Mike Levin

It appears that a Polymarket account called "Magamyman" made $515,000 in a single day betting on last night's U.S. strike on Iran, with the first trade placed 71 minutes before the news broke publicly. When this person bought in, the market had this at a 17% probability. They turned roughly $87,000 into over half a million dollars overnight. Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year. The DOJ and CFTC both had active investigations into Polymarket that were dropped after Trump took office. Prediction markets cannot be a vehicle for profiting off advance knowledge of military action. We need answers, transparency, and oversight.

Federal judges are moving houses, freezing credit cards, and changing their commutes. Their children are being targeted. A Reagan-appointed judge says he fears less for himself than for “our democracy at risk because of the trends against the rule of law.” When the president vilifies judges who rule against him, threats follow. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a consequence. Targeting judges is how democracy dies.

RFK Jr. isn’t a skeptic asking hard questions. He’s a con man dismantling the vaccine system that kept your kids safe for generations. Babies are back in ICUs with diseases that should be extinct. A federal judge called his appointees “distinctly unqualified.” This isn’t medical freedom, it’s straight up negligence. propublica.org/article/rfk-jr…

Corey Lewandowski must be held fully accountable for his actions at DHS. An unelected, unconfirmed operative ran a cabinet agency like his personal fiefdom. He was legally limited to 130 days as an unpaid volunteer. And yet he fired a FEMA director, ran ICE operations, and was connected to a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad contract that is now under congressional investigation. Trump fired Kristi Noem and Lewandowski walked out with her. Now we must demand every document, every email, every record tied to his time at DHS. If you believe in accountability, this one should make your blood boil. mediaite.com/media/news/hou…

Let me get this straight. The federal government held a legal auction for the right to build offshore wind farms. A company won those auctions fair and square, paying nearly a billion dollars into the U.S. Treasury. The projects went through years of review. Courts repeatedly upheld their legality. Everything was above board. Then the Trump administration tried five separate times to kill other wind projects in federal court and lost every single time. Judges reviewed the administration’s supposed “national security” justification and weren’t persuaded.  So now they’ve landed on a new plan: pay the company nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS of your tax money to just walk away. Because, and I am not making this up, the president thinks offshore wind turbines are ugly and claims without evidence that they “drive whales crazy.”  He’s been nursing this petty grudge since 2012, when he tried to block a wind farm visible from his golf course in Scotland. Fourteen years later, American taxpayers are footing the bill for it. This is stupid policy. It’s fiscally reckless, strategically blind, and driven entirely by a personal vendetta rather than any coherent vision for American energy or competitiveness. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead, building offshore wind at a staggering pace and positioning itself to dominate the global clean energy economy for decades to come. None of this is America First. nytimes.com/2026/03/17/cli…

This is textbook corruption. Corey Lewandowski allegedly ran a pay-to-play racket from inside the DHS. Federal law is explicit: demanding personal payment in exchange for government action is a crime, full stop. The FBI and DOJ need to open a criminal investigation NOW. Every contract touched by Lewandowski needs to be audited and every consultant fee traced. Every company needs to be interviewed. Lewandowski must be held FULLY accountable. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/d…

Chrissy and I have two kids in public schools. We care deeply about what happens in those classrooms, not as a political issue, but as parents. America must provide a solid foundation of opportunity so no one falls behind and a limitless horizon so everyone can rise as high as their hard work takes them. That’s not happening right now. Linda McMahon took over the Department of Education saying she wanted to dismantle it. Education Week documented more than $12 BILLION in school funding cut or disrupted in her first year: teacher training, mental health services, violence prevention, programs helping low-income kids get to college. Many of these cuts were later ruled illegal by federal judges. The administration cut them anyway. This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s pulling up the ladder on the kids who need a boost the most. Every child deserves good teachers, safe schools, and someone who believes in their potential. Strong floor. No ceiling. edweek.org/policy-politic…

Here is what’s really going on with regard to the funding stalemate in Congress. ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens on the streets of Minneapolis. Democrats then said: before we write you another check, agree to the same rules every police department in America already follows. Judicial warrants before entering homes. Visible ID. Body cameras. No raids at schools and hospitals. We immediately pushed for votes to fund TSA, the Coast Guard, and FEMA. Republicans blocked it. We tried to fund FEMA alone. Republicans blocked that too. Their position was to fund ICE with no strings attached, or shut the whole thing down. So DHS shut down. Then yesterday, the White House sent a letter admitting we were right. But they still won’t agree to judicial warrants or to take the masks off, which means agents can still break down your door without a judge’s approval and you still can’t see their faces when they do it. We’ve been ready to fund your airport security since day one, not to mention Coast Guard, FEMA and the rest. Republicans chose to protect ICE from accountability instead. #FundDHSFreezeICE

Today’s news about Cesar Chavez is shocking and deeply disappointing. He was someone millions of Americans, especially Latino families growing up in this country, looked up to and respected. This is painful to reckon with. But it has to be reckoned with. No one is above accountability, and that is especially true when young women have been harmed. Let’s remember that the farmworkers’ movement was built by the workers themselves. The people who sacrificed for decades just to be treated with basic dignity. That is the legacy worth protecting, and that is what we should center going forward along with justice for the survivors.​​​​​​​​​​ That’s why I think we should rename what bears Chavez's name after the United Farm Workers movement itself. Honor what the people built together, not any one individual.

This is totally insane. A war correspondent just received death threats from online gamblers who wanted him to change his reporting on an Iranian missile strike so they could collect a payout. One bettor had $900,000 riding on the outcome. He told the journalist he knew where he lived and who his family members were.  This is what prediction markets on life and death actually look like in practice. This is exactly why I introduced the DEATH BETS Act with Senator @AdamSchiff. The DEATH BETS Act would ban contracts on assassinations, deaths of world leaders, and acts of war on platforms like Polymarket. This story shows exactly why that matters.  When you let people place million-dollar bets on whether a missile kills someone, you create a financial incentive to threaten journalists, manipulate information, and profit from human suffering. washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

Trump’s FCC just threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who cover the Iran war in ways Trump doesn’t like. Let that sink in. The FCC is telling news organizations to “correct course” or lose their ability to broadcast, and he’s doing it in wartime, when accurate, independent journalism is most critical and most dangerous to those in power. A government official using federal licensing power to punish coverage he finds unflattering is textbook authoritarian press suppression. The message is unmistakable: report the war the way we want it reported, or we will silence you. Carr should be ashamed. Congress should be investigating. And every journalist covering this war should take his threat as confirmation that they’re doing their job. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f…

We cannot normalize this behavior. A group of middle schoolers surrounded an 11-year-old girl on her bike at Poinsettia Park, assaulted her, and called her racial slurs. The video is appalling. Our kids won’t always get along. But settling differences with hateful language and violence is never acceptable. We must call it out every time and teach young people a better way. nbcsandiego.com/news/local/car…

Trump’s top economist just admitted that hurting American consumers is “the last of our concerns.” This is who they are.

The SAVE Act is a solution to a problem that does not exist. Noncitizen voting is already illegal, already extremely rare, and already prosecuted when it occurs. Every credible study confirms this. Election officials will tell you the same thing. Which means this bill was never about protecting elections. It was always about making it harder for eligible American citizens to vote. Requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register sounds reasonable until you realize that millions of Americans, veterans, seniors, rural residents, working parents, and others do not have easy access to the documents this bill demands. The costs and the bureaucratic hurdles fall hardest on the very people who already face the most barriers to participation. For millions of eligible voters, it is effectively a tax on voting. If Republicans were serious about election integrity, they would be working with us to fund election infrastructure and making it easier for every eligible citizen to cast a ballot and have it counted. Instead they want to make it harder. Every American who believes in fair elections, regardless of party, should be asking why. #SAVEActTaxesVoting

This is infuriating. Trump is exploiting an unauthorized war in Iran to resurrect one of California’s worst environmental nightmares. The last time oil flowed through these pipelines, a corroded pipe burst and spilled more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil, killing hundreds of birds and marine mammals and closing beaches for months. That was 2015. The profits flow to Texas and Wall Street, not to California consumers. The safety record does not hold up, and the environmental risk is simply not worth it. In the years to come, I look forward to having the opportunity to ban California offshore drilling once and for all. Our coastline and our communities deserve better than this. latimes.com/california/sto…