We begin with a clip from November 27, 2025, in which a reporter on Air Force asks President Donald J. Trump who—other than himself—would be a good Republican nominee in 2028.

Vice President JD Vance (left) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, February 28, 2025. Image credit: The White House/Wikimedia Commons

In the News:

* Last weekend was No Kings Part Three: Minneapolis and St. Paul saw a particularly robust turnout. The crowd was graced by special appearances from Jane Fonda and Joan Baez; Bruce Springsteen also sang his anthem to the city. Nationally, as 8 million citizens took part, with an enhanced number of young people who oppose Trump’s war on Iran. In Manhattan, the procession stretched for over a mile; in Washington D.C., the parade route went past Stephen Miller’s house as the crowd called for his removal. The National Republican Campaign Committee derided the events as “Hate America Rallies;” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson referred to them as “Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions” created by “leftist funding networks.”

* In the department of “We didn’t see this one coming,” Kristi Noem’s husband Bryon was outed by the Daily Mail on Tuesday as a visitor to a cross-dressing fetish website devoted to “bimbofication.” You can read the allegations as printed by the New York Post here; a spokesperson for Noem says that “The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time;” and President Donald Trump expressed sympathy for the family. Bryon Noem is not speaking to the press, but his neighbors in Castlewood, South Dakota have responded with generosity and kindness.

* Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court has given the University of Pennsylvania 30 days to comply with the Trump administration’s demand for a list of Jewish faculty, staff and students. Penn is appealing the ruling, arguing that the university has an obligation to the privacy rights of its employees and does not maintain such lists. In fact, until the late 1960s Penn, and other universities did exactly that, and it was tied to antisemitic quotas and discriminatory housing practices on campus.

* A Colorado law banning gay conversion therapy has been struck down by the Supreme Court, with all justices but Ketanji Brown Jackson voting in the affirmative. Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist, said the law would prevent her from “consensual conversations” with people who believe that their feelings conflict with their religious values. The majority agreed that the law was not neutral because it did not ban speech that affirmed sexual or gender identity. Jackson’s dissent argued that states have the right to regulate medical treatment; she read her opinion from the bench, a signal about how strongly she felt about it. The ruling vacates existing or pending laws in 27 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

Vance (left) and Rubio chat up U.S. athletes at the 2026 Olympics in Milan, Italy. Photo credit: The White House/Wikimedia Commons

News focus:

* Let’s start with the annual poll of young conservatives at CPAC last month: Vice President JD Vance won, with 53% (down from 61% last year), but Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in single digits last year, rose to 35%. Other candidates—including re-runs Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Tulsi Gabbard—were in the very low single digits. Rubio won “favorite Cabinet member,” while Ken Paxton outscored John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary by 46 points. Except for Trump in 2024, the straw poll has never accurately predicted who will be president: Ron Paul won it in 2010 and 2011, Mitt Romney won it repeatedly, and Ted Cruz won it in 2016.

* Created by the American Conservative Union, CPAC is a festival of conservatism, largely attended by young activists. Founded in 1974, it is credited with launching the New Right and setting Ronald Reagan on a path to the 1976 GOP nomination.

* In 2010, when Fox News host Glenn Beck gave the keynote, CPAC also became the place where right wing media influencers merged with the GOP.

* In 2014, former Bush advisor Matt Schlapp was elected head of the ACU. He and his wife Mercedes are canny entrepreneurs: they have turned CPAC into a franchise, with national and international satellite conferences. CPAC sustains and mirrors the strength of the MAGA right within the GOP. For example, in 2017, after Trump won the election, his political strategist, Steve Bannon, was embraced after having been shunned for years.

* CPAC is also famous for the partying and networking. It also has a vexed relationship with queerness: in 2010, evangelicals protested the inclusion of gay Republican groups and lost. In 2015, Log Cabin Republicans was barred from the event, but has since returned; and in 2016, Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled because of remarks he made about having sex with a priest while underage. That said, as at many GOP gatherings, the rumor mill insists that Grindr is super-busy when CPAC is in town.

* As importantly, Schlapp himself seems to be at least bisexual: he has repeatedly been accused of making advances to men. In 2022, a staffer for Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker accused Schlapp of sexual assault; the accuser settled in 2024. Then, in 2025, he was accused of assaulting another man in a Virginia bar.

* So, it’s a sign of how powerful Schlapp is in conservatism that he remains in command of CPAC, and how critical the organization is in mobilizing the base.

* This leads us back to Vance, who was chosen as Trump’s running mate in part because he was young and had working class origins; in 2024, right wing media also tried to sell him as sexy and handsome. According to Pew Research, however, Vance’s approval rating has gone south. Only 38% of voters view him positively, while 52% view him negatively. Marco Rubio, at 34/44 is polling below RFK Jr. (44/48) in favorability and above him in unfavorability.

* That said, if we just look at Republican voters, Vance has a 75% favorability, RFK Jr. 74%, and Rubio 64%. Rubio also has the highest numbers in the cabinet, except for Pete Hegseth, when it comes to being unknown to voters in either party. The window for announcing a presidential campaign is about two years, which means we should look at these numbers again after the midterms.

* As Vice President, Vance is positioned well in a bad field: while Trump has not endorsed a successor, he seems to be pushing a Vance-Rubio ticket.

* Vance has been a shapeshifter, but may be trapped this time. He went from being a Trump critic to a Trump supporter to become Vice President. If Trump is repudiated in the midterms, will he be forced to decide whether to distance from Trump (which will be difficult, as he has no real record of his own) or embrace a MAGA agenda (which only 27% of voters endorse) that has failed to deliver? That could open the door for Rubio—or someone else.

* And, oh yes! Goodbye, Pam Bondi! Here’s the profile of Bondi that Neil references.

What we want to go viral:

* Neil wants you to read Faith Wilson, “The Quiet Rise of Employee Surveillance” (March 31, 2026) because there is no federal law that regulates or controls the collection of employee data.

* Claire wants you to take a deep dive into a new report by Sophie Culpepper at Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, “How a Minnesota mom and minister `blew past’ her screen time limits when ICE came to her city” (March 26, 2026). Culpepper asks: if only 16% of Americans pay for news, how are they getting it?

Short takes:

* Local and state officials are fighting the expansion of ICE incarceration facilities through warehouse conversion by denying these facilities access to utilities—water, power, and sewage—they need to make a husk of a building into a prison. “CE has claimed it conducted “thorough due diligence” to ensure that surrounding communities were equipped to provide the warehouses with necessary utilities and infrastructure,” Judd Legum writes at Popular Information. “In at least three states, however, officials say that the new ICE facilities will overwhelm local water and sewage infrastructure or damage the local environment.” Pennsylvania, Georgia and Utah have all taken this tack, Utah as recently as this month. “Salt Lake City is facing a water crisis. The region received very little snow over the winter and faced record-breaking high temperatures in March, causing the city to issue a stage 2 drought advisory the week before voting to limit water use by new developments.” (April 2, 2026)

* The libertarian conservative tech class claims to be all about helping young (white) men: at the same time, numerous cynical projects are designed to exploit them. “Sports bettors are overwhelmingly male. Compulsive sports betters are almost universally male,” Jill Filipovich reminds us on her Substack, relaunched as Throughline. The shift to phone-based gambling has vitiated live communities organized around fandom and betting, making young men more isolated and more lonely while also picking their pockets. “I see virtually no ads for sports betting platforms on my social media pages. My husband, who like me is not a gambler nor much of a sports-watcher, gets them with regularity. And when you watch ads for sports betting, they’re strongly male-coded. They know the audience they’re trying to bring in, and it’s young men — and particularly less-educated young men, who may not be as savvy or sophisticated, and who may be looking for an easy fix to their financial problems.” (April 2, 2026)

* Are there more flimflams under the Trump administration, or is this just the same tune from a different band? Barbie enthusiasts from around the world arrived in Fort Lauderdale, FL for the “ultimate Barbie fan event,” only to find a sad little display of Barbie-themed junk swimming around in the Broward County Convention Center. “Tickets started at $149 for adult admission and went up to $449,” Madison Malone Kircher writes at The New York Times. “Tara Brooks, a data analyst who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., spent about $249 on a ‘pink pass,’ a higher-tier ticket that included a ‘special swag bag.’” It wasn’t so special. “She received a bottle of Barbie-branded hand sanitizer” that Brooks said is available at The Dollar Store. (March 30, 2026)

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