Progressive Media

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The focus of Friday’s Washington Week in Review journalist roundtable (which aired on the eve of Memorial Day weekend) was the Department of Defense, especially on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s war against wokeism, which the panel disapproved of, especially New York Times national security correspondent Helene Cooper, who all but accused Hegseth and the Trump Administration of racism and sexism.

Helene Cooper, National Security Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, that’s a great question, Jeff. I think I would start first with just he’s instilled an atmosphere of fear, which is pervasive now throughout the Pentagon, just because he has fired or threatened to fire or forced to retire just so many of the top brass….

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It’s extremely suboptimal that the only way the constitutional order is being preserved these days is by masses of plaintiffs filing lawsuit after lawsuit against the administration’s flagrantly illegal conduct. While the administration has fought nearly everything tooth and nail, a few settlements have slipped through.

President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked diversity and wokeness, words that mean whatever Trump wants them to mean on any given day. But sometimes, woke wins, and the administration has no choice but to knuckle under, settle, and cut its losses.

These sorts of victories are few and far between these days, given that conservatives on the Supreme Court make a habit of giving Trump whatever he wants, giving him very little incentive to settle cases. But hey, we’ll take it.

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The Trump/Xi meetings in China were private. It appears that there were no big breakthroughs and “wins” for Trump to bring back to the United States.

Trump tried to flatter the Chinese leader, who responded with threats about Taiwan.

The Trump trip, where he took a bunch of the world’s richest CEOs with him, appears to have been a total bust on all fronts. Republicans were hoping that Trump would have another one of his fake deals with China to announce that would help to get farmers who are being devastated by the president’s toxic combo of war and tariffs off their backs, but there was no big announcement.

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Even if it wasn’t obvious before, it’s certainly been abundantly clear since the start of President Trump’s second term in office that Democrats have no qualms whatsoever about fanning the flames using outright lies and purposeful deception to the point it spurs their outrage mobs to take violent action in the name of  “democracy” and “social justice.”

 

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A protest sign outside Alabama’s statehouse on May 7.Kim Chandler/AP

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In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

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A cluster of high-profile political attacks in the U.S. spotlight the nation’s extreme divisions—but they don’t necessarily signal a broader uptick in politically inspired brutality, experts say.

Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans are increasingly worried about political violence. The latest round of concern was sparked on April 25, when a 31-year-old man stormed the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C., during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance. Secret Service agents arrested the armed man before he could get to the ballroom where the event was being held. He has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president—which would represent the third serious attempt on Trump’s life since 2024. The man has pled not guilty to this and related charges.

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Democrats must stop conceding that the only answer for various racist voting laws is that Democrats just have to vote more and harder and better.

We try to keep despair out of these pages, tough as the times are. That’s why I didn’t write about Friday’s Virginia Supreme Court’s decision striking down new voter-approved congressional maps for extremely dubious reasons (read Virginia political expert Carolyn Fiddler’s awesome explanation of the ruling here).

Coming after the Supreme Court (of the United States) decision invalidating Louisiana’s congressional maps for taking race into account, the Bayou State’s immediately postponing upcoming elections as a result, and Tennessee’s swift move to use the SCOTUS ruling to wipe a majority-Black congressional district literally off the political map, last week was the worst for voting rights since the court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder ruling struck down two vital sections of the Voting Rights Act. I admit to not seeing much light down this tunnel that afternoon.

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No one agrees on when, where, or how capitalism began, or whether it had a beginning at all, but everyone agrees that capitalism, the word, first appeared in the 19th century. Capital and capitalist slipped into use, unnoticed and unremarked, in the 13th and 17th centuries. Capitalism burst through the barricades of political argument in the 1830s, announcing immediately the hostility of its user. “Long live capital!” cried the French socialist Louis Blanc in 1839. “Long may we go on to attack capitalism, its mortal enemy, with even more intensity.” As much as the word named something, so did it identify its speaker—as a worker, a radical, a hater.

If capital was viewed as a thing and capitalists as people, capitalism was something else. Blanc described it as an act, the taking of collective wealth and turning it into individual or private profit. Proudhon claimed it was a citadel, casting medieval and military shadows across the land. Despite his obvious interest and extensive writing on the subject, Marx steered clear of the term.

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As star correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s future at “60 Minutes” remains unclear, journalists at the legendary news show are being careful not to offend their new boss.

Following Bari Weiss’ controversial hiring as CBS News’ editor in chief, compliance is the name of the game.

Attribution: APSharyn Alfonsi attends the CBS 2019 upfront at The Plaza on May 15, 2019, in New York.

A source close to the “60 Minutes” staff told Daily Kos the editorial team is hesitant to pick up the phone or answer texts from people critical of new management.

The nervousness isn’t unfounded. Alfonsi’s time with CBS has come into question after she openly spoke against Weiss and the editorial decisions coming from the top.

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HBO’s John Oliver went on an especially nasty rant against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight for his recent majority opinion in Louisiana v. Callais. Oliver declared that Alito’s claim that the South isn’t as racist as it was in the 60s is “obviously horseshit” and suggested Alito supports segregation multiple times.

Oliver teed up a clip of a report from ABC’s Rachel Scott by claiming, “That ruling basically gutted Section Two of the VRA, which prohibits race-based discrimination when it comes to voting, including drawing election maps that dilute minority voting power, and in writing the opinion for the majority, Justice Alito took a bold swing.”

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… A ceasefire by U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be on shaky ground after Iran launched strikes against the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. Central Command said it sank six Iranian small boats in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump later escalated the rhetoric, telling Fox News that Iran will be “blown off the face of the earth” if it targets U.S. ships that are protecting commercial vessels transiting the strait.

He also called on South Korea to support U.S. efforts after he claimed a South Korean cargo ship had come under fire from Iran. Seoul had not publicly responded as of the time of writing.

These developments have spooked investors. International benchmark Brent crude futures rose nearly 6% to settle at $114.44 per barrel, while all three major U.S. stock indexes dipped.

Some analysts are sounding the alarm, warning that global economies could be “sleepwalking” into a “big recession”, as investors continue to underestimate the impact of the oil price shock, according to Amrita Sen, founder and director, market intelligence at Energy Aspect.

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A panel of voters on Fox News suggested that Republican control of government and President Donald Trump were to blame for “very, very, very high” prices.

During a Fox News segment on Monday, host Harris Faulkner asked the voter panel how they would approach the midterm elections. One independent said that she was frustrated and might not vote at all.

“Well, honestly, what has been holding me back is I feel like the change that I was expecting from the president himself,” voter Mary Josephine explained. “I don’t feel in my everyday life, which is concerning to me. I still feel, obviously, that, you know, prices are very, very, very high. You know, if you’re going to the grocery store or just in general, because inflation still exists.”

“Unfortunately, now we have the higher gas prices, which really hurt, you know, everyday people in their pocket,” the voter added. “And I’ve voted my entire life. And the frustration right now is, it’s just unbelievable. Because what really changes? I just feel like that we’re kind of, you know, just, you know, kind of steering the ship in the same direction.

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The Elitist Media evening newscasts rightly accorded significant coverage to last year’s deadly Southern California wildfires. It is therefore unfortunate that they seem mostly disinterested in covering the arrest and revealed motive of the individual suspected in starting the Palisades Fire.

ABC and CBS did NOT cover the arrest of Jonathan Rinderknecht. ABC covered the end of the litigation between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, while CBS covered the Met Gala. There was simply no time to spare.

NBC Nightly News did cover it. Here’s the report in its entirety as aired on Monday, May 4th, 2026:

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“Awesome,” Murphy said as he shared an article headlined “At least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels bypass US blockade.”

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is cheering for the United States to fail in Iran because he hates the president. “Awesome,” Murphy said as he shared an article headlined “At least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels bypass US blockade.”

“A Democrat Senator is now publicly rooting for Iran. Did ActBlue start accepting donations from the regime’s oil revenue?” Said Montana Senator Tim Sheehy.

“The Democrats are rooting for Iran—literally,” said commentator Batya Ungar-Sargon. “Senator Chris Murphy may be the most psychotic example of this, but he is the apotheosis of a vibe that is utterly pervasive in the anti-Trump Left and Right. Donald Trump has a super-power: He exposes the most despicable qualities in his opponents, revealing them to be utterly beneath contempt.”

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On Saturday’s The Weekend: Primetime, MS NOW hosts Antonia Hylton and Charles Coleman Jr. combined for a remarkable escalation—from stylistic nitpicking to smearing an entire group of Christians as extremists.

After opening with a polished aside about Trump’s recent use of “God is good,” which she said had not previously been part of his ‘linguistic repertoire,’” Hylton quickly pivoted to a jaw-dropping—and wholly unsupported—claim: that Trump is surrounded by religious advisers who are “telling him that he is God,” or effectively God’s representative on Earth.

Hylton offered no evidence for the assertion, presenting it instead as her personal “read” based on following “extremist” Christian figures. But she didn’t name a single adviser making such a claim—let alone anyone literally telling Trump he is God.

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The White House should not be used as the world’s most expensive assisted living facility, but that appears to be what is happening during the second Donald Trump administration.

The president was showing signs of decline when he ran to return to the White House in 2024. Trump consistently got facts wrong, forgot names, and jumbled up basic history to the point where he once blamed Joe Biden for World War II.

If the American people had been paying attention, and Democrats deserve some blame for being afraid to call out explicitly and repeatedly Trump’s decline to voters, they would have seen that Trump was cognitively fit to serve as president.

Trump has made decision after decision, starting with his obsession with tariffs and willful blindness to the advice of experts, that he would cause severe economic damage, and going through believing Netanyahu and going to war with Iran, which has demonstrated a severe lack of mental competency coming from the White House.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader has issied a chilling threat in a new bombshell message, while also taking a brutal swipe at Donald Trump and US troops.

Mojtaba Khamenei commended his forces for resisting what he called American and Israeli “arrogance”, before threatening to bring about “new defeats”. The Supreme Leader also said his opponents’ “weakness and humiliation” had been exposed for all to see. Khamenei has not been seen since the war began. He replaced his father Ali Khamenei, who was killed in Israeli-US strikes at the start of the conflict.

In a statement issued through an Iranian state news agency, Khamenei said his forces had “stood firm against America’s sinister schemes.”

He continued: “With its strong divine and popular support and in dense, fortified ranks, it (the army) stands shoulder to shoulder with other mujahideen of the armed forces against the two armies at the forefront of the front of kufr (disbelief) and arrogance, clashing with them hand-to-hand and exposing their weakness and humiliation to the eyes of the world.

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Ever since Pope Leo assumed the papacy, PBS News Hour Friday contributors MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart and The Atlantic staff writer David Brooks have tried to claim him as one of their own in their fight against the Trump administration. That continued this Friday as the duo essentially told Vice President JD Vance to shut up when it comes to criticizing Leo’s remarks about the Iran War, with Capehart claiming they are among “the most insulting things” a VP could say and Brooks arguing the Iran War is permissible under just war theory, but also isn’t because Trump.

Host Amna Nawaz began with Capehart and wondered, “Pope Leo issued a pretty strong statement rebuking the war in Iran. Trump then unloaded on him online. Vice President Vance jumped in to criticize him as well, telling him to be careful on matters of theology. Is it smart for the president to be getting into it with the pope? What does he stand to gain from that?”

Using logic he would never apply to abortion, Capehart replied:

No, it’s not smart at all to be getting into it with the pope, to be fighting with the pope, even though the president says, ‘I’m not fighting with the pope.’ Yes, you are, and over something where it’s like the president is taking the words from the pope very, very seriously, when any pope, Pope Leo, Pope Francis, Pope John Paul, would have been saying the same thing, because this is about life and death. This is about right and wrong. And it’s something big that’s happening in the world that has commanded the pope’s attention.

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President Donald Trump departs after speaking with reporters about the war in Iran during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Monday, April 6, 2026.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

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In a Truth Social tirade on Sunday morning, President Donald Trump claimed that Iran violated their ceasefire agreement with the US by firing shots at ships in the Strait of Hormuz and again threatened to commit war crimes by taking out the country’s energy infrastructure.

“Many of [the bullets] were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom,” Trump contended about Iran’s targeting of the ships, without evidence. “That wasn’t nice, was it?”