MONDAY: Is the New York Times still based on this planet?

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2026

Yesterday's Meet the Press: Is the newspaper known as the New York Times still headquartered here on this planet? 

We ask because of the way the paper reported the events which transpired on yesterday's Meet the Press.   

The sitting president appeared on the show for an extensive interview. Only a newspaper based on an asteroid could have produced this report. 

Dual headline included:

Trump Says He Never Promised No New Wars, and Defends Compensation Fund
In a lengthy interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president again vowed that gas prices would go down when the war in Iran ends. 

President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.

“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Mr. Trump said in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” taped during his trip to Wisconsin on Friday. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”

Speaking about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, he continued: “So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”

He did promise. As a candidate in 2024, Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged not to involve the United States in war, including on the night he won the election. “They said, ‘He will start a war,’” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech. “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” 

On what meet doth this our Caesar feed?  More precisely, in what solar system does this our one-time world-famous newspaper currently dwell? 

It isn't that any of that is "wrong." It's just that the Washington Post saw what happened more clearly. 

The Post saw something which much closely resembled the session which actually occurred. Here's what the Bezos broadsheet says it saw, dual headline included: 

Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview when challenged over false claims  
When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were “rigged.”

President Donald Trump broke off an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday after host Kristen Welker challenged his false claims about elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” he said after a tense exchange lasting about four minutes. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

He then stood up and walked off the set in a barn in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, taped before an event focused on farmers that Trump held there Friday.

An NBC spokesperson declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Post saw the furious behavior of a disordered president. And not only that! The sitting president kept making false claims, those dual headline said. 

Here's the main thing the WashPo somehow managed to see:

Even after all these years, the sitting president kept making (the same "false claims" he's made these many years. When his interlocutor challenged his claims—when she challenged the claims which were false—the sitting president stood up, walked off the set in the barn, and left his "darling" alone, right there on the set.

That said, it wasn't until today's Morning Joe that we saw a news org center down on what actually happened. Joe himself was absent today, but Mika centered down on the insults aimed at Kisten Welker, and at the endless stream of "lies" which kept emerging from the mouth of the man who is—tragically but dangerously—severely mentally ill.

We wouldn't use the term "lies" ourselves; we might use the term "delusions." It isn't clear to us that he doesn't believe the false and unfounded claims he never, in his apparent mania, is willing to stop making.

(Full disclosure! According to medical science, some people are "delusional.")

The New York Times wiped all that away. There are few words to capture the "companion craziness" of what this big money "newspaper" currently does in this, the most compliant of all corporate worlds.

For a hint of Mika's presentation, you can just click here. See "Mika furious over Trump's false claims and media coverage." For the record, we don't agree with much of what Tomasky and Lemire said.

We'll offer more detail tomorrow afternoon, unless something worse occurs. But the Times is huddled on a distant rock, or in a more distant locale.

BLACK, PLUS BLUE: Terri Sewell is plenty sharp!

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2026

The year when our politics flipped: Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Alabama) is a high achiever.   

Also, Rep. Sewell is plenty sharp. The leading authority on this topic offers this overview:  

Terri Sewell

Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (born January 1, 1965) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative for Alabama's 7th congressional district as member of the Democratic Party since 2011. The district includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly African American portions of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

A native of Huntsville, Sewell studied at Princeton University for a bachelor's, Harvard Law School for a Juris Doctor degree, and St Hilda's College, Oxford for a second bachelor's that was promoted by tradition to an MA. Before entering politics, she was a securities lawyer for Davis Polk & Wardwell and a public finance lawyer for Maynard, Cooper & Gale, where she was the first Black woman to make partner. She is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Alabama and, along with Republican Martha Roby, was one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in a regular election. 

Sewell is plenty sharp. In our view, a bit of humor lurks at the end of this additional texr: 

Early life and education

...She was the first Black valedictorian of Selma High School.

After graduating from high school, Sewell went to Princeton University...Sewell completed a 158-page long senior thesis, "Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come." During her time at Princeton, she interned with Richard Shelby (then a Democrat) and Howell Heflin.  

It's true! The chronology establishes the fact that the future Senator Shelby actually was "then a Democrat," just as the overview says. 

For the record, Senator Heflin was a Democrat all through his 18-year Senate career (1979-1997). But this was back in the time when (conservative) white Democrats still dominated the electoral politics of the states of the Deep South. 

Rep. Sewell graduated from Princeton in 1986. That November, the Alabama electorate sent five (conservative) Democrats to the House of Representatives, and only two Republicans. 

That same year, the former Rep. Shelby was elected to the Senate. He was still a (conservative) Democrat at that point, but that party affiliation was eventually going to change.   

In November 1994, the dam burst across the South, but also around the nation. Republicans gained 54 seats in that year's congressional elections, winning control of the House for the first time in forty years.  

As part of that shocking partisan change, a slow-rolling party switch across "the solid South" achieved a milestone that year: 

"In a significant political realignment, the South underwent a dramatic transformation," the leading authority states. "Before the election, House Democrats outnumbered House Republicans in the South. Afterwards, with the Republicans having picked up a total of 19 Southern seats, they were able to outnumber Democrats in the South for the first time since Reconstruction."

The "Republican / Gingrich Revolution" had arrived on the national and regional scene! In Alabama, all seven House incumbents were re-elected in 1994, including those five Democrats. But here's where the humor comes in:  

The very next day, right around noon, Senator Shelby switched! We've always seen this as a source of humor, though it also serves as a marker of a major political realignment in a challenging political age. 

The leading authority nails down the basic fact of the matter:  

Richard Shelby  

Richard Craig Shelby (born May 6, 1934) is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Alabama from 1987 to 2023. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 as a Democrat, Shelby switched to the Republican Party in 1994. Shelby is the longest-serving U.S. senator from Alabama, holding office for exactly 36 years.   

...Shelby served in the Alabama State Senate from 1970 to 1978, when he was elected from the 7th district to the United States House of Representatives. He served in the House until 1987; during his House tenure, he was among a group of conservative Democrats known as the boll weevils.

In 1986, Shelby was elected to the U.S. Senate in a tight race. In 1994, the day after the Republican Revolution in which the GOP gained the majority in Congress midway through President Bill Clinton's first term, Shelby switched parties and became a Republican. He was reelected by a large margin in 1998, facing no significant electoral opposition thereafter.   

Senator Shelby switched the very next day! And yes, that's what he did!

On Election Day, he had been Senator Shelby (D-Alabama). From the next day on, he was Senator Shelby (R-Alabama)—or, as we have always scored it, he had seemed to become Senator Shelby (Permanent majority).   

For the record, Senator Shelby had every right to switch! Also, none of this, in any way, reflects poorly on Rep. Sewell, who interned with Rep. Shelby three times when he was still a Democrat.  

We're also prepared to say this: 

Rep. Sewell continued to speak well of Senator Shelby, long after he had switched.  In our view, this news report speaks well of Rep. Sewell's personal decency, and of her all-around smarts.

In our view, this matter joins other aspects of the careers of Sewell, Shelby and Heflin which may shed light on the efforts made, within our struggling nation, to find our way out of the brutal racial history created for us by our ancestors.

That said, the senator's morning-after switch has always struck us as wonderfully comical. It also stands as a marker of the slow-rolling political switch in which "the solid South" remained largely solid, but switched from being solidly Democratic to being solidly GOP.   

We'll also tell you this:   

As you probably know, Rep. Sewell's congressional district—Alabama's 7th congressional district—has been very much in the news of late as the current mid-census redistricting war piledrives across the South.  

Last Wednesday, Nicolle Wallace devoted a segment on Deadline: White House to the recent Supreme Court decision in which Alabama has been allowed to proceed this fall with one majority-Black congressional district—with one such district, not two. 

Wallace started her segment with several chunks of a videotaped statement by Rep. Sewell. If you want to watch the segment, you can start by clicking here.

Terri Sewell is very sharp. She's a major high achiever. 

We strongly agree with one of the things she said on that tape. Then again, maybe and possibly not with another thing she said.   

How should Black voters in Alabama regard that recent decision? How should Democrats—in general, how should Blue America—regard the current turmoil regarding the deliberate construction of congressional districts which are majority Black? 

Those are very important questions, and the topic is highly complex. We won't be able to hit all the stops in the course of this one little week.

Tomorrow: Two of the things she said.

SATURDAY: The Atlantic joins the human race!

SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2026

Helen Lewis, superb again: As you may recall, it's the cover report in the June edition of The Atlantic. On the magazine's somewhat bluer than pale blue cover, the essay is described this way:

THE MEN WHO FEAR WOMEN
By HELEN LEWIS

We wrote about Lewis' essay last week. Online, it appears beneath this dual headline, and begins in the manner shown:

THE MEN WHO WANT WOMEN TO BE QUIET
A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right.

By Helen Lewis

Douglas Wilson has a modest proposal to improve American life: He wants to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote. In his ideal system, “we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure,” he told me recently. “And that is, we vote by household.”

Wilson is a co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, based in Moscow, Idaho. Over the past five decades, he has built a small empire there, dedicated to disseminating his theocratic vision for the United States: a publishing house, a school, a liberal-arts college, and a video-streaming service. His denomination, which has about 170 affiliated churches, counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a member, and Wilson was invited to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon in February. So when the pastor casually suggests disenfranchising half of America, people listen.

That's the way the essay begins.

People have written about Pastor Wilson before—about the pastor whose denomination includes the perpetually furious Secretary Hegseth as a member. In her essay, Lewis goes into substantial detail, first about Pastor Wilson, but then about an array of pastors, podcasters and streamers, not excluding "a loose collection of trolls known as Groypers," all of whom are part of a burgeoning gender-based movement.

As you may recalls, Lewis is writing about a loose affiliation of millionaires and other furious men. They're sometimes said to belong to the movement she starts to describe in this passage:

Wilson is a prominent voice in what is sometimes called “masculinism”: a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men. His version is religious, influenced by the notion of male “headship” of the family and Saint Paul’s belief that godly women should “be quiet.” There are also plenty of secular masculinists, as well as nominally Muslim ones, such as the streamer Sneako, the self-proclaimed pimp Andrew Tate, and the podcaster Myron Gaines. Woman-bashing plays well on social media and sells lots of ads for crypto, sports betting, and supplements. You can make good money telling men that they’re the truly oppressed sex.

Masculinism! For ourselves, we'll go ahead and take a guess—the attitudes which Lewis goes on to describe are deeply bred in the bone. Some men are condemned to have a bit too much of the neural wiring which inspires them to loathe women in a significant way.  

The chemicals float around in their brains, perhaps in slightly excessive volume. Such men are thereby inspired to a dimwitted loathing they may find it hard to quit.

The invention of podcasts and similar technologies have helped these afflicted parties find each other and become angrier still. They may end up going on the Fox News Channel and offering ugly insults posing as jokes—such self-revelations as this:

And finally, the New World screwworm, which eats animals from the inside out, has been finally found in America, inside a cow. 

Scientists say this is just the latest of many reasons to avoid sex with Joy Behar. 

[PHOTO of Joy Behar]

AUDIENCE: Cheering, applause

The manifest nutcase who offered that musing never tires of the joy of comparing Behar to cows—or, perhaps, to horses, cattle, pigs and dogs, or once in a while to "livestock." He himself would never have sex with such an animal! 

(For the record, there would be a substantial age difference. Believe it or not, the pitiful boy who offered that quip is 61 years old! Behar, with whom he would never have sex, is 83 as we speak. Adjusting for age, and considering the norms of the culture, she looks amazingly good.)

At any rate, he would never have sex with that cow! Moments earlier, he had pleasured viewers with a joke in which (brace for punchline) he said that Ted Danson "will continue to apologize to his penis for ever having sex with Whoopi Goldberg"—and yes, that's what he said.

This is pretty much all he has. In fairness, he didn't invent the brain chemistry, the chemical torrent, which leads some men, even today, to succumb to such acts of loathing—such acts of self-portrayal.

The pitiful fellow who offered those "jokes" is part of the Fox News Channel's dimwitted duo—the pitiful pair who seem to be pushing the wonders of masculinism for that corporate "cable news" outfit.

The woman who runs that "cable news" messaging enterprise pays him $9 million per year to do this every night. As he does, the women who are paid by the Fox News Channel to serve as his co-hosts or as his panelists stare politely off into air, or in some cases choose to join in.

When Lewis' cover essay appeared, we were disappointed by its failure to cite the pair of "cable news" stars who work this beat at Fox. As of yesterday, Lewis is back with a related report from the world of this gender-based societal backlash.  

Lewis' work has long been superb. Within the boundaries of American journalism, her work is as good as it gets—and then some.

Finally, it was Lewis unbound! Dual headline included, her new report starts as shown:

The Republicans Who Impugn Talarico’s Manhood

Attacks on the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas show the GOP’s narrow, anxious definition of masculinity.

By Helen Lewis

The attacks on James Talarico have not been subtle. In the weeks since the 37-year-old state representative won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Texas, Republicans have been describing him as “Low-T Talarico,” “James Talafreako,” and “Six-Gender Jimmy.” On May 28, the White House immigration czar Stephen Miller said on Fox News that it was “brave, courageous, that the Democratic Party would choose Texas, of all places, to nominate their first transgender Senate candidate.”

The Republicans have long marketed themselves as the manlier party, but the anti-Talarico blitzkrieg is both obviously coordinated and unusually overt. The overarching strategy here, as the Democratic presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel has previously pointed out, is to associate the entire left with being “weak and woke.” Not manly, in other words. Talarico’s aw-shucks niceness and youthful looks are reframed as the result of low testosterone, and his (admittedly mawkish and over-egged) statements of concern for gender-nonconforming children make him a “freak.” Worst of all, according to the Florida Republican Dan Weldon, Talarico looks as though he “couldn’t name a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s.” Supporters of the Republican candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, portray Democrats as wusses, cucks, soy boys who don’t follow sports. One commentator mused about whether Talarico wears “frilly underwear.”

So it goes with this continuing backlash. But good grief! Is that a reference to the Fox News Channel, right there in that opening paragraph?

Yes, it actually is! And with that, at long last, the Atlantic has chosen or has dared to join the human race. The magazine has even dared to let Lewis offer this:

Mostly, the attacks on Talarico have taken the form of 99,999 dog whistles implying that he is gay. On Fox News, Jesse Watters laughingly observed that the Democrats had rebuffed rumors that Talarico is vegan by posting photos of him “swallowing large sticks of meat.” He added: “He’s also 37 and not married.” When the New York Post confirmed that Talarico’s girlfriend exists by revealing her identity, the attack line mutated—did you know that she’s vegan? Pretty gay.   

By the way, I recommend watching the clip of Watters and [Stephen] Miller in full, because Miller has the kind of natural comic gifts that usually persuade people to forsake a career in stand-up and become a funeral director instead. Watters underlines the pathos by providing what I can describe only as live-action canned laughter. And yet, Miller must have some sense of humor, because his (vegan) roast of Talarico concluded with the assertion that the people of Texas, “some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women” in America, would never vote for “somebody with that much soy to be a U.S. senator, compared to a real conservative, patriotic, God-fearing, and truly beloved statewide figure in Ken Paxton.”

Ken Paxton? Truly beloved? Now, that’s comedy. Ken Paxton is not even truly beloved in Ken Paxton’s own party...

Astounding! The Atlantic has finally let one of its writers describe the type of braindead garbage which crowds the air at the Fox News Channel. For the clip of Watters and Miller to which she refers, Lewis links you here.

The Atlantic has thereby decided to bite the bullet and join the human race! That said, the New York Times still seems to cower in fear. So do the silent stars at MS NOW, from Rachel and Lawrence on down.

Lewis' work has long been superb. That said, our own Blue America, as a group, has never had a sexual politics. Also, our stars seem to be afraid of Fox, and they don't really seem to care. 

Gutfeld and Watters proceed in the knowledge that they can do and say whatever is pleasing. The loathing of women is undisguised, as is the baiting of those who lack the excessive volume of T which can make men so ugly, so stupid.

The Times will not report what they do. So too with our own cable stars!

FRANK: We need to do better, Barney Frank said!

FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2026

Did Gutfeld get something right? During the last year of his life, Barney Frank was concerned with the possible loss of "our democracy."   

More specifically, and quite constructively, he was concerned with the possibility that members of his own political tribe might be contributing to the danger. For that reason, he wrote the book which will be published later this year, the book which carries this title:

The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy 

How constructive were Frank's critiques? There will be no way to know until the book appears—and when it does, no one will comment or care. 

But in the final few months of his life, he gave interviews to the New York Times and to the Atlantic. 

The Atlantic's James Kirchick has seen the book. It seems to us that he made an important point as he discussed Frank's views:

Barney Frank’s Second Coming Out

[...]

Many progressives believe their own hearts to be pure but cannot conceive that anyone to their right might have sincere reasons for opposing them on borders, crime, foreign policy, or any other issue. “Many of these zealots,” Frank writes, “are convinced that the source of their abandonment is some form of corruption.” 

So Frank writes, in his book.

Kirchick, a conservative-leaner, may have seemed like a strange choice for this assignment, but Rep. Frank signed on. Meanwhile, who are the "zealots" to whom Frank refers in that one quote? 

We can't tell you that. But it's completely natural for progressives, and for everyone else, to assume that their own motives are pure and that those who disagree simply must be corrupt.  

We human beings are wired that way. It's how we're inclined to react.

In fact, we Blues managed to find a very large number of ways to help President Trump return to the White House. As is natural, w Blues have often had trouble perceiving that fact. That makes it more likely that we the people will never be able to find a way out of the threat to "our democracy"—out of our current extremely dangerous societal mess.  

It's true! Much of the gruesome behavior which emanates from the Fox News Channel is built around legitimate complaints about Democratic Party governance and Blue American issue framing. If we had to compile a list of such triggers, we'd start with the (still unexplained) border policy conducted under President Biden, but then we'd continue from there.

Many complaints voiced on appalling programs like The Five are built upon a legitimate base. That doesn't make the pseudo-journalistic behavior less gruesome, but it helps explain why there's a large audience for the gruesome behavior displayed on such programs—an audience from which the corporate bosses at Fox are apparently happy to profit.  

How gruesome does that behavior get, even as our own tribe's journalistic stars and media orgs agree to look away? Simply put, there's no way to keep up with the ugly behavior, or with the attendant stupidity of the imitation of journalism persistently aired on the channel to which we've referred..

There's no way to keep up with the channel's childish, ugly "masculinism," or with its sick imitations of journalism—its imitations of human life. That brings us back to the questions with which we began this week's reports. 

We posted those questions in Monday's report. Those questions concerned conditions at the Delaney Hall Detention Center, an ICE facility in Newark.

Based on news reports from the previous week, our questions went like this:  

Have detainees at Delaney Hall been served food containing maggots? 

Also:

Last Wednesday, did three congressmen observe this unacceptable state of affairs as they toured the site?  

News reports by CBS News and the Associated Press made it seem that at least one congressman, or possibly three, had actually seen such food being served, but the writing in their news reports was perhaps a bit fuzzy. 

In this Facebook post, the Washington Post seemed to say the same thing, mentioning Rep. Jerry Nadler by name.

That said, how about it? Did the congressmen actually see such food being served? By now, we'd say the answer is tilting toward a possible no, although there's no way to be be sure.

We've seen no one pursue the three congressmen to nail down the question of what they saw at the detention center. Meanwhile, this very Wednesday, the editorial board at the Washington Post seemed to backslid on that question a bit, in the manner shown:

Alarming cruelty reported at Delaney Hall demands accountability

The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit this week against the operator of a privately run immigration detention center in Newark, claiming that health inspectors were denied full access to the facility. It’s the latest reminder that the federal government’s immigration enforcement system desperately needs greater transparency and accountability.   

The facility, called Delaney Hall, has become a flash point in recent weeks. Reports of unsanitary and inhumane conditions, which have become disturbingly common among detention facilities nationwide, have resulted in violent clashes outside the building between protesters and police. The situation has gotten so bad that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) imposed a curfew around the center, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) deployed state troopers to manage the crowds.  

[...]   

[T]he federal government has an obligation to ensure that detainees in its custody, even if they illegally entered the country, are not subject to cruel conditions. Immigration detention centers are not supposed to be punitive; their purpose is to temporarily house immigrants while courts review their cases.

For weeks, detainees and attorneys advocating for them have accused the Delaney facility of providing poor living conditions and inadequate medical care despite outbreaks of covid and the flu. Some prisoners have joined a hunger strike, alleging that they have been served expired food and even meals containing live worms. Others have said they were subjected to solitary confinement.  

The editorial continues from there—and for starters, good for the board! The editorial board correctly asserts that detainees must not be subjected to cruel conditions—but the board has slid away from the original claim about the three congressmen. 

"Maggots" have become "live worms;" we see no difference there. But the assertions about this matter are now being sourced to statements made by detainees. The notion that congressmen actually observed some such state of affairs have disappeared from this editorial. 

Elsewhere, Blue news orgs simply ignored this allegation, right from the start. No one seems to have asked Rep. Nadler to say what exactly he saw. Could it be that we Blues just plain simply perhaps don't especially care?   

The claim last week was horrendous enough, but behavior at the Fox News Channel was immeasurably worse. It was that behavior which led us to focus on this matter as the week began. 

It began last Thursday with ugly behavior, then slid downhill from there.   

It's as we noted on Monday. "Who cares if there are maggots?" the channel's grisly Greg Gutfeld histrionically asked, on last Thursday's edition of The Five.  

"Who cares if [detainees] don't like the food?" Gutfeld's sidekick, Jesse Watters, soon added. 

At Media Matters, a fuller (though incomplete) bit of transcript was supplied. The inanity continued from the point where this transcript stopped, but—with paragraph breaks added for a modicum of clarity—this is the Media Matters transcript of the bulk of what Gutfeld said on last Thursday's The Five:  

Greg Gutfeld on the federal detention center at Delaney Hall: “Maggots or not, the food is dietitian approved”
Gutfeld: “Who cares if there are maggots?

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): In terms of the complaints, there's no video, medical records, or public reports, but I have to admit Jerry Nadler went there. And you know what he said? The food comes in small portions.

JESSICA TARLOV (CO-HOST): And has maggots in it.

GUTFELD: Yeah, but it's in small portions.

TARLOV: I get you want to call him fat, but there's—

GUTFELD: No. Why would you say that? He has a medical condition, Jessica, my God! He's obese, not fat! 

But the conditions are roughly the same as where they came from. Messy johns, medical delays. But maggots or not, the food is dietitian approved. 

I don't see the maggots. Why aren't they documented? They get 24/7 medical access. But here's the key, and this is the only thing you need to remember:

When the opposition to immigration policy scales up, the complaints spike. They're aggregated, and they are amplified, designed to set the stage for this chaotic mess. But these people, you do not have to fear them, you do not have to listen to them, they created the problem, they have lost the privilege of input. 

You can complain all you want about the maggots. I don't believe you. Because I don't believe any Democrat about immigration. It's just like commenting on Trump's health after enabling Biden's cover-up. I don't have to listen to that anymore. 

You guys blew it. Trump sealed what you broke, the border. Now he's cleaning up the aftermath. You can't stand there and tell us how to clean up the mess. You lost that right.

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): Jessica, I will go to you. Why does it have to go from—instead of saying, "Fix this problem"—if there are maggots in the food. Like again, I don't know—

GUTFELD: Who cares if there are maggots?  

Videotape is provided at the Media Matters link.

"Who cares if there are maggots?" he thoughtfully interjected. But an array of ugly and stupid comments preceded that question, and Watters hadn't yet had the chance to offer this thought:

"Who cares if they don't like the food?"  

Regarding the food, it's "dietitian approved," Gutfeld had mockingly said. Before that, he had engaged in one of his standard jibes on the theme that Rep. Nadler is just too BLEEPing fat. 

(There's a long, coarse backstory here, built around Gutfeld's endless, brain-damaged ruminations about Nadler's imagined bathroom behaviors. And yes, this is the kind of product the Fox News Channel provides in its primetime "cable news" coverage.)

Gutfeld had also said that "messy johns" are the norm where the detainees come from. And he had voiced the remarkable journalistic theory which he now routinely voices:

Because Democrats opened the border and misstated about President Biden's health, people within his own Red tribe no longer have to listen to any claim any liberal or Democrat makes!

We Blues can complain as much as we like. In a classic prescription for a failed state, Gutfeld persistently instructs Red American viewers that they should no longer listen or care.  

Also, of course, "Maggots or not, the food is dietitian approved!" So went this messaging agent's mocking reaction in the face of the claim about maggots.

The conversation got dumber from there, with Watters joining in. The next day, Watters performed the role of clown to perfection, reading "the whole monthly menu" for the center, desserts and all, as if a pudding is just as sweet if it arrives with live worms in it.   

The rest of the children sat around, laughing and pretending that this behavior made sense. This Monday, Delaney Hall was discussed again, with Watters recalling his reading of the menus: 

WATTERS (6/1/26): They were complaining they didn't have ethnic food. We looked at the menu, it looked like Taco Bell...Instead of talking about health care or high gas prices, they're worrying about what cereal we're feeding some maniac from Honduras! That's the problem with Democrats! 

Few detainees are maniacs. It isn't clear that many or most of the detainees should be detained at all, but this is the way this game is played on this ersatz "news channel."

It went downhill from there. By the end of Monday's segment, Gutfeld was deriding Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) as "a little douche."

"Little Kim—what a little douche," the 61-year-old "bad boy" said. 

Watters jumped in to improve the play. He and Gutfeld took turns deriding Senator Kim as "the real Lil' Kim," a wonderfully entertaining reference to the lady rapper.

Much of what gets said on this show is built upon reasonable complaints. From there, the reaction tends to move in the direction of ugly and the ginormously dumb. 

President Trumnp's bizarre behaviors and lunatic claims will simply never be mentioned.  In this way, the furious Gutfeld and the clowning clown Watters engineer an epistemic silent secession, in which Red Americans are allowed to retain spotless minds about President Trump while hearing endless insults aimed at the douchebags found in the other America.

Meanwhile, we Blues! Our big news orgs report none of this profoundly destructive behavior. The ugly insults aimed at women by Gutfeld's broken brained masculinism go unreported as well. 

Do we Blues sometimes give them the fuel from which this soul-draining conduct is launched? We leave you today with this one thought about the maggots:    

Gutfeld said he didn't believe that there were maggots. As far as we have ever learned from any Blue American news org, it could be that he was right!

Frank said we Blues need to step up our game. As a general matter, we agree with that assessment.

That said, do we Blues possess the skill to see where we may be proceeding in error? As humans, we Blues, like the Reds, aren't necessarily wired that way.

Based on our tribe's widespread self-assurance, we anticipate little improvement until a highly skilled leader appears.

Starting Monday: "When language goes on holiday!" (Reports on the Callais decision. Thoughts on what comes next.)

THURSDAY: We're told what Ali Velshi is!

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2026

Senator Kim, Obama as well: Last evening, we learned what Ali Velshi is. As it turns out, he's "a douchebag," or so Red America's viewers were told.  

Also, Barack Obama is "a gay Muslim." Viewers of the Gutfeld! program were offered that additional knowledge.   

(Also, the latest Richard Gere [HEART] gerbils ploy! The angriest dog on the Fox News Channel just can't seem to let that one go.)

Last Wednesday, we told you that "douchebag" is becoming one of Greg Gutfeld's favorite analytical terms. He also enjoys discussing "boners" and the disappearance of same, as he did in this opening "joke" at 10:02 last night:

GUTFELD (6/3/26): Last night, Katie Porter conceded the California governor's race after getting just five percent of the vote.

[PHOTO of Porter]

She'll now go back to her old job as a scarecrow for boners. 

AUDIENCE, PANEL: [Laughter]

GUTFELD: Don't worry, supporters. She always lands on her hooves.  

PANELIST KENNEDY: [Laughter]   

He just can't seem to quit what he does—what he does to pleasure his audience. That latest assertion about President Obama was also delivered at 10:02, again in the form of a "joke:"  

GUTFELD: President Trump claims he is getting along quite well with Iran's new supreme leader, who is probably gay. 

No surprise! Trump has been known to get along with gay Muslim leaders quite often.

[PHOTO of Trump with Obama]

AUDIENCE: [Cheering, applause]

"I don't get it," the little guy said as the cheering died down. "I don't know why you find that funny."  

(That's one of the many beards the termagant hides behind. For his latest about Gere—well actually, no. We don't want to link you to that today.)

To see Velshi assailed as a douchebag, you can just click here. Later, the little guy assailed him using a word which producers had to BLEEP.

Monday afternoon, this time right there on The Five, the little guy assailed Senator Kim (D-NJ), describing him as simply "a douche"—more precisely, as "a little douche."

(Senator Kim is "the real Lil Kim," Watters and Gutfeld each said. This is the way "the news" is presented on our astonishing nation's most-watched "cable news" program.)

Suzanne Scott puts this swill on the air in primetime every night. We're barely scratching the surface of where this angry messaging specialist takes it.

(On Fox, President Obama is routinely described as gay. Michelle Obama is routinely said to be a man. Rare is the night which doesn't include a throwback joke about Don Lemon, who is openly gay—rather, about how lasciviously promiscuous the liberal journo supposedly is.)

It's news! It's news that American broadcast journalism has reached this extremely low point. Unless you read the Atlantic or the New York Times, or unless you watch MS NOW, where this extremely unusual "journalistic" behavior is never reported or discussed

Those orgs are afraid of the Fox News Channel. That said, you're already living in a failed state. How hard is it to see that?

Another key disappearance: Boners, or the disappearance of same, seem to play a significant role in the termagant's mental life. On Monday evening's Gutfeld! show, he took a shot at Governor Sherill's logic, handing his audience this:

GUTFELD: Her logic disappeared faster than a boner at The View's annual Bikini Car Wash.

[PHOTO of the women of The View]

AUDIENCE: [Clatter, applause]

 GUTFELD (delightedly): It's been a while, I know.

Questions: Does this occur in news broadcasts anywhere else in the world? Or is this perhaps the "American exceptionalism" which holds these chimps in such thrall?

FRANK: Trump is imploding, the congressman said!

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2026

We're not sure that's enough: In the last weeks of his remarkable life, Barney Frank, receiving hospice care in Ogunquit, appeared with Jake Tapper, on CNN, for a brief final interview. 

The interview itself was on videotape. The session started like this:

TAPPER (5/3/26): Welcome back to State of The Union. You will remember my next guest as a trailblazer for many things, including gay rights. He is the co-author of one of the most significant financial reforms since the New Deal.

But now, at age 86, 16-term former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat who is battling congestive heart failure, just entered hospice care. And as he prepares for his goodbyes, he's directing his famously sharp wit not only at President Trump, but at his own party. 

[Videotape]

And joining me now is former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. Congressman, how are you feeling today?

FRANK: OK. I have felt better. On the other hand, I anticipate feeling worse. I'm in no great pain, but my energy level is low. Essentially, after 86 years, my heart's just wearing out.  

God bless the late, unforgettable Barney Frank! You can watch the full interview by clicking here. For the transcript, just click this.

He said his heart was wearing out. But also, he said his party is doing some things which make the nation's recovery less likely.   

In the last year of his life, Rep. Frank wrote a book devoted to that very claim. The book will be published later this year. 

Whatever he actually says in the book, no one will pay it a lick of attention. But this is where his critique began in his short session with Tapper:    

TAPPER: Let's talk about your book. It's going to come out later this year. It's called The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy.

You are a progressive icon, but now you are expressing some reservations about where the progressive movement has gone. Tell us more. 

[...]  

FRANK: It's precisely because I have been on the left that I have undertaken this. 

I think we're in a situation where the mainstream, to my disappointment, for many years ignored inequality. And many of us fought to get inequality on the Democratic agenda. 

But the problem was, as we succeeded in bringing the mainstream of the left into a concern with inequality, we also enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn't ready for. 

Even when I agree with them on the end, I think they make a mistake by taking the most controversial parts of the agenda and turning them into litmus tests.  

For the record:  From a pair of final print interviews, it seems that Rep. Frank was likely referring to economic inequality at the start of this brief capsule history. 

In this brief interview, what follows is his one example of the pursuit of changes, by some on the left, which "the public isn't ready for:" 

FRANK (continuing directly): My example is same-sex marriage. Obviously, I have been working for gay rights starting in 1972, when I filed the bill. And we in the movement to establish fairness for gay and lesbian and bisexual people, we picked to work on those issues which were more acceptable.

We didn't get to marriage until after these other things had been resolved. And that's what I'm suggesting that we do today. 

The analog is males and female transsexuals playing sports that are for women. I understand there's a lot of anger about that. And I think, in the interest of the transgender community, as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way, and not simply announce that, if you don't support it, you're a homophobe.  

According to Rep. Frank, some on the left have moved too fast with respect to "males and female transsexuals playing sports that are for women." He also seemed to say that there had been some unhelpful name-calling. 

Rep. Frank was hardly alone in this general perception. Rightly or wrongly, it's widely said that Candidate Harris was substantially harmed by an earlier position she had taken with respect to health care for undocumented transexual prisoners. 

Rightly or wrongly, the idea that progressives and Democrats moved too fast in this general area doesn't belong to Frank alone. There were, of course, many other ways in which Democrats and liberals helped the current sitting president make his way back to the White House.  

The ludicrous situation involving President Biden's late abandonment of his re-election campaign stands out as a giant example. Jill Biden is out there today, seeming perhaps to make this bad situation worse.

That said, many other examples exist, most of which go unmentioned in the "safe spaces" maintained for us Blue Americans in our own tribe's media warrens.  

What else has Rep. Frank said in his book? That remains to be seen. That said, we'd be inclined to disagree with what he told Tapper, a bit later on, about the sitting president.

The sitting president is imploding, the former congressman said:   

FRANK: Donald Trump, we originally thought was a joke. And then he turned out to be very good at one thing, exploiting voters' discontent.

And so he won an election based on that and, since then, has gone back to being a joke. The man is imploding. He has no program that he's seeking to adopt.

[...]

TAPPER: You said you think President Trump is imploding. And you told Politico that you regret that you're not going to see the continued implosion of President Trump because of your current health situation.

[...]

FRANK: I say in the book, early on, that the fate of liberal democracy versus authoritarian populism will depend in part on how Donald Trump does, and if he does badly, that discredits the whole operation. 

I am convinced that he does not have an appeal beside exploiting anger. But he's so angry, and his politics are so determined by this anger, that he doesn't see that. And so that's why I think he's imploding.   

The sitting president is imploding, the former congressman said. In our view, that seems to be true in the most obvious sense, but we think it miscasts the size and the shape of the problem.  

The president's approvals seem to be dropping—although, given his endlessly erratic performance, it seems to us that they remain shockingly high. In our view, it's also true that we Blues engage in a wide array of behaviors which help him retain those numbers.  

Will the president's ongoing implosion lead to a Democratic takeover of the House (and possibly even the Senate) this year? Assuming he lets elections proceed, that seems like an obvious possibility—but he would still be in the Oval Office for at least two additional years.  

Given his apparent unraveling, that undermines the significance of the "implosion" to which Frank refers. We see the situation this way:

The president can implode as much as we like. But what might he do after that? 

In our view, implosion isn't enough. After implosion, what's next?

Major heralded global world experts have begun to advance a simple proposition about our difficult situation. Their consensus goes like this: 

If people can't see that they're living in a failed state, that has no bearing on the reality of the situation

These international global top experts are offering several comparisons to our current situation:   

In the Oscar-nominated film, The Sixth Sense, the Bruce Willis character doesn't know that he's already dead. And in Camus' famous novel, La Peste, a plague has already entered Oran, but the citizens of the sun-splashed city are unable to see this.

So it goes, top experts say, in a nation in which The Five is aired each day, with no one commenting on the way it and its companion broadcasts affect the broader society.

We started this week's reports with a reference to the dim-witted clowning seen on The Five on Thursday and Friday of last week. (The garbage only piles harder as the evening hours wear on.)

The fun concerned the reported presence of maggots. Tomorrow, we'll return to that starting point. 

This involves a problem which has no name, given the failure of Blue America's slumbering elites to speak about what is occurring inside what deluded experts now see as an imploded failed state.

Tomorrow: "Who cares about maggots?" the messengers said. Here within our own Oran, things have slid downhill from there.

WEDNESDAY: Olsen is seeking a system that's fair!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2026

We Americans aren't built for such work: Yesterday, we discussed a perfectly sensible notion advanced by Henry Olsen. Writing in the Washington, the conservative leaner said this:   

How to escape the gerrymandering trap

[...]

No one doubts that popular majorities in states such as Texas and Florida would select a majority of Republican representatives under a fair map. Democrats should, however, be able to elect some 40 to 45 percent of those members, since that’s their usual share of the statewide vote. But Florida’s new map has 24 districts—86 percent—that would have been won by Donald Trump in 2024, while four would have been won by Kamala Harris.

Democrats practice these dark arts, too. Trump got 38 percent of Californians’ votes in 2024. The state has 52 House seats, so with fair districts, Republicans should elect about 20 members. But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Newsomander—so dubbed by Republicans—created just four seats the GOP can reasonably be expected to win, plus a couple more where they have a fair shot.   

Olsen is seeking basic fairness. Later, he explicitly says how this whole thing, ideally, would work:

A proportional representation system limits the potential for distortion by ensuring that the share of seats a party wins is approximately the same as the share of votes it receives. If Democrats win 60 percent of a state’s votes, for example, they would be awarded 60 percent of the seats.

We agree—on its face, that does seem like a fair way to do things. It may not always be quite that easy, but that does seem fair.

Yesterday, we went to offer two basic points:   

There is no political tradition, no established practice, in which the various states have tried to create their districts that way. Also, there is at present no federal law or constitutional provision which says that the states must do that.    

We might have added a third point—under current circumstances, it's crazy to think that we'll be able to achieve some such reform around here. For starters, consider this:

In his column, Olsen goes on to describe some (fairly complicated) procedures which certain other countries have devised to produce something resembling proportional representation. This is his first example: 

Switzerland’s election system would be the easiest to implement in the United States. The Alpine nation has a federal, bicameral legislature like America’s. Each Swiss canton—the equivalent of a U.S. state—elects members to the country’s lower house by proportional representation, with a canton’s total number of representatives determined by population. Parties put up lists of candidates, in order of preference, and they secure a number of seats corresponding to the percentage of votes their list wins: In a 10-seat canton, a party with 30 percent support would have its top three listed candidates seated.  

Easiest to implement? Columnist Olsen, please! Switzerland is a nation of nine million people, divided into 26 cantons. The typical canton is extremely small as compared to American states. 

What makes sense there wouldn't work here. Please don't make us explain it.

The same is true for Finland's system, which Olsen moves to next. Finland's population is even smaller—5.6 million. On its face, what works for low population, one culture Finland wouldn't make much sense here.

Olsen goes on to describe complicated systems currently employed by two larger nations—Japan and Germany. But at this point, you must remember this:  

Given the current state of our nation's Red/Blue political warfare, there is zero chance—no chance at all—that any complex new way of creating House districts could ever get through the American Congress, let alone survive a battle with provisions of the Constitution, if any such roadblocks came to exist.   

Given our ongoing status as a failed state, there is exactly zero chance that our Congress is going to devise and pass some miraculous plan which creates something resembling proportional representation in the House for our two political parties on a state-by-state basis.  Dreaming dreams about 60/40 splits isn't going to get us there.   

Meanwhile, the ongoing war about redistricting continues to provide daily fodder for people who might want to observe the way a failed state will aggressively fail to deal with its basic challenges. 

A new decision about Alabama's congressional districts was released by the Supreme Court last evening. From NBC News:

Supreme Court allows Alabama to use congressional map that eliminates a majority-Black district

This brings us back to the ongoing American pursuit of something resembling proportional representation for Black citizens in the various states.

This topic has been a jumble for decades; it remains a tangled conceptual jumble today.  Our parties fall back on their talking points—on their dueling agitprop—with each new bump in the long, winding road which has now come to this place.

We may visit this new decision tomorrow, but the jumble surrounding this highly fraught topic has prevailed for the past four decades. The jumble—the muddles; the conceptual confusion—has gone on and on, down through the many long years and the many thick muddles of language.

Simply put, we humans aren't built for this type of work, especially where, understandably, emotions and feelings are strong.

Tomorrow: We don't think she should have said it!

FRANK: Paul Krugman made a striking statement!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2026

When he did, a cable star noticed: Should Paul Krugman have said what he recently said?  

We can't necessarily tell you! But for reasons which may be instantly obvious, we were intrigued by the first thing he said in the six-minute video he posted on his Substack site.  

That said, we doubt the accuracy of one part of what the Nobel laureate said.  You can watch the full video on YouTube simply by clicking here. 

Here's the way Krugman starts:   

KRUGMAN (5/31/26): The president of the United States is mentally ill, but everybody knows that. So while we should continue to focus on this degeneration taking place before our eyes, we should also, beyond that, ask what we should do about the powers, the interests, the system that put this horrifying person in a position of power.  

That's the way Krugman started.  We focus on this video because of something he said just a bit later, at the five-minute mark.

That said, is it true? Is it true that the sitting president is mentally ill? Also, is it true that that "everybody knows that?"

As we've repeatedly said, we're inclined to assume that the initial statement is true—but we regard "mental illness" as a conceptually complex term whose parameters are barely understood within this underdeveloped, immature part of our nation's public discourse. 

As we've repeatedly said, we'd like to see (carefully selected) medical specialists asked to discuss that particular claim, but our major journalists have agreed that no such discussion will ever happen.

Beyond that, there's no guarantees that journalists would be able to find medical specialists who were up to the task of producing a clear discussion. There's no guarantee that our journalists would know what questions to ask or would know what tone to adopt in the process of asking their questions.

Meanwhile, how about this. Does everyone know that the president is mentally ill? 

In the most literal sense, the obvious answer is no. If we're talking about "everyone" of a certain professional class, we used to assume that our mainstream journalists believed in the likelihood of some such unfortunate state of affairs, but we have recently come to doubt even that.

Everyone knows he's "mentally ill?" It isn't clear what the claim about the president would even mean, let alone whether the claim is actually accurate. And no:   

Meanwhile, everyone doesn't even believe that the president is mentally ill. For millions of people out in the land, this thought has never occurred.   

That's the way the Krugman tape starts, but that isn't why we're discussing his video statement. We're discussing it because of what he later said—because of the later statement which formed the backbone of the opening segment on last night's Gutfeld! program.   

Greg Gutfeld littered his presentation with the usual insulting / Biden deathwatch / misogyny-adjacent jokes. (Does Sarah Jessica Parker look like a horse? She does on the Gutfeld! program. Greg Gutfeld persistently teaches boys and young men to behave this way toward women.) 

The program's host hides behind several beards, but he's a version of loathing unchained. That said, this is the later statement by Krugman on which Gutfeld's monologue focused at the start of last night's show:  

KRUGMAN: Obviously, we need to de-fang Trump as much as possible, and make sure that neither he, nor anybody that follows in his footsteps, has power after the next two elections. 

But beyond that, we really need to do a thorough purging of the United States. We need a de-MAGAfication, and that is— I am not going over the top by using a word that is very similar to the de-Nazification that we pursued successfully after World War II in Germany.  

And we need something—it's not just the MAGA ideology, it's the whole structure of hugely unequal power, hugely unequal wealth, that made this horrific moment possible.  

It's not going to be easy, but—and maybe, it's not going to be doable—but we have to try, because this is an absolute—this is a nightmare.  

As you can see by clicking here, Gutfeld's producers played videotape of the first half of that presentation. In his monologue, Gutfeld focused on the allusion to deNazification—an allusion which may have made the nightmare in question worse.  

Should Krugman have said what he said? We wouldn't have said anything like it ourselves—and during the Gutfeld! segment, amid the standard name-calling and the standard ugly jokes, Kat Timpf made an accurate presentation about statements of this general type:  

TIMPF (6/2/26): The way that Trump and Trump-backed candidates have won so many elections is specifically this stuff. This is the kind of stuff that motivates people, by saying that people who voted for him are Nazis. People say, "Well, I'm not a Nazi," and that drives them to further support this point of view.

GUTFELD: Right.

TIMPF: So not only—I would say the kindest way to say it is, it's ridiculous. But also, what is he suggesting? You could say he's implying some things that are a little worse than ridiculous.

But again, he's just getting in his own way. All language like this does is make Trump supporters support Trump more than they did before they heard him say that. 

GUTFELD: Yes, exactly 

AUDIENCE: [Cheers and applause]

TIMPF: See? There you go!

What might it have seemed that Krugman was suggesting or implying with his call for "a thorough purging of the United States?" However the statement was intended, it could have sounded various ways to various people. 

Did he mean to say that people who support Trump are Nazis? Not necessarily, but a person could easily think that it sounded a bit like that.

What would a thorough purge of the nation be like? During his six-minute video, Krugman made little attempt to explain, leaving us with no real idea.

But it's surely true that statements like this may tend to harden existing tribal support for the president in question. In the process, such presentations may lessen the chance that we'll ever be able to find a path "back out of all this now too much for us," the path the Frost poem once sought.

Has our nation fallen into a place "now too much for us"—a place from which we won't be able to extricate ourselves? That, of course, remains to be seen—but in the book he wrote in the last year of his like, Barney Frank talks about some of the ways the liberal world may be making recovery less likely.  

Frank's book will generate zero interest. Exactly nothing will change after it's published this fall.  But even as the ugly insults and the gonzo behavior continue to flow from vehicles like The Five, what was this celebrated liberal / progressive figure even talking about?  

At this point, the answer isn't entirely clear. Tomorrow, we'll try to say.   

Tomorrow: What he told Jake Tapper

FRANK: Few things can match a show like The Five!

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2026

Frank said we Blues have some flaws: Yesterday, we started the week's ruminations with a few simple factual questions:  

Were maggots present in the food served to detainees at the Delaney Hall Detention Center?  Did three congressmen actually see some such thing during an inspection last Wednesday? Did Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) actually see some such thing?    

We ask for the obvious reason:

Major news orgs, including the Associated Press, reported that three congressmen said that they'd seen that very thing. For obvious reasons, this report initially created a bit of a stir.

It created a stir for obvious reasons. But, by now, the claim has essentially gone away. It seems that no one actually cares whether some such claim was ever made and if the claim was accurate.   

No one had more fun with this claim that the gang of baboons who swing from the chandeliers on the Fox News Channel's "cable news" program, The Five. 

Yesterday, the panelists in question discussed the various situations at Delaney Hall on that program's third straight broadcast.   The sheer inanity of these presentations help explain why the planet's most famous top experts have begun referring to our struggling nation as, simply put, a "failed state."  

The Five is our nation's most-watched "cable news" show. The fact that its ludicrous journalistic practices have been normalized within the wider political / journalistic culture suggests that our struggling nation is no longer able to function in any sort of serious way.   

Yesterday, we started to show you what the panelists on The Five said about the report of maggots in the food. We expect to report their fuller comments in the next few days.   

The Five is a gruesome artefact of Red American corporate culture. On balance, we know of nothing as gruesome in Blue America as the nonsense which is routinely performed on that program. 

On the other hand:  

The dimwitted conduct on The Five is often tied to legitimate complaints about Democratic Party governance and Blue American political culture. And then, along came the late Barney Frank, age 86, in the final year of his life, writing a book with this possibly puzzling title:

The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy   

In the headlines which sit above its obituary, the New York Times correctly describes Rep. Frank as someone who was often voted the "brainiest" member of the House of Representatives. 

He was also a liberal stalwart. In her piece for the Times, Katharine Seelye quote Nancy Pelosi giving voice to her view of Frank:

“The quarterback for us is Barney,” Ms. Pelosi told Jeffrey Toobin for a 2009 New Yorker profile of Mr. Frank. “He’s solution-oriented, respectful of different perspectives and brilliant. And it’s brilliance that saves time, because he simplifies the complex for us. He is an enormously valuable intellectual resource for the Congress.”  

He was a "brilliant, enormously valuable intellectual resource." And, no doubt, he was! 

The late Barney Frank was very sharp. He was also extremely witty. But now, Frank has left behind a book saying that we have to "reform the left" if we hope to emerge from our ongoing political and cultural catastrophes—in the parlance of the time, if we hope to "rescue democracy.". 

As a general matter, we agree! In our view, there have been obvious errors within our own Blue America which allowed the sitting president to achieve a second term. 

Those errors have also allowed him to maintain the astoundingly high approval rate he currently enjoys. 

By conventional norms, his approval rate—let's go with something like 38%—is a very poor approval rate. But we'd say it's been our own imperfections which, under the current astonishing circumstances, have kept his approvals that high.   

What kinds of reforms does Frank recommend in the book in question? Because the book hasn't been published yet, there's no perfect way to tell.    

We regard the lunacy of programs like The Five as the ultimate fail in our current journalistic discourse. But how have Blue imperfections of various kinds helped keep the president's approvals that high?

In our view, Rep. Frank was on target in some respects in some of his last few interviews. There may have been a few other examples of imperfect Blue American wisdom which he failed to cite in those sessions.   

Members of tribal groups an find it hard to see their own group's imperfections. Frank was saying that we Blues have some flaws. Could he possibly have gotten that right?

Tomorrow: Back to a normal schedule. One change in format may loom.

BREAKING: We won't be posting until this afternoon!

 TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2026

Olsen on gerrymanders: You're right! It actually has been quite a while. 

That said, we won't be posting until this afternoon, due to an intervening mission of unmistakable national import.

Meanwhile, what the heck, we leave you to ponder this. It's part of an essay by the Washington Post's Henry Olsen about some possible better ways to form congressional districts:  

How to escape the gerrymandering trap

[...]

A good gerrymander—good not in a moral sense but in the way it works as designed by the gerrymanderers—gives the line-drawing party more seats than it would be entitled to based on its share of the vote. Perform that task well enough, and massive majorities can be forged out of slim vote margins.

That’s what the Republicans’ recent gerrymanders have done. No one doubts that popular majorities in states such as Texas and Florida would select a majority of Republican representatives under a fair map. Democrats should, however, be able to elect some 40 to 45 percent of those members, since that’s their usual share of the statewide vote. But Florida’s new map has 24 districts—86 percent—that would have been won by Donald Trump in 2024, while four would have been won by Kamala Harris.

Democrats practice these dark arts, too. Trump got 38 percent of Californians’ votes in 2024. The state has 52 House seats, so with fair districts, Republicans should elect about 20 members. But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Newsomander—so dubbed by Republicans—created just four seats the GOP can reasonably be expected to win, plus a couple more where they have a fair shot.

Olsen, a conservative, is being fair-minded here. That said, his basic premise, as expressed below, is built on sand:

Democrats [in Texas and Florida] should be able to elect some 40 to 45 percent of those members, since that’s their usual share of the statewide vote.

Simply put, it's impossible to get people to stop offering this presumption. That said:

There's no political tradition or legal requirement which means that a party which receives (let's say) 40 percent of the congressional vote in some particular state should end up with 40 percent of that state's congressional seats. 

Indeed, depending on the distribution of the vote in some particular state, it may be that gerrymanders aren't necessary to produce a vastly disproportionate outcome.  It may be that disproportionate outcomes will occur even "under a fair map."

It may even be impossible to gerrymander your way out of some such disproportionate outcome. Massachusetts has been offered as an example of that, as we'll note at some future time.

It seems like common sense and simple fairness to say that congressional representation should turn out to be "proportionate" to some state's statewide vote on a two-party basis. 

We agree—that does seem fair! But in no way is the matter that simple, and there's no tradition or law pushing us toward such outcomes.

Oksen is dreaming of a fairer system; there's no reason why he shouldn't. That said, people often start discussions of gerrymandering with the presumption he states.

It's a very common presumption. But if we're trying to understand how this thing works, the presumption may not be helpful.

With regard to gerrymanders, the current "race to the bottom" really is a race to the bottom. But there's no easy or obvious answer to this question:

How might it be addressed?

MONDAY: How horribly bad are Cali's schools?

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2026

Let's take a look at the record: Are California's public schools some sort of uniquely bad? A person might have received that impression from what this unnamed gentleman said:   

...[NAME WITHHELD] Fawns Over ‘Authentic’ Spencer Pratt in Podcast Appearance 

[...] 

During one especially warm moment, [NAME WITHHELD] expressed his frustration over education in California, assigning blame to teachers’ unions, before asking Pratt for his answer to the problem.   

“We spend a lot more trying to educate a kid in this state and do worse than places that spend way less. And part of that is because the teachers’ union is so strong,” he said. 

“Are you–there’s a great question for you, Mr. Candidate. Are you strong enough to buck the unions?”  

All in all, it sounded like Cali was really struggling. Skillfully, we ordered the analysts to go take a look at the record.

The youngsters examined the data. They returned with these average scores in reading and math from the most recent NAEP:

Average scores, Grade 8 Reading: 2024 Naep
California / United States
White kids: 269.15 / 265.85
Black kids: 246.97 / 242.58
Hispanic kids: 242.50 / 244.52
Asian kids: 281.70 / 279.62
Two or more races: 267.29 / 261.42

Average scores, Grade 8 Math: 2024 Naep
California / United States
White kids: 287.22 / 284.46
Black  kids: 252.43 / 250.83
Hispanic kids: 253.47 / 257.39
Asian kids: 307.22 / 304.64
Two or more races: 288.51 / 276.61

For all Naep data, just click here. From there, you're on your own!

The differences here aren't enormous. By a very rough rules of thumb, ten points on the Naep scale is often said to correspond (very roughly) to one academic year.

The differences aren't huge. But California's white, Black and Asian kids slightly outperformed their counterparts nationwide. California's Hispanic kids slightly underperformed their nationwide peers.  

Regarding spending, the World Population Review has California ranked 14th highest among the fifty states in per pupil spending. Now for the rest of the story:

Cali ranks only 33rd highest among the fifty states in per pupil spending as a percentage of taxpayer income. 

Plenty of money is almost surely being imperfectly spent, in California and elsewhere. That said, are some other states doing much better while spending much less?   

Given the history of such competitions, we're very, very, very slow to sign on to "miracle" stories. (Over the course of the past fifty years, the experts have tended to be the last ones to know.)

That said, Cali's kids are scoring roughly like the nation's kids overall. The statewide per pupil spending lags far behind that of big spenders like New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut.  

Everyone knows all about public schools. It has ever been thus!

The Bureau clears its throat: For a Census Bureau rundown for 2024, you can just click this. 

For whatever reason, the Bureau listed the five biggest- and smallest-spending states, failed to list anyone else.

FRANK: Gutfeld and Watters were at it again!

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2026

But also, Barney Frank: Are maggots frequently found in the food at the Delaney Hall Detention Center, right there on the outskirts of Newark? 

Are they found in the food there at all? At this site, we can't necessarily tell you. That said:

Last Thursday, CBS News seemed to report that three United States congressmen had said that's what they saw:

Protests over inhumane conditions at ICE facility Delaney Hall in Newark become violent

[...]

A congressional delegation from New York and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker visited Delaney Hall earlier Wednesday. They said they observed dire conditions, including a pregnant women not getting the proper medical care.

"This is a moral stain on who we hope to be and profess to be. It is a complete indictment of the president who lied to us about how he was going to conduct his immigration policies," Booker said.

Advocates say detainees inside have been on a hunger strike for almost a week. The Department of Homeland Security denies a strike is happening inside.

Maggots in the food?

Congressmen Adriano Espaillat, Dan Goldman, and Jerry Nadler say they observed a lack of medical treatment and small portions of food that very often contained maggots.

And so on from there.

According to CBS, three congressmen said they'd seen maggots in the food.  In fairness, none of the three was directly quoted. But that's what it seemed they had said.

The congressional reps had inspected the detention center on Wednesday. The following day, on The Five, Greg Gutfeld said he doesn't care if maggots are found in the food.

"Who cares if there are maggots?" the gentleman thoughtfully said. "Who cares if [detainees] don't like the food?" Jesse Watters soon added.

Citizens, can we talk?

Presumably, some people do care if there are maggots in the food. Also, it seems that some others don't. 

For now, let's stick to the factual question:

Are there maggots in the food at the Delaney Hall facility? And did the three congressmen actually say that that's what they actually saw?

Are there maggots in the food? And what was the source of that claim? In its own report about this matter, the Associated Press offered this:

Congress members say conditions dire at NJ detention center facing protests, reported hunger strike

Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday said they observed dire conditions within a federal immigration detention center in New Jersey where protesters have been demonstrating for days and asserting that detainees are on a hunger strike.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, said detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark are being given small portions of food that “very often” contain maggots and that the only medication they receive is Tylenol.

One woman, he said, had a lump in her breast but was still waiting on a mammogram more than a month into her detention. Another detainee was suffering from colon cancer but wasn’t receiving any treatment.

“The bottom line is, if you are human, if you are American, you cannot support what is going on here,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, another Manhattan Democrat who toured the facility Wednesday. “They’re living in jail conditions, and none of these people are criminals.”

In this AP report, Rep. Nadler was cited as the lone source of the specific claim. And as with CBS, so too here:

Nadler wasn't directly quoted. Was he reporting his own observation, or had he merely been told? The AP didn't report the source of the congressman's claim.

What did congressmen actually see when they were inside the center? Gutfeld said he doesn't care if there are maggots in the food, but as of this morning, five days later, it isn't clear that major mainstream news orgs care about this either.

Using Google as well as the paper's search engine, we find no sign that the New York Times has ever reported this claim. In fact, we find no sign that the Times or the Wall Street Journal has ever reported last Wednesday's congressional visit at all.

Are there maggots in the food? Did one (or three) congressmen say as much? Did they observe this with their own eyes, or had they merely been told?   

We start with this question today because of what we saw on The Five when the godforsaken ersatz news program pretended to discuss the maggots on two successive programs.   

First on Thursday, then on Friday, the corporate buffoons who people this program offered their reactions to the report in question. Not long ago, the sheer stupidity put on display on Friday's program would have been hard to picture within the American news firmament.

In the next few days, we'll show you what Gutfeld and Watters said on Thursday, the again the next day. A key point:

According to the world's major experts, a nation which accepts such brain death as part of news culture has already become a failed state.   

The garbage can sold by the Fox News Channel rarely fails to amaze. It's an artefact of Red American corporate messaging culture—and The Five, as you well know, boasts an audience which almost triples the size of the typical MS NOW prime time audience.   

For a person who wants to leave a published record on How It Happened for the generations to follow, it's hard to avert one's gaze from the undermining of the culture which takes place on the Fox News Channel. 

That said, there's also this:

On May 20, just twelve days ago, the New York Times reported the death of Barney Frank. We're going to show you the dual headline, plus part of the way the lengthy report began:

Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86
Often voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House, he was also the first to come out voluntarily and helped normalize being openly gay in public office.

Barney Frank, the brassy, lightning-quick former Massachusetts representative who for decades was the most prominent gay politician in the country and who was an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression, died on Tuesday at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He was 86.

His friend James Segel confirmed the death. Mr. Frank said last month that he had entered hospice care with congestive heart failure.

Mr. Frank, a liberal Democrat who represented a diverse suburban Boston district for 32 years, starting in 1981, was the first gay member of the House to come out voluntarily; others had been outed in scandals. His public declaration of his sexual orientation in 1987—spurred by a fear of being outed, by the death of a closeted colleague and by his own determination to show that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of—helped normalize being openly gay in public life.

He was "an author of the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression." He was also the first gay member of the House to come out.

(One commenter comments here: "He saved many lives of gay young people because of his honesty. It took courage and it saved lives.so rare these days.")

No one ever doubted that Rep. Frank was extremely sharp. The Times obit went on at great length. As it ended, it offered this recent point:

As Mr. Frank was entering hospice care in late April, he had just finished writing a book, “The Hard Path to Unity.” Its premise was that the political left, of which he was a member in good standing, had sometimes gone too far in pushing divisive causes...

Slow down, he advised, and find common ground. Rather than focusing on cultural flash points, build support with something practical; instead of demanding Medicare for all, for example, start by reducing the age of Medicare eligibility.

Too frail to travel, he nevertheless happily spoke with interviewers about what he had written, and said he was pleased that the book’s message was having some resonance.

“Frankly,” he told The Times, “if I weren’t dying, people wouldn’t be paying as much attention.”

That's what he'd recently said.

The inanity of Red American corporate messaging was on display again last week. Quite recently, Frank had been saying that we Blues have sometimes made extremely large mistakes.

He said we Blues have made large mistakes! What could this very important figure possibly have meant by that? 

Tomorrow: Watters, equipped with the menus