Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new Pope as anti-Trump pro-open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented. We talked to the excellent political theorist Matt McManus, who was raised in the church and regularly wrestles with the intellectual roots of today’s right wing, including in his 2023 book, The Political Right and Equality. He explains what Vance gets wrong about Catholic teaching, why it’s so inimical to Trumpism, and how today’s pro-Trump influencers and “post-liberal” Catholic intellectuals alike are refusing to reckon with what MAGA has truly become. Listen to this episode here.

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President Donald Trump erupted on Truth Social this week when it became clear that MAGA loyalist and insurrectionist Ed Martin’s nomination for U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. is in trouble. Trump even called GOP Senators to demand their support. But then GOP Senator Thom Tillis announced his opposition, leading even staunch Trump loyalists to concede he might not survive. MAGA personalities lashed out in response. Lost in this saga has been the basic reason we don’t want a MAGA-brained January Sixer in such a crucial law enforcement role in the first place. We talked to former prosecutor Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy. She explains why this position is so critical to the legal order, why Martin has no business in it, and why she has cautious optimism that Trump’s assault on the rule of law might ultimately get repelled.

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Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is set to absolutely clobber rural America. First there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a bizarre set of ramblings that indicated he’s fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile, there are new signs that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered. The House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid will likely pose a massive problem for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will also inflict pain on rural areas. We talked to Matt Hildreth, executive director of RuralOrganizing.org  and a veteran Democratic operative in rural areas. He explains why the perfect storm of policies bearing down on rural America is unusual, and reflects on whether his party will be able to translate this into real gains—or whether this will once again prove a chimera. 

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President Donald Trump is angry at longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove. That’s because Rove delivered Trump a stern on-air warning about his sliding approval ratings. What caught our attention, though, is what Rove said about immigration in particular. Rove suggested that Trump is in trouble on what’s supposed to be his best issue, and offered a striking explanation for it that surely got under Trump’s skin. This comes as Trump also delivered another diatribe about the Supreme Court for suggesting he does not have absolute power to deport millions with zero due process, suggesting he and Stephen Miller will cling to their deeply unpopular course of action no matter what. We talked to Lakshya Jain, co-founder of the Split Ticket election site, who explains how Trump is rapidly losing his onetime advantage on immigration, why this is such a momentous shift, and how Democrats can capitalize.

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President Trump has recently been erupting at Fox News over its new poll finding him with 55 percent disapproval. Trump described Fox’s pollster as “Trump hating” and demanded that the firm be “investigated.” Stephen Miller subsequently called for the pollster’s firing. Guess what: Fox News has gotten the message. As Trump’s poll numbers for other news organizations have steadily worsened, Fox personalities have begun going to great lengths to deny what the numbers clearly show. This highlights a problem that is trending toward a fiasco for MAGA: As Trump’s tariffs and other policies take their toll on Trump voters and everyone else, his approval will slide further, forcing Fox News to deceive the network’s own viewers about what they themselves increasingly are experiencing from Trump’s presidency. We talked to Matt Gertz of Media Matters, who has been chronicling Fox’s poll denial. He explains what Trump’s anger at Fox means for the network, how Fox personalities are coping, and why all these dynamics will get much worse.

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Big news: A federal judge just ruled that President Donald Trump’s renditions under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act are illegal. It’s a crucial moment in the battle against Trump’s lawlessness. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller ranted wildly at the media for daring to ask hard questions about the wrongfully-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, falsely stating as fact that he’s an “MS-13 terrorist” and raging at the very idea that migrants he labels “terrorists” should get due process. It’s a clear sign of Miller’s certainty that he can label anyone a “terrorist” by fiat and that the administration can get away with literally anything. We talked to the great legal commentator Leah Litman, author of Lawless, a new book about the Supreme Court. She explains why the ruling suggests the courts may not give Trump the deference he’d hoped for as commander in chief to reinvent reality to carry out his illegal renditions—and why Miller’s project may be in the process of seriously overreaching.

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We just learned that President Donald Trump’s economy contracted in the first quarter. Trump unloaded twice over this bad news, attempting to blame Joe Biden for it. Meanwhile, some of Trump’s aides went full North Korea, bowing down before him and offering adulation in shockingly abject terms. So how long do Trump’s advisers think they can keep him in a protective cocoon, shielding him from the realities of his disastrous reign? We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who has a good new piece arguing that Trump’s unpopularity will only get worse, due to basic structural facts about his presidency. He explains why the sycophancy of Trump’s aides is only working against him—and why insulating him against outside facts will only get harder and more damaging.

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After the news broke that Amazon might publicly clarify the costs that President Trump’s tariffs are imposing on its products, Trump instructed his White House press secretary to publicly threaten the company. Trump also called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to express his displeasure, and one adviser told CNN that “he was pissed.” Amazon immediately shelved the plan, and Trump openly gloated about Bezos bending the knee, an unnerving signal of more autocratic bullying ahead. Meanwhile, a new PRRI poll sheds fascinating light on public opinion about Trump’s authoritarianism, with a majority now seeing him as a “dangerous dictator.” We talked to Melissa Deckman, the CEO of PRRI, who explains what the new data really tells us about the public’s revulsion at Trump’s abuses of power—and why episodes like this one are only exacerbating it. Listen to this episode here.

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President Donald Trump is growing angrier over polls that keep showing him tanking. On Monday, he raged that polls sponsored by media outlets are “COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT.” He even quoted one of his own pollsters saying that surveys from The New York Times and The Washington Post are “FAKE POLLS,” something his pollster clearly hatched to calm his anger. So to what degree are the people around Trump simply lying to him about his disastrous reign? They’re deceiving him about the state of public opinion, and Stephen Miller is plainly seducing Trump into believing the Supreme Court sided with him on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, when it didn’t. We talked to journalist Michael Cohen, author of a new piece for his Truth and Consequences Substack about this problem. He explains how we know Trump’s aides are keeping him in a state of delusion, and why that’s heading to an alarming place. 

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Over the weekend, President Trump raged on Truth Social at judges who are ruling that Trump must follow the law in the case of wrongfully-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others illegally deported to prisons in El Salvador. Trump again threatened to dispense with due process for migrants. Yet this comes even as Trump admitted in a new interview that he’s open to bringing Abrego Garcia back and retrying him for deportation through lawful channels. For Trump to acknowledge he has this option while nonetheless threatening to end due process for Abrego Garcia and other migrants is a dark development. All this comes as two new polls show Trump badly losing the war of public opinion over all these illegal renditions. We talked to Chris Newman, a lawyer for the Abrego Garcia family, who powerfully explains how Trump is importing Bukele-style authoritarianism into the United States, why this is alienating the American people, and why Trump will ultimately lose in court.

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