WHEN TRUMP LEAVES OFFICE, YOU'LL BARELY NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE IN THE GOP

Here's a disheartening headline in The New York Times:

Without a Border ‘Invasion,’ Texas G.O.P. Turns to an Old Enemy, Islam

Republican politicians and strategists in Texas are amping up anti-Muslim rhetoric as a way to energize Republican voters after several elections when the border was the animating force.

As I was saying yesterday, Republicans can't successfully run on their real agenda -- making the rich richer -- so they run on culture-war issues and wager that their voters won't notice that the party never makes their lives better (a successful bet in recent decades, in Texas and many other states). When one issue isn't enraging and motivating voters, there are others waiting in the wings. That's what's happening in Texas now.

The attacks on Islam are a notable shift for a party that has spent the last several election cycles focused on the Mexican border. Warnings of migrant “caravans” and a criminal invasion have lost their sting with a Republican in the White House and new policies that have halted most border crossings.

Attacks such as ...?

Ads for Senator John Cornyn of Texas have touted his fight against “radical Islam.” Texas Republican lawmakers created a “Sharia-Free America Caucus” in Congress. Gov. Greg Abbott has labeled one of the nation’s largest Muslim rights groups a terror organization.

A “Save Texas from Radical Islam” dinner north of Dallas last month featured Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump, the conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders — and attracted party activists and Texas House members. The State Senate is weighing legislation requested by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to ensure Texans “are never held under the heel of ‘Sharia law.’”

Just on Monday, the state’s hard-right attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced he would investigate a proposed real estate development in Kaufman County, east of Dallas, as a “potentially illegal ‘Sharia City.’”

Paxton, of course, is running for Cornyn's Senate seat, and many polls show him beating Cornyn in the primary and winning the general election. But in case you think Cornyn is one of the "good" Republicans, check out this nakedly Islamophobic ad he's running:



Some Republicans in Texas are worse:

Islam came up repeatedly on Thursday night at a gathering of several dozen party activists and voters who had come to a restaurant in The Colony, a suburb of Dallas, to support a far-right challenger to the area’s conservative Republican state representative ... Lt. Col. Larry Brock, an Air Force veteran who served two years in prison for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Mr. Brock spoke for several minutes about Islam.

“We should ban the burqa, the hijab, the abaya, the niqab,” he said, referring to different head and body coverings worn by some Muslim women. “No to halal meat. No to celebrating Ramadan. No, no, no.”

The author of the Times story, J. David Goodman, doesn't fully understand what Texas Republicans are afraid of:

The state party put a resolution on its primary ballot asking whether Texas should “prohibit Sharia law,” a term that refers to Islamic religious rules but has long served as a catchall to signify expansions of Muslim culture and religion that opponents say threaten American values.

No, this isn't just fear of "expansions of Muslim culture and religion." These people believe that Muslims want to replace current laws in America with Muslim religious law. They think Muslims want to force your wife and daughters to wear burqas, while banning pork and bacon. (They probably believe Muslims want to turn America into an Islamic theocracy because many of them want to turn America into a Christian theocracy.)

Now here's a little perspective, from a Texas Monthly story on the same subject (free to read here):

Conservative Christians run the state government. Muslims in Texas represent an estimated 2 percent of the population. What little political power the community wields is concentrated in a handful of suburban enclaves in North Texas and greater Houston. The Muslim population, if generalizations can be made about such a diverse group, tends to be socially conservative and politically mixed.

Nevertheless:

[Bo] French, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, has called on Donald Trump to “round up every Muslim in America” and deport them. He has warned that if nothing is done, Texas could end up like Dearborn, Michigan, the Arab-majority city. (No matter that it voted for Trump in 2024.)

Valentina Gomez, a twentysomething Colombian immigrant running for a Central Texas congressional seat after moving to the state from Missouri, where she lost an election in 2024, released footage of herself incinerating a Quran with a blowtorch. “Vote for me so we can kick every dirty Muslim out of Texas,” she said in a separate social media post.

And one congressman sees A Conspiracy So Vast:

“We’ve gotta be much more aggressive,” Central Texas Congressman Chip Roy told Glenn Beck in late December, in regard to cracking down on Islamic groups. He mused—vaguely, conspiratorially—that there existed a “criminal organization” connecting antifa, George Soros, and Muslim organizations in Texas. “It’s all connected,” he said, “it’s all connected.”

One thing I'd like you to notice is that this is not being driven by Donald Trump or the White House. As I regularly point out, the GOP wasn't a mellow, moderate party until Trump came along. Trump accelerated the extremism, but it was always there, and it was on the rise independently of Trump. Fox News, talk radio, and newer media and social media outlets have created increasing amounts of ragebait in order to keep voters angry at Democrats and loyal to Republicans. This would have happened even if Trump had never entered electoral politics, and it will keep happening when he's gone, unless we somehow manage to turn the GOP into a pariah party that's shunned by decent people.

What's happening in Texas is in part a reaction to local matters, particularly this:

In September, Abbott signed into law House Bill 4211, which took aim at sharia compounds—fantastical concoctions. This was in response to a ferocious conservative campaign against EPIC City, [a] proposed master-planned community near Dallas.... Created by the East Plano Islamic Center, a prominent Collin County mosque, and rebranded late last year as the Meadow, the residential development would reportedly include more than a thousand homes, a faith-based K–12 school, a community college, and a place of worship. The issue exploded in early 2025, after [right-wing online commentator Amy] Mek labeled the development a “402-acre sharia city.”

... EPIC’s critics didn’t argue for a more inclusive project. Instead, they sought to scuttle the development by creating the impression that it would function as a no-go zone for non-Muslims, a sort of Lone Star caliphate. This was a stretch, to say the least—the developers stressed that the community would comply with Fair Housing Laws and pledged to allow people of any faith. They were flooded by death threats and hate mail.

The Times story reports:

Mohamed Ebeida, a research scientist who immigrated from Egypt, said often when he and his children would go to pray at the Plano center on Fridays, protesters told them they were “going to hellfire.”

“Do you want a society where every group alienates each other?” he said.

No, they want as society where they alienate everyone they don't like, and their enemies don't get to push back. They don't want to share power, but stirring up hate is how they win and retain power.

WE'RE RACIALLY DIVIDED SO REPUBLICAN VOTERS WILL REMAIN DISTRACTED

Here's a response to Bad Bunny's joyful Super Bowl halftime show:

Beyonce and Ricky Martin performed at Bush's 2000 inaugural is a thing I think about a lot when considering how much more culturally isolated and extreme the right has become.

— Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 10:16 AM

In the 2000s, a number of Establishment Republicans -- George W. Bush, John McCain, Lindsey Graham -- wanted comprehensive immigration reform and wanted it to be identified with their party. They hoped this would win them favor with Hispanic voters. But the right-wing messaging that resonated most with their own voters was anti-immigrant. Bush's immigration push died in 2007.

Immigration reform wasn't the GOP's main goal. Its main goal was to cut taxes on the rich, cut regulations for big corporations, and slash the social safety net. It's an agenda that's not easy to sell to voters -- so, over the years, the GOP has distracted voters from this agenda by stirring up anger and hate. The GOP knew that Fox News, talk radio, and right-wing online publications were building party loyalty, and they gave propagandists more or less free rein to make voters angry at immigrants, Black people, white liberals, the media, gay people, feminists, entertainers, and gun-control advocates (that's a partial list).

For the most part, this permanent campaign of distraction was electorally successful. Even when Democrats scored big victories at the polls in 2008, Republicans came roaring back in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. And then Trump won two victories, and nearly scored an Electoral College win in 2020.

For the GOP, on balance, distraction has worked. Trump's major legislative wins have funneled huge amounts of money to the wealthy. And even if we have free and fair elections in November and Democrats do well, the GOP might still control the Senate as well as the White House and the Supreme Court.

Was building an electorate that hates half the country and cheers the brutalization of non-whites and their allies a worthwhile price for the wealthy backers of the GOP to pay? I think their answer would be "Oh, sure." They got their money. They don't care if the rest of us are at one another's throats.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO KID ROCK (updated)

It's almost time...

How will the headliner, Kid Rock, celebrate Faith, Family, and Freedom? I assume that a recent flurry of negative publicity means that he won't be performing this early hymn:

... social media users honed in on Kid Rock’s 2001 song, “Cool, Daddy Cool,” which contains the lyrics, “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see some say that’s statutory (but I say that’s mandatory).”

But that's hardly the only Kid Rock song that would seem a tad out of place if it showed in his set list at a concert celebrating Faith and Family.

I've been writing posts about this jamoke since 2004, when it was first reported that he might perform at the Republican convention in New York. (That year he performed at an event in the city during the convention. He finally made it to the main stage in 2024.) In 2004, I wrote:

Which songs from his catalog should Kid serenade the Values Party with?

"Pimp of the Nation"? "Fuck U Blind"? "Balls in Your Mouth"? "Killin' Brain Cells"? "3 Sheets to the Wind (What's My Name)"? "Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp"? "Drunk in the Morning"?

All of those are genuine Kid Rock songs, mostly from his early years.

The 1990 song "Pimp of the Nation" would be an interesting choice for tonight's performance, since it includes these surprisingly prophetic lyrics:

And because I do so much pimping
One day I'll probably walk with a limp
And drive a big Lincoln
Wearing an unbuttoned shirt
And be a fifty-five year old pervert

(Well, the last line is prophetic, at least -- Kid Rock turned 55 in January.) This is also a song that begins with a statement of principles that seems ideally suited to a party led by Jeffrey Epstein's former best friend:

There's only two types of men
Pimps and Johns
There's one type of bitch
And that's a ho

I don't know if you'll be able to get through the entire song. I at least got as far as the verse in which he claims to be pimping Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tipper Gore, Robin Givens, Latoya Jackson, and Roseanne Barr (who, for all we know, might actually show up and perform it with him someday).



Below you'll find Kid Rock's performance of "Balls in Your Mouth" at Woodstock '99, the festival now known as "Rapestock" for its abysmal security and high number of sexual assaults. He introduces the song in part by summarizing his politcal philosophy at the time:

You want me to get political? Well, this is about as deep as Kid Rock thinks: Monica Lewinsky is a fuckin' ho, and Bill Clinton is a goddamn pimp!

Charming -- but surprisingly timely, given that Donald Trump himself recent told a reporter, “See, I like Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton.”

In a way, Kid Rock is the perfect musical act for the age of Trump, a guy who spent his early years obsessed with dehumanizing sex, but who is now regarded as a defender of faith and family even though he hasn't really changed at all.

The Kid Rock who recorded these early songs is the real Kid Rock, not the guy who prances in front of a flag. I hope he performs "Balls in Your Mouth" tonight -- and, since it's Sunday, I hope he performs it while waving a copy of Charlie Kirk's posthumous book:

Throw your hands in the air, church people:



*****

UPDATE: And speaking of Bill Clinton, here's another pious Kid Rock lyric (found via Reddit):

Erika Kirk, your thoughts?

ON TRUMP AND THE MIDTERMS, JAMELLE BOUIE STILL DOESN'T GET IT

The New York Times has published another roundtable discussion about the potential for President Trump and his allies to prevent a free and fair election in November. The participants, once again, are Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Cottle, and David French.

Bouie still believes that Trump is very limited in his ability to manipulate the midterms; it's the contrarian hot take he wants to be known for these days. But he knows he's getting pushback, so he tries to clarify what he thinks:

Setting aside the fact that the executive — or the president, specifically — really has no legal authority here, I want to be very clear about what I’m saying here. I’m not doing the thing where I say, “Well, we can’t do that. It’s illegal.”

I’m saying that for example, if you are the head of a board of elections or you lead your precinct in Georgia and Donald Trump calls you and says, “I want you to throw out ballots,” you can say to Donald Trump, “OK” — and then ignore him. There’s no authority he has over you.

Sure, local election officials can say no to Trump if he askes them to toss ballots. But will they? And will it be an ask this time, the way it was in Georgia in 2020? Or will Trump's troops simply seize the ballots?

Bouie makes a valid point when says this:

... I actually think it’s really important to listen to how Trump talks about this. He doesn’t actually talk about it in terms of the midterms.

His mental model for the election is the presidential election. He is preoccupied with his loss in 2020 and losing the popular vote in 2016. Sending the F.B.I. to Georgia, to take materials from the 2020 elections, to me, suggests that all of this is less about subverting the elections that are actually going to happen and more about finding material for Trump to be able to say, “No, I actually won.”

And maybe the fact that Trump is more fixated on 2020 than he is on the midterms will actually save the midterms. But as Cottle points out, he also has reason to fear big midterm losses that would give power to Democrats. Bouie concedes that, but insists that Trump can't really act unless he has the public on his side:

... we can imagine a world where Trump is a popular president, where his approval rating is 55-45, and he’s riding high.

... in that world, I could see this maybe working.

... if we get to November and Trump’s approval rating has dipped from where it is now, if that’s where Trump is politically, then all of the screaming about fraud and illegals in the world isn’t going to change the fact that people can see with their plain eyes that the man is unpopular and that people are going to respond accordingly.

Trump can't act with impunity unless he's popular? Really? He's unpopular now, and he's acting with impunity anyway. People are trying to stop him -- Democratic groups are trying to do it in the courts, and citizens are trying to do it in the streets, and they're having some successes -- but he just keeps coming.

David French seems the most clear-eyed about this. He thinks the people we really need to worry about are Trump's underlings:

... if you look at the Stephen Miller side of things, in many ways, what we’re seeing and what reporting is demonstrating is that he’s more ruthless often than Trump’s own instincts. This is a big part of MAGA — they’re more vicious, more cruel even than Donald Trump....

When you see a situation where Trump is raiding Fulton County; Bannon is saying, “Get ICE all around polling precincts”; Trump is waiting for that phone call from Tulsi Gabbard; Tommy Tuberville is saying, “Get rid of voting machines” — you’ve got this environment where MAGA is very focused on the midterms because they’ve been governing like they’re never going to lose power.

... the Steve Bannons, the Stephen Millers, they have a generational project and I don’t think that they want to see their generational project go up in flames after two years, after 2024.

These people believe that they and their allies should run the country forever because they believe they're the only genuine Americans. They don't believe in democracy because they don't believe Democrats deserve to vote.

And French is right about lower-level election officials:

I just don’t think people realize how much a median county committee-level Republican in a lot of red areas is radicalized on this issue and willing to go to the barricades on this issue. So, that’s the X factor here....

You have a whole superstructure beyond that of people who have been extraordinarily radicalized on this issue from year after year after year of misinformation, disinformation: Illegals are voting, great replacement theory, etc., etc.

So, he has a lot of willing partners down to the precinct level who firmly believe that if Republicans lose, it’s because the fix was in.

They don't think Democrats should vote either.

As he has in the past, Bouie talks about agency, pointing out that Trump and his subordinates aren't the only people who have it:

... there are other people with agency besides them. I’ve been emphatic about this recently and I think it boils down to that I’m just tired of the assumption that Trump and those around him are the only people with agency.

But who has more agency? We don't know. Bouie suggests that good people can stop Trump just by paying attention:

This is a place where I just think public vigilance is actually going to be the most potent thing. If Americans are intensely apathetic about the election, then there’s going to be more opportunities for shenanigans.

But if Americans are very attentive or care very much, if they’re very motivated to go vote — and at this stage, it looks like there’s going to be at least a large number of Americans who can be very motivated to go vote — then the extent to which you can do much is actually radically reduced.

People are going to notice if you are trying to stop the vote count and they’re going to complain and they’re going to act and they’re going to react.

But people are noticing-- and reacting to -- the terrible things the administration is doing now, and they're still being done. ICE is still terrorizing people in Minnesota and elsewhere. We got five-year-old Liam Ramos out of the horrific Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, but there are more than 200 children still detained. Maybe a combination of legal challenges and mass outrage will forestall the worst, but we don't know.

Bouie seems to believe that a civic-minded populace ought to make it impossible for the administration to steal any election. I hope we have that much power, and that much determination to save democracy. It remains to be seen whether we do.

THE MAINSTREAM PRESS IS DESPERATE TO FIND A REPUBLICAN WITH BASIC HUMAN DECENCY -- EVEN A FAKE ONE

Yesterday, The New York Times published Caroline Kitchener's long, insipid profile of Alabama senator Katie Britt, whom you might remember from her poorly received response to President Biden's State of the Union address in 2024. Kitchener's author page on the Times says that she tries to "seek out human stories that are not black and white." You'd never know it from this profile, which portrays Britt as a secular saint, interleaving carefully curated Christian-mom details with multiple excuses for Britt's unswerving loyalty to President Trump.

The piece bears this headline:

The G.O.P. Senator Who Can’t Stop Thinking About the Boy ICE Detained

Although Britt has done nothing to end the imprisonment of "the boy ICE detained," Kitchener gives her credit for feeling bad about him -- credit that goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs.

I haven't seen the Melania documentary, but it can't possibly be more hagiographic than this article. Here's Kitchener interleaving homey details about Britt-as-mom with "reporting" on her alleged anguish over the detention of this boy:

Her son had been at the orthodontist for 45 minutes when Katie Britt saw the picture of the boy in the bunny hat.

Waiting in her car for her son’s appointment to finish, the Republican senator from Alabama could not look away from the photo on her phone that had just gone viral: The agent’s hands on the boy’s Spider-Man backpack. The icy black vehicle. The flash of terror in those 5-year-old eyes.

“Can you look into this?” Ms. Britt texted her team from a Montgomery parking lot on a Thursday morning in late January, afraid to believe that this could happen in America. She had read reports that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had used the boy as a “pawn,” sending him to knock on the door of his home in hopes of luring out others.

Ms. Britt’s 15-year-old son climbed into the car, his teeth checked and braces adjusted. He would sit for an A.P. World History test later that day, compete in a speech and debate tournament over the weekend.

The boy in the bunny hat would be sitting in an ICE detention facility over a thousand miles away from his home.

What does Britt do on behalf of Liam Ramos? Well, nothing:

... Ms. Britt sat at her kitchen table on the phone with her legislative director, trying to discern exactly what had happened with the boy in Minneapolis.

“What did JD say about it?” she asked.

Vice President Vance had defended ICE, the staff member explained, arguing that the agents had no choice but to detain the child after they arrested his father, whom Mr. Vance called an “illegal alien.”

Ms. Britt scribbled a few notes in her planner. She wanted to talk directly to the woman in charge.

As she prepared to call Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, Ms. Britt gamed out what the secretary might say, and how she should respond. If Ms. Noem told her that the child really had been used to lure others out of a home, Ms. Britt thought to herself, that would have to be a red line.

How does that play out?

When she reached Ms. Noem on the phone, the secretary told Ms. Britt exactly what she was hoping to hear, Ms. Britt recounted later: The boy was never used as a pawn. ICE agents had cared for him after his father fled the scene. The agents followed proper procedures....

“Thank you so much,” Ms. Britt recalled saying to Ms. Noem. “This is so helpful to hear.”

... But Ms. Noem’s facts did not match the accounts coming from local officials. Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the boy’s school district, told reporters that masked agents had instructed the 5-year-old to knock on the door of his home to see if others were inside — “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

Nonetheless, when asked if she believed Ms. Noem without a shadow of a doubt, Ms. Britt did not hesitate.

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.”

Britt, we're told, never defies the president:

In Mr. Trump’s second term, Ms. Britt has voted in line with the president 100 percent of the time. Her disagreements emerge only in private, in conversations with top White House officials and cabinet secretaries, whose numbers are all saved in her phone.

But never mind, because she's a nice lady who reads to children:

Twenty minutes after she and her son arrived home from the orthodontist, Ms. Britt was off to a round-table event at a local day care center to highlight her recent child care legislation, which would be covered by members of the national media. Before she turned to the policy discussion, she knelt on the floor with a copy of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

One little boy climbed into her lap.

He was a big fat caterpillar!” the boy said, resting his head on her chest as she read the book aloud.

Ms. Britt was still thinking of the boy in the bunny hat, she said, who is right around the same age.

When it was time to talk to the cameras, she did not mention Minneapolis, reaching instead for a tagline she’d rattled off many times before.

“We are the party of parents, the party of families,” Ms. Britt said, bright lights in her eyes.

“President Trump has led the way on that.”

She wants to make sure you know she loves God ...

Ms. Britt opens her Bible every day when the house is quiet, just before 5 a.m.

She has had the same copy since she was 7 years old, its pages enthusiastically annotated with the pink and purple gel pens of a girl who always came home with straight A’s.

“Too often we don’t fall back on this,” she said, sitting in her sunroom armchair, her Bible open to a favorite passage on forgiveness. “And I think you have to.”

... and, as she showed when she ran for the Senate, also Trump:

When she was trailing in the Republican primary polls, she made a last-ditch effort to charm Mr. Trump — showing up to a Trump rally for Mr. Brooks and maneuvering her way to the front of the photo line....

“I’m going to win this election,” Ms. Britt told Mr. Trump, her husband recalled, as she looked him square in the eye. “And when I do, I’ll be a killer for you.”

Trump endorsed her, and she won.

We're told that she nudges Trump behind the scenes, and maybe it's true:

Over the last year, Ms. Britt has occasionally convinced the Trump administration to reverse course, according to several people with knowledge of conversations between Ms. Britt and Trump officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe those interactions. A call to the Pentagon restored the training materials on the Black airmen from Alabama, the people said. A call to the White House got Mr. Trump on board with funding body-worn cameras for ICE agents. And a call to Mr. Trump directly restored billions of dollars for research last summer to the National Institutes of Health.

But it's disgraceful to publish a puff piece about Britt's deep feelings regarding Liam Ramos when she's accomplished precisely nothing to get him released. Meanwhile:

This is a remarkable @nytimes.com split screen: A huge 3,526 word + photos profile on Sen Britt who "can't stop thinking about the boy ICE detained" But Rep Jaoquin Castro- who actually got Liam Ramos out of detention & back home- gets no interview, no pix, just 116 words inside a story. WOW.

[image or embed]

— @NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) (@newsjennifer.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 2:13 PM

(The story about Joaquin Castro's efforts is here.)

And since the Kitchener story was published, has Britt said anything about this?

The federal government has filed a motion seeking to end asylum claims for the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, according to the lawyer representing the family....

The Department of Homeland Security filed a motion Wednesday to expedite deportation proceedings in the family’s case, said immigration attorney Danielle Molliver with Nwokocha & Operana Law Offices.

Nope.

*****

My comments here aren't just about Katie Britt. There's a larger issue involved.

The New York Times has done some good work in its coverage of Trump's war on Minnesota. In particular, it published several video analyses that definitively debunked administration lies about the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

But the Times is still the Times. It never abandons its quest to find that mythical beast, the reasonable Republican. Corporately, the Times seems to despise Trump, but what it would very much prefer is a government run by a right-centrist Republican -- although a corporatist Democrat will do in a pinch. The Times simply won't accept the obvious fact that moderate Republicanism no longer exists at the national level, or anywhere in America outside the Northeast. The Times continues to believe that surely someone will save the GOP from its worst instincts. (Needless to say, the GOP in 2026 is nothing but its worst instincts, and that will be true for the foreseeable future.)

And here's a warning: If we have free and fair elections in 2028, the Times and other mainstream outlets may very well portray J.D. Vance the way Kitchener portrays Britt -- as a thoughtful, soft-spoken Republican who wants to move the GOP away from its worst instincts. This won't be universal -- Jamelle Bouie, in particular, knows that Vance is an evil, sadistic man and a gutter racist, and I don't expect him to stop saying that -- but Vance is quite likely to win the Republican nomination, and political reporters at the Times are likely to express their hopes about Vance, regardless of the facts.

We'll get insipid, soft-focus profiles of Vance, and he'll be portrayed as a turn of the page after Trump -- more so than loudmouths like Gavin Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee.

It might be persuasive to Times readers. Or it could be that most of these readers now see through the bullshit. If you go to the Kitchener story and look at the "reader picks" among the comments, you find a lot of anger:

Who cares what her misgivings may be?

Obviously, this ridiculously flattering essay pretends that this woman's feeling badly for people who are abused, mistreated and, yes, even killed, by ICE goons somehow makes up for her groveling and sniveling support of the most evil president in U.S. history.

Who cares what she "feels", or, more accurately, claims to feel? She is complicit in this enormous evil that we all see. She is even more culpable than Trump, because she claims that she sees something wrong, people being hurt and abused, and, although she's in a position to do something, does nothing.

Quite a few Times readers aren't falling for this kind of thing anymore.

THE MEDIA BELIEVES IN TWO CONTRADICTORY MONOCULTURES, NEITHER OF WHICH EXISTS

There's a new poll out from NPR, PBS, and Marist College, and it says what nearly every recent poll says: Most of America disapproves of the actions of the Trump administration, and Trump's Republican supporters are the outliers. Independent voters aren't as overwhelmingly opposed to Trump as Democrats, but they're strongly opposed nonetheless. Some examples:

91% of Democrats and 68% of independents say ICE's action are making Americans somewhat less or much less safe. In fact, 80% of Democrats and 56% of independents believe ICE is making Americans much less safe. However, 77% of Republicans report the actions of ICE are making Americans much more safe or somewhat more safe....

Six in ten Americans (60%) disapprove of the job ICE is doing. 33% approve. Democrats (91%) overwhelmingly disapprove of the agency's performance, and 66% of independents agree. Nearly three in four Republicans (73%), though, approve of how ICE is doing its job....

Nearly six in ten Americans (59%) think the demonstrations around the country to oppose the actions of ICE are mostly legitimate protests. 40%, though. say the demonstrations are mostly people acting unlawfully. Again, stark partisan differences exist, with 85% of Democrats and 65% of independents reporting these demonstrations are mostly legitimate protests. 75% of Republicans say they are mostly people acting unlawfully....

Seven in ten Democrats (70%) and almost six in ten independents (58%) think lowering prices should be the focus of the Trump Administration. A plurality of Republicans (44%), though, assert controlling immigration should be the Administration’s top priority....

56% of Americans say placing tariffs or fees on imported products from other countries hurts the U.S. economy.... Democrats (87%) and independents (63%) are more likely than Republicans (20%) to say tariffs hurt the economy. About two in three Republicans (66%) say tariffs benefit the national economy.

As I keep saying, on most issues these days, Democrats are the normal ones. Roughly two thirds of independents agree with us on nearly every issue. Republicans are the out-of-touch oddballs.

And yet it remains an article of faith in the media that heartland white Republicans are the "real" Americans, and Trump critics really aren't Americans at all.

But if we shift to the realm of popular culture, the opposite view holds. A large percentage of highly successful pop culture figures lean left. Awards shows, like the recent Grammys, can seem like anti-Trump political rallies.

The media believes that America loves entertainers who are proudly progressive, but also believes that "real" Americans are right-wing. Does anyone in the press ever wonder how both of these things could be true?

I don't think either perception is fully accurate. The majority of Americans seem to be leaning to the left right now, but many people in the middle aren't there permanently. Some voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and they may vote for downballot Republicans in the future. The one thing I'm certain of is that angry, cruelty-is-the-point MAGA/Fox News Republicans aren't the majority in this country. They're not normative. But because every state has two U.S. senators regardless of population, including small, rural, right-leaning states, and also because the Electoral College is apportioned based on congressional representation, right-wingers wield disproportionate political power in America. They don't need to win the popular vote to control the Senate or win the White House.

That plus the fact that they vote for Trump in somewhat larger numbers than pollsters expect leads the political media to believe that urban and suburban liberals and leftists are the oddballs and Republicans are normative. But the pro-Republican "vibe shift" that supposedly happened in 2024 has now been over for months. Pro-Trump voters aren't normative.

But they exist, and they've surprised some of us by buying tickets for the documentary Melania. The film was expected to make $5 million at the box office; it's made more than $9 million so far. Expectations were based on poor advance ticket sales, but the audience for Melania is older, and Baby Boomers are the least likely moviegoers to buy tickets in advance.

The movie still won't make enough to turn a profit, but there's a niche audience for it -- part of the same niche audience that thinks ICE is doing a swell job right now and that believes Trump's tariffs are awesome.

And I just want to warn you that Turning Point USA's alternate Super Bowl halftime show starring Kid Rock could get decent ratings. We shouldn't assume that it will be a flop. I expect it to find its niche audience, too, even though the real Super Bowl halftime show starring Bad Bunny will have higher ratings.

I wish political commentators understood that the current political divide mimics the pop-culture divide: hardcore Republicans are out there -- but they're the minority.

BILLIONAIRE WINGNUTS EXPECTED MEDIA OWNERSHIP TO BE EASIER

So this just happened:

The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage.

The company is laying off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said.

The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.

Here's one response to the news:

Everybody has it backwards. Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies. They’re creating a world they control completely

— Jared Yates Sexton (@jysexton.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 10:47 AM

The Washington Post and CBS aren’t intended to succeed. They’re intended to fail and as they fail any sort of power or influence they have over public opinion will demonstrably wane until it disappears. It’ll happen over and over again until there are no impediments for the wealthy.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@jysexton.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 10:50 AM

I don't agree. Look at Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter/X: He hasn't managed to make it profitable, but he's converted it into his version of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent -- a conduit for his racist and far-right views and the far-right and racist views of his favorite tweeters. He doesn't want "any sort of power or influence" X has to "demonstrably wane until it disappears." He wants touse X to help elect neo-fascists in the U.S., Britain, Germany, and elsewhere.

The Ellison family clearly could have hired someone much more low-profile than Bari Weiss if they wanted to destroy CBS News. They clearly plan to let her make significant changes -- sure, there'll be layoffs, but they're letting her bring in (semi-)boldface names and introduce new features at CBS.

And Jeff Bezos seemed to be trying to preserve The Washington Post after he purchased it in 2013. He hired an acclaimed editor, Marty Baron, and put some resources into the paper. More recently, though, he's tried to make it both leaner and Trumpier. Now he seems to be stripping it for parts, but I don't think that was the original intention.

Tech guys become impatient when everything they touch doesn't instantly turn to gold. They expect that they can move fast, break things, and watch the value of their new toy go up because they've made it buzzy. But that's not how mature businesses work. Even Twitter was a semi-mature business when Musk bought it. Musk couldn't accept that Twitter was never likely to be profitable, and Bezos doesn't seem to have understood how hard it would be for him to build an economically thriving newspaper.

Also, these guys wanted to see their increasingly right-leaning views reflected in the content produced by these properties. They can't accept the reality that this alienates large portions of their potential market.

I'm a genius! they tell themselves. So why is this so hard?

I don't think these guys are looking to destroy what they've purchased -- but they're all doing such a terrible job of building an appealing product that I can understand why it looks that way.