b💉@🏡 🌻

@BulwarkOnline @Timodc @esglaude Sadly, Linda McMahon is still in his cabinet, but she likes to be ‘one of the guys’…

"What does it say that we have this Kim Jong Un-ass reality TV show star sitting around around a Cabinet meeting having a bunch of —now that all the women are gone—men tell him he's the only one that can save America?" @Timodc and @esglaude on Trump's sausage fest of mediocrity.

@RonFilipkowski How much did taxpayers get fleeced for that tacky crap?

We just want affordable gas and groceries.

@gothburz Wasting Willamette Valley Pinot Noir would be criminal…

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

@brhodes @gtconway3d Was stunned (why? I know he’s an idiot) to hear him trying to blame the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal…if only he’d left well enough alone…

The U.S. government is run by a lunatic who is not in control of events and is resorting to violence to try (unsuccessfully) to impose control.

Bruce Springsteen closed his concert in Minneapolis by paying tribute to Renée Good and encouraging fans to heed John Lewis's famous call to "get into good trouble." "These are the hard times, but we'll make it through. We're the Americans. But I think — I know — for me, the hardest part about all of this is feeling the distance between your neighbors, your fellow citizens, and that distance… well, it can darken your soul. Now we have a leader who says he wishes nothing but ill upon the people he disagrees with, and who disagree with him. I don't feel that way. America, from the beginning, was born out of disagreement. It was built on disagreement. We can argue about what course we thought the country should take while recognizing our common humanity, our dignity and, yes, our unity... "I go back to thinking about Renée Good's last words before she died, to the man who she was protesting against, the man who would take her life. She said, 'That's fine, dude, I’m not mad at you. I'm not mad.' God bless her. "So tonight, when you go home, hold your loved ones close. And tomorrow, do as Renée did, find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action to defend our country’s ideals. And as the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, 'Go out and get into some good trouble. Say something. Do something. Help! Sing something!' If you're feeling helpless, hopeless, betrayed, frustrated, angry … I know I've been. That's why The E Street Band is here tonight. This is a tour that was not planned. We’re here tonight because we need to feel your hope, and your strength. And we want to bring some hope and some strength for you. I hope we did that. All I can say is God bless Alex Pretti, God bless Renée Good, God bless you, and God bless America." 📸: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images

This interview is a uniquely valuable perspective. Please watch.

Trump is the biggest threat to D.C.’s architectural splendor since War of 1812 washingtonpost.com/style/2026/03/…

BREAKING: Bruce Springsteen just announced that his band will be doing a tour in effort to fight back against Donald Trump's authoritarian overreach. The Boss is back!

@Mollyploofkins Hope so!

TBH this looks painful

@MilesTaylorUSA @RpsAgainstTrump Is he getting a cut?

NEWS — Trump coercing staff to wear the same black pair of shoes that he wears. “Everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” a staffer said, as some reportedly ditch their own footwear to comply with Trump’s wishes. We’re officially in the dumbest timeline.

@capksharma @StephenKing I think he actually said “eminent threats” and I don’t think anything about this could be categorized as such…

@StephenKing Trump’s reckless lies dragged America into this Iran bloodbath—fake “imminent threats,” endless war for his bloated ego. History will judge him as the warmonger and coward he truly is. When will people learn? #NoMoreWars

Country Joe had it right: 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin' for?

@Amelia558rs Maude

Vintage old lady name for this DOG please

@SenThomTillis @emrwilkins Wow! Just when people were starting to like and respect you…

Senator Markwayne Mullin is a great guy and a great choice to lead DHS, restore competence, and refocus efforts on quickly distributing disaster aid, keeping the border secure, and targeting violent illegal immigrants for deportation. Another big positive: he likes dogs.

@Acyn She kept trying to throw career staff under the bus - disgusting!!

Noem: It was a competitive process Schiff: This contract went to a company that did not exist two weeks before they got the contract. Are you sayin that it’s a coincidence that $143 million went to a subcontractor that you worked with extensively as governor in South Dakota or during your campaign?

Boycott the State of the Union , by @RBReich open.substack.com/pub/robertreic…

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Brendan Loper. #NewYorkerCartoons

Here's Steve Kerr when asked what the path moving forward is for the country... "There should be an appeal to our better angels to look after one another and to recognize what's happening. We're being divided by media for profit, by misinformation. There's so much out there that is really difficult for all of us to reconcile. In times like these, you have to lean on values and who you are and who you want to be -- either as an individual or as a country. And I think that's the biggest thing."

The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act. nytimes.com/2026/01/25/opi… via @NYTOpinion