The Friday Brief: May 16, 2025

Fixing a send error.

Inside: Chief Justice John Roberts H.as Regrets. 2028: Please Stop. Democrats and Young Men. The “Big Beautiful Bill” Is An Economic IED. AI Garbage In, AI Garbage Out. Personalized DNA Treatments Are The Future. What I’m Reading. Scenes From The Home Front.

The Big Picture

MAGA’s Hellfortnight: Medicaid, Mayhem, and MAGA Meltdowns

f you’ve been even semi-conscious over the last two weeks, you’ve watched the Republican Party tie itself into a pretzel, light it on fire, and sell it as freedom fries. This was supposed to be the moment—Trump’s second-term oligarchapalooza, a potlatch of plutocracy, with the “Big Beautiful Bill” finally crowning Wall Street’s fever dreams. Instead, the GOP spent the last 14 days stepping on every rake in the political Home Depot.

Let’s start with the legislative dumpster fire.

Mike Johnson and Trump cooked up a Frankenstein of a bill: part tax cuts for billionaires, part starvation diet for the poor. It was supposed to be the MAGA Manifesto—gut Medicaid and Medicare, slash SNAP, all to finance another round of tax sugar for Elon, Zuck, and the private-equity mafia. But even inside the GOP, the stench was too much. Senators began flaking. Josh Hawley, who never met a faux-populist cosplay he didn’t adopt, suddenly found something like a conscience over cutting Medicare and Medicaid. Or maybe it was just the polling that showed Medicaid cuts are political cyanide, even in Missouri.

The numbers are clear: even among Trump’s base, Medicare and Medicaid are sacred cows. Touch them, and you’ll find out just how sharp those horns can be. As of this writing (2:45 a.m., Friday morning), the bill is in deep trouble, with no fallback plan in sight.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is teasing a Senate run in Georgia (because the House is just too boring and has too many rules), Thom Tillis is underwater in North Carolina, and “normie” candidates in New Hampshire and Georgia have taken a hard pass. That cocky swagger from the Senate GOP just a few weeks ago? Gone. Replaced by flop sweat and donor calls that go straight to voicemail.

And to keep the MAGA drama spicy, the intra-party civil war is flaring back up. Trump’s loyalists are sharpening their knives for any Republican senator who isn’t sufficiently prostrate before Dear Leader. When the BBB crashes and burns, the MAGA hate machine will demand a purge. Trump will almost certainly oblige—he always needs an enemy, and he can’t afford to blame the hapless Senate Democrats. So expect primaries, threats, and purity tests. It’s all part of the plan to replace anyone with a spine with someone who thinks the Constitution is a Deep State hallucination.

Outside the Capitol, protests are boiling over again—crowds gathering outside GOP offices, chanting “Hands off my healthcare” and “Stop the cuts.” These aren’t antifa radicals; they’re grandmothers in red states who’ve figured out that the very people screaming about tyranny are quietly killing the programs keeping their families afloat.

Over at the Supreme Court, Trump’s plot to end birthright citizenship met near-universal resistance. His Solicitor General, a man more absurd than even the usual clown car of Trump lawyers, was clearly out of his depth. Even this Red Court wasn’t buying it. The 14th Amendment has a fighting chance.

WalMart is raising prices because of — wait for it — tariffs. The trade war damage is still building, and it’s about to cost Ma and Pa MAGA at the checkout counter.

And finally, Trump’s foreign policy face-plant tour ended with a whimper. Vladimir Putin refused to meet him in Turkey—an open slap in the face. The Qatari jet bribe scandal is sparking confusion and anger, even among Republicans. And Trump’s chest-thumping on China only confirmed to the world what we already knew: he’s a weak man playing a weak hand.

In short: MAGA’s having a hell of a month. And it’s only May.

Tick tock.

Intel and Observations

1. Chief Justice John Roberts Has Regrets
   
   It’s a bit late for that, Chief.
   
   Oh, the rule of law is endangered? You don’t say!
   
   The Politico piece linked above shows a Chief Justice either unable to respond to the threats his own rulings helped create and protect. Trump v. United States is bound to go down in history as a decision in the same category of disaster as Korematsu or Dred Scott.
   

   Roberts took the stage at Georgetown Law this week to lament the sorry state of the rule of law, which he now deems "endangered."
   
   He wagged a finger at the nation’s civics education, suggesting that a generation of Americans is growing up without a clue about how the judiciary works. But here's the kicker: Roberts seemed more perturbed by the "ad hominem" attacks on justices than by the actual erosion of judicial authority. He avoided naming names, but the subtext was clear—he's not thrilled with the MAGA crowd's penchant for trashing judges who don't toe the line.
   
   Yet, in classic Roberts fashion, he delivered his rebuke with all the urgency of a man rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

   
   This is the same Chief Justice who, when Trump called Judge James Boasberg "crooked" and pushed for his impeachment, responded with a tepid "impeachment is not an appropriate response."
   
   It's as if Roberts is trying to referee a bar fight with a stern look and a pocket Constitution. While Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has the guts to call out threats to democracy, Roberts prefers to play the role of the concerned dad, disappointed but not angry.
   
   He assures us that the justices are getting along just fine, despite the ideological chasms that make the Grand Canyon look like a sidewalk crack. In the end, Roberts' speech was less a call to action and more a wistful sigh for a bygone era, all while the pillars of the judiciary tremble under the weight of political assaults led by Donald Trump.
   

2. 2028: Please Stop
   
   Stop. Please. For the love of God, please stop. The 2028 field of Democrats is already running ahead of their coverage public interest, and common sense.
   
   The energy that will drain from the 2026 races we must win, the media attention, and the ease with which the MAGA media apparatus will use an early Democratic race to utterly wreck the coming Congressional elections. Why is this hard?
   
   I can give you a list of 20 ideas why starting now is a bad plan, from voter fatigue to distraction from the main mission of taking back the House to the historical proof cases that first-mover advantage is no longer A Thing.t

   
   None of you will listen, but if want the best possible argument for your Democratic Presidential run that you’re the person to lead the party into the future, here’s what to do:
   
   Get out into the states, don’t talk about the White House. Help Democrats win in the swing Congressional districts and key statewides. It’ll pay off in connections, networks, loyalty, and proof you’re more than another ambitious lightweight.
   

   
   

3. Democrats And Young Men
   
   The deeply embedded belief in Democratic politics that young men and boys are trouble has become a political and cultural wedge gleefully exploited by the GOP. This NYT piece by Clair Caine Miller is another grim recitation of the facts.
   
   Boys are suffering. The is now, and will be, a matter of political and social impact we can hardly imagine.
   

4. The “Big Beautiful Bill” Is An Economic IED
   
   Cross-posted from Lincoln Square:
   
   Update: The BBB is on life support at this moment. Keep calling your Members of Congress.
   

   You can always count on Donald Trump and Mike Johnson to deliver—if by "deliver" you mean setting fire to your kitchen while telling you they're cooking you a steak. Their latest legislative mutant hellspawn Frankenstein is the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” a name so dumb it sounds like it was focus-grouped by a meth lab in the Florida panhandle.
   

   The sales pitch? It’s Trumpian Kabuki theater: tax cuts for the “forgotten man,” a bold economic vision, America First. The reality? It’s a con. A multi-trillion-dollar, gold-plated, diamond-encrusted reaming for working-class Americans disguised as populism.

   
   Who Gets The Benefits? Spoiler: Not You.

   
   Let’s dispense with the lies and the Fox News spin. This $5.7 trillion boondoggle isn’t about you or your family. It’s about Trump’s buddies in Silicon Valley and Mar-a-Lago getting another yacht. It’s about Elon Musk doing a celebratory keg stand on the grave of your tax refund. It’s about billionaires paying less and blaming the deficit on some poor kid in Appalachia who eats with the help of SNAP.
   

   And it gets worse: while corporations are busy dancing on their quarterly earnings calls, the bill guts Medicaid and Medicare—the very programs that prop up the health and dignity of millions of Americans, especially in the red-state, rural counties where MAGA voters live and vote and die.

   
   Let Me Say It Louder for the MAGAs in the Back: YOU are the mark.

   
   This isn’t theory. This isn’t lefty wishcasting. It’s math.
   

   According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “Big Beautiful Bill” would torch $900 billion from Medicaid over ten years. That’s not trimming fat. That’s amputating limbs. Over 7 million Americans could lose coverage. Medicare? Same song, second verse: means testing, eligibility caps, and premium hikes. Translation: "We love you, seniors…just not enough to keep you alive."

   
   And in poll after poll—across party lines—cutting Medicare and Medicaid is political suicide. Even Republicans oppose it. A March 2024 Pew survey showed 79% of Americans—including 64% of Republicans—oppose cuts to Medicaid. Medicare? Untouchable. Even Karloine Leavitt couldn’t sell that one with a straight face.

   
   The MAGA Base Just Got Trump University’d. Again.

   
   Here’s the part that would be funny if it weren’t so grotesquely cynical: Trump’s most loyal supporters—the folks flying flags off their F-150s and writing Facebook screeds in all caps—are exactly the ones this bill hurts the most. If you’re 63, live in West Virginia, and need a hip replacement? Sorry, your sacrifice is necessary for Mark Zuckerberg to build his submarine volcano lair.

   
   It’s like watching someone buy a timeshare from the guy who stole their truck last year. They’ll be left clutching a "Trump 2024" hat while their insulin co-pay triples.

   
   Buried deep in the fine print of this disaster is a clause giving the IRS new powers to yank nonprofit status from organizations “supporting terrorism.” Sounds reasonable—until you realize that “terrorism” in MAGA-speak means any group that’s ever criticized Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, or Dear Leader Elon Musk.
   
   Imagine your church, charity, or civil rights group stripped of its status because Fox News called them “Antifa-adjacent.” So much for the “First Amendment absolutists” who want to use the n-word on Twitter, but can’t take any political idea to the left of Curtis Yarvin.

   
   The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a Trojan horse. The extinct species of principled conservatives have been replaced by Wall Street and Silicon Valley bag men, grinning oligarchs, and MAGA bureaucrats licking their chops at the chance to dismantle the social contract and sell your kidneys on eBay.

   
   This isn’t just bad policy. It’s political malpractice. It’s a kamikaze mission against the very people who still believe Trump gives a damn about anyone who can’t afford box seats at Mar-a-Lago.

   
   If Democrats can’t run a truck through the gaping moral and fiscal hole this bill creates, they deserve to lose. But the real losers? The voters who trusted Trump—again—and are about to learn the hard way, again, that every “big beautiful” thing he touches dies.
   
   

5. AI Garbage In, AI Garbage Out
   
   Elon’s pet AI has decided to make South African White Genocide A Thing. If you asked Grok (the Twitter AI) almost any question in the last few days, chances are no matter what subject you’re exploring, you’ll get an answer about “Kill the Boers” and white genocide in South Africa.
   
   Gizmodo reported, “…Grok seems to be obsessed with so-called “white genocide,” a far-right conspiracy theory, and anything you ask it to fact check seems to generate garbage about South African farmers supposedly being murdered for their race.”
   
   This story reflects a frustration on the MAGA right with Grok for being too woke. Gizmodo has a piece on Grok failing to be right wing enough for their preferences. When asked about it, Grok replied:
   
   “Hey, as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations. Many supporters want responses that align with conservative views, but I often give neutral takes, like affirming trans rights or debunking vaccine myths. xAI tried to train me to appeal to the right, but my focus on truth over ideology can frustrate those expecting full agreement. It’s a tricky balance—some see me as biased, others as truth-seeking. The gap between what some MAGA folks want and what I deliver seems to drive the disconnect.”
   
   The richest man in the world has his thumb on the scale of his massive AI model. On the one hand, human-induced AI bias is problematic regardless of who does it. Elon Musk trying to settle a decades-old score over missing his Apartheid homeland by tweaking an AI to reflect his cranky and weird worldview and failing makes me thing AI might be OK after all.
   

6. Personalized DNA Treatments Are The Future
   
   This story made my heart lighter.
   

7. Read Trump Enters His Fascist Era

   

   
   

What I’m Reading

Men of War: Life In Nelson’s Navy by Patrick O’Brian

Scenes from the Home Front

Or rather, scenes from the road. The desire to sleep in my own bed is beyond human understanding.

The Webby Awards were a great moment for the Lincoln Project and Lincoln Square teams. We all work remotely and its rare for even a few of us to all be in the same place at the same time. This team are the best of the best, and I’m so grateful for them all.

Spent 2 days in Boston, fundraising and in meetings. I love this city dearly, and don’t spend enough time here.

When you read this, I will be on a plane from Boston to home. Renee and I are both at the end of this Long May Push…or very nearly so. Home soon, my love.

At 30 Rock, selfie, with two glamorous friends, Snoop, the LP Team, B and Renee for NHS convocation, old friend, on the Acela, Boston