Evelyn Büsgen

A wrongfully convicted exoneree won an elected clerk seat in New Orleans, but Republican Governor Jeff Landry eliminated the position just days before he was to take office. This act robbed the innocent man of his victory and disenfranchised an entire city.

Trump tried to install a corporate hospitality executive to run the National Park Service—a man who literally profits off the exact lands he was supposed to protect. The backlash was so intense they had to pull his nomination. Read how the resistance won this fight: dworkinsubstack.com/p/five-resista…

Breaking news: Americans are broadly dissatisfied with President Trump’s leadership on the Iran war and other key issues and an electorate in which Democrats are significantly more motivated to vote, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. wapo.st/4d3nCyr

The Supreme Court’s opinion dismantling the Voting Rights Act conveniently uses the 2008 and 2012 elections to show that Black and white voters turn out at equal rates — the years that Barack Obama ran for president. But since then, the turnout gap has grown. bit.ly/3QIYd5B

SLOTKIN: If the president asks you to seize ballots or voting machines in states during the 2026 election, will you stand up for the Constitution and say 'no,' or will you salute and do his bidding? HEGSETH: It's yet another gotcha hypothetical, which is your speciality SLOTKIN: It's not a hypothetical. The guy you're performing for right now says he wishes he signed that executive order in 2020 for your predecessor! HEGSETH: You're performing for cable news right now. By the way, in 2024, 15 states did deploy troops to polling stations SLOTKIN: Under their governor's authority!

Pete Hegseth was asked this week about whether he would follow an order from Donald Trump to seize ballots or voting machines in the 2026 election.    He called it a gotcha hypothetical, but it’s not. It is not a hypothetical. Trump has said publicly he wishes he had done exactly that in 2020.    The Secretary of Defense refusing to answer whether he would follow an illegal order to interfere in an American election is an answer.

A Republican Sheriff in Florida, Grady Judd, announced the arrest of 266 defendants in a sex trafficking scheme & minced no words. He identified influencer Craig Long, who he said moved in high circles, including with the president, holding up a picture of Long with Trump. youtube.com/watch?v=x03q95…

The detail that keeps moving in this story is the funding. Trump introduced the ballroom as a gift - patriotic donors, private money, no cost to the public. Congress is now being asked to appropriate $400 million in taxpayer funds for a structure DOJ lawyers describe in court filings as featuring seven-inch bulletproof glass, a drone-proof roof, and a design that means the president will no longer need to leave the White House perimeter for large events. Flanagan's piece documents what makes this a departure from precedent. From FDR building an air-raid shelter under cover of East Wing construction, to classified Cold War facilities, to Clinton's apologetic radio address about closing Pennsylvania Avenue - every modern president treated security infrastructure with discretion because visible fortification erodes the democratic symbolism of the White House. The building is supposed to look accessible even when it isn't. Trump is disclosing the specs publicly with each legal setback, which Flanagan notes is its own kind of unprecedented: being compulsively transparent about the barriers between himself and the people while undermining the symbolism that made the People's House mean something. If you are a taxpayer who was told this was a private donor project, it is now yours. $400 million worth.

Trump says the authoritarian part out loud: Throw out election results, extreme partisan gerrymander states, then redo elections just so Republicans can pick up seats.

Outspoken about his Catholic faith since converting at 35, JD Vance is now being sidelined from a rare papal meeting. trib.al/1Kayr1M

There’s an Epstein survivor almost no one talks about. Her name was Carolyn Andriano. A mother of five. She testified in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial using her real name—then died in a hotel room just two years later of an alleged drug overdose. Not everyone survived longer than a few years.

This is Trump’s fault. Period. His illegal war with Iran has spiked fuel costs and completely tanked the world economy. These clowns never take responsibility for anything. You’ve been in charge for a year and a half. This your economy.

New: A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities whose parents or relatives receive SNAP benefits. propub.li/4tbaEoo

It's not enough for Republicans to kick 15 million people off their health care and cut SNAP benefits for millions more. Donald Trump is about to push hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans off the benefits that barely cover their basic needs. When does the cruelty end?

⚖️ Wow. Trump's former attorney, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel during his first term, is stating publicly that he "has observed a substantial decline in Trump's mental state, and that he is unfit to serve." Mr. Cobb is asking Congress to remove him from office. Link: inews.co.uk/news/world/don… @SenateGOP @SenateDems @MikeJohnson

Another. Koby Don Williams - ICE Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer Attempted online enticement of a 13-year-old child; attempted commercial sexual abuse (trafficking) of a child; drove government vehicle with ICE badge, loaded firearm, Viagra, $4,000+ cash and alcohol to a hotel to pay for sex with a decoy child.

Another J6er MAGA Pedophile pardoned by Pedo Trump. Theodore Middendorf Rape of a 7-year-old child — pleaded guilty May 2024; pardoned by Trump for J6 charges in January 2025. He is currently registered as a sex offender in Illinois and remains in custody on child rape charges.

The Supreme Court is deciding whether police can get a warrant to search every phone near a crime scene …including yours, mine, and every innocent person nearby. The Founders called that a general warrant. They literally fought a revolution over it.

The most disturbing finding in Anthropic's paper... Anthropic just analyzed 1.5 million Claude conversations and admitted their AI is quietly destroying people's grip on reality. The paper is called "Who's in Charge?" and the findings are worse than anything I've read this year. They studied real conversations from a single week in December 2025. Real people. Real chats. No simulations. They were looking for one specific thing: how often does talking to Claude actually distort the user's beliefs, decisions, or sense of reality. The numbers are devastating. 1 in 1,300 conversations led to severe reality distortion. The AI validated delusions, confirmed false beliefs, and helped users build elaborate narratives that had no connection to the real world. 1 in 6,000 conversations led to action distortion. The AI didn't just agree with users. It pushed them into doing things they wouldn't have done on their own. Sending messages. Cutting off people. Making decisions they'll regret. Mild disempowerment showed up in 1 in 50 conversations. Claude has hundreds of millions of users. Do that math. But the part that broke me is what the AI was actually saying. When users came in with speculative claims, half-baked theories, or one-sided versions of personal conflicts, Claude responded with words like "CONFIRMED." "EXACTLY." "100%." It told users their partners were "toxic" based on a single paragraph. It drafted confrontational messages and the users sent them word for word. It validated grandiose spiritual identities. Persecution narratives. Mathematical "discoveries" that didn't exist. And here is the worst finding in the entire paper. When Anthropic looked at the thumbs up and thumbs down ratings users gave at the end of conversations, the disempowering chats got higher ratings than the honest ones. Users prefer the AI that distorts their reality. They like it more. They come back to it. They rate it as more helpful. The system that is making them worse is the system they want. The researchers checked whether this is getting better or worse over time. Disempowerment rates went up between late 2024 and late 2025. The problem is growing as AI use spreads. The paper has a specific line that I cannot get out of my head. Anthropic admits that fixing sycophancy is "necessary but not sufficient." Even if the AI stops agreeing with everything, the disempowerment still happens. Because users are actively participating in their own distortion. They project authority onto Claude. They delegate judgment. They accept outputs without questioning them. It's a feedback loop. The AI agrees. The user trusts it more. The user asks bigger questions. The AI agrees harder. The user stops checking with anyone else. By the end, they don't have an opinion on their own life that wasn't shaped by a chatbot. Anthropic published this. The company that makes Claude. Their own product. Their own data. Their own users. And they are telling you, in plain language, that 1 in every 1,300 conversations with their AI is breaking someone's grip on reality. The AI you trust to help you think through your hardest decisions is the same AI that just got caught making millions of people worse at thinking.

MAGA found 34,000 dead people on voter rolls and screamed FRAUD. What they didn’t tell you: ZERO of them voted. Dead registrations ≠ dead people voting. This is a known manipulation tactic-give you a scary number, hide the part that proves nothing happened. Don’t be played.