungodly masculine harassment; women who refuse protection from their fathers and husbands must seek it from the police. But women who genuinely insist on ‘no masculine protection’ are really women who tacitly agree on the propriety of rape […] Men are designed by God to initiate and lead, and women are designed to respond.

Wilson says things like this and does things like defending the Confederacy because he has a depraved mind. Anthony Bradley has a great piece condemning the Reformed movement for tolerating Wilson:

[Wilson’s] ideas themselves were never hidden. They appeared in books, pamphlets, conference lectures, blog posts, and, critically, on platforms belonging to some of American evangelicalism’s most significant institutions. The Pentagon prayer invitation did not create a new problem. It made an existing problem visible in a context that could not be managed by editorial decisions or quiet departures from conference lineups.

The real question, therefore, is not why Doug Wilson holds the theological and political commitments he holds. The real question is institutional: why did so many evangelical organizations spend years creating the conditions under which those commitments could be treated as acceptable contributions to Christian public discourse? And what does the answer to that question reveal about the institutional culture, the theological frameworks, and the social dynamics that made such amplification not only possible but, within certain communities, unremarkable?

As Bradley notes, a lot of the same evangelical organizations that promoted or featured Wilson’s writings are now quietly removing them. But they’ve had lots of time and lots of evidence to work with. Wilson is not the originator of Christian Nationalism, but he is one of the biggest reasons it is so popular right now.

Christian Nationalism is literally Satanic.

In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus is in the desert for 40 days, Satan arrives to tempt Him. Satan attacks Christ’s hunger and Christ’s faith in the Father, but also explicitly tempts Jesus with power:

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

The belief that Christians can create their own kingdom and dominate others is literally a temptation from Satan, and Christian Nationalists will tell you that they actually read their bibles. Erick Erickson had a great tweet about this, which I’ll quote because it’ll get cut off:

Today, in the United States, a group of Christians want a political savior. They advance the notion of “Christian Nationalism” and want some sort of so called Christian prince to lead us. They would turn Christ into a political project. That is the thing the crowd in Jerusalem wanted and did not get, so they went with Barabbas instead.

Just last week, in Finland, two Christians were found guilty of crimes against humanity because, over a decade ago, they published a pamphlet on Biblical sexuality that, quoting scripture, mentioned homosexuality is a sin. The crime of which the Finnish court found them guilty was originally a war crime. Finland has a state church with the power to collect taxes. In Britain, the new female Archbishop of Canterbury spoke in favor of abortion rights in the House of Lords. Britain is a Christian nation.

Nations co-opt churches. Christian nationalists look on the United States today and think it could not get worse with a national church, so we might as well have one. In this country, Christians are not going to jail for quoting scripture. In Nigeria, China, and elsewhere Christians are actually dying for professing Christ as Lord. In this country, too many people believe the gates of Hell will prevail against the Church unless they themselves lead the church into political power.

Jesus Christ rejected the political enterprise of the church in Jerusalem and the crowd turned on him and the Romans executed him, declaring him the “King of the Jews.” He went in a tomb. For many historians who consider the execution of a Jewish carpenter in Jerusalem two thousand years ago a turning point for history, they stop there at the tomb. But the death of a carpenter would not have changed history had that carpenter not risen from the dead.

Christ rose and will return. In the mean time, Christians need not eschew politics. Vote and participate. If you feel strongly, run for office. We should have more people with Christian convictions in office. But Christianity and the church are not political projects and, should they become political projects, the American church would wind up like the Finnish or the British churches — sclerotic, impotent institutions doing the will of a state hostile to the things of God.

I disagree with Erickson about a lot of things (including his harsher criticisms of Talarico), but he is on the money here; Christian Nationalism is a lie from Satan, and anyone who supports it has been deceived. We really don’t have to go much further than that, but it is notable that most of the men associated with it (like Wilson) have other glaring faults.

Talarico is a mirror.

For years I attended Tim Keller’s church in Manhattan, and so much of his teaching has helped shape me into the Christian I am today. He regularly advocated for Christians to find a “third way” to engage in politics, simply because the bible does not explicitly lend itself to left-wing or right-wing positions.

The Christian Nationalist crowd now hates Tim Keller because of that “third way,” but they really hate him because they love their own politics more than they love God. Keller is right and they are wrong, and I suspect they will always be mad about it.

Similarly, I think the big reason Talarico is getting implicit death threats from Christian Nationalists is because they look at him and hate what he is showing them about themselves: They actually don’t know God, and Talarico just might.

In the book of Jonah, the author reflects on his own commands from God and his refusal to listen. In two instances (almost like a mirror) God uses unbelievers to show how they are closer to God’s own will than Jonah himself:

God used the pagans to show Jonah - an “Israel First” nationalist who saw no point in reaching out to nations opposed to God - how his heart had turned away from God. In the same way, Talarico - again, a dude who seriously said God might be pro-choice - is a mirror who should show guys like Haynes, Potteiger, and Wilson that they don’t actually love God.

The upside of Jonah is that because he himself wrote his book, we know that he understood the lesson God intended to teach him. Call me crazy, but I don’t think we’ll see the same sort of reflection and repentance from the Christian Nationalist crowd.

I’ll hit you with my takes on birthright citizenship early next week. Have a blessed Holy Week and a wonderful Easter.

The Democrats have drafted a bill that is currently waiting for passage in the House: The Responsibility in Voting Act, or RIVA. It has a pretty simple premise: If you have voted for Donald Trump more than once in a national, presidential election (i.e., primaries don’t count), then you are barred from voting for two presidential election cycles. The bill basically argues that if you were irresponsible enough to vote for Donald Trump twice or even three times, you should get a “time out” and think about what you did.

Some legal scholars have argued that the bill is on shaky ground constitutionally speaking, but when you get into the details you actually find a lot of support for it in American history.

After all, voting is a privilege and not a right, and that has long been established in the United States. For example: If you are a felon, you lose your right to vote going forward and if you commit voter fraud enough times, you join the Republican Party. The U.S. punishes people all the time by restricting their voting rights or making them sit in the corner with the friends of Jeffrey Epstein. This is just simple, American history.

In that sense, the basis for RIVA’s voting restrictions are well-established.

The text of the law itself.

Some legal scholars have taken issue with the language in the law itself, specifically where it says, “People who voted for Trump more than once are too stupid to function anyway.” I’ll admit, this is tough language, but New York State didn’t remove the term “oriental” from its laws when referring to Asian-Americans until the 1990s. So, suck it up.

Others have taken exception to the carveouts: If you voted for Trump, then Joe Biden, and then Trump again, your voting rights are restricted for only one presidential election and you have to unironically support Gavin Newsom.1 This seems like a reduced punishment, but you still voted for two people who were almost 80.

The intent of the law matters.

Here is the overall argument about RIVA that really matters to me: It makes me feel good, and that can’t be a bad thing. Some people have said that it puts too much power in the hands of Democrats, as it will effectively allow them to acquire huge majorities - largely uncontested - for years. And to that I say: So what? It’s not like there’s any downside to this legislation, or having it turned back on me. Doing good things for me and punishing people I don’t like is the whole point of government, after all.

There is that old Lord Acton quote: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s a good quote, but to be honest, Lord Acton was a bitch. Plus, he never met me and there is no chance I could ever be corrupted. Nor could any of the good people in government.

My daughter has a stuffed animal that I have convinced her to call Oda Mae Brown, which is Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the movie Ghost.

Unlike the rest of this post, this is true. Happy April Fools’ day. The Holy Week post is out on Good Friday.

Iran is winning?

I think what we are learning from this war is that sheer force isn’t always enough to get you a win. In terms of the global reaction to the war, it actually seems like Iran is winning: They are showing us that even though we can bomb the hell out of them, they can wreak economic havoc in the meantime.

Obviously oil prices have soared over the past few weeks, which has driven up gas prices here and around the world. But Iran’s big move came yesterday:

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened to attack oil and gas infrastructure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a move that would further seriously disrupt the region’s energy infrastructure, which has already been fractured by the war, now in its 20th day.

Hours later, Iranian missiles struck a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility at Ras Laffan Industrial City in northern Qatar. Doha reported that the attack caused three fires.

Iran’s attack in Qatar has been called “armageddon” by the Financial Times, and the New York Times has a great article explaining why:

Restarting plants and reopening the Strait of Hormuz could take weeks, causing a relatively brief disruption. But repairing or rebuilding facilities could take much long longer.1

“A longer outage caused by damage is a bigger deal than a short outage caused by a shutdown,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm in Washington. “If the market is pricing in a short disruption that could be resolved in a cease-fire or the end of the war, it would be weeks for full functional facilities to come back on line.2 If it is damaged, it could be months.”

Later on in the article it says that if Iran’s attacks on infrastructure continue, we could be looking at oil hovering around $150 a barrel. 🫠

I really cannot believe I’m saying this, but Iran is probably going to win the war Trump started, because he went into it without a coherent plan or even an idea of what he hoped to achieve. To recap:

• He has killed Iran’s leadership, but the regime is still in charge and now more radical than ever. They will likely never agree to any sort of “deal” with the United States and will sprint towards a nuke.

• Trump is rapidly going through munitions and depleting our military, which China is watching because they plan to invade Taiwan,3 possibly as early as next year.

• The United States is completely isolated from the rest of the world on this and our allies in NATO are ignoring our pleas for help.

• Israel’s reputation on the world stage has never been lower (more on this later).

• Gas prices are skyrocketing and the American economy is in tatters.

Iran holds all the cards. They can make this war cost a ton and continue to make Trump look foolish, and all it will cost them is the lives of their own people, which the regime doesn’t care about anyway.

Iran has successfully made the war into a weird doppelgänger of Trump’s tariffs: We are holding a gun to our own head and telling the rest of the world we’ll shoot.

This was avoidable.

I said in the last Jackal (and others) that the U.S. attacking Iran could have happened under another president not named Donald Trump. There is a consensus belief across both Parties that Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, and deterring them probably always required some sort of force.4

But Trump went into it blindly and has now sparked an energy crisis. Of course, Trump said, “No one could have predicted” that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz or go after its neighbors in the Middle East. But lots of people did, including some with astounding precision.

Here is an article from Nate Swanson in Foreign Affairs, titled, Why Iran Will Escalate,” and dated February 24, 2026, i.e., two days before the war started. Here is a quote that will make your jaw drop:

Finally, Tehran could target global oil flows and international shipping, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump. Iran may well encourage the Houthis to resume attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also been preparing to selectively seize adversary ships in the Strait of Hormuz. If conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly (my emphasis).

Do you guys wanna know who Nate Swanson is? He was one of the senior Iran experts in the Trump Administration. He was kicked out in the middle of 2025, because Laura Loomer told Trump to fire him:

Trump fired one of the government’s most experienced Iran experts after a far-right activist—who once chained herself to Twitter’s headquarters because they banned her account—urged his firing for “disloyalty.”

Don’t go looking for other timelines. You are living in the dumbest one.

There aren’t enough words to describe the incompetence.

Tucker, Megyn, and Candace.

I wanted to spend a quick moment on the “rift” within the MAGAverse about the war with Iran. While the “MAGA” section of the Republican Party is fully behind Trump, certain portions of conservative media have offered some pointed criticism.

Much of the criticism has focused on Israel apparently leading us into war, and you’re seeing that from people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, but also comedians like Dave Smith, who supported Trump in 2024 as a result of “horseshoe politics.”

I think it’s something to note going forward. We are currently looking at two political parties in the U.S. that will have anti-Semitic elements within their bases. You’ll have it with the extreme, Hasan Piker-style Democrats on the Left, and you’ll have it with the extreme, Nick Fuentes-style Republicans on the Right.

A few months ago, the Manhattan Institute surveyed young Republicans and, spoiler, they do not like the Jews and are a little Hitler-curious. City Journal then spoke to them:

Moderator: What do you think of Adolf Hitler?

Ashley: I think he was a great leader, to be honest. I think what he was going for was terrible, but I think he showed very strong leadership values.

Andrew: I’m in favor of a strong executive. I think we should have a stronger executive branch. I don’t think we should be killing people or doing mass genocide, obviously, but I do think we should have a strong executive. I feel like one of the biggest problems Trump is running into right now is all these little courts, they want to throw up little blockages against everything he’s trying to do, whether it be his tariffs or deporting people. So I’m very pro-strong executive, strong leader, strong man. I support national sovereignty, and Hitler was a nationalist. He was like, we have to take Germany back for Germans. And I feel like we should do that in America. We should take America back for our native population. So, I’m not an expert on Hitler by any means, but as far as nationalism is concerned, I’m all that.

As a bonus, here is what Andrew said about the Jews:

All Tucker, Megyn, and Candace are doing is reading tea leaves. In ten years, these “young Republicans” will be the base of the Party. It’s simply an economic calculation that Republicans who consume conservative media will want to hear meaner things said about Jews and Israel.

And it’s also worth noting that no one should take more blame for this than Israel itself. Its conduct in Gaza has thrown gasoline on global anti-Israel sentiment.

At least the economy is OK.

So, we have a war with Iran ongoing, and then there is the bad economic news: Inflation came in sky-high last month, with prices up 3.4% from the same time last year.

With slowing economic growth and the U.S. shedding jobs, we are quickly approaching stagflation territory. You see, history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes: Donald Trump is the Republican Jimmy Carter, which means in 2028 we will be looking for a Democratic Ronald Reagan.

I have thoughts on who that is, but I’ll save them for another Jackal. We do SCOTUS stuff and birthright citizenship soon, and there is also the annual Holy Week Jackal and a special one coming on April 1st. Talk to you all soon.

Why are we at war with Iran?

Before we jump into the details, a quick disclaimer: Much like Bill Murray doesn’t do defense, the Jackal doesn’t do foreign policy. I’ll have my own thoughts but then will give lots of reading materials. I claim no expertise and do not expect you to take anything I say seriously.

I want to go back to the Jackals of yesteryear, a.k.a., when we first bombed Iran under Trump 2.0 in June of 2025. Yeah, remember that? It feels like decades ago, but it wasn’t even eight months ago. Freakish. What’s worse: Christmas was barely more than two months ago. What is time?

Anyway, here is what I said back then:

I mean, that is horrific, even if the mission is deemed successful (we’ll get to that). But make no mistake: We are at war with Iran. You do not get to launch a major offensive on a country and then say it’s not really a war. […] Again, I would simply wait, but the goldilocks scenario here - where Iran drops their nuclear ambitions, comes back to the table, and stops funding terrorism in the Middle East - will probably remain elusive.

Spoiler: The goldilocks scenario was indeed elusive. Back then, Trump said that we had totally “obliterated” Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. But it turns out we didn’t and had to go back in to finish the job.

Or, that was one of the first explanations.

I’m not kidding, this is how the narrative shifted on why we went to war with Iran:

• On Saturday, Trump said that we were going after Iran’s missile silos and their navy. He also talked about ending their ability to build a nuke. Cool!

• After we got word that the Ayatollah Khamenei was unalived, the Administration shifted the narrative and said there was an imminent threat from Iran.

• Then on Sunday Trump said that negotiations with Iran were not progressing, so that’s why we attacked (super normal to go to war over failed negotiations).

• Later on Trump pivoted back to ending Iran’s ability to build a nuke, and also called for regime change.

• On Monday, Pete Hegseth said this was not a regime-change war.

• Then Marco Rubio showed up and said we didn’t really face an imminent threat, but we would have faced one because Israel was going to attack Iran.

• Then Trump contradicted Rubio and said he “forced Israel’s hand.”

• J.D. Vance also chimed in and said we had to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

It is now seven days into this war and we still don’t know what our objectives are or why we’re even there. Trump has said different things, ranging from “this will be quick and last a few weeks,” to, “we may be there until September.” WTF.

I can’t take Lexapro for another few hours. Just tell me what’s going to happen.

I will reiterate what I said last year: The Iranian regime truly is evil and there is a goldilocks scenario here that is visible. Is it possible that the Iranian people - with the leadership ousted - will rise up, take control of their government and build a Western-style democracy? Sure, that’s possible. But it’s not the most likely outcome.

Likelier outcomes include:

• No actual regime change. The Mullahs remain in charge and are even less likely to trust the United States or Israel. They will likely unleash more terror on the region.

• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) takes control. They arguably have been more powerful than the religious leaders in Iran and are far more extreme. If they end up the sole leaders of Iran, they will race towards a nuclear weapon and will attack other countries in the Middle East indiscriminately.

• Columbia University speaker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes control (if he’s still alive). Ahmadinejad is Iran’s Trump, meaning he is less rational and predictable than the Mullahs.

• A power vacuum filled by extremists and militants.

And even if we get the best-case scenario here, it is unlikely to produce a country that is friendly with the West. The United States is extremely unpopular with the Iranian people and Israel even more so; it definitely doesn’t help that we’re working together.

Back during Iran’s Green Revolution, there were calls for then-President Barack Obama to support the Iranian people protesting in the streets. When Obama refused to do so, Republicans pounced and called him cowardly. But Obama’s team was actually very intelligent: American support for an anti-government movement in Iran will kill any such movement. We are truly that unpopular.1 In fact, the Mullahs took video of Obama giving a speech and added captions in Persian that said Obama supported the Greens.

There is no, “We will be greeted as liberators” argument to make with Iran.

Is there any room for hope?

I’ll say this: Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and their regime causes havoc. They are OG bad guys from jump street, and it is awesome that Khamenei is dead.

They also cannot be allowed to have a nuke, full stop. They will sneak it into the hands of some group, like Hamas or Hezbollah, and then they will take a stroll right into Israel.

If Trump is able to get a full win here, it will be remembered as one of the most brilliant foreign policy moves in American history. A Middle East without the insane Iranian regime and instead run by the (wonderful) Iranian people is a safer Middle East.

But Donald Trump is so dense that light bends around him. He is dumber than a bag of hammers. His brain is smoother than an apple. He is an oxygen thief. And his Cabinet isn’t much better.

Here’s a great example. In order for this war to be “legal,” there has to be an imminent threat from Iran. It allows Trump to use his Article II powers for an allotted time, and then he has to go to Congress for approval. Presidents generally get pretty wide latitude for military action like this.

But his own Administration officials have all conceded that Iran did not pose an imminent threat.2 Then, Rubio tried to clean it up (see above) and Trump undermined him. So, he killed his own argument and it is now entirely possible this war is fully illegal (the repercussions of that are probably worth a separate Jackal).

I have no hope for a good outcome here because this team is incompetent. The President is a reality TV show host whose casinos lost money and the Secretary of Defense is a Fox News host who hasn’t been sober at 10 A.M. in decades.

Even with the world’s most powerful military and the most brilliant military minds in history, they are going to mess it up.

READING LIST.

This is not really a “should-reads” section, since I’ll probably quote from some people and then give thoughts. But think of it as one.

The best piece I’ve read so far is from Bill Kristol (who knows a thing or two about starting a war). He says the Administration has provided no explanation:

Why did we go to war now? The administration hasn’t offered a coherent explanation. Over the weekend, President Trump suggested several purposes and backed away from some, leaving confusion in his wake. His aides tried to clean things up yesterday, having Trump read military “objectives” from a teleprompter at the White House. But none of the objectives—destroying Iran’s missile capabilities and its navy, ensuring Iran can’t obtain a nuclear weapon or support terrorism—explain why we had to go to war now. Nor do they explain why we are engaged in such an open-ended and massive military campaign.

The lack of explanation is going to be pretty key here. Support for this war is really in the dumpster, hovering around 27%.3 For comparison, support for the Iraq War (which the Bush Administration spent a long time selling) was sky-high, with over 70% of Americans in support and just 16% (!) opposed.

I think one of the factors behind the low level of support is that it feels like an obvious betrayal of Trump’s campaign promises. There are already compilations piling up of Trump promising he would never go to war with Iran, and that it was Kamala Harris who would drag us into one.

There is already a divide in MAGA, but Americans as a whole also have bigger concerns, namely the floundering economy. And things are only going to get worse, since wars tend to be inflationary. Here is Catherine Rampell:

Gasoline might be the most noticeable price Trump is turbocharging right now, but it’s far from the only one.

Other energy markets are affected, too. Qatar, which supplies about 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, halted LNG production after a drone attack. Production there will take weeks to restart.

As a result, downstream firms that require LNG to operate are closing shop, too. For example, the Gulf region is responsible for nearly a tenth of the global aluminum supply. Already this week, multiple major aluminum smelters had to initiate shutdowns; one company says it may take up to a year to restart production.

Yeah dude. Gas is going up, and everything else along with it. It has sort of flown under the radar recently because the economic news in general has been so bad, but inflation has been spiking, largely due to Trump’s tariffs (RIP)4. A war with Iran is going to cause a major disruption to the global oil trade, and it will mean a spike in gas prices at home. We are already creeping toward a recession and this war could give us a nice, big push.

I’ll leave you guys with this piece from Jay Caspian Kang, which reflects on how the Trump Administration didn’t even bother to sell this war and how we’ve forgotten wars like Iraq and Afghanistan:

If we do forget the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, it won’t be on account of a revisionist history about those wars, one that has swayed us with jingoistic propaganda about a caring military or some paean about spreading democracy. Instead, Trump will have won by simply refusing to tell a story at all, outside of Hegseth’s absurd football-coach talk. Hegseth, in a way, is right: nobody believes in those stories anymore, so why would he bother spinning them? Just say, essentially, nothing, and hope that, eventually, we’ll all go back to our phones.

I am not sure I fully agree with Kang. I talked about the different scenarios that could unfold regarding Iran, but there are other scenarios to think about.

Trump built himself a coalition of hardcore Republicans who always vote GOP; conspiracists who generally don’t trust the government and see him as someone who will shake it up; casual voters who don’t pay attention to politics; and belligerent racists.

He has lost a lot of traditional Republican support (raises hand and the hands of many friends and family members), who will likely never return to the GOP, since it has changed so much under Trump.

If he hadn’t lost the conspiracists with his coverup of the Epstein Files, then he is surely losing them now over his war with Iran. And he’s losing the belligerent racists because he’s aligned with Israel in the war against Iran, and they hate the Jews.

What is the GOP left with? A few people who only pay attention to politics in even years, if that?

A real scenario is possible here: Donald Trump’s disaster of a second term sees his coalition crumble and the GOP is unable to rebuild, becoming so weak they experience what the Democrats did in the 1980s.

Because the people are not going to forget Trump 2.0.

I almost hate to tell you guys this, but birthright citizenship is coming up again in April. The Jackal will go into full SCOTUS mode in the coming weeks. Sorry in advance.

I just wanted to go through a list of public officials/figures who have resigned from their positions over their connections to Jeffrey Epstein, or had legal action taken against them:

• Miroslav Lajčák – National security advisor from Slovakia has resigned.

• Peter Mandelson – U.K. politician who was yeeted from the House of Lords and has now been arrested.

• Mona Juul – Norwegian diplomat who resigned.

• Jack Lang – Former French culture minister who stepped down from leadership of Arab World Institute.

• Mohamed Waheed Hassan – Former Maldives president has resigned.

• Peter Attia – American journalist who was forced out of CBS News

• Brad Karp – Resigned from Paul, Weiss, a white-shoe law firm.

• Kathy Ruemmler – Resigned as Goldman Sachs legal chief.

• Thomas Pritzker - Stepped down from Hyatt.

• Larry Summers – Former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Obama. Has stepped down from virtually everything following his ties to Epstein.

• Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem – Resigned as chairman and CEO of DP World.

• Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor - Obviously lost his “prince”title (now I have it) and is under indictment.

That is a big list and there may be more. NPR had a huge story drop today, where they uncovered that DOJ scrubbed around 50 pages from the Epstein Files release that document the FBI’s multiple interviews with a woman who says she was abused by Trump when she was a minor. Here is NPR:

According to the newly released files, the FBI internally circulated Epstein-related allegations that mention Trump in late July and early August 2025. The list, collected from the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center, included numerous salacious allegations. Agents marked most of the accusations as unverifiable or not credible.

But one lead was sent to the FBI’s Washington office with the purpose of setting up an interview with the accuser. The lead was included in an internal PowerPoint slide deck detailing “prominent names“ in the Epstein and Maxwell investigations last fall. […] The FBI interviewed this Trump and Epstein accuser four times. That is according to an FBI “Serial Report” and a list of Non-Testifying Witness Material in the Maxwell case that were also released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Only the first interview, conducted July 24, 2019, is in the public database. That interview does not mention Trump.

Why did DOJ scrub this part of the file, but leave the other parts about Trump in there? After all, if it isn’t true, the Administration could have simply said it was like the other allegations about Trump and Epstein in the files that do not appear to be credible (and there are nutty things called into the FBI tipline all the time).

Instead, this weird, curious little story about a woman being interviewed four times by the FBI is missing from the Epstein Files. Just funny how DOJ was able to pinpoint this little story and miss the other 38,000 mentions of Trump in the files.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Democrats are running with their arguments about Trump and Epstein all wrong. The default position, from jump street, should be that Trump should resign. He should act like every other public or private figure who is connected to Epstein: Resign your post and take your stroll down washout lane.

Donald Trump should resign over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Anything less is a capitulation.

Enjoy the State of the Union. I’m not watching.

Wow! SCOTUS likes us again!

Guys, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court came through for America and found one of the largest tax increases in American history unconstitutional. Let’s dive in.

How did they even do this?

So, the lineup was Chief Justice John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Sonia Stomayor, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch. The dissenters were Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Thomas Alito.

I will say off the bat, the dissenters should be embarrassed. Kavanaugh wrote a particularly nonsensical dissent, where he complained about the ramifications of the Court’s decision and how it would affect the economy. Suffice it to say, that is not the Supreme Court’s role and it would be unsurprising to hear Kavanaugh echo such a sentiment in another decision. SCOTUS cannot save America from itself, and it cannot bail out an Administration that did not have proper authority to enact tariffs.

I will say, the main opinion from the six justices is not even the best one in the decision. That comes from the three liberals, who said - through Kagan - that the President flat-out does not have the statutory authority to enact tariffs without approval from Congress.

I’ll quote Kagan below, but first I want to give some background. The main opinion found that Donald Trump’s tariffs were unconstitutional because the law he relied upon - The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) - only allows him to regulate things like imports, but did not allow him to enact taxes (that power belongs solely to Congress). Tariffs are taxes, so the IEEPA does not apply. The majority opinion gets all that right but additionally held that the “major questions” doctrine applied here, which is a rule the Supreme Court created itself.1

In summary, the major questions doctrine is an added layer of legal analysis that says when the Executive Branch asserts power over an issue of great political or economic significance, Congress has to give its explicit permission for the Executive to act. No vagueness and no half-arguments. No citations to old, weird laws where Congress ceded its authority one time. It has to be clear.

Since that didn’t happen here, the majority held that the major questions doctrine applied and the Trump Administration were anti-Dude: They did not abide.

The majority opinion is correct, but the three liberals said we didn’t even have to get that far. Here is Kagan:

Most important, IEEPA’s key phrase—the one the Government relies on—says nothing about imposing tariffs or taxes. That text authorizes the President, upon finding a foreign threat and declaring an emergency, to “regulate” the “importation” of foreign goods. And the meaning of “regulate,” both in common parlance and as Congress uses the word, does not encompass taxing. To “regulate,” according to the Government’s preferred definition, means to “fix, establish or control; to adjust by rule, method, or established mode; to direct by rule or restriction; to subject to governing principles or laws.” Nothing in that definition naturally refers to levying taxes. Nor does Congress ever use the word “regulate” in that way. Hundreds of provisions in the U. S. Code give agencies the authority to “regulate” one thing or another. Yet the Government cannot identify a single one that is understood to grant taxing power.

So, Kagan and the liberals got it right. But that doesn’t mean the majority got it wrong, either. After all, everyone got to the correct decision in the end.

I just happen to agree with the liberals that there is nothing in the IEEPA that even hints that POTUS has the ability to use the law to enact tariffs, emergency or not.

However, Roberts’s decision is an important check on Trump’s (or any other president’s) power to enact tariffs going forward. By applying the major questions doctrine, the Roberts Court has effectively negated Trump’s ability to use other laws to work around Congress’ legal authority. I have seen some people (including Trump himself) say that the Administration will simply use another law to enact tariffs.

I think they are all missing what this decisions lays out. Roberts essentially says that any and all tariff authority (with very few exceptions) has to come directly from Congress. That will affect Trump’s ability to use tariffs going forward.

So what happens to our money.

SCOTUS did not lay out what will happen to the taxes paid by importers, and that left some people confused. But I think the real answer is clear from their decision: Because the Administration’s tariffs were illegal, anyone affected will be able to seek restitution in court. Lots of companies have already started litigating, including big retailers.

The remedy here seems relatively simple to me: If people paid monies to the government based on an interpretation of a law that was unconstitutional, the government will have to pay those people back. I don’t think we’re going to have a general fund or anything available, but as people file various courts will award them their money.

Will it be chaotic and insane? Yes, but that is the Administration’s fault, not the Court’s.

In the long run, I think this decision will actually help the Trump Administration. I will tell everyone a story: Last year, while Elisabeth was pregnant, we got central air installed in our home because she didn’t want to go through a hot, Denver summer with just a swamp cooler2 keeping us from overheating.

When we were getting quotes from different companies, I kept hearing the same thing: “Tariffs are driving up our prices.” I am sure other Americans heard something similar throughout 2025, hence Trump’s huge drop in the polls after “Liberation Day.”

It isn’t some great mystery: Trump’s tariffs were a huge economic disaster and they brought a relatively healthy economy to a halt. And things have been getting worse: GDP growth in the fourth quarter of last year (usually a strong quarter thanks to the holidays) was a paltry 1.4%. An inflation readout from this morning also showed prices accelerating. Trump’s tariff agenda is largely to blame.3

In the short term, we might see some spikes of additional economic activity as many importers will revert to their old pricing schemes and that will help a lagging economy. But I do think a lot of the damage is already done. The trickiest part of an inflation crisis is that prices rarely come back down once retailers understand that people are willing to pay them. When people stop paying altogether, that’s usually when a recession hits.

Under Trump’s tariffs, we were seeing a mini-version of stagflation: Slowing economic growth with higher prices. I think that will ease up a little bit now. But in the long term, Trump’s tariffs have weakened our relationship with our trading partners and pushed our closest allies into the arms of China.

That damage will be lasting.

And it was all illegal from jump street. MAGA.

See you all next week.

Are you really about to write a thing about trade policy between the continental United States and one of its territories?

Sort of. I actually want to start off with what prompted this Jackal: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. I thought it was amazing. You can watch it yourself:

From purely a theatrical standpoint, I think it was the best halftime show…ever. The dancing and set pieces were more akin to a Broadway play than a Super Bowl. From a performance standpoint, I think it obviously falls behind Prince’s 2007 show (which I’m not sure anyone will top), and a few others. But overall, it was a lot of fun and entertaining.

And then we have to talk about the conservative safe space that was created because Bad Bunny sings in his native Spanish: The TPUSA alternative halftime show, featuring Kid Rock. I have to say, nothing captures our current moment better than a group that bills itself as a “Christian” organization promoting a guy with lyrics like this:

Now some people say my mind's blown
I'm coolin' like a snow cone
On my cell phone, I'm paid, G
Can't call me, just page me (Daddy, yeah)
Young ladies, young ladies
I like 'em underage, see
Some say that's statutory
But I say it's mandatory

Mr. Rock certainly fits in with the current Administration!

The Safe Space Show™ topped out at about 6 million viewers, which counts bot-views in its total. I would put the real viewership at around 3 million. In contrast, 128 million people watched Bad Bunny perform.1 Sad!

Maybe I am biased about the halftime show because I genuinely love Bad Bunny. My eldest daughter asks us to play “Weltita” on an almost daily basis, and the rest of his newest album is fantastic. It was one of my five favorites from last year, along with the albums from Geese, Rosalia, Nourished by Time, and Dijon.2

Bad Bunny has been around for a while, but I think his previous album, Un Verano Sin Ti, shot him skyward in terms of popularity. It is really great, and has a more straightforward reggaeton sound, whereas his latest album, Debi Tirar Mas Fotos, leans heavily into the classic sounds of Puerto Rican music. Bad Bunny loves where he’s from and you can hear it in his songs.

I also love Puerto Rico, and I hope you can hear it when you read this Jackal. I have exactly one photo of it from the last time I was there in 2007:

The photo is from the pre-iPhone years, which explains why it sucks. But I chose it because aside from maybe one or two quirks, this is a street that could easily be mistaken for a beach town in Florida. Puerto Rico is a thoroughly American place and it deserves statehood.

Belief in Puerto Rican statehood is actually a bipartisan affair. It is weird to think about it this way, but we were actually a lot closer to statehood for Puerto Rico in the 1940s than we are today. When Democrats first inserted it into their Party Platform in 1940, it seemed like an inevitability.

Republicans followed suit in 1964, and support for Puerto Rican statehood appeared in every GOP Party Platform up until 2020 (when the Platform essentially said they just wanted to reëlect Donald Trump). So, throughout the 20th Century, support for Puerto Rican statehood was not at all controversial and even Republicans used the forceful language of advocacy:

Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since 1898. The Republican Party vigorously supports the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted into the Union as a fully sovereign State after they freely so determine. Therefore, we support the establishment of a presidential task force to prepare the necessary legislation to ensure that the people of Puerto Rico have the opportunity to exercise at the earliest possible date their right to apply for admission into the Union.

That’s from the GOP Platform of 1988, when George H.W. Bush ran for president following Ronald Reagan’s two terms. That was a GOP infinitely more welcoming to immigrants than its current iteration, so it is unsurprising that it sounds so different. But Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants; they are Americans. And their lack of statehood has become a form of oppression.

Current U.S. policies are detrimental not only to Puerto Rico but also non-continental U.S. states like Hawaii. Specifically, the Jones Act is a 100 year-old law that artificially increases prices on all goods coming from places like Hawaii (which produces large amounts of beef that we eat here on the mainland) and Puerto Rico.

So, statehood would help Puerto Rico a lot and give them access to all the benefits that come with being admitted to the Union, but the Jones Act - a law that results in higher shipping costs - should be repealed yesterday.

The thing about Puerto Rican statehood that jumps out at me the most is that admitting it into the Union would allow us to acknowledge how Spanish America is, and how it is intertwined with our history.

There is a video from a few years back of a guy in a Nevada airport yelling at another dude for speaking Spanish. The irony of telling someone to speak English while sitting in a state with a Spanish name (“snowy”) was apparently lost on him. But that is something that could apply to a whole host of states: Colorado, California, Montana, Nevada, and Florida all get their names directly from Spanish. Another two, Texas and Arizona, are based on Spanish interpretations of Native American words. And then there’s New Mexico, whose name actually predates regular Mexico by about 200 years.

Before large parts of the southern and western U.S. became America, they were actually Spain (or Mexico), and we are a better country for it. There was an old series put together by Andrew Sullivan back in the blogging days called, “America has no idea how black it is,” where he would detail all sorts of factoids lost to history. For example, the banjo - a mainstay of “white” music - has its origins in Africa, and that’s before you even get to things like Rock and Roll.

A similar point exists about America’s Spanish origins. There are places here that speak Spanish now because they always have. Places like Laredo, Roma, and San Ygnacio in Texas are speaking Spanish now and were speaking it before the United States was even a country. In the same way that there is no America without England or France, there is no America without Spain, and Puerto Rico fits neatly into our weird, melting pot of a story.

Pam Bondi crashes out.

So, Pam Bondi’s hearing this week in front of the House went poorly. I’m not sure what her goal was, but if it was becoming a meme then she succeeded. She bemoaned the current investigation into Epstein because the Dow is over 50,000, which I guess is infinitely more important:

As of this writing, the Dow Jones is now below 50,000, which is funny but besides the point.

To answer Bondi’s question - why are the Democrats only now interested in Epstein - I think there are a few points to be made:

1. The #MeToo movement completely upended the way America now treats sexual assault, especially when it is done by men in power. This probably explains why Jeffrey Epstein was conversing with Steve Bannon about how to push back on the movement as a whole.

2. That environment is what eventually leads to Epstein’s second indictment. Lots of people missed it, but back then we had our first mini-Epstein scandal and it was highlighted by Democrats, who demanded Alex Acosta’s resignation (Acosta famously gave Epstein his first sweetheart deal and was working in the Trump Administration).

3. Ghislaine Maxwell is indicted after Epstein, and because her trial was ongoing, DOJ could not speak about the case and none of the records could be released. The first set of Epstein material that we got - things like flight records - came out during public testimony in Maxwell’s trial and during the Biden Administration. We started getting these more recent releases because Maxwell exhausted her appeals last summer, effectively ending her case.

4. This is the most important: The Democrats are very much interested in this case because the Trump Administration’s handling of it is a scandal all on its own. Bondi is the one who got into office and said, “The Epstein Files are on my desk,” only to completely shut down any subsequent investigation in July 2025. It would be pretty normal and routine for indictments of alleged co-conspirators to follow after Maxwell’s conviction, but the Trump Administration pumped the brakes.

Democrats want to find out why because it is politically advantageous for them to do so, but also because Trump himself is acting guilty. And here is the thing I’ve learned about Trump after watching him for 11 years: When he sounds guilty, he is guilty. He spent years trying to cover up the Russia scandal because he knew his Campaign did something wrong; he isn’t trying to shut down the Epstein scandal because it makes Les Wexner look bad.

Democrats should support the SAVE Act for trolling purposes.

So, the House passed the SAVE Act this week, and now it heads to the Senate. I’ll say off the bat that it’s a ridiculous piece of legislation seeking to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. Because the GOP as a whole now has to pretend that Trump’s fantasies about the 2020 Election are real, they are passing a nationwide Voter ID bill. Cool.

I have long said that Republicans in Congress - who all know Joe Biden won the 2020 Election - are subservient to the base of the GOP (which believes Trump) to their own detriment.

The SAVE Act has to pass the Senate to become law, but it will not get the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster. Trump is pushing for Republicans to eliminate the filibuster to pass the law, and I can guarantee you they will not because the SAVE Act hurts Republicans more than Democrats.

The SAVE Act requires you to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote, which means you need a driver’s license and either a passport or birth certificate that matches your driver’s license. And all of it has to be presented in person. That will disproportionately affect rural voters, who often have to drive hours in order to complete their voter registration. Guess who rural voters tend to vote for?

More importantly, the GOP is also now the Party of low-propensity voters, i.e., ones that do not pay close attention to politics. This is where Trump has lost the most support since he took office, but suffice it to say this group does not keep track of their birth certificates and they certainly do not have passports.

If the SAVE Act had been law in 2024, Democrats would have easily won:

• Pennsylvania

• Wisconsin

• Michigan

And they likely would have won Arizona and Georgia. Republicans would probably have done a little better in Virginia, but not enough to flip the state. The 2024 electoral map with the SAVE Act looks like this:

So, you can see why Republicans in the Senate are hesitant to break the filibuster for a law that doesn’t help them. Of course, the GOP base believes that once this law is passed, the non-citizens who magically propelled Democrats to a win in 2020 (but not 2024, where they forgot to vote against the guy who was going to deport all of them), will fall off voters rolls and the GOP will dominate even in states like California.

But here’s the thing: Non-citizen voting is so rare it is nearly accurate to say it never happens at all. And I don’t even have to cite to some far-left source to make that point; I can cite to the Trump Administration.

A lot of people missed this, but after Trump won in 2024, Republicans across the country embarked on a quest to find non-citizen voters and prosecute them. They quietly released their findings last month and found that non-citizen voter fraud - if it even happens at all - is exceedingly rare:

As president, Mr. Trump has pushed his administration to address the alleged crimes, including prompting many states to upload tens of millions of voter records through a federal immigration verification tool run out of the Department of Homeland Security.

But with the review underway, the results so far indicate there is no evidence of widespread fraud, according to interviews with government officials and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Out of 49.5 million voter registrations that have been checked, the department referred around 10,000 cases to Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation of noncitizenship, or roughly .02 percent of the names processed, according to Matthew Tragesser, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the D.H.S. agency that oversees the program. A Justice Department spokeswoman also said the administration believed around 10,000 registered noncitizen voters had been found.

And even what they’re finding in their reviews seems to be an overestimation:

The verification tool has mistakenly flagged some people who appear to actually be citizens, according to some local election officials.

In Charlotte County, Fla., for instance, the elections supervisor Leah Valenti, an appointee of Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, said she found that just 15 out of 176,000 names she uploaded to D.H.S. came back as noncitizens. Of those, she found that three were people mistakenly added to the rolls who never intended to register to vote; they have since been removed. Two others already sent in documentation to prove their naturalized citizenship, she said.

“We didn’t get a mass onslaught of people,” said Ms. Valenti, who is a proponent of using the D.H.S. system to verify voters’ eligibility. “We have clean voter rolls.”

Mr. Tragesser said the program was “doing exactly what it is supposed to do — providing states with an easy-to-use tool to stop aliens from hijacking our elections.”

The thing is, verification of citizenship already happens when you register to vote. When states get your driver’s license number and proof of residence, that information is cross-checked with a national database (thanks to a little bill called the Help America Vote Act, passed by Dubya) that includes your Social Security number. If the database shows that you do not have a Social Security number or that your Social Security number is being used by someone living somewhere else, your registration is caput (and, in rare instances, you are prosecuted).

The law is a solution in search of a problem, and it provides a solution that will weaken Republicans going forward. It ain’t passing the Senate.

Guys, I forgot that it is President’s Day weekend. I will try to get a Jackal to you next week but we might be in vacay mode. See you soon.

Holy moly do we have a lot to talk about.

Epstein.

A week ago the Department of Justice released a whole new batch of Epstein Files and these were - by far - the craziest of the bunch. If you want a quick summary:

• Despite his claims to the contrary, Elon Musk communicated with Epstein, and even requested to go to his island, multiple times. He even tried to organize a trip there (ON CHRISTMAS MORNING) because his kids were driving him crazy. Musk worked in the Trump Administration.

• Alex Acosta, who infamously gave Epstein his sweetheart deal after his first arrest is very much in the files. Acosta worked in the first Trump Administration.

• Alan Dershowitz and his assistant Mitch Webber are both in the files. Dershowitz defended Trump in his first impeachment trial and Webber worked in the Trump Administration.

• Steve Bannon had extensive communications with Epstein, and seemed to be very close to him. They texted frequently, often about Trump. Bannon worked in the first Trump Administration.

• Howard Lutnick, who conceded that he had met Epstein but cut off all ties to him in 2005, is seen asking to go to his island in 2014. Lutnick works in the Trump Administration.

• Epstein had frequent communications with Peter Thiel, who is a Republican mega donor and close friend of J.D. Vance. Vance works in the Trump Administration.

• Brett Ratner, the Hollywood director/producer, also hung out with Epstein. Ratner directed the Melania Trump “documentary.”

• Epstein communicated frequently with Woody Allen, who hasn’t made a good movie since Blue Jasmine. Allen no longer plays jazz concerts at the Carlyle on Monday nights. (?)1

Do you see where I’m going with this? IT LOOKS BAD. And it gets a lot worse.

Is Trump in the files again?

Obviously he is, because Trump and Epstein were close friends for many years. In this batch, we see more evidence that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane and that they spent a lot of time together. Overall, Trump is mentioned more often in the files than Harry Potter is mentioned in all seven Harry Potter books.

I want to speak to a lot of the evidence in the files, specifically the stuff that talks about the things Trump and Epstein did with women. Like I said last time around, there are a lot of FBI “tips” in the files that mention Trump, and I think it’s fair to treat them with a healthy dose of skepticism. One of the tips is from a person who alleges that he saw Epstein engage in cannibalism, something that 100% of his victims failed to mention over the years.

Obviously, a lot of the stuff that gets called into the FBI tip line is not true, but there was still something about Trump in the more reliable parts of the files. We now have access to an FBI interview with one of Epstein’s victims, and how she was “presented” to Trump and Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell. Ultimately, nothing happened between Trump and the woman (or more likely the girl, since Epstein was not interested in anyone who was over 18), but the fact that she was presented to Trump as a potential “mate” is disgusting. She was taken around Mar-A-Lago and spent time with Trump and Epstein.

The most important part of this is that it’s not from the FBI tip line. This was a person being interviewed by two FBI agents and it was related to a crime. If you are a frequent reader of the Jackal, you know that lying to the FBI is a crime in and of itself (which is why you should never talk to them without a lawyer), and one that does get prosecuted regularly. There is no evidence anywhere that a woman who was potentially abused by Epstein was ever indicted for lying to the FBI, and there is no evidence the agents in this case ever pursued a charge against her, meaning there is a good chance they thought her story was true.

Is it hard evidence that Trump was involved with underage girls? No, but we continue to take steps in that direction with every drop of files.

“Epstein was everything.”

I want to get into a few quotes from Marjorie Tayler Greene, the former Congresswoman from Georgia. In her big interview with the New York Times, Greene quoted Trump, who went after her for trying to release the files: “Epstein was everything.”

After the latest batch of files were released, Greene said something else: “MAGA was all a lie.” When you go through the files and read Epstein’s exchanges with everyone, from Peter Thiel to Steve Bannon, a clear story begins to unfold: Epstein was a major player in global politics, and he was completely in sync with Trump’s line of thinking.

In an exchange with Thiel from 2016, Epstein celebrated Brexit and the “return to tribalism,” as it represented new opportunities for people like Thiel and himself. Epstein wanted negative interest rates, the end of globalization, and “amazing new alliances.” Epstein said, “finding things on their way to collapse, was much easier than finding the next bargain.” If you’ve watched Game of Thrones, this is essentially Littlefinger’s speech: “Chaos is a ladder.”

The files similarly show that Epstein was close to the first Trump Administration. We’ll get into Epstein’s relationship with Bannon later, but there are emails from Epstein to Larry Summers (a previous member of Barack Obama’s Administration), in which it’s suggested that Epstein is headed to Mar-A-Lago and someone in the Administration was asking him for names to replace Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury:

You also see Epstein communicating with - get this - the Russians. He talks about meetings with Vladimir Putin, and has direct communications with others from Putin’s inner circle. Whenever Epstein gets into any trouble, he runs immediately to the Russians, and to Putin directly.

There is a thread here, and it suggests that the Russians2 were potentially using Epstein as a “honeytrap” for wealthy men in the West. There is a good video on this below, and a good read on it here:3

An interesting tidbit from many, many years ago: In the Mueller Report, where they were tasked with finding out about the infamous “pee tape,” it was noted that after Trump heard about a potential tape, he sent Michael Cohen looking for it.

Cohen got in touch with a Russian businessman and asked about the tape. This is what the report says happened:

On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know . . . .” Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.

Note the date of Cohen’s text: It came after the Access Hollywood tape was released. Just something to note! What is obvious from the Epstein Files is that he kept photos, videos, and other materials of the men who either visited his island or spent time with him. And there are photos of men with girls as well. Was the pee tape facilitated by Epstein and given to the Russians? Crazier things have happened.4

Epstein was extremely online.

To me, the most interesting thing in the files is Epstein’s relationship with Bannon and a man named Christopher Poole. This part of the Jackal is a deep dive into Internet culture, but bear with me.

Poole is the founder of 4Chan, a hyper-online Internet forum that features lots of memes, off-color jokes, and Neo-Nazi stuff. If there is a gross rumor about a politician or other public figure, there is a good chance it came from 4Chan. So, why was Epstein chatting with Chris Poole?

4Chan has always run into problems with Internet regulators, and that was always a headache for Poole. He previously shut down 4Chan’s politics board because it was overwhelmed with overtly pro-Nazi propaganda, but then curiously relaunched it only a year later. In a must-read piece, Ryan Broderick details what happened:

Poole shutdown /new/ in January 2011, telling users at the time, “As for /new/, anybody who used it knows exactly why it was removed. When I re-added the board last year, I made a note that if it devolved into /stormfront/, I’d remove it.” (Stormfront is one of the oldest Neo-Nazi communities on the web.)

So it has never made much sense as to why Poole would ban /new/ for being a racist hell hole and then, barely a year later, launch /pol/, a board specifically designed to be a racist hell hole. But buried inside the newest batch of files related to the Epstein investigation is a possible hint as to what made Poole change his mind. He met with Epstein the day before /pol/ was created (my emphasis).

In Epstein’s emails with Bannon, you can see how the two of them were plotting to gin up support for far-right autocrats across the world. Bannon and Epstein bragged about supporting:

• Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

• Viktor Orban in Hungary.

• Matteo Salvini in Italy.

• Marine La Pen in France.

• Nigel Farage in the U.K.

• Shinzo Abe in Japan.

The most important part of Epstein’s association with 4Chan is that it is the birthplace of QAnon, before it was hijacked by Ron Watkins and brought over to 8Chan (a site that is somehow worse than 4Chan).

So, you have Epstein and Bannon plotting together on how to convert disaffected young men who are stuck in extremely online Internet forums, and it comes after Epstein’s meeting with Poole years earlier.

But the biggest part of this to me is when Epstein and Bannon start talking.5 Michael Wolff (remember him?) gets them together in October 2017, shortly after Bannon left the White House in Trump 1.0. They begin coming up with ways to “stave off” the (at the time) nascent #MeToo/Time’sUp movement:

Do you know what else started in October 2017, right after Epstein and Bannon got connected, and only a few years after Epstein had met the head of 4Chan? QAnon. Funny coincidence.

Overall, you see Epstein and Bannon orchestrating the major rightward shift towards global populism from 2015ish to the present. My guess is that Greene read all of these emails and concluded that MAGA is a lie fomented and manipulated by Jeffrey Freaking Epstein or, at the very least, aligned with him. If that’s true, then Trump was right when he said Epstein was everything.

This is not going away.

The Trump Administration has repeatedly said that they are not releasing any other files, and that the Epstein investigation is over. There will be no arrests, and apparently no names will be made public. The thing is, Democrats will eventually be back in power after November and will have the ability to compel the release of these records, without redactions (never mind the fact that Trump officials are currently breaking the law, which may be relevant to a judge).

The releases done by the government also show something else conclusively, even leaving aside Epstein’s weird conversations with Bannon, Musk, and Thiel: Trump and Epstein were very, very close friends. I think in one of my other Jackals on the Epstein Files, I poured cold water on a long-standing rumor that Melania was introduced to Trump by Epstein. I basically reasoned that because Melania threatened to sue anyone who printed that, it couldn’t be true since she wouldn’t expose herself to discovery for no reason.

But the latest batch of files seems to confirm it:

That is one of Epstein’s assistants giving testimony under oath. Maybe they’re lying, but it sure would be interesting if someone who Melania threatened to sue asked her to prove it in court.

MAGA will not care.

This is the regular part of each Epstein Jackal where I tell you that MAGA is not going to abandon Trump over Epstein. A thing I have said to some friends in private is that even if we eventually see evidence that Trump was after underage girls, MAGA will then shift and say, “Liking a 16 year-old girl doesn’t make you a pedophile, it makes you a hebephile.” And that is already happening:

When I see “takes” like that, I generally only have one response:

Like I said above, the Administration now says the Epstein Files are #over, and I would bet that Trump’s supporters fall in line.

When Trump was asked about the survivors during a press conference by Kaitlin Collins, he said this in response:

You are the worst reporter. CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know she’s a young woman — I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face. You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth.

Classy. But the most shocking comment to me was from Trump’s assistant Todd Blanche. After all of these releases and documents detailing truly lurid behavior from Epstein (and others) Blanche said that partying with Epstein is “not a crime.”6 OK:

If I voted for Trump, I would hide my head in a bag.

See you on schedule one week from now.

It has been worse than I imagined. Trump 2.0 is an objective disaster, and even his worst critics underestimated the damage.

A disastrous first year.

The title of my Jackal from a year ago, “It’s All Downhill from Here,” was apt but the content was not. I want to go through it a little bit, touch on some things happening this week, and also give a few thoughts on a potential SCOTUS decision on tariffs, but first let’s take a pit stop.

When Trump took office, his approval rating - according to The Economist - was around 46%, with his disapproval sitting at 48%. Trump has never been a very popular figure and after such a close election, it’s unsurprising that a hefty chunk of the country wasn’t thrilled with him. But still, most presidents will take -2% approval if you ask them.

Here’s what it is now:

That is bad. When you break it down by each state, it gets even worse. The only states where Trump has a positive approval rating are:

• Alabama

• Arkansas

• Tennessee

• Oklahoma

• Kentucky

• South Dakota

• West Virginia

• Wyoming

• Utah

• North Dakota

• Montana

• Idaho

Of those states, the only ones where his net approval is higher than 3% are:

• Idaho

• West Virginia

• North Dakota

• Wyoming

• Montana

• Tennesse

Yes, that means Trump’s approval rating is underwater in states that he won in 2024, including Georgia (-18%), Arizona (-16%), Pennsylvania (-16%), Wisconsin (-17%), and Michigan (-15%).

Trump supporters can spin or justify this in lots of different ways. Maybe he’s playing 4D chess or maybe the coming gains are going to turn things around. Maybe the rest of us just don’t “get it,” but for him to go from -2% to -19% in just one year is really bad, politically speaking. Things do not look good for the Trump Administration right now, and the elections from only 2 and a half months ago prove the relevance of the polls, which will remain relevant as we head into the midterms.

The week where it all ended.

I think what I failed to capture in my initial assessment/prediction of Trump 2.0 was the capacity for unmitigated failure. This past week has driven Trump’s incompetence home and shown us the consequences of his Presidency. At Davos, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, gave a speech announcing the end of American hegemony and that a “new world order” had to come about. He talked about the West “moving on” from U.S. dominance, effectively saying that our time as a global superpower had passed.

He received a standing ovation.

Carney also announced that Canada would be rescinding its 100% tariffs on China’s electric car market, which will give them their first major foothold in North America. It’s a huge blow to Tesla and Elon Musk (more on him later), because even BYD’s cars are superior to Tesla’s, and Americans will eventually get a look at them as Canadians venture south.

It is an incredible, crushing failure on Trump’s part, who is pushing more and more of our allies into China’s arms. Whether he knows it or not (and he most certainly doesn’t), the rest of the world no longer sees him or his ideology as an aberration but as a possible permanent fixture in American politics, so they are readjusting. Put simply: Our former Western allies are bullish on the emergence of American ignorance. They do not trust us to elect a Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or even a George H.W. Bush again. Earlier today, the European Union canceled its free trade deal with the U.S., following Trump’s speech at Davos.

I took heart in the fact that financial markets remain one last check on Trump: After he announced a possible military invasion of Greenland to “take it over,” the Dow Jones, S&P, and Nasdaq all plummeted. He came out today and said he wouldn’t do a military takeover of Greenland, and markets surged again. But I think the damage is done.

For one, the rest of Europe can see Trump for what he is, even if his sycophantic supporters and - to some extent - the American media cannot: Insane. Earlier this week, the Norwegian Prime Minister confirmed what many people had assumed was a joke: Trump texted and said he wants Greenland because Norway didn’t give him a Nobel peace prize. Seriously.

When I say that Donald Trump is “insane,” I don’t mean it’s “hard to believe” he’s President or that he’s just some wild guy; I mean he is mentally ill. The Europeans see this too (most likely because they don’t have Fox News there), and have taken note that he was elected twice.

The Greenland pivot isn’t something that popped up out of nowhere. At the end of Trump’s first term, he did multiple interviews where he said he wanted Greenland because it was big (Greenland looks huge on a map, but is actually smaller than Chad) and that he viewed it as a real estate acquisition and described it as something he “just had to have.”1

So, even if he eventually backs down (he will take an off-ramp if the markets keep tanking), the desire will linger on for him. All it will take is for some reporter to say, “Hey, whatever happened to Greenland?” and we could be right back to where we started. I know this. You know this. And now our allies know this.

They are no longer giving the American public the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s what I got wrong.

I think looking back at my piece from last year, a few big oopsies stand out.

1. I underestimated Trump’s weaponization of ICE and his desire to deport immigrants. I mocked the Administration for doing fewer deportations than Joe Biden. While it is still true that Trump 2.0 is deporting fewer violent criminals than Biden did (at least per capita), they have used ICE to go after everyone else.

2. “Sit back and watch them fail.” Yikes. This was a good statement for mental health purposes, but I don’t like it anymore.

3. I said Elon Musk is not a Nazi.

Point 3 is a pretty big surprise for me. Over the past year, Musk has made it clearer and clearer that he is a white nationalist, as he has continually reposted and amplified insane Neo-Nazis. His website is now filled with them as he has stopped banning accounts, even the ones that engage in the most vile racism. And since his infamous “salute,” we’ve gotten another angle showing that it was, in fact, simply a “seig heil.”

Twitter is also completely useless. It rarely works and is filled with bots. You are more likely to see random pornographic content than a unique political take. And something happened while Elon was doing the Great Replacement Theory: Facebook beat him at social media. Threads is now more popular than X.

I definitely did not see that coming. Part of me is plaintive about this, since I think Musk was perviously a net force for good stuff in America. But I do think he allowed his Twitter overuse to mess with his brain, and also probably did too many drugs.

I think I also underestimated how much Trump’s tariffs would devastate the economy, even if I shared those sentiments every now and then. Look at this chart to see the damage:

We are now rolling into 2026 with 2025 being the worst year for job growth (outside of a recession) in the past 25 years. It is a disaster, and one that could have easily been avoided (especially when you look at how much better the rest of the world is doing). This brings me to SCOTUS potentially bailing us (and Trump) out.

The Supreme Court heard the tariffs case late last year, and lots of people were expecting a quick decision given the economic turmoil they are causing. Even if they were to side with the Administration, you’d want to get a definitive answer so that companies can adjust.

We are now mostly through January and we have no tariff decision. Technically, we do not have an opinion day scheduled until late February (although opinions theoretically could come at any time). To me, that means someone is writing a lengthy dissent that is holding up the decision, and I don’t think it’s one of the conservatives. If a conservative - say Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito - were dissenting to a decision striking down Trump’s tariffs, they’d be motivated to do it quickly, so that the Administration could start paying everyone back as quickly as possible.

If a liberal were dissenting, the timing doesn’t really matter, since no one is going to get paid back anyway. Looking at those tea leaves and disregarding the oral argument (where it seemed like SCOTUS was going to decide against the Administration), it seems to me like SCOTUS will side with Trump.

However, there’s another set of tea leaves. Over the past couple months, a huge chunk of companies have started to file in Federal Court and have asked for their tariff fees to be returned. Costco and Wal-Mart are two of the really big names, but lots of corporations have filed in kind. Maybe they got wind of something and are getting out ahead of a favorable ruling for them.

Or maybe SCOTUS solidifies Trump’s tax increases. Either way, I think the damage is done.

When you add all of this together:

• Trump’s cratering polls

• Trump’s cratering economy

• Allies turning against us

• Trump’s collapsing brain making 2024 Joe Biden sound like 2008 Joe Biden

• Legal failures left and right

• Tariffs

• Greenland

• ICE agents shooting a woman in the face

It is clear that there is only one kind of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it applies to those who think Trump is doing a good job.

I will be back in a few weeks with a piece on the dire straits of conservative media.

They shot an innocent woman in cold blood.

Good’s shooting itself is horrific, and deserves a longer post reflecting on what’s happening to us as a country and why people react so callously to everything. Good was a mother of three who had just dropped off her six year-old at school. Now she is dead, and she doesn’t have to be.

But I do want to do a quick legal analysis of her shooting. In short, I think a murder charge is coming for the officer based on the available evidence, and the only way one doesn’t come is if there is Federal interference.

The New York Times has a really good analysis of the video evidence, which is pretty damning for Ross. I think there are a few objective, factual things that everyone has to acknowledge:

• The ICE officers gave Good conflicting directions. You can hear them say to her, “Move,” which she begins to do. Then another says, “Get the fuck out of the car.” In general, that is a recipe for an accident.

• Ross was in no danger at all. She did not try to hit him with her car, and he was easily able to move out of the way. After he shot her, he walked down the block and said, “Call 911.” Then he left the scene, unharmed.

• Ross fires three shots at her, and shots 2 and 3 were after she had already passed him. At best, you could say there is a legal defense for the first shot (I wouldn’t agree), but shots 2 and 3 are probably what gets you a murder charge.

• Ross put himself in harm’s way. He steps in front of the car (law enforcement officers are told directly to never do this) and whips out his cell phone (another thing that goes against protocol). With one hand operating his phone, he shoots Good. Just total amateur hour stuff.

• Nearly every word coming out of the Administration’s mouth about this incident has been a lie.

Ross’s intent was also made clear with a new video released earlier today. I would note two things: 1. The video is the Ross took with his phone, and it was leaked to a local, Right-Wing outfit in Minnesota, instead of being given to Minnesota’s law enforcement. 2. It makes things infinitely worse for him.

In the video, you can hear Good saying to the ICE officers, “I’m not mad at you guys,” and following the initial directions to move. Then, when one officer and Ross approach her car and give her different directions, she turns her wheel away from both of them and attempts to drive off. After Ross fires his third shot, he calls Good a “fucking bitch.” It is a prosecutor’s dream (assuming you have a prosecutor who likes to indict cops, which is rare).

Justin Amash (remember him?) summarizes it well:

“Mislead” is doing a lot of work there, because I would just say they are lying. You have to know things are bad when even Trump is starting to say, “It’s a horrible scene” instead of insulting the woman.

J.D. Vance has actually been more extreme than Trump, and essentially blamed her for her own death. He did an insane press conference yesterday, where he blatantly lied about what happened and then gave away information that allowed media outlets to identify the ICE officer. Vance went into detail about a prior incident that happened to Ross, which allowed journalists to connect the dots. And I can’t help but wonder why.

You have two options at this point:

• J.D. Vance is a moron.

• He wanted to Ross to be identified.

It is my guess that Vance and others in the Administration want Ross to be identified because they want him to get hurt. They want some sort of retaliatory violence against him or another member of ICE, because it would allow them to escalate.

It is totally possible that Vance was just stupid and outed the officer because his brain failed. But with an I.Q. of 85, he has one of the highest in the cabinet; I don’t think it was an accident.

And just from a political perspective, if/when Vance is the GOP nominee in 2028, Republicans have a serious problem: J.D. Vance is deeply unpopular. Not only is he the most unpopular vice president in history; he is the most unpopular person in public life, besides Hillary Clinton.

To put things in context, Democrats tried to roll into the 2024 Election with the guy who is currently -18 and the woman who is currently -15. Vance is -23 and my guess is that the more time the public has to get to know him, the higher that unfavorable number will go.

Mad about Maduro.

I also have a quick note about the Maduro situation, which is truly insane. Several things can be true at once:

• The operation to capture Maduro was dope.

• It is great that he is out of power.

• The operation may have been unconstitutional.

• The Trump Administration clearly has no clue about what happens next.

• We did it for oil, but the reasons are unclear.

There is a huge missing piece of this that no one in the Administration has acknowledged: Guyana.

There has been a long territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over Western Guyana for around 100 years. Venezuela has claimed that the rural and mostly uninhabited part of Guyana is really Venezuela’s since the countries were divvied up many years ago.

Those claims have waxed and waned over the years, but Maduro kicked him into high gear. In 2023, he passed a referendum (by posing it to the Venezuelan public, but it was likely fake) which supported annexing the disputed territory. He has since placed troops on the border, which has likewise prompted Brazil to place troops on their own border as a defensive posture.

A few years ago, Guyana made a huge discovery off its coast: Huge amounts of oil. The discovery was so big it will make Guyana the new United Arab Emirates of South America. GDP per capital in Guyana was $6,500 in 2019. Since the oil discovery, it has jumped to $71,000, and it could jump to $90,000 by 2030. Guyana will eventually be the third-richest country in the Western Hemisphere, behind the U.S. and Canada.

Naturally, Maduro wants the oil. And, as all illiberal dictators are true imperialists at heart, it was pretty clear that he was planning to invade Guyana and make a claim to the land, and thus the oil.

The Trump Administration has mentioned none of this. To be clear, if Maduro had invaded Guyana or had began making threats, that is 1000% the sort of thing we should use our military to defend. Guyana is our ally and we should protect them; I would have been fully on board with Trumpy.

But it is a huge missing piece of this entire operation, that can only be explained by incompetence. I said this when they did the tariffs: They tariffed an island that was only inhabited by penguins.

There is no plan. There is no strategy. Everyone in the cabinet is a smooth-brain. Buckle up.

I’m gonna try to send you guys some Jackals while I’m on paternity, but I like the snuggles too much.

December is usually Denver’s coldest month, beating January by a couple degrees (thanks to some weird wind effects). This December was Denver’s second-warmest on record. I expected January to finally cool things off, but our recorded high on January 4, 2026, was 67 degrees, twenty degrees above the average. It was 55 degrees yesterday and is expected to be the same today.

Something is going on.

This is a picture of my garden on October 15, 2025. Maybe the tomato plants are a little strained, but it was very happily producing fruit. We didn’t fully remove it until October 26th.

If you know me, you know that I love my garden, to the point where the winter months almost make me sad. Being able to give your kids fresh tomatoes and cucumbers every day from July through September really is a gift. But that gift period has gotten a lot bigger over the past few years; the season has now expanded into early May and late October. That means more tomatoes, which are delicious. But it’s all coming at a cost.

When I lived in New York, I fully acknowledged climate change as a reality. As someone who lived through Hurricane Sandy, it was hard not to think about it. But I didn’t become truly aware until moving to Colorado and learning about “wildfire season.” Hot temperatures combined with a dry climate make hiking a challenge. And then there’s the smoke.

Our first home on the western side of Denver had a beautiful view of the mountains, since it was a townhome with a rooftop deck. It sounded like a great idea, until we realized that choking through wildfire smoke during 100 degree days made it essentially unusable in the middle of the summer.

Now, with two children, I am worried about the world we are leaving them. Sure, there will be more tomatoes, but what else is going to happen?

Climate change is real.

The fundamental problem with our current “debate” about climate change is that only one side mistakenly believes that there is actually a “debate.” The Left acknowledges reality and the Right does not. It wasn’t always like this.

Donald Trump - the current head of the Republican Party - has said that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese. Leaders from the Party both in government and in media have fully rejected the idea that the earth is warming at all, let alone that the warming is caused by human activity.

But the science is settled. We can see it by measuring nearly every aspect of the environment in the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries. CO2 levels are up:

Global earth temperatures are the highest they’ve been in over 100 years:

Arctic sea ice is decreasing, on average, by 12.2% each decade:

Sea levels continue to rise, which will displace millions of people across the globe:

And these are just the recent data. When we look back over longer periods of time, it becomes truly shocking:

And it’s not surprising what is causing this accelerated warming trend (us):

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases trap the heat from sunlight, warming the planet. Without any greenhouse gases, Earth would be too cold to support life. But the more greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere, the warmer the planet becomes.

Carbon dioxide comes from sources such as the burning of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), wildfires, and volcanic eruptions. […] Ground-based and satellite measurements have measured a sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 in recent decades. With a more than 50% increase in CO2 since the start of industrial times in the 18th century, scientific measurements have linked this increase primarily to the burning of coal, oil, and gas. This means that CO2 levels are now 150% the value they were at in 1750 — this is at least 1.5 times greater than the natural increase observed at the end of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, which happened over thousands of years (my emphasis).

Even if, after all this evidence, you do not believe in climate change (or that human activity is to blame), climate change believes in you. In 2025, the first mass migration due to modern climate change happened: An entire country - Tuvalu - began its relocation to Australia, because rising sea levels will eventually erase it from the face of the earth. And more of this is coming.

Christians are called to acknowledge truth.

The direction of the charts above is one thing, but then interpreting them is another. There is universal agreement amongst scientists that humans are responsible for higher global temperatures.

• A study first published in 2004 reviewed almost a thousand peer-reviewed articles on climate change and did not find a single one that rejected the idea that it was man-made.

• The Doran and Zimmerman study from 2009 similarly found that 97% of scientists agreed that human beings were behind our recent warming.

• The Anderegg study in 2010 found the same thing.

• The Cook study also found the same thing in 2013.

• More recent (and larger) studies have found even more universal agreement. Across 88,000 different scientific studies, 99% agreed that human beings were warming the planet.

I’m sure this is where the climate skeptics will jump in: “David, you are ignoring the 1% of scientists, who are surely right about this and everyone else is biased.” This is an argument I have heard a lot on topics ranging from vaccines to 9/11 being an inside job:1 There are “experts” whose views are being overlooked, because the opposition is paid off or bullied into their beliefs.

But that same argument is never applied within Christianity itself. Jesus’s actual existence is not seriously debated amongst biblical scholars, and that applies to both secular and Christian historians. Even atheist scholars agree that Jesus was a real, historical figure and not a figment of the early church’s imagination. But there isn’t 100% agreement.

A minority of scholars argue that Jesus actually didn’t exist and is instead a mythical figure, à la Hercules or Maui (shout out to Moana). In his “documentary,” Religulous, Bill Maher lays out this theory:

I should say: Almost every frame of Maher’s video is false. To begin with, he confuses Mithra (the Persian god) and Mithras, an ancient Roman cult movement. Mithra has zero similarities to Christ, but Mithras has more than a few. The problem is that Mithras came after Christ, and was imitating Christianity, not the other way around.

Maher’s views are heavily in the minority and unsupported by evidence, and they are not being suppressed or discarded because of Big Antiquity Scholarship™ or a conspiracy held up by corrupt historians. But Christians who deny the man-made, scientific explanations for global warming (and, again, for vaccines and other issues) are no different from the Mahers of the world. Think of it this way:

• 99% of scientists agree that climate change is being accelerated by humans.

  • “I’m going to go with the 1% who disagree.”

• 99% of historians agree that Jesus existed.

  • “I’m sticking with the 99% because the 1% aren’t credible.”

You cannot use the scientific method to get you to one place and then take an off-ramp when it takes you to a place you don’t like.2 It is true that Jesus existed (and, I believe, died and rose from the dead), and it is true that humans are behind the effects of climate change.

Stewardship is a biblical calling.

Some Christians argue that because God is in control of the weather, then climate change is impossible. We - mere mortals - cannot do anything to alter the planet’s ecology. But this is an irresponsible narrative, in addition to being anti-biblical.

Christians are charged with being stewards of the planet in the book of Genesis, where we are called to “take care” of the earth. Call me crazy, but if we have lots of evidence that burning through rapid amounts of fossil fuels (usually in pursuit of consumerism, which is a another discussion) is damaging the environment, that is neglecting our God-given role as caretakers of the earth.

It is also clear by now that being given stewardship over something suggests that our activity can have an effect on that something. God calls us to be good stewards of our finances. He calls us to be good stewards of our bodies. He calls us to be good stewards of our mind and to avoid things like excessive drinking. I don’t see anyone seriously trying to argue that because God has ultimate dominion over our finances, health, bodies, and sobriety (along with everything else), that we should ignore his directive to be good stewards of those things. If you mishandle your finances, you are a bad steward of what God has given you. If you mishandle God’s good, green earth, you are a bad steward of what God has given you. It logically follows.

I don’t think any book I’ve read in the past 10 years has affected me more than The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It hit me so hard I forced my whole bible study to read it with me. But in it, Comer lays out the calling of the Christian: A simple, contented life. Some of you may have seen those giant pickup trucks that people purposefully outfit to emit more smoke and pollution, basically giving a big middle finger to the climate change folks. You can call that lots of things, but it is not simple or contented. Comer also talks about how nature can bring us closer to God:

Creation - especially places that are yet untouched by civilization - has the potential to wake us up to our Creator in ways that few things ever can. It invokes gratitude and that secular unicorn, wonder. If materialism despiritualizes us, the material world itself has the opposite effect; it respiritualizes our souls.3

As someone who hikes in Colorado, I can definitely attest to this:

Colorado is filled with endless beauty, pointing us back to our Creator. If we destroy that beauty, are we severing a line to God?

Because our politics are now so heavily infused with religion, I think too many Christians have reflexively assumed that it is God’s intention for us to be pro-climate change, and burn through more gas and coal. But the neat thing about Christianity is that it cuts through any political party’s current beliefs (more on this later). And the Bible’s teachings on contentment (along with Comer’s4) surely current stance on climate change.

What does it look like in practice?

Well, this is a newsletter mostly about acknowledgement. For the deeper answers, I don’t have a really good explainer. Does this mean that all Christians should buy electric cars? I don’t think so, mostly because the infrastructure doesn’t seem to be there yet. My wife and I also use disposable diapers, as opposed to re-usable ones, which are definitely better for the environment. While we do have friends who used re-usable diapers (and they probably love God more than we do), there also has to be a balance for time, stress, and general tiredness, especially with newborns. My point is: There is a lot of room for grace here. One thing Elisabeth and I have tried to be conscious of is where we are buying our clothes from. My toothbrush is made from 100% recycled materials, which is neat. We also use re-usable water bottles, but that is something required of every Coloradan (along with getting a dog). The little things can make a difference if everyone does them.

I think it’s also important to acknowledge that we - the world - have made huge changes and are, in fact, reducing carbon emissions. The U.S. has reduced its net carbon emissions by 17% since 2005, and we have made major headway on the transition to electric, wind, and solar power.

For a long time, there was an argument against these reductions in carbon emissions - or at least the general call for them - because it would do a disservice to developing countries who did not get to experience the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. This argument - put forth by Bjorn Lomberg5 - essentially says that it is unfair for the developed West to reap the benefits of heavy carbon emissions, while demanding the same of less-developed countries in the South and East, who did not contribute as greatly to the current climate problem. But when you look at Asia, especially India and China, they have been able to reduce their emissions by a ton while also growing economically. Because of the economic opportunities associated with solar, wind, and electric energy, India has shown that it is possible to reduce your carbon emissions while also emerging from a “developing country” status. And China expects to be fully carbon neutral by 2060. I think Lomberg’s argument has been proven wrong.

Where he might still have a point is that the private market seems to be doing a pretty good job of pushing itself towards more carbon-neutral solutions. That’s a bigger debate altogether, but with hybrid models - government incentive combined with private enterprise - the U.S. and other Western countries have made great progress. We need to do more.

My position is normal, rational, and conservative.

A thing that I lament is that I have to write this piece at all. I remember being with a conservative friend when John McCain released his plan to address climate change in the GOP’s 2008 Platform. The two of us - both Republicans at the time - were excited to see him (and Sarah Palin!) acknowledge the factual matter and propose a private, free-market solution. Reading it today feels alien. After acknowledging that, “The same human economic activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,” the GOP platform lays out multiple ways to tackle climate change.

It ends its section on climate change with this:

The Republican perspective on the environment is in keeping with our longstanding appreciation for nature and gratitude for the bounty the Almighty has bestowed upon the American people. It was Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who said, "The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others." We agree. Whether through family vacations, hunting or fishing trips, backpacking excursions, or weekend hikes, Americans of all backgrounds share a commitment to protecting the environment and the opportunities it offers. In addition, the public should have access to public lands for recreational activities such as hunting, hiking, and fishing.

In contrast, the 2024 GOP platform mentions climate change zero times, in addition to being almost one-fifth the size of the 2008 platform. After acknowledging the reality of climate change, we should also acknowledge that the Republican Party has changed. Or at least what they say publicly has changed.

Remember all the charts from above? The ones that show accelerated warming and attribute it to humans? They come directly from the current Trump Administration, including the quote about climate change being caused by the burning of fossil fuels. They can say whatever they want to their constituents, but I know how to read. Maybe after they read this Jackal they’ll take those pages down.

It is sad that it now offends people when you say, “Climate change is real.” But one day the political coalitions will change. What will stick around: The Christian obligation to acknowledge truth and practice stewardship.

I really do love my garden. I love picking tomatoes with my eldest daughter, and I love it when she begs for cucumbers as soon as we pluck them from the vine. I am writing this mostly because I am afraid of the world we are giving her. Climate change is going to bring about drastic changes to our planet. There will be mass migration events, water and food shortages, and animal extinction. Still, I am not a fatalist; humans have adapted to changes in climate before and I suspect we will do so again, through pain and suffering.

My garden also connects me to my grandfather, who passed away 15 years ago this year. I am getting older and my memories are fading, but the ones I have of my family going to his house in Queens and eating from his garden are sticking around.

I have known for many years that my grandfather lost his own father when he was just nine years old. His dad, Paul Magliochetti, was trying to break up a fight between two of his neighbors, and one of them shot him. I only recently learned that it happened on Thanksgiving.

For my most of my life I spent Thanksgivings with my grandfather, without even knowing about the pain that day brought him. He died on St. Patrick’s Day. I love Irish people, food, and whiskey, but I have trouble mustering happiness on a day that brings so many people great joy. We are all carrying unseen pain.

Our ultimate goal as parents is to pass on a life to our children that is better than ours. To acknowledge pain, endure it, and hope that there is less of it for our kids. My grandfather did that, but I am worrying about what I am doing for my two daughters, and if simply acknowledging climate change is enough. After all, they will live more directly with the repercussions than I will.

This is where I’m thankful for God’s grace, as we all strive to do better for our kids. I hate that my daughters’ lives may be filled with more pain than mine, and that they will have to make sacrifices that I didn’t. Or maybe we will be diligent enough and serious enough to make the changes necessary to fix this problem. Hope springs eternal. I do know this: Addressing a problem means admitting it exists. Christians have a true obligation to start there.

Our kids deserve to have their gardens, though pain seen and unseen.

The Jackal returns on Friday.

As a reminder, we are fully in the season of Christmas. On this day in the Christmas calendar, your true love should be getting you FIVE GOLDEN RINGS. Or, if you read the Bluey version, FIVE DOLLARBUCKS. So continue saying Merry Christmas to all your friends until the 12 days are up. You can even cite to me if you want.

I do have a Christmas confession for everyone: I had heard prior to my last Jackal that Elise Stefanik was going to suspend her campaign for governor. Given that it was happening in relative proximity to the release of the Epstein Files, I assumed it meant something super bad was in them. So, I teased it a little bit. But then they came out and you couldn’t find Trump anywhere in the files. Or so we thought.

I don’t want to rehash what everyone has probably gone over the past couple weeks, but I think we went from everyone suspecting that there was an Epstein coverup going on to everyone straight up saying, “Oh, we are fully in the middle of an Epstein coverup.” What basically happened is that the Trump Administration released some records related to Epstein, but curiously had redacted large portions of them and omitted any photos of Trump. Or so we thought.

Internet sleuths1 figured out that Trump’s DOJ redacted the files incorrectly, and that you could simply copy and paste the redacted materials into a new document and see what was blacked out. #Competence

But the icing on the cake is what happened after people found a few photos of Trump in the files that got released by the DOJ. Once those became public and people started noticing that Jeffrey Epstein had a few pictures of Trump with women, the DOJ deleted the files from the release. If it wasn’t obvious that we were in the middle of a coverup up until that moment, it became abundantly clear after that.

Some of the stuff in the files is nuts.

Lots of people have texted me about the crazy stuff that came out in a second batch of files, so I’ll go through them quickly, ranking them from least believable to most believable:

• Trump was present when an underage woman’s infant child was killed, after the child was thrown off a yacht in Michigan. The woman was allegedly one of Epstein’s victims.

  • Epstein spent a lot of time in Michigan, but that’s about where the plausibility of this one ends. The lake where this supposedly happened is too shallow to fit anything but a really small yacht.

• A limo driver overheard a woman saying Trump and Epstein threatened her:

The limo driver who reported all of this has a history of psychotic episodes and was hospitalized at one point. And while it is true that there was a reported suicide in Kiefer, Oklahoma that syncs up with the time frame, the limo driver tried to report this to the FBI right before the 2020 Election.

• Jeffrey Epstein wrote a letter to Larry Nassar in which he explicitly said that Trump engaged in sex with minors.

  • I actually think this one could be true, although the DOJ has explicitly said it was a fake letter. CNN was able to verify that it came straight from the prison where Epstein was locked up. So, that means some guard (or someone else) faked a letter to Larry Nassar right around the time of Epstein’s death? However, even if it is real, Epstein - as is evidenced by his now public emails - regularly made stuff up.

• The FBI identified somewhere around ten co-conspirators with Epstein who were not charged with crimes.

  • This one is the most relevant to me. Who are these people? Are they witnesses in Epstein’s case? Are they also subjects of investigations? Based on the actual text of the bill Congress passed to release the Epstein Files, we should know.

• Trump rode on Epstein’s plane many more times than was publicly reported.

  • This was said internally by a DOJ attorney during the Department’s prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell. It is true, but shouldn’t be surprising; Trump and Epstein were very close.

• Trump’s DOJ was monitoring an Epstein reporter’s flights in 2019.

  • This was actually confirmed by the reporter herself, Julie K. Brown, whose (heroic) reporting on Epstein led to his arrest. Why was Trump’s DOJ tracking a reporter’s flights in July 2019?

Suffice it to say, it is clear that Trump is “in the Epstein files.” And I would bet we eventually see evidence of him doing something extremely bad in them. Why? You should really read Marjorie Tayler Greene’s very long interview with the New York Times, from start to finish. She makes clear that her falling out with Trump has to do with Epstein and he is terrified of the subject in general. One part of it jumped out at me, where Trump attacked Greene for trying to release the Epstein Files:

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

That last line. Here’s the thing: Trump has no friends and no compassion for other people outside of himself. He has betrayed family members for small slights and cares about no one else.

He’s talking about himself and he knows he’s going to get hurt.

End of the year Jackal comes soon. Merry Christmas.

Lots has happened this week. The New York Times released two bombshell reports on Jeffrey Epstein, the first detailing how he made his fortune and then the second detailing his (weird) relationship with Donald Trump. Both come ahead of a new tranche of Epstein files being released tomorrow. But I think they are only a small part of a bigger story floating underneath.

Earlier this week, Vanity Fair dropped their interview with Susan Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff. Wiles got that job because she led Trump’s 2024 Campaign, and obviously did a good job of getting him into the White House. And in the interview you can see why she excels in both roles: She is candid, honest, and clear-eyed about reality. Throughout the eleven (!) interviews she did, Wiles admits a lot of stuff, like:

• Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” (Trump has actually said this himself).

• J.D. Vance is a conspiracy theorist (and that his conversion to Trumpism was political).

• The tariffs were a bad idea and got lots of pushback.

• There is no coherent strategy regarding Venezuela.

• Trump’s targeting of enemies through the Department of Justice is, in fact, vindictive and not based in legal reality (Wiles’s interview is going to get cited to a lot).

• She (and others) advised him against pardoning the most violent offenders of January 6th, to no avail.

• Elon Musk is addicted to ketamine and didn’t really know what he was doing with DOGE (RIP).

Despite all these admissions that made headlines, one thing in the interview stuck out to me more than anything else:

Most senior White House officials parse their words and speak only on background.1 But over many on-the-record conversations, Wiles answered almost every question I put to her.

The “I” in that sentence is from Chris Whipple, the number one chief of staff historian in the country, who has written numerous books about the position. He is the premier writer on the subject, and Susie Wiles knows him. Why would she go on the record so frequently and for so long? First, look at this picture:

Wiles is in the center of that photo and has a higher IQ than anyone in the room. In fact, she probably has a higher IQ than Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt combined. Why would she go on the record with Whipple and for so long?

I think the answer to that question is way more interesting than anything else going on right now. To be clear: Wiles goes on the record with Chris Whipple (1) and says lots of devastating things about the Administration (2). Then, she not only doesn’t get fired immediately (3), but is defended by the Administration (4).

In Trump 1.0, Wiles would have been sacked already. But she knows something, and it’s letting her keep her job while also allowing her to build a parachute for herself.

Wiles is no idiot. She did not make a “mistake” and accidentally say a bunch of stuff on the record to Chris Whipple. Wiles spoke to the Press throughout 2024 - on background and otherwise - and never made a similar mistake. Then, she sits down with one of the country’s most well-known interviewers and just has an oopsie?

I think Wiles can read, and she is reading the writing on the wall. Trump 2.0 has been a historic failure, to the point where she knows nothing can right the ship. Maybe the economy survives Trump’s trade war, but Wiles has to know that the U.S. economy turns like a boat, and that boat is a-turnin’.

If we are not already in a recession, we are currently headed towards one. Last month’s job data were particularly bad: We only hired 64,000 people in November, and we lost 105,000 jobs in October. This year - combined with losses in other months - we have created only 55,000 jobs a month on average; that is the lowest number (ever) outside of a recession. And if it weren’t for healthcare, the U.S. economy would have lost jobs over the past six months, during which we averaged only 17,000 jobs a month being created. Take that with (still) increasing inflation and you can see why Americans are giving Trump his lowest numbers ever in economic approval.

I think Wiles knows all of this and she is not alone. There are rumors floating around that the biggest wave of GOP retirements in the House is coming up, and that is likely because they know they are losing control of the chamber next year, bigly. Wiles is getting out ahead of a looming disaster and will eventually be able to point to these interviews when she is trying to land her next job. “I tried to stop him and couldn’t.”

Still, I don’t think that’s the whole story. Wiles has to know that economic performance is temporary and in the same way that voters are blaming Trump’s tariffs for bad economic outcomes, they could give him credit if he turns the his own bad economy around.

So, I think Wiles knows something else. Either Wiles is privy to the the long-rumored issues surrounding Trump’s health (he fell asleep in the Oval Office again today 🫠), or she knows that the eventual release of the Epstein files is going to tar Trump forever. Put simply: She wants off the ship, but whatever she knows is so damaging that they do not want to throw her overboard. At least for now.

I have said this to a few friends: I am fascinated by people who thought Trump 2.0 was going to be “fine.” In the Wiles interview, you can see why it has been such a disaster: Wiles and others try to hold or contain Trump, and they are no longer able to do so, because Trump trusts himself more than anyone else. He just bulldozes through everyone and anyone.

We are fully in a Night of Camp David moment. Fasten your seatbelts.

I’m sure we’ll talk soon.

They got the pipe bomber!

This week, the F.B.I. nabbed itself a big fish: The infamous pipe bomber from January 6th. The alleged bomber - Brian Cole - had evaded the F.B.I. for years, fueling conspiracy theories about what his motives were.

I previously wrote about the Blaze’s story from a few weeks ago where they named a different person as the pipe bomber. They have now officially retracted it. But that’s not the “conservative media lie” I’m alluding to with the headline. Instead, it came from current deputy director of the F.B.I., Dan Bongino.

Last night, Bongino appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and was asked about his previous statements regarding the pipe bomber. You see, before Bongino was working for the government, he said that the reason the pipe bomber hadn’t been found was because it was an inside job: The F.B.I. knew who the pipe bomber was and was covering it up.

When Hannity put his own words in front of him, this is what Bongino said:

Did you catch that? When Bongino was confronted with the previous conspiracy theories he spread about the pipe bomber, he says, “In the past, I was paid for my opinions.” In other words, he didn’t feel like he had a responsibility to tell his audience the truth, because it was more profitable for him to feed them lies.

To the surprise of no one engaged with reality, Brian Cole is not a government agent or ANTIFA, or an F.B.I. employee. He is a supporter of Donald Trump who thought the 2020 Election was “stolen.”

I really can’t overstate this: There is really no such thing as “conservative media.” There is a conservative entertainment complex that feeds its audience lies and ignores the truth when it is inconvenient. If you have loved ones who regularly watch Fox News, you have a responsibility to tell them to turn it off. Why? Because studies show that people who watch Fox News know less about current events than people who do not watch the news at all.

Right now, the Capitol Police officer named by the Blaze has had to hire private security. The same goes for a number of Capital Police officers who came out publicly and rebutted Trump’s narrative about January 6th. A number of police officers - after fighting with a mob of Trump supporters for hours on that day - took their own lives.

And the consciences of the Dan Bonginos of the world have been unaffected by this, as they spread lies about the pipe bomber (and January 6th in general) for years. Bongino’s admission is damning, but it is unsurprising to anyone who isn’t brainwashed.

When a Democratic President takes office, they should take a lesson from Trump’s FCC and have a serious look at the broadcast licenses of outlets like Fox News, and the servers that host websites like The Blaze (if it survives the coming defamation lawsuit). The lies - that do real material harm to peoples’ lives - have gone on for long enough.

Nothing on the bomb strikes?

Arguably the biggest story this week was Pete Hegseth’s authorization of naval strikes on several boats in the Caribbean. I think this story is still unfolding, and we are learning lots of new details every day. In the meantime, I think this is an excellent read from Andrew Sullivan (and worth a free trial, at least).

This is also a great read from Paul Krugman (not related to the boat strikes), and puts a bow on the whole Jackal. The summary of Krugman’s piece is that Trump’s support amongst the swing voters who put him in office is falling off a cliff. This is confirmed by other sources too:

Trump’s 2024 coalition is breaking apart, which is mostly a policy issue. But the reason the GOP has been losing white, educated voters (and not really winning them back) is because of things like pipe bomb conspiracies, anti-vaccine sentiments, and general insanity.

Once you lose the lower propensity voters that put Trump in office, what are you left with? Only Trump’s most hardcore supporters, which cannot win you elections.

One more Jackal before the end-of-the-year piece. I’ll see you all soon.

Why does Donald Trump like Mamdani so much?

President Trump met with mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani today, and if you want to understand their meeting in one picture, here it is:

Trump gushed over Mamdani, and people on both sides of the aisle were in disbelief. Trump said he would happily live in New York under Mamadani, and that he thinks Mamdani is going to “surprise a lot of conservatives” with how good of a job he does. It was truly bizarre.

How did Mamdani get Trump to fawn over him in public? My guess is that Mamdani - who is very smart - effusively praised Trump right before their meeting began. Trump is pretty easy to manipulate and loves being complimented. So give him credit: Mamdani played his cards exactly right.

I would bet Mamdani did so because he needs Trump to help New York, but the side-effect of all this is that Trump just destroyed the GOP’s 2026 messaging campaign. Republicans in the House were going to tie the Democrats to Mamdani’s “radical left” policies and use it nationwide, a la “Defund the Police” in 2020. Trump’s bromance just took that entire narrative away from them.

Also, pour one out for the political consultants who were hoping to cash in on the Elise Stefanik honeypot, as she’s running for governor of New York next year. She was all-in on running against Mamdani and calling him a jihadist, but her campaign will see less money from donors than beach-front property in Alaska. She had to put out this tweet after the meeting:

Debasing yourself and going after New York’s first Muslim mayor all to lose the governor’s race by 15 points more than Lee Zeldin did. No one deserves the embarrassment more.

But it wasn’t just the insane Mamdani meeting. Now Marjorie Taylor Greene is retiring (two days after her congressional pension vests) following her feud with Trump. I think that is more indicative of the writing on the wall than anything else. MTG seems to know what a lot of other Republicans don’t: MAGA is dead.

Trump is a lame duck, as the elections earlier this month proved. Republicans are going to lose the House next year and Trump’s presidency will essentially be over. The Epstein Files are eventually going to be released, even if the Administration delays for as long as possible.1 It’s safe to say that will be bad for Trump, given that even in the small batch of emails that were released last week he was the most mentioned person, by far. Barf.

But I think MTG can see where this is all going and she’s making her pivot. Maybe she will land a media contract as a commentator and get a seven-figure salary. Maybe she takes her campaign money and starts endorsing the true “MAGA” candidates. Or maybe she becomes a CrossFit instructor. In any of these scenarios, she is better off away from MAGA. I don’t think it’s an accident that she began to distance herself from Trump once he started waffling on the Epstein Files. Even then she was able to game out this scenario.

The truth is, Trump is almost 80 years old and will not be President again. On top of that, his second term has been an unmitigated disaster. The economy is spiraling. Trade has plummeted. We are losing manufacturing jobs at a rapid pace. Oh, and inflation is still elevated.

And it’s not just the economy: James Comey’s indictment is now very likely to be dismissed, which will be a huge embarrassment for Trump.2 Depending on the nature of Comey’s dismissal, it is likely that the case against Leticia James will be dismissed too. And SCOTUS really might nuke all of Trump’s tariffs. It is just one haymaker after another.

Don’t take it from me; just look at what a Fox News host had to say:

The blue wave early in the month was really just the beginning. Now, everyone is starting to see it: Trump 2.0 is a huge failure. And it’s not just the vibes either; his approval rating is fully in the toilet:

On the bright side, it is nice to be proven right. But it is more sad than anything else. If Kamala Harris had won last year, job growth would be improving, inflation would be falling, and Trump likely be in a courtroom as opposed to building a giant ballroom next to the White House.

And wrecking the country. That too.

I’ll try to give you a hot take if the Comey dismissal comes. But it may be super close to turkey day and I’m cooking. If you don’t hear from me, Happy Thanksgiving.

Naps are great.

Last weekend, Elisabeth and I napped on both Saturday and Sunday while the two kids were sleeping. I support naps. But I have never fallen asleep while I was in the middle of doing a job. Someone else did:

Trump fought his sleepiness for roughly 30 minutes during a meeting in the Oval Office, which was packed full of people. I have to say, being able to fall sleep in that busy of an environment is a talent and I commend him. It is also not the first time Trump has fallen asleep in public this term, and he was a very frequent napper during his criminal trial in New York. He is 79 and likes to nap; there are worse things.

But of course it’s bad and a reminder that he is too old to do the job. There were immediate comparisons to Joe Biden, who also fell asleep in public a few times during his presidency. But I don’t think the comparison is fair, because Biden’s shut-eye time usually came after long trips overseas or after extended time in public. In contrast, Trump’s meeting was in the early afternoon in the Oval Office. Joe Biden never fell asleep in that environment, and if he had, there would have been pandemonium. Neera Tanden observed as much:

I think Neera is right, but others disagreed. T. Becket Adams took great exception:

So, I thought I would ask a helpful question:

Becket never answered, but I got a lot of angry replies from other people, which is weird because it was just a question! The reason (I think) a lot of those replies are angry is because most Trump supporters know the answer: Biden did not fall asleep in the Oval. Some even conceded as much to me.

There is simultaneously a similarity between Trump and Biden, but there is also an asymmetry. Yes, they are both old and clearly in decline, but as I tried to point out multiple times last year, Trump is worse than Biden, even now. Here is a transcript from Trump, just 3 days ago:

We do billions of dollars in trade with Hungary. Why would they give that up? And they gave up so much else. Look, they gave up everything. This country was poorly run. I think if I didn’t win the election, we might not have a country, if you want to know the truth, not a recognizable country. But our relationship was immediately good as soon as I won the election because Viktor’s one of the people that’s highly respected, and we had a great relationship with Hungary. We do again. That was an easy one. Yeah.

“We do again.” Sometimes when Trump speaks it reminds me of The Office episode where Kevin decides to omit words because “few words do trick.”

But that is just a recent example. Trump frequently does not make sense when he speaks, to the point where his own press secretary has to translate for him afterwards. Sometimes the media has to do this as well, which has infamously been dubbed “sane-washing” by Democrats.

You can say whatever you want about Trump’s locution, but if you watch old videos of him it is clear he is in cognitive decline, and Republicans - like the ones who were angry about my question - do not want to see it. They saw that Biden was too old for the job, but are now ignoring age when it is applied to Trump. To the non-partisans, it is obvious that Trump is too old to be President, and Trump supporters refuse to see it.

How are you going to tie Zohran into this?

I’m getting there, just hold tight. There was a “story” last week about the identity of the January 6th pipe bomber. A media(ish) outlet, The Blaze, had purportedly identified the would-be bomber, and spoiler alert: It was not a Trump supporter, but a Capitol Police officer. You guessed it: The pipe bombing incident was an inside job, according to The Blaze.

Except the story is nonsense. Leaving aside the fact that it was written by a convicted participant in January 6th and a source for the story has a long history of embellishment, it makes absolutely no sense. I am not going to link to it, but the entire “analysis” is based on the gait of a certain Capitol Police officer and the videos we have of the pipe bomber. That’s it. Will Sommer, from the Bulwark has a good summary here, but suffice it to say the story has been completely walked back by The Blaze. Glenn Beck - its owner - has thrown cold water on it, and members of Congress who initially hyped it up have now gone back and deleted their tweets. This is likely because the officer in question - who I am not naming here to avoid adding to their misery - is planning a defamation suit against The Blaze, which will be very strong.1

But the story didn’t have to completely fall apart for us to know that it was bogus. Its entire narrative is based on a false premise: That Trump and his supporters were the victims on January 6th. I didn’t mention this when I talked about the violence on “both sides” after the Charlie Kirk assassination, but a troubling development on the Right is that they invent conspiracy theories to excuse the violence on their side. After Kirk was murdered, Democratic politicians emphatically condemned it en masse. When Paul Pelosi was attacked by a Trump supporter, conservatives and their media invented a story that he was actually there for a little sex party with Mr. Pelosi. January 6th, you see, wasn’t really Trump supporters. Instead, it was the F.B.I. who did it and the rioters were entrapped. The shooter in Minnesota wasn’t really a Trump supporter; he actually was mad at Democrats for not protecting illegal immigrants!

An important part of right-wing media is the belief in conspiracy theories, to the point where they are now all fighting about whether or not Israel actually murdered Charlie Kirk (seriously). I think a lot of this is downstream of Trump, who himself is a huge conspiracy theorist, where every slight against him is a plot enacted by “they” and “them.” There are, of course, conspiracy theorists on the Left who think that the 2024 Election was stolen (there are currently legal challenges happening in New York related to that) or that Israel actually did October 7th. The key difference here is that Democratic officials do not engage in the conspiracy theories and they remain at the fringes of the Party. Donald Trump himself and some Republicans in Congress actively engage with conspiracy theories, which encourages Republican voters to believe them.

Some of this is the chicken or the egg problem: Do Republicans have to be conspiratorial to satisfy their base, or is the base conspiratorial because Trump is conspiratorial? I don’t think it’s all Trump, but he is a significant factor.

DUDE. ZOHRAN.

OK, we’re there. This is where Zohran comes in: I have now written a few times about how I think his policy proposals will be bad, especially things like rent control and/or price controls. The difference between Zohran and Trump is that I can have a debate with Zohran and/or his supporters about policy, whereas any conversation I have with Trump supporters is going to be about reality. Who won the 2020 election. Were the COVID vaccines an evil weapon launched by Anthony Fauci. Do Jewish Space Lasers™ exist. Was the pipe bomber a Capitol Police officer. Did the F.B.I. secretly do January 6th to…keep Joe Biden from getting into office by delaying the vote but also doing it on his behalf.

Or let’s start off with something even more basic: Are freaking tariffs a tax? I am not kidding, I have had full on arguments with Trump supporters over something Trump said on video, and they will still insist Trump didn’t say it.

A poll came out yesterday that said 40% of Americans feel “politically homeless,” with neither Party meeting the needs of the American people. I can relate, but there is definitely an asymmetry between the Parties: One engages with reality and the other does not.

I think that is an ongoing problem for the GOP, since it will be hard for them to reach educated voters and anyone who isn’t brain-warped by conservative media.

Let’s not forget, this wasn’t all that long ago:

And “Zohran. Pipe bombs. Naps.” makes more sense than anything the GOP has said since.

See you Friday.

David, you should see someone.

MY INSANITY IS A SUPER POWER. OK, I’ll stop with the all caps. But for real, if you don’t have the Koran memorized by Tuesday, Zohran will come to your house and read the Communist Manifesto to you, wearing just socks. This is what happens when you let the Democrats win.

And win they did, B.T. (big time) on Tuesday. This has been a repeated story since 2022ish, but Democrats are now officially the Party of off-year elections. Since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, there has been a huge shift in highly-educated voters to the Democratic Party, and educated voters tend to vote.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

New York City is its own little thing (and we’ll get to it later), but the results in Virginia and New Jersey are shocking. I think everyone expected the Democrats in both races to win, but the margins are pretty seismic. Democrats didn’t just turn out their own voters; they flipped a lot of Trump voters too. Look at these results from Virginia:

If you look at that map, it shows the Democrats winning voters the rural, southwestern parts of Virginia, which have been pretty pro-Republican recently and particularly pro-Trump.

Democratic advantages with educated voters gets you some of the way to these results, but these are not happening unless there are some 2024 Trump voters who are switching to the Democrats. The evidence is actually really clear, even in these early days:

Latino voters supported the Democratic candidates this year by at least double-digit margins, according to NBC News exit polling. Latino men, who broke for Trump last year, according to the 2024 exit polls, favored the Democrats in each of the races where exit polling was conducted on Tuesday.

This is where I toot my own horn. If you have read anything I’ve written since Trump was elected (or even a little bit before), I have tried to say three things:

1. Trump’s victory in 2024 was mostly about inflation (and also Joe Biden’s misguided attempt at reëlection).

2. For this reason, his coalition is very fragile.

3. Very few people in the GOP understand why Trump won in 2024, which makes them vulnerable in future elections.

Here is a thing I said right after the election last year:

Trump’s first term was a disaster. He left office with a net loss in job creation, a spiraling economy, and a spike in crime. Biden cleaned it up in four years, and Trump will fail again because he is stupid, incompetent, and fat.

There is no such thing as a permanent coalition. When voters realize that Trump cannot magically reduce prices (this is DEFLATION, which doesn’t happen unless there’s a recession), the ones he flipped will flip back on him.

I think the GOP has fundamentally misunderstood how much Trump’s celebrity has helped him win elections. The voters who have propelled him to victory in elections since 2016 do not view him as President Chaos;™ they still see the dude from The Apprentice who is a tough, but talented businessman. And in 2017, Trump was able to ride the coattails of the strong Obama economy until COVID hit. When he was hit with a real crisis, the celebrity allure faded. It creeped back up again when the alternative choice was a vice-president they were unfamiliar with, and who belonged to an unpopular administration.

If you are reading anything more into Trump’s wins you are bringing your own biases. Here is great evidence: Do you remember Trump’s huge advantage with young men in 2024, to the point where there were countless articles written about how Gen Z dudes were now fully GOP? Look at the results from Tuesday:

The GOP does not have a “MAGA” coalition. They have a jumble of people who occasionally vote for them if the conditions are right, and going forward they have a major problem if Trump isn’t on the ballot.

Woke never went away. People are still watching the woke TV shows, and they don’t care that the Little Mermaid is black now. There is a political media culture that wants to tell you that the general public deeply cares about the stuff I am writing trying to write about every week, but they don’t. Elections are fundamentally about whether or not the people in power are doing a good job and the economy. And on Tuesday, Americans said Trump is doing a bad job and the economy sucks.

Talk dirty to me about Zohran.

Maybe the least surprising win on Tuesday was Zohran’s pretty easy coast to victory. In a three-way race it is hard to crack 50% of the vote but he did it, giving him a solid (but unclear) mandate as mayor.

I wrote a longer thing on Zohran a few months ago where I kinda bashed on him, but I will revisit that and say I am actually excited for him. If he follows through with a lot of his misguided policy ideas, I still think they won’t work out, but overall he is a breath of fresh air in American politics. He won by going to halal carts and interviewing the owners. That is awesome. I am still skeptical, but I hope he has a lot of success.

I will also make an easy bet with anyone: I think he will work overtime to court Jewish voters and try to make them feel safer in New York City.1 Zohran is young, maybe naive, but he is not stupid by any means. He knows this is a vulnerability for him and I think he will seek to correct it.

But overall, NYC sent the sex pest back to the Shadow. For that, everyone should be thankful.

However, I was a little shocked to see the reaction from the anti-Zohran crowd afterwards. I saw a lot of people in public and also friends on social media say that New York “forgot” what happened on 9/11 by electing a Muslim mayor.

Here I was thinking that my skepticism of Zohran was related to his progressive policies, when in reality lots of people simply don’t like him because he’s a Muslim. I seriously thought it was such a non-issue, I laughed at this (very amazing) poke at Zohran’s religion:

It feels (slightly) less funny now that I know people hated Zohran just because he is a Muslim. Because it is November 2025 and woke is now officially back, I am happy to announce that these people are canceled and any pets they have will be sold at auction.

But seriously, it’s just gross. It’s also fundamentally low IQ. If you watch any of Zohran’s videos and the only thing you come up with is, “That guy doesn’t understand New York because he’s a Muslim,” you are a singled-celled organism. Full stop.

It actually sent me back to Mehdi Hasan’s debate with a bunch of “far-right Republicans” on Youtube. Spoiler: These guys were not actually Republicans; they were white supremacists who spoke positively of the Nazis.2 Here is what one of them said to Mehdi’s face:

Mehdi is an Indian-Muslim immigrant, just like Zohran. He is a U.S. citizen, just like Zohran. And a dude told him to his face he wants him out of the country.3

A few months ago, all of conservative media was in uproar about the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s transit system. Iryna was a 23 year-old Ukrainian refugee and her murder was/is horrific. She was killed by a black man who had been imprisoned multiple times, so I will let you guess why it struck a nerve in conservative circles.

Pay close attention to the immigrants they memorialize and pay attention to the immigrants they tell to get out.

Zohran is American, oftentimes more so than his critics. If you reject that principle, you hate the country you live in.

OK, that was dirty.

I am going to hit every liberal dopamine center with this next section (which is short, I promise). The Democratic wins on Tuesday were so overwhelming, some right-wing influencers started testing the “rigged” waters again:

The contempt these people have for their own voters is pretty infuriating. Let’s just review what has happened since 2020:

1. After he lost, Trump hired two different commissions to review the election results and confirm he lost. Both commissions said he did.

2. He has now been in power for ten months, and has offered zero evidence of election fraud in 2020, to the point it cost him the election.

3. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani has lost his law license because of his lies about the election, as has Jenna Ellis. Sydney Powell was also punished. Fox News had to pay 3/4 of a billion dollars because of their lies about the election results. And Mike Lindell has said he will need to file for bankruptcy, because he cannot pay the penalties related to his defamation cases about the election results.

4. If Trump had any evidence about Election 2020 being “rigged,” all of this stuff could go away. Rudy gets his law license back and Mike Lindell is a millionaire again.

Trump hasn’t released this evidence because it doesn’t exist. And they will still lie to their voters about it.

I AM BACK TO ALL CAPS AND I WILL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW I REFUSED TO PROOFREAD THIS POST. I WILL BE BACK TO WRITE ABOUT THE TARIFFS BLOWING UP AT SCOTUS BUT THEN THANKSGIVING WILL MEAN NOM NOM NOM NOM.