Opinion

HED: Trump DOJ investigating Nixon prosecutors is not AI slop without pictures

I was 10 years old in 1974 when my great-great-grandmother turned 100. Richard Nixon, then president, sent her a congratulatory letter with his signature at the bottom. She gave it to me because even then I was obsessed with the presidency.

Let’s just come right out and say it: the Republicans couldn’t do a better job of tanking the midterms if they were doing it on purpose.

Is it possible they are? Or have they just inherited their president’s gift for doing the worst imaginable thing at the worst imaginable time?

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a climate case that could make or break efforts to stop rising temperatures before they reach the point of no return.

Our planet is hotter than it has ever been, at any time, in the entire history of modern civilization.The six warmest years on record have all been within the last 10, and world scientists agree unequivocally that fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, is the cause.

It occurs to me that we don't know much about former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, beyond the obvious: lost a congressional campaign, pregnant to a rich guy she later married, stumbled as press secretary, especially at first, and then got out with a veteran's sense of timing.

The above is obvious, and it's not that much, not really, especially since it sounds like she's about to tell us a great deal more in an upcoming tell-all book being shopped around, one that may make her as rich as her husband.

Donald Trump learned how to manipulate the media while instilling distrust in it directly from his Daddy Vladdy Putin.

Beginning in 2015, when Trump ousted a Univision reporter from a press conference, what started as a simmer became a roiling boil that led to his petty, arbitrary, and unconstitutional press ban last month — which a Trump-appointed federal judge blocked.

They’re at it again. The billionaires who own and run the GOP — including the billionaire in the White House and the billionaires in his Cabinet — are throwing out another desperate “let’s buy some votes” scheme by sending a million Americans their own money.

According to the White House, over the next few days about a million Americans will get a check for $500 in the mail, prominently signed by Donald Trump, along with a letter telling them a naked lie about it being money Joe Biden kept from them.

Former Trump-pet Marjorie Taylor Greene has somehow reinvented herself as some sort of truth-teller and is even garnering praise from liberals for how forthcoming she’s being about Republicans and her former boss.

Yet this is still her pinned tweet.

In 1998, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, a truly loathsome character at the time but now almost angelic in comparison to today's characters, told the Indianapolis Star that Bill Clinton was "a scumbag" and that's why he was "after him."

It was a really big deal. It sent shock waves through Washington. I recall being gobsmacked at the language. It triggered intense political backlash, with Democrats attempting to remove him from his committee chairmanship. He was never formally investigated, as the Dems demanded. The House Republican leadership ultimately blocked all disciplinary resolutions, allowing him to retain his position despite his potty mouth.

You can hear it in their voices, the words they use, the issues brought up, the frustration evolving into tinged anger, and the conviction — no more, you're pushing it, really pushing it.

Republican senators have been talking about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth a lot more lately, and that's bad news at a particularly bad time for him, as he already faces eight articles of impeachment once the House returns (assuming it ever returns).

Two very different demos have recently risen to social media prominence: GenX women and our polar opposites, the MAGA Trad Wives. The starkly opposed messaging is making a real case for the “nurture” part of the “nature vs. nurture” argument during a time when women’s rights are constantly in flux.

GenX Women — aka the “Forgotten Generation”— have emerged as a hugely influential group thanks to being the (better) half of the last fully analog generation on the planet. Too many GenX men are MAGA, which is why liberal GenX women have found our collectively loud social media voice amid our current AI garbage fire of MAGA fakery. We are rightfully raging as we refuse to remain silent during our menopause, from the peri- to the post-menopausal years. Black women in particular are leading the female GenX trends, and rightly so.