The Bulwark Podcast

Of course, SCOTUS struck down Trump’s stupid tariffs. Nearly every legal expert in America said they were unconstitutional, but we have had to live with them for more than a year. Now, he’s threatening war on Iran apparently because it’s not fair that Obama got a Nobel and he didn’t. Meanwhile, as we approach the fourth anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Putin still holds out hope he can seiz...

The junior senator from Minnesota joined Tim on Wednesday for the first show of a two-night Bulwark run at the historic Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis—the city that caught ICE off-guard with its "radical empathy" and kick-ass organizing skills. It was the "secret sauce" of Minnesotans that looks to have federal agents winding down their operation there. Plus, Democrats need to continue to hold th...

Most Democratic politicians are scared to criticize each other. They also fear dinging former presidents, or the various groups that make up the party’s broad coalition. And too many Dem candidates are afraid to color outside the lines, even if voters want them to be less establishment and more like regular people. Can the party get it together before the midterms? Plus, Trump’s threat of war agai...

From FCC Chair Brendan Carr—who keeps trying to silence the political opinions of late night TV comedians, to DHS pressuring social media companies to expose anti-ICE accounts, and to the willingness of serial killer RFK, Jr and his MAHA cohort to stack up dead children so they can keep their antivax con going—it’s clear the shamelessness of MAGA knows no bounds. But even if the coalition that del...

The white Anglo-Saxon supremacy in Trumpland is so over the top that even child-of-Cuban-immigrants Marco Rubio claims America’s common cultural heritage is European. But then with a schizophrenic touch, our secretary of state went on to endorse the reelection of Viktor Orban, who has decidedly turned Hungary away from Western democratic values. In response, some high-profile Democrats weighed in,...

In addition to protesting and voting, we have another option hiding in plain sight against this administration: our economic power. Scott says resistance should also include unsubscribing—from one or more streaming platforms, from LLMs, or from ride hailing platforms. Stick it to the CEOs who are enabling Trump and take a piece of hide out of Big Tech, especially Tim Cook’s Apple. There should be...

ICE failed in its operation in Minnesota because the people would not bend to their terror campaign. Minneapolis residents also maintained incredible discipline in their resistance and totally let Trump down by keeping a check on any potential riotous behavior. Meanwhile, the El Paso airport closure shows the administration’s continuing communication problems, and Bondi’s performance before the Ho...

Trump may keep telling Ukrainians their country is about to collapse, and Putin may keep bombing their power plants—leaving them miserably cold during one of the harshest winters in years— but Ukrainians are not giving up, and they’re not backing down. On the streets of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa, Ben found defiance, the will to fight and survive, and a still lingering sentimental attachment to Ame...

Not only did Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick go to the Epstein island, a sultan from the UAE, who sent a “torture video” to Epstein, also attended Trump’s first inaugural. That would be the same country where the royal family secretly bought half of the Trump family’s crypto venture—right before he was inaugurated a second time. For some reason, Sultan bin Sulayem was one of six powerful and wea...

Trump of course hated Bad Bunny's halftime performance, but even he wasn't running the Turning Point alternative at Mar-a-Lago. And a couple of Olympic skiers expressing disapproval of ICE or calling for love and respect for immigrants and their fellow Americans sent MAGA into hyperdrive—with calls for the athletes to be denaturalized and deported. Meanwhile, Kash Patel stopped an investigation in...

Trump casually posted a racist video and the White House essentially told Americans to calm down. Convicted felons are being treated better than rounded-up immigrants in detention centers. And the evangelicals' favorite president doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the word, prayer. Still, Republicans on The Hill are seeing the broad unpopularity of ICE's behavior in Minnesota and may be sta...

The massive layoffs at Jeff Bezos's Washington Post involve more than just the financial situation at the paper. The Amazon founder's real priority is keeping Donald Trump happy so the money keeps flowing from his lucrative government contracts. And the man worth $260 billion will do what it takes, even if that means hollowing out a great news organization and potentially turning it into a MAGA-fr...

Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to hold onto his near monopoly on power after the midterms. Beyond his scheme to invoke the Insurrection Act through a riot he’s trying to will into being in Minneapolis, he could also declare foreign election interference—or claim there was skullduggery afoot in Los Angeles or Georgia precincts. Anything to stall or stop the new Congress from being se...

From dads standing guard at school doors, to Costco moms delivering food to people afraid to leave home, and to the ICE spotters patrolling the streets— everyday Minnesotans have been standing up to the Trump administration’s terror campaign with a vibrant sense of community that Stephen Miller apparently did not even consider a possibility. And while most of the rank-and-file activists are not pa...

JD originally made a name for himself as an economic populist but now spends all his time lying and ignoring the woes of the white working class. Stephen Miller is far more interested in authoritarianism than the American worker. And the biggest MAGA warrior of all, Steve Bannon, was downright smitten with Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is busy trying to hide the identities o...

In the wake of the massive winter storm, the power is still out in some places, trees are down, and the death toll continues to rise. And where is FEMA? Don’t pester Trump about it because he is very busy going after political opponents like Don Lemon, re-litigating once again his 2020 loss in Georgia, and keeping up his terror campaign in Minnesota in hopes of invoking the Insurrection Act. Plus,...

Trump has decidedly built a white supremacist army within the government. And this was always the risk when the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9-11. Influential people warned at the time that our norms would not protect us against someone who was determined to violate them using DHS. At the same time, white people are putting themselves on the line in a way that is reminiscent o...

The mass deportation operation was supposed to be about the manly men pulling out all the stops in defense of Western civilization, which they claim is being brought down by brown and black immigrants. But it is the multi-racial, multi-faith people of Minneapolis who are fighting—at the risk of their own lives—for the cause of community, neighborhoodism, and social cohesion. And that is not the sa...

The deployment of dangerous, untrained, and violent federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis met its match in a massive, organized, nonviolent resistance that truly showed what democracy looks like. And though the ostensible immigration enforcement operation is not over, the administration thought the tough guys would easily prevail. But Gov. Walz says the real strength was with the ordinary a...

The Trump administration’s version of the Stasi murdered Alex Pretti in cold blood because he was exercising his First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and his Second Amendment right to carry a licensed firearm. But in MAGA land, those rights only apply to the people on their side, not all Americans. The few Republicans who are starting to feel queasy about menacing agents running around our...

Trump is taking billion dollar bribes for his ‘Board of Peace,’ where he can pretend he’ll be the head of a new world order in partnership with Putin. He’s also looking for his next foreign policy adventure since he didn’t get any mileage with Greenland or Iran. And he’s acting like socialist-fascist Juan Perón—taking stakes in U.S. companies while continuing to sic the American gestapo on the Twi...

Donald Trump is so enamored with Vladimir Putin he doesn't even know the Russian leader is regularly making fun of him in ways that can’t easily be translated. Trump is also running the White House like it's the Kremlin, with backdoor deals, quick enrichment schemes, nefarious activities, and cronies calling the shots—while people in official positions, like Marco, are just fig leaves. It’s the ex...

In his rambling mess of a speech at Davos, Trump confused Iceland and Greenland, and demonstrated that he doesn't understand how NATO works. The infamous draft-dodger also seemed to call Truman and Eisenhower "stupid" for not just taking Greenland after WWII. Nevertheless, his threat to somehow get the island is undermining our international rules-based order. Plus, the secret, imperfect alliance...

The Republican Party may be deeply unpopular, but the Democratic Party is even more so. The Dems' brand is weak despite the success of the off-year elections in 2025. To have a shot at winning back the Senate in the midterms, and the White House in 2028, the most successful Dems will be the ones who run against the status quo of their own party. In the meantime, Dems should be aggressively holding...

The president's demented rant that the United States has to take Greenland because the Nobel committee has not awarded him his much coveted peace prize is farcical and embarrassing—we are in 25th Amendment territory. At the same time, Trump's alternate claim that conquering the island is about being tough on Russia is so phony since he's busy trying to help give Ukraine to Putin. Meanwhile, ICE ag...