Stories credited to thefuckingnews.substack.com, by publication date. ChamberLight collects articles that mention the officials it tracks, so this shows its own coverage of this source, not how much the source publishes.

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Month	Stories	All outlets
April 2026	6	3,707
May 2026	0	none collected
June 2026	0	none collected
July 2026	0	none collected
August 2026	0	1 (collection gap)
September 2026	0	1,320

Who they cover

Party of the officials these stories are mainly about, across all 7 officials named. A story counts once for each official it is mainly about, so the split is over 13 story–official pairs, from 6 stories.

Democrat46% · 6 pairs
Republican46% · 6 pairs
Party not recorded8% · 1 pair

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Stories mainly about each official, and their share of the source’s 6 stories.

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ChamberLight’s article analysis assigns each story a tone toward the official it covers. It describes the coverage of that official, not thefuckingnews.substack.com’s stance, and reader votes do not change it. 6 stories.

Good Look: 0 (0%)
Mixed: 1 (17%)
Informational: 0 (0%)
Bad Look: 5 (83%)

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Articles served from thefuckingnews.substack.com

Trump Losing War on Renewables while Losing War on Iran

April 20: Renewable energy in March overtook both natural gas and Trump’s … Gas prices rise and cabinet member says maybe better luck in 2027 … Vance gets sent back to Pakistan to try again … Tariff refunds start today except for you who can suck it … More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal Take action: Your representatives To demonstrate how well the war on Iran is going, Pres. Donald Trump appeared in the Oval Office Saturday with normal people. (Screengrab / White House video.) The same month that Pres. Donald Trump launched the war that’s taking longer to win than he said it would, he also lost a milestone battle in the energy war he’s been waging since a windmill apparently killed his family. March 2026 was the first month in which America used more renewable energy than fossil fuels to power its homes and businesses. Wind, solar, hydroelectric, and even biomass energy were, collectively, the number one source of energy in the country. Despite Trump trying to kill the tax credits, incentives, and momentum that Pres. Joe Biden and Democrats created, renewable energy is not only defying predictions of its death like Biden is, but growing stronger every day like Biden isn’t. Throw in nuclear energy, and non-fossil fuels generated a majority of U.S. electrical energy last month. And that’s not even counting the nuclear energy Iran will probably start generating next month. Trump is also actively trying to help Big Oil, opening new federal land for them to befoul as if they were Trump in a teen pageant dressing room. And yet, there, too, he’s losing. The Wall Street Journal reports they’re spending billions of dollars drilling new non-American wells thousands of miles from Wall Street, notably in Africa. According to the Ember think tank, which presumably crunched all these numbers using energy generated by the sun, fossil fuels provided less U.S. electrical power last month than in any March since a quarter century ago, when the U.S. had a lot fewer people because immigrants hadn’t yet invaded us to lower our crime rate and boost our productivity. For years, Trump’s team has laid out a complex, nuanced cased against renewable energy in a series of white papers and white Christian nationalism papers. Specifically, the argument goes, windmills kill birds that should’ve been killed by rolling back environmental regulations, and solar power is unnecessary when the sun’s effects can already be replicated through liberal deployment of orange pancake makeup. Is it possible March was a one-off? Of course. For now. Energy use is lower in the spring, which used to be a temperate season instead of an enraging yo-yo between winter-like days and summer-like days as if this were the Iran War that’s over one day and not over the next. Trump may not agree to a cease-coal-fire and the war itself may not end for at least two weeks. But the trend lines show that Trump has already lost the war on renewables. For instance, it was just Friday that TFN alerted you Newsfuckers about Trump tanking global demand for tankers full of wildly expensive gas. And more losses are coming. On Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Fox — so even Fox viewers could hear it if they were listening — that it will be “a while” until gas is cheaper than $3 a gallon again. He didn’t say which “while” it would be, but last month he said it would be “weeks.” Apparently, one (1) “while” is about 40 weeks, because on Sunday Wright said it “might not happen until next year,” which isn’t just weeks, it’s many weeks. That’s our Trumpy, always overdelivering! And remember it was Wright last month who also said that high gas prices had nothing to do with supply. It was Wall Street speculators gambling the price up, feeding off economic volatility (their number-one source of protein). You know I’m not the conspiratorial sort, but it’s worth noting that Wright has stopped blaming Wall Street. And the Trump administration is still blocking Wall Street regulations that could bring the price of gas down the way it’s blocking the Strait of Hormuz, which won’t. And oil prices, Axios reports, spiked again Sunday, almost as if Wall Street doesn’t believe Trump’s peace-talks talk. I mean, think about it, if Donald Trump told you he had fixed a bridge, would you walk across it? MEDIA WATCH After spotting the story about renewables by the Yale School on the Environment after it was shared on Bluesky — which I use to find stories corporate media overlook, not to doomscroll TFN media into overdepression! — I checked to see if any corporate media wrote up Ember’s findings. Nope. The closest was Gizmodo. Remember, the victories tend to be incremental, which makes them harder to see, and harder for corporate media to justify paying attention to. Which is why TFN does. Vance to the Miscue! Vice Pres. JD Vance is heading for Pakistan today to finish what he stopped starting: Peace talks with Iran. The mission will take Vance away from important vice-presidential vice duties such as teaching theology to the pope. But Vance isn’t going alone. He’s taking America’s best negotiators or Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Iran, hilariously, denied participating. Meaning Vance could be the first sitting vice president to lead peace talks with no one to revive a ceasefire that didn’t cease the fire and end a war the U.S. is both losing and already won. Obviously, political media are focusing on the logistics — the peace-talk whens and wheres — of Pres. Donald Trump’s announcement Sunday instead of on the who the hells and what the nonconsensual fucks and the why the bouncing diggities. Trump referred to Iran firing on ships in the Strait of Hormuz by saying, “That wasn’t nice, was it?” as if he were speaking to a five-year-old or was one. He also blew up the Pentagon’s attempt to defend the war crime of targeting civilian infrastructure. Pentagon lawyers were arguing that the U.S. is targeting infrastructure that the Iranian military use, too. And yet, there was Trump Sunday: “[T]he United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” Every single one — meaning civilian-only, too. Basically, The Joker announcing his crimes, except war crimes. Basically, a serial killer. Speaking of which… Murder, He Boat The U.S. military on Sunday attacked a boat in the Caribbean, without a warning. Three people were murdered instead of being arrested, or warned, or read their rights. The Boat-iac Killer™ death toll now stands at 180 people. There have been no warrants or indictment. No charges filed and no evidence entered into, um, evidence. It’s the 52nd murderous attack by the U.S. military and the 52nd for which Democrats have not promised prosecutions. By contrast, Iran is getting peace talks, while no talks are under way to end the drug trafficking that Pres. Donald Trump claimed he ended when he claimed he ended the Venezuelan regime. The boat was blown up on the same day that an Iranian vessel also transporting illegal goods — because Trump says so — was not blown up. Trump gave the shipping vessel multiple warnings, like a limp-tiny-wristed liberal, and the U.S. Navy engaged in a six-hour standoff with it before disabling its propulsion and not murdering the people on it. Happy Liberation from Liberation Day Day! Today, America celebrates its liberation from the Liberation Day of tariffs imposed upon us one year ago, or 1/250th of America’s independence. Didja get me anything made in America? The Associated Press reported Sunday that because the process for U.S. importers to claim refunds is so complicated, “any reimbursements businesses plan to make to customers likely would trickled [sic] down slowly.” TFN warned you Newsfuckers on Friday that because the process is so capitalist, you’re probably not getting back any of the $1,700 that American households paid on average to the Treasury thanks to Pres. Donald Trump’s tariffs. It’s going to the companies that passed the cost on to you, and not even the small companies that can’t afford the lawyers, it’s going to the big companies that can. In short: You paid tariffs. They went to the U.S. Treasury. Which will now give them to big corporations. Y’know, like taxes! And as TFN newsfucked on Friday, what big corporations do with windfalls is invest in ways to fire people. All I ask is that America remember all of this the next time a Democrat says we need to elect more businesspeople to political office. Happy Almost Liberation from Big Brother Day The federal government’s ability to spy on you electronically without a warrant will renew in just ten days, unless Congress fails to act. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is set to expire April 30, unless Congress does something stupid like doing something. While congressional Republicans agree on clear, simple issues like reducing food and health care, things get complicated when we’re talking about murky issues like whether the government should spy on people. Luckily for America, Republicans are so busy tearing themselves apart over how antisemitic is too antisemitic that they have no idea of a concept of a plan to renew FISA. The latest attempt fell apart Friday as if it were Iranian peace talks or an Israeli ceasefire. Trump wants FISA extended with no changes, while some Republicans realize that warrantless spying will be an option for presidents of either party. They balked last week at what they called a “fake warrant requirement” offered by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The GOP’s official position is that fake warrants are only okay if you’re chasing suspected immigrants. So far, the only House Democrats willing to let Trump keep spying on you without warrants are these four: Jared Golden (D-ME) Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) Tom Suozzi (D-NY). So far, they haven’t been enough to offset the 20 some-odd Republican defectors, who are some odd Republicans. But there’s still a threat that some of those odd Republicans will un-defect or some more odd Democrats will join those four some-odd Democrats. Trump Regains Rogan Podcaster Joe Rogan, love object of thirsty Democrats despite saying worse shit than Hasan Piker has, appears to be back in Pres. Donald Trump’s loving tiny arms. Rogan had criticized Trump for waging war on Iran and also on the U.S. So how does one win Rogan back? If you’ve ever seen Rogan, the answer shouldn’t surprise you: You offer him drugs. Axios reports that Team Trump Until He Fires Them has been wooing the podcaster of woo-woo science for months. And Rogan shed some light on their relationship at this weekend’s White House signing of an executive order clearing the way for expanded use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Here’s the amazing, annotated, exchange: Rogan: With one dose of Ibogaine, more than 80% of people are free of that [opioid] addiction [TFN couldn’t find information to substantiate this]. With two doses, it’s more than 90% [ditto]. I sent him [Trump] that information. The text message came back, “Sounds great. Do you want FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approval? Let’s do it.” It was literally that quick. These drugs are illegal not because they’re harmful; they’re illegal because of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act that was passed by the Richard Nixon administration [preach]. They did it to target the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement [PREACH]. It’s not because these drugs harm people [wait for it]. And for 56 years, we’ve lived under those terrible conditions. We’re free of that now. We’re free of that now thanks to all these people that we see next to me and thanks to President Trump. Trump: I want to thank you. We all respect Joe and he's a little bit more liberal than I am. That's okay. I have a lot of friends [false] that are liberal [false], but Joe is an amazing guy and he wrote me a little note about this and I had it checked out. I didn't just do it, I had it checked out. I went to Bobby and Oz. “Bobby and Oz” is, of course, a Saturday morning kids show about a boy and his talking flute … or it’s Robert Fuckwit Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Either way, it involves puffin’ stuff. And Trump’s idea of checking out controlled substances is asking a doctor famous for being on TV and a guy who literally sold controlled substances in college despite having literal Kennedy money. But wait, it gets better. Why was Ibogaine not approved? Sure, to stick it to the hippies and Black people. But also because it kills you! Two years ago, Stat News reported that Ibogaine was unlikely ever to be approved, due to the terrifying phrase “cardiac toxicity,” which literally just gave me a heart attack in my pants. Instead, the federal government was funding research to develop an analog that would replicate the therapeutic psychedelic effects … but without exploding your heart. And we all know what happened to science funding, so enjoy that Ibogaine trip, folks, certified safe by the team of Bobby and Oz. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., left, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, a flute. (Screengrab / Sid and Marty Krofft video.) Good News, America! The DNC Doesn’t Need Your Money! Just last year, Democratic Party leaders told us that Zohran Mamdani’s socialist plans for New York City were pipe dreams that he just couldn’t afford. But now, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) says it, too, can perform miracles that once required money! Here’s the weirdest thing. When talking to the Washington Post for a recent story, DNC Finance Chair (and real-estate developer) Chris Korge said, “I don’t care if the RNC [Republican National Committee] outraises the DNC by seven times, because they are going to get their asses kicked in the midterms.” Hear that, America? The DNC doesn’t need your money, thanks to the upcoming ass-kicking! Even though the RNC at the end of February had, yes, seven times more money than the DNC did. And yet… …Last week I got a DNC email (see here) that specifically says otherwise: “We’re not going to lie and say we’re not concerned about the GOP’s cash advantage. Because frankly, we are.” Well, maybe frankly you are, but Chris Korgely you aren’t! Now, even if the DNC isn’t going to lie and say the thing the DNC’s Korgely said, a cynical Newsfucker might suspect the DNC says one thing to sound cool to the Washington Post and another to sound frankly concerned to the potential donors Korge doesn’t carge about. Two Quickies The fucked-up fuck who murdered eight children on Sunday reportedly had been caught up with bizarre ideologies and violent organizations. And by that I mean Shamar Elkins was a U.S. Army veteran and Christian churchgoer. A couple of weeks ago he posted, “Dear God, Today I ask You to help me guard my mind and my emotions,” and “When negativity arises, remind me to say, ‘It does not belong to me, in the name of Jesus.’” At least now we can rule those out as effective mental-health treatments. The state of Michigan on Sunday responded to the Justice Department request for Wayne County ballots and other 2024 election materials by telling the department to go suck an egg and Michigan’s dick while taking a long walk off a short pier where it could also go fly a kite while fucking itself. But enough legalese: The answer was no. TCB HOUSING Anyone in the Savannah, GA, area able to put me up on a couch maybe in the near future? Please LMK! SAVING TV NEWS Former CBS News justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane joined me Thursday for “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane.” You can check it out here. And on Thursday, May 7, I’ll be joined by Alicia Hastey, the producer whose CBS departure also made headlines. You can bookmark this link now to make sure you don’t miss “How To Save TV News: Alicia Hastey.” You can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here. SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem. If you can afford it, you can join the ranks of Newsfuckers keeping TFN by upgrading to a paid subscription: Go get ‘em, kids! The GOP’s fighting the war on renewables with a toxic gasbag. TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Apr 20, 202624 votes

Here’s Pete Hegseth Literally Saying the “Pulp Fiction” Prayer

April 16: Generals and other Pentagon officials solemnly bow their heads as America’s defense secretary delivers chapter and verse from Ezekiel and Samuel L. Jackson … Democrats introduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth without including movie plagiarism … Trump goes to Vegas betting he can make the One Big Beautiful Bill Act popular even as poor Americans go bust … More Democrats oppose arms for Israel … More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal Take action: Your representatives Yes, it really happened. No, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doesn’t seem to have any clue. It’s almost as if he has no one checking his scripts in his, um, defense. On Wednesday, Hegseth spoke at his monthly sectarian Pentagon prayer service, and read what he explained was a prayer delivered by the lead mission planner of Sandy 1, the mission earlier this month to rescue two pilots from Iran instead of rescuing Earth from the Iran War. Hegseth said the prayer was called “CSAR 25:17,” a play on “Combat Search And Rescue” and Ezekiel 25:17. Hegseth was in on the joke. That part of the joke. What Hegseth didn’t appear to realize was that CSAR 25:17 hadn’t just been modified with references to the mission and the “Sandy” units involved. The rest of the verse had been modified by screenwriters Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary for the movie Pulp Fiction. The prayer had been modified even before that by King James’s translators and who knows who else. In other words, it was made up for Iran after being made up for Pulp Fiction after being made up for The Bible. Which, I should note, prohibits altering the words of The Bible. But the only indications that Hegseth is even passingly familiar with Pulp Fiction are that he got medieval on his ass (with medieval tattoos) and, like Christopher Walken’s character, Hegseth, too, pulls things from his ass. Point being, the prayer that America’s defense secretary delivered Wednesday was basically the one from this scene: I’ve waited too long to credit fellow Substacker Brian Kaylor for catching this. He’s a Baptist minister and journalist who I’ve cited before for his work tracking Hegseth’s unconstitutional forays into theology. His writeup is worth checking out. Kaylor notes, for instance, that this is the second month in which Hegseth has used his sectarian prayer service to justify U.S. military violence in the name of Jesus. And Kaylor takes note of Hegseth misappropriating Jesus, saying, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” I can’t be bothered to look up what Jesus was talking about — feel free to share in the comments! — but Hegseth’s implication was that anyone who doesn’t like the Pentagon’s murder sprees for Jesus can suck it. Which may or may not have been pushback at Pope Leo XIV, given Pres. Donald Trump’s absolute lack of levers to pull against Leo’s Rotten Tomatoes score for the Iran War. (Blockade? Leo’s already surrounded by Rome. Tariffs? On what? Absolution? The Vatican doesn’t have any natural oil reserves, leaving only one thing Trump can do: Threaten to shine a relentless spotlight on the issue of covering up child sex abuse. Worth a try!) There are, of course, a host of reasons Hegseth using psalms to justify bombs is hilarious. The “prayer” in question is what Jules says before killing people he’s been hired to kill. No moral justification whatsoever. Fittingly, in this case Jules was murdering Brett, a hapless kid who had not attacked Jules, was no threat to Jules, and was not developing nuclear weapons. “Check out the big brain on Brett!” Jules says, possibly referring to Brett Kavanaugh. Which reminds me. Know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris? They call it a “Royale with no, you can’t use our bases to attack Iran.” And Jules, played indelibly by Samuel L. Jackson, explains later in the movie — as Pete “Take the ‘L’” Hegseth doesn’t appear to realize — that in his parable, the speaker delivering the prayer is the bad guy. As Jules says and Hegseth ought to have said: “I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. … the truth is, you’re the weak, and I’m the tyranny of evil men, but … I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.” It would be nice if Hegseth realized that he’s the tyranny of evil men. It’d be even better for him to say he’s trying real hard to be the shepherd. But it’d be fiction. Pop an Impeachment in the Motherfucker’s Ass A handful of House Democrats on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who should also be introduced to a court of law where an attorney will be provided for him if he cannot afford one. There are six articles of impeachment, and should have been seven (decide for yourself whether that’s a six, seven joke; I’ll never tell): Illegal war on Iran “and reckless endangerment of United States servicemembers.” Murder, He Boat: Purposely targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran and accidentally killing a school full of girls which doesn’t count as accidental if first you fire the nervous Nellies whose job it was to make sure you didn’t; The Boat-iac Killings™ in the Pacific and Caribbean without warning or due process; and illegally ordering no quarter and no mercy, consistent with the tyranny of evil men. Using Signal for classified info like an amateur clown, not even a professional clown. Covering up his incompetence by unlawfully preventing Congress from getting info to which it’s constitutionally entitled for its constitutional oversight of all of Hegseth’s oversights, like killing one (1) schoolful of girls. Abuse of power and politicization, targeting political enemies for shit like telling troops to obey the law. Bringing disrepute upon the armed forces and the U.S. — consistent with Pres. Donald Trump’s global disreputing — specifically by undermining the U.S. commitment to NATO and denigrating and persecuting LGBTQ+ people, women, and non-white people. Not mentioned — because everything takes time, and religion is still a sacred cow — are the very many impeachable offenses against the constitutional separations of church and state and Hegseth. His monthly prayer sessions, yes, but also the sectarianifying and de-ecumenicalisming of the chaplaincy. Among other God shit I hath forgotteth at the moment. Should’ve also included Venezuela, but that’d fuck up the six, seven joke. Trump Heads to Vegas To Promote Legal Fucking Pres. Donald Trump is in Las Vegas, NV, today, gambling that he can make people forget about his stupid, illegal war on Iran by promoting his stupid, legal war on America. His attempt to remind people about the glories of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) comes just as OBuBBA’s beginning to fuck people legally in every state, not just Nevada. Trump is meeting today with cops getting tax breaks on overtime pay, because people love being reminded how much their town pays cops in sketchy overtime pay. And he’s meeting with a barber and a casino pit supervisor paying lower taxes on their tips, because people love getting reminded how much of a haircut they take in casinos and the Trumpconomy. Why would Trump spend his precious golf and TV time on something boring like the Trumpconomy? Because America hates his signature legislation almost as much as it hates his signature on Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday card. Because both were about kid-fucking! CNN annoyingly doesn’t tell us the absolute numbers in its polling on OBuBBA. But we do get the upshot: The disapproval rating is 20 points higher than approval and among independents OBuBBA is underwater by a stunning 41 points. And that’s before OBuBBA has hit us with its worst, much of which was delayed to avoid Americans realizing how shitty it is. OBuBBA jacked up America’s debt by trillions, slashed benefits to poor Americans and the other kind, and handed rich people an extra trillion dollars for their trouble. How much did the average taxpayer benefit, according to new stats on 2026 refunds? An added $340 more than under stingy skinflint Pres. Joe Biden. Pack your bags, Martha, we’re heading for Vegas and two whole nights in a Motel 6! That’s, like, 12 motel nights! Despite Trump trumpeting that $340 — more than enough to drive to the store and buy eggs and drive home — that money was spent long ago thanks to the continued rise of Trumpflation and the spike in the price of Trumpetroleum. And the American Prospect reports that the real costs of OBuBBA, along with other Trump policies, are only just starting to hit. OBuBBA “work” requirements for food — in truth, paperwork requirements, to weed out all those evil people trying to, um, eat food they don’t deserve — kicked in in February, kicking the poorest of us when they were already down under the Trumpconomy. States are already implementing the new requirements: Making poor people take jobs they can’t afford (because then they have to hire someone to watch the kids or Grandpa) or take time they don’t have to somehow prove they’re looking for jobs that don’t exist. Even some Republicans are acknowledging the growing problem, if not yet the cause (which they voted for). Meidas Touch Chief Washington Correspondent Scott MacFarlane was one of the few journalists on Wednesday asking Republican senators about shit that matters: Food. (MacFarlane will actually join me today for a Substack Live, “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane,” which you can join live right here.) Lummis might be able to be patient, presumably because she’s not waiting for her food, but in the last half of 2025, 2.5 million people lost their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits. That’s expected to rise to four million after the first round of cuts is phased in and food is phased out. As the Prospect’s Whitney Curry Wimbish writes, Congress is considering ways to fix it make it worse: “Lawmakers will decide whether to increase that number even more when they consider the second round of cuts Trump put in his 2027 budget proposal, which would cut another $6.3 billion from SNAP. He’s also seeking cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) by $1.4 billion, and the elimination of a food program for low-income seniors.” You know what you did, low-income seniors who eat food. Even the people not cut from these programs are getting enfucked — because millions of them will now have labyrinthine bureaucratic hoops to jump through and those are the worst kind of hoops. And a lot of those people getting food benefits are also getting federal help keeping the AC on so they don’t RIP. Trump’s enfucking that, too. Trump’s 2027 budget proposal would increase Defense Department spending from $1 trillion to about $1.5 trillion, but eliminate the $4 billion from the department that actually defends Americans from death by boiling alive in global (and also biological) warming. Actually, I shouldn’t blame the Defense Department for sucking up the money America needs to actually defend itself. As the Prospect notes, this is the sixth time Trump has tried to toss LIHEAP (the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program) on the trash heap. And that’s after making home energy costs soar with his war of bad choice. Even before the Iran War, private, investor-owned utilities started the year seeking $14 billion in rate increases. GENESIS Just a reminder that Trump’s budget proposal comes from his office of mismanagement and fudge-it, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB director is Russell Vought, who you may know as a co-author of Project 2025, the blueprint for America’s demise that weirdly wasn’t directly written by Russia or al Qaeda. But what even most leftie media won’t tell you, so only you Newsfuckers know, is that Vought is also responsible for welcoming evangelical preacher Ralph Drollinger into the White House to teach his Bible study. And Drollinger’s lessons include teaching that Jesus and The Bible don’t want government helping people except by hurting criminals. How About Blocking Arms Sales to Israel and The U.S.? The Senate on Wednesday rejected two resolutions that would have ended some illegal U.S. supplies for Israel. U.S. law does not permit weapons sales for the purpose of human-rights abuses, which, really, what else are weapons for? The big takeaway, though, as the Associated Press notes, is that in two years, the number of senators voting to end these arms sales has doubled. Forty Democrats voted against supplying Israel with bulldozers, and 36 voted against bombs. Why more opposition to bulldozers? As The Guardian explains, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) use the bulldozers in self-defense against houses. A coalition including Indivisible, MoveOn, J Street, and Jewish Voice for Peace opposed the sales in a letter to Congress, saying the bulldozers “have been widely used in operations involving large-scale demolition of homes, civilian infrastructure, and entire neighborhoods in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, contributing to forced displacement and de facto annexation.” As No Kings Press Coordinator Hunter Dunn noted, senators who once backed Israel’s self-destructive and Palestinian-destructive war, didn’t on Wednesday: Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) was one of the remaining Democrats still voting to supply Israel’s war crimes. Coons said he could not “abandon our steadfast ally, Israel, and the Americans who live within its borders” and so he had to vote for continuing the IDF massacre that is eradicating international support for Israel. A resolution opposing the war in Iran was also shut down by Republican senators, including Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, abandoning our steadfast ally, the Constitution. One Quickie The criminals who rob you blind whenever you buy a concert ticket were found guilty on Wednesday. Live Nation and Ticketmaster were both convicted of being monopolies and robbing us blind, which was pretty easy to prove given that Live Nation literally owns Ticketmaster and an executive literally referred to “robbing them blind.” The judge will decide how much of the money they stole they’ll have to give up but also whether and how to break up this fucking monstrosity. Of course, this had been a federal case, but it was state prosecutors who won the conviction because the Trump administration dropped out so it could focus on tossing the guys who sell T-shirts at concerts into concentration camps. TCB HOUSING Anyone in the Savannah, GA, area able to put me up on a couch maybe in the near future? Please LMK! SAVING TV NEWS Please join me today for “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane.” Scott’s the former CBS News justice correspondent who made headlines leaving CBS News. You can catch us on the future of TV news here. And on Thursday, May 7, I’ll be joined by Alicia Hastey, the producer whose CBS departure also made headlines. You can bookmark this link now to make sure you don’t miss “How To Save TV News: Alicia Hastey.” You can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here. SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem. If you can afford it, you can join the ranks of Newsfuckers keeping TFN by upgrading to a paid subscription: Go get ‘em, kids! We’re trying real hard to be the shepherd. TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Apr 16, 202618 votes

Here’s Pete Hegseth Literally Saying the “Pulp Fiction” Prayer

Apr 16, 202613 votes

The Democratic Party’s Hasan Piker Hypocrites

This is a TFN Bonus Story — you can adjust your settings here if you want to get just the weekday morning newsletter. You can support or connect with TFN via the podcast, a donation, TFN swag, and other ways. (Editorial note: Full disclosure: I met Hasan Piker when we were colleagues at The Young Turks. Embarrassing disclosure: He no longer responds to me.) When Abdul El-Sayed appeared with streamer Hasan Piker last week, even the chyron writer at Fox — which has said some truly repugnant things — managed to distinguish between opposing the Israeli government and being antisemitic. (Screengrab / Fox video.) Democratic Party okay-deciding remains opaque and cryptic to me. Not okay, apparently, is Hasan Piker, the popular streamer. He’s antisemitic, we’re told. A Jew-hater, according to characterizations of things he’s said, which do not include him saying he hates Jews. Meanwhile, the okayness of some people actually in the Democratic Party goes unquestioned. Even association with actual antisemitism. Some Democrats have not merely associated with haters and bigots and dangerous fear-mongers, have not merely associated with them despite their message, but have amplified those very messages. Still okay, still safely in the party and leading it are any number of ostensible grownups who’ve advocated letting LGBTQ+ and other persecuted people fend for themselves against the white Christian nationalists holding the levers of power in all three branches. Somehow those Democrats aren’t toxic at all. In fact, they’re considered the grownups. Pragmatists. Realists. There are legions of elected Democrats who’ve amplified racist fear-mongering about crime and xenophobic stereotypes about immigrants. And there is a cottage industry of ostensibly Democratic operatives and enclaves less active in championing policies that would form a more perfect union than they are in policing who’s let in to the cottage to join that union. With all the challenges facing the Democratic Party right now, I was stunned to read in Ezra Klein’s recent column — about Piker and okay-ness — that the putatively Democratic putative think tank Third Way is actively pushing Democrats to shun Piker, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that Piker might help Democrats reel in (or back in) disaffected young men. As Klein pointed out, in Klein-ier language, Piker has said some stupid shit about different kinds of Jews and Jewish stuff and Israel. Y’know, like the president has. But as Klein implies, Piker’s comments are most inflammatory out of the full context. Specifically, the context of other Piker words and actions that address the question of his alleged antisemitism directly rather than by insinuation. Such as: “From pogroms to the Holocaust, Jews have always been singled out by those in power as a scapegoat for the instability and economic volatility that people in power caused. A resilient, nascent antisemitism is a constant threat.” Calling antisemitism “gross,” “immoral,” and “a hate crime.” Supporting Jewish politicians including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). As Klein says, Piker “isn’t a ‘Jew hater.’ He’s an anti-Zionist.” The hypocrisy of Democratic Party leaders is that anti-Zionism isn’t allowed, while actual, clear, unalloyed, primal antisemitism is. Criticizing Israel isn’t the sine qua non of antisemitism. Calling Jews Christ-killers is. And yet, prominent Democratic Party leaders and politicians associate with actual antisemites the way they never would with Piker or other anti-Zionists. That’s why I was stunned to read something else in Klein’s column: “Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, said Piker reflected ‘the dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics.’ Last year, I asked the ADL about the ancient canard that the Jews killed Jesus, the original sin that gave us centuries of antisemitism. The ADL referred me to their published material on deicide. After I revealed that the Senate, House, and White House Bible studies teach the lie that spawned antisemitism, that the Jews killed Jesus, the ADL did not respond to my followup request for comment. That was June. I tried again in July. And August. Those times, I named Republican sponsors of the Bible study and even one Democratic participant. No response. The Bible study — taught on Capitol Hill and in undisclosed executive offices — has said for years that the Jews killed Jesus. It’s in the pamphlets of Capitol Ministries, which runs it. It’s in the videos of pastor Ralph Drollinger, who leads it (and, for the record, also doesn’t appear to hate Jews; he just spreads the lie that inflames millions who do). Literally dozens of Republican cabinet members and members of Congress sponsor this Bible study, still. Their names appear on the very pamphlets disseminating the deicide lie that Islamic, Protestant, and Catholic leaders have renounced. Two Democrats have acknowledged, grudgingly or coyly, attending these Bible studies: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA). The ADL has said nothing about the dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics by Republicans or Gillibrand or Gluesenkamp Perez. Politico has not polled members of Congress about appearing with them. Third Way is fine with both Democrats. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) supports them. Gillibrand said now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City should publicly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” She has yet to condemn what Drollinger says at her Bible studies and has said in the past. About the “false religion” of Catholicism. Or mothers staying at home. No one has put the teachings of her own Bible study around Gillibrand’s neck the way she put other people’s slogan around Mandani’s. Gillibrand and other Democrats have also fronted the National Prayer Breakfasts of the Fellowship Foundation, which paid to have Rep. Tim Wahlberg (R-MI) fly to Uganda to buck up the president there — at Uganda’s prayer breakfast, no less — against international pressure just because he signed into law a death penalty for LGBTQ+ people. No one’s asking Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to denounce Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) for flying to El Salvador to inaugurate a prayer breakfast there at which Suozzi praised Pres. Nayib Bukele, the systemic human- and civil-rights abuser who served as jailor of convenience for Pres. Donald Trump’s illegal deportations. It’s hard not to wonder whether AIPAC cares more about anti-Zionism than antisemitism. AIPAC spent a reported $190,401 to send Gluesenkamp Perez back to Congress, where she secretly tried to recruit fellow members to Drollinger’s antisemitic Bible study. AIPAC’s spent almost exactly a million dollars supporting Gillibrand. And it’s not just Drollinger. Some Republican members of Congress fought against including deicide in legislation codifying antisemitism. Literally, they rewrote the bill so that it wouldn’t classify saying “Christ-killer” as antisemitic. I’d name them, but there are too many. And too many Democrats supported the antisemitism bill once it was cleansed of actual antisemitism and fit for prosecuting anti-Zionism. Democrats have not volunteered or been asked to shun the Republicans who defended the most essential form of antisemitism there is. Yet Piker is somehow toxic for noxious rhetorical anti-Zionism. All while these same, supposedly respectable, leaders of both parties illegally supply and try to normalize the Israeli government’s crimes. If we expand the aperture even further, we see a vast plain of Democratic not-okayness that never gets recognized, let alone questioned. Far more direct complicity with far more substantial and grave wrongdoing never even raises the specter of shunning or exile. Every single Senate Democrat voted to confirm Secretary of State Marco Rubio, proud free-speech-hater, kidnapper of students, and leader of a foreign-policy initiative that includes piracy, murdering people in boats, and an illegal military attack on another country. Most Senate Democrats voted to confirm at least some other members of Trump’s scofflaw cabinet. Cabinet members who oversaw detention camps and who defended them in court were put there by Democrats. The vast majority of all congressional Democrats have personally voted to fund at least some aspect of the Trump agenda. Reinscribing institutional discrimination on the basis of gender, orientation, ethnicity, and religion. Poisoning our land, water, air, and climate. Illegally depriving the people of lawfully allocated funds so often you don’t even know which examples I’m referring to. And, yes, funding and elevating antisemites of the genuine, original classic variety. So the next time corporate media or putatively Democratic right-wing organizations apply another Litmus test, be it Piker or something else, it’s worth peering through the walls of everyone’s glass houses. Because most congressional Democrats could spend the rest of their lives atoning for their sins and still on their last day die guiltier than Piker is today. TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. TFN’s journalism can only exist with your financial support. If you want to support this work, you can make a donation or sign up for a paid subscription:

Apr 13, 20269 votes

The Democratic Party’s Hasan Piker Hypocrites

Apr 13, 20266 votes

The Day of the Jackhole

April 13: In wake of Vance’s failure, Trump launches blockade of Iran, which fails before it starts … High oil prices survive Trumpian diplomacy … Hungary’s voters just ate Viktor Orbán’s lunch and an hour later they’re already Hungary again … Praying for an enemy he can beat, Trump launches war of words against The Vatican … More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal Take action: Your representatives Vice Pres. JD Vance leaves the podium in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Saturday knowing that the White House is using the “VP” code in its banner so it can track how many fewer sign-ups he generates. (Screengrab / White House video.) Vice President JD Vance returned home to Washington as an international man of mystery, namely, the mystery of how’d he get this job? Still, he returned from Pakistan intact: Still free of diplomatic experience. The shadowy operative for Pres. Donald Trump accomplished not one but two assassinations this weekend, both of them not missions he chose to accept. On Sunday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán died politically of complications due to wounds Vance inflicted earlier in the week campaigning there for the right-wing autocrat who took over the media but couldn’t figure out how to take over voting booths or voters’ hearts. And on Saturday Vance killed peace talks with Iran by just, like, deciding Iran wouldn’t agree on the first day so what’re you gonna do? I ask you, though, Newsfuckers, is “No” an answer Trump would accept from the Iranians or a teenage girl he had managed to separate from her friends? No! Vance did succeed in getting corporate media to describe his one (1) day of peace talks as “marathon” and also to talk in awe about his 21-hour non-stop diplomacy. And yet: No. Out of 21 hours in Pakistan, only some were spent on JDiplomacy. That left five whole hours for JDicking around, which means his actual marathon of (failed) talks was just 16 hours. That’s a standard work day for some of the people Vance shits on in Hillbilly Elegy. Newsfuckers, it’s less than 2/3 of Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) 25-hour floor speech a year ago. And Vance had a chair! It was only 33/200ths of one Scaramucci1. Vance not only duped media into crediting him with an extra five hours, he somehow sold them on Iran refusing to promise not to pursue nuclear weapons, which Iran already said they’re not pursuing. The New York Times wrote that: “He [Vance] blamed Iran for the failed talks, saying the United States sought a commitment that Iran would not seek a nuclear weapon, and they refused.” That embedded link there is the Times’s, but it only links to a story saying Iran wouldn’t turn over some of its near-bomb-grade uranium. That’s not refusing a commitment not to seek nukes! Those are different things! Internet rules say you can’t link to something that isn’t the thing you’re saying! The Times also credited Vance with holding the highest-level talks with Iran since 1979, framing this as a breakthrough because Iran chants “Death to America.” As if America didn’t oust Iran’s prime minister, support Iraq’s war against Iran, and had a Republican presidential candidate sing, “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran.” On Sunday, Iran said that the U.S. negotiators had failed to earn Iran’s trust. Imagine murderous theocratic rulers thinking you’re shady. But why should they trust a man who’s had almost as many names as the internet has given him faces? This is a guy who’s been an evangelical Protestant, atheist, and Catholic, in only 41 years. A guy who defends and answers to this millennium’s most renowned liar and con man. And why should Iran have confidence in a man who’s been in U.S. government almost four years now? Sure, he’s taken eight international trips as vice president, and they were no vacation, except the ones that were vacation. All told, Vance’s international track record now consists of: Failed partial day of Iran diplomacy in Pakistan Failed Ukraine-Russia diplomacy in France, Germany, and Rome Failure to end the Armenia-Azerbaijan enmity in Armenia and Azerbaijan Stealing Pope Francis’s life force in Vatican City on a trip that included Rome and India for no clear reason except pasta and the Taj Mahal Returning to Vatican City for Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration mass but failing to steal his life force Successfully sealing the deal on a Gaza ceasefire that’s killed hundreds Losing Hungary Losing Greenland Losing Scotland and the Cotswolds Losing the Olympics audience at Milan. Boo!!! If Vance’s experience taught him anything, it was that when complex diplomacy doesn’t yield an agreement after 16 hours, you end it and blame the side that didn’t end it. So what now? Trump has made it very clear: If talks don’t succeed, he will end the talks rather than continue them until they do, and if Iran keeps blockading the strait, he will blockade the strait until they don’t. The U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which was unblocked before Trump started this war, is starting today, the second illegal theocratic Hormuz blockade in two months. (Fun fact: Blockades are in and of themselves an act of war. Which presidents can’t legally commit without Congress. Which means orders to carry out a blockade are illegal orders.) Trump’s rationale for the blockade? That nuclear weapons can’t be “in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people.” Now you tell us! Hilariously and Trumpishly, the blockade was weakened before it started. U.S. Central Command announced that instead of posting signs warning “No Thru Traffic,” it’s only local traffic that’s not allowed. Trump’s only blockading Iranian ports. Apparently someone figured out that blockading all cargo ships from passing through will accomplish exactly what Iran’s blockade did: Fucking the global economy. And it remains unclear how Trump will keep the strait open. He’s bragged about destroying Iran’s navy, but 60% of its smaller fleet remains intact, still capable of targeting ships and dropping mines like Trump drops bombs. And Iran responded, predictably — to those people capable of predicting things — that it will target all ports in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman if its own ports are blockaded. Plus, Iran’s Houthi friends in Yemen are still capable of shutting down the strait on the other side of the Saudi peninsula known as the Gate of Lamentations. IT’S STUPID’S ECONOMY Remember how Trump saved oil prices with his ceasefire and then the firing didn’t cease? That’s why oil’s still again still above $100 a barrel. But even some progressive media are wrestling with whose fault that might be: Over at Axios, they shared headlines that the blockade drove up oil prices and, for a separate story, Trump’s claim that the blockade will drive down oil prices: If Axios loved brevity the way it says it does it would’ve made this one story. Of course, the real driver of volatile oil prices — even though we have a futures market specifically for calming volatility — is Wall Street. End of an Orbánana Republic For everyone who feared Pres. Donald Trump was looking at xenophobic, Christian nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a model for stealing elections: Let’s hope so! Trump and Orbán may have figured out how to cow media and politicians, but neither have mastered the ability to steal elections subtly enough to avoid voter uprising. So, in Sunday’s Hungarian elections, Orbán was not the victor. Vice President JD Vance had campaigned with him just last week, sealing Orban’s fate. Trump even tried that thing of promising to reward an election outcome he liked with billions of our dollars that we don’t have for universal health care like Hungary has. Trump had said he would strengthen Hungary’s economy but only if voters re-elected the prime minister whose 16 years in power left Hungary’s economy in need of strengthening. And that was only the most notable election interference. And yet, voters hungry for democracy gave opposition leader Péter Magyar’s party a parliamentary superfunkadelicmajority. Magyar’s not exactly a progressive — for Europe, anyway — but his ouster of Orbán could mean seismic change for Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. Orbán stood in the way of significant measures to unify Europe further and bolster Ukraine’s defenses against Russia. And Trump’s global right-wing cabal just lost its European stronghold to the power of the people. Swalwell Receives Fraction of Earned Consequences Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on Sunday dropped out of the California gubernatorial race, in which he was a front-runner, due to a lack of people believing his denials about raping and abusing and pestering women. Does it personally hurt to know that Swalwell was texting prodigiously with 20-something women while not responding to one of my requests for comment? Newsfuckers, it does. Not even a dick pic, I tells ya! Swalwell spent the weekend flaming out in spectacular fashion as apparently years of simmering accusations came to a boil and there are already questions about all the people now saying yeah they’d heard this stuff for years. My dudes, that’s a bug, not a feature. MAGA voters presumably will cheer Swalwell as a flawed messenger. But calls are already mounting among Democrats to expel Swalwell from Congress, meaning he may have fucked his entire career without even getting it drunk first. Perhaps most stunning, Swalwell’s fall came without even a single campaign appearance by Vice Pres. JD Vance, destroyer of worlds. Three Days of the Conned Donors The Democratic National Committee (DNC) wrapped up its three-day meeting Saturday without unsealing its fate. With embarrassingly low fundraising, DNC Chair Ken Martin had said last November’s wins would turn things around. If they did, it was 360°, because the DNC is still fucking itself. Democratic candidates keep overperforming but DNC fundraising keeps oversucking. In other words, voters and donors prefer Democratic candidates to Democratic leadership. And this weekend’s DNC confab sounded more con than fab, and insufficiently fab to turn the DNC around. The DNC voted to continue undemocratically not reflecting its own members’ views on Israel, Gaza, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that keeps insisting it’s a Democratic organization. DNC resolutions on Israel and Palestine were referred to a working group, which is Robert’s Rules of Order for motion to fuck off and seconding the motion to die. While the DNC did pass yet another resolution to frown sternly at dark money, party leaders blocked a vote on condemning AIPAC dark money specifically, because singling anyone out would be wrong which is why the DNC singles out predatory capitalism and never singles out Pres. Donald Trump2 in every fundraising message. Similar out-singling was killed for AI dark money and crypto dark fake money. Martin explained: “[I]nstead of going one-by-one, we passed a blanket repudiation.” (And then shielded AI, AIPAC, and crypto, one by one.) Halie Soifer, former advisor to Vice Pres. Kamala Harris and now CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said the votes show that the party rejects the views of “a vocal, far-left faction of our party,” which polling shows makes up a mere fringe of 57%-80% of Democratic voters, while the bulk of the party, a vast majority of anywhere from 20% to 43%, support Israel unconditionally, in violation of U.S. laws against supporting countries unconditionally. And if you’re wondering where America’s 2028 Democratic saviors stand, one DNC member said they got, in Politico’s words, “direct calls about the resolutions from two presidential aspirants who would have to answer for the DNC’s positions on Israel and AIPAC if they run.” Release The AIPAC Files™! And Martin’s Middle East working group? He formed it last summer and Politico reported Thursday that “It has yet to begin its work in earnest.” Must I explain the importance of working in earnest? There’s no way to know whether party leadership support of Israel’s massacre of Palestinians has hurt the party among Palestinian-Americans, in part because Martin refuses to release the DNC report that reportedly shows that yup, it has. And how’s the DNC itself doing under its unrepresentative representatives? Only 17 state parties are hiring. In an election year. Under Re-President That Guy. In Florida, the state Democratic Party hasn’t found a single Democrat, let alone two Democrats, to run for two big state-wide offices: agriculture commissioner or chief financial officer (wait, why would a state have a chief financial officer? Is it trying to make profits?!?) First-World Nation Leaves U.S. in the Health-Care Dust The first registrations for universal health care begin today in a North American nation that apparently doesn’t suffer from the grinding poverty that makes it impossible in the U.S.: Mexico! (h/t) The first registrants will be those 85 years and older, because, I mean, c’mon. We’re all thinking it. The first coverage under the new, Luigi Mangione-esque plan will include high-risk pregnancies, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, and emergency care for ailments like getting murdered for running a “health” “insurance” company. Eventually, according to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum — who’s somehow defending her population of 129 million from real threats without her own world-tentacling military — “The objective is that any citizen can attend any health institution and be guaranteed full and free coverage.” Well, sure, a rich country like Mexico can afford that. We can’t even afford gas. Pope Under Attack for His Holy Record on Crime Apparently shopping for an enemy he can actually defeat, Pres. Donald Trump turned his attention from stronger adversaries like Iran and Greenland to target the military stronghold of Vatican City. In a post Sunday night, Trump unleashed a massive attack on the Vatican’s Robert Prevost, whose street name is Pope Leo XIV. Trump’s very first assault? Leo is soft on crime! First of all, in Trump’s litany of complaints about the Vatican, it’s weird that he didn’t mention the one most obvious criticism: Systemic protection of pedophiles. SO WEIRD! Secondly and bestly, the idea of a tough-on-crime pope is amazing. Hollywood, make this fucking movie. PROJECT HAIL MARY, MOTHERFUCKER Ext.: Jesus on the cross, straining to turn His head to the two thieves hung up with Him. Tense music plays. Jesus: [Squinting] Do ya feel lucky, punks? Well, do ya, punks? Barabbas: [Smirking] Pardon me, but you are dead, Jesus! Jesus: Ah’ll be back. Fun fact: Soft on crime is the theological basis of Christianity. The Lord set up His own Son to be killed in order to raise the spiritual capital to bail out killers, rapists, and undocumented immigrants. Y’know what they call tough-on-crime popes in Iran? Ayatollah you later! Leo’s so soft on crime, he opposes the death penalty! And it’s no surprise Trump is shifting his bullying to Leo, who has been critical of Trump’s illegal war-mongering. Although the pope is said to be infallible, his army of 135 guys is Swiss. The Vatican’s closest thing to a navy is a fleet of handheld vessels where the water’s on the inside. And they’re not even trying to obtain weapons-grade uranium. Yet! Upcoming Elections Contributing writer Paula Schaap has contributed more writing to TFN’s page on imminent democracy-happening! You can check out Paula’s take on some of the upcoming elections right here. TCB HOUSING Anyone in the Savannah, GA, area able to put me up on a couch maybe in the near future? Please LMK! SAVING TV NEWS I hope you’ll check out last Thursday’s Substack Live, “How To Save TV News: Kevin Newman.” My former colleague at ABC News shared some apparently never-revealed details about his stint as co-anchor of Good Morning America. Afterward, I texted Kevin and asked him how much of what he revealed on Thursday was stuff he had never shared publicly before. He said most of it. And it’s super-revealing about why TV news is what it is and isn’t what it should be. I’ve worked with a lot of folks in TV news. Kevin was one of the good ones. I think you’ll understand why and appreciate his insights. You can check it out here. This Thursday, April 16, join me for “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane.” Scott’s the former CBS News justice correspondent who made headlines leaving CBS News. You can catch us on the future of TV news here. And you can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here. SUPPORTING TFN If anyone needs inspiration to support TFN with a paid subscription, I can’t imagine anything better than this. Here’s the New York Times’s “great read” on why wealth hoarders should sing, “Don’t Sorry, Be Happy”: Unlike either of the Bezi, TFN is here for you every day, free for everyone — and when TFN screws up a story, let alone the Earth, TFN does apologize — thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem. If you can afford it, you can join the ranks of Newsfuckers keeping TFN by upgrading to a paid subscription: Go get ‘em, kids! Don’t make Trump send Special Agent Vance after you! TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. 1 One (1) Scaramucci = 11 days, the lifespan of Tony Scaramucci as White House communications director. Also, I stole the Booker and Scaramucci comparisons from people on Bluesky but neglected to grab the links for my sources. Sorry, internet theft victims! 2 Sarcasm alert.

Apr 13, 202620 votes

Facepalm The Nation: Your Weekly TFN

You can listen to this week’s Facepalm the Nation, courtesy of our mystery Newsfucker who did the awesome audio for it, here. Check out TFN’s podcast, make a donation, score swag, or connect in other ways. FTN is intended to help Newsfuckers keep tabs on TFN without flooding their inboxes. To choose which TFN emails you get — weekly, daily, or Bonus Stories — adjust your Notification settings here. Let’s facepalm… 25th Amendment My 1st Ass You might see a lot today about House Democrats moving forward on using the 25th Amendment to remove Pres. Donald Trump from office. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) scheduled a briefing on the subject. Impeachment star Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will lead today’s briefing at 3pm on the 25th Amendment. You may already know that the 25th Amendment was ratified to address the issue of presidential incapacity after Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Both Kennedy and Trump suffered from severe lack of brain. Today’s activity all looks like congressional Democrats are finally moving forward on the agenda their voters have voiced so powerfully it literally motivated the nation’s largest national protest last month. Removing Trump from office is also an obligation created when members of Congress took their oath of office: They swore to uphold the Constitution. Can’t uphold the Constitution while abiding a president who uses said Constitution for toilet paper with the help of one of those extender-grabby things. My overly skeptical first reaction to today’s 25th Amendment briefing was, wait, why 25th Amendment? There are other methods for removal from office. Like impeachment. Or a large crane. Arguably, the 25th Amendment is harder to accomplish than good, old-fashioned impeachment. (Although impeachment requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, it at least lets a simple House majority initiate the Senate trial in the first place.) The best-known method for 25th Amending a jackhole president is if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet agree to remove said jackhole. That clearly ain’t happening. So what exactly are Democrats doing? Well, Amendment 25 has another clause that allows Congress to designate a body other than the cabinet that can oust said jackhole. What body? The Constitution doesn’t tell us. Like an asshole. It could be the Board of Peace. Or FIFA. Or Congress could make up a whole new body expressly for jackhole-ousting. But the original problems remain — Democrats lack the same votes to designate a body that they lack to impeach. So WTF are Democrats doing? Is this all kabuki? Or bukkake? My overly cynical self wondered Thursday whether the complexity and improbability of success with the 25th are a feature, not a bug. Meaning that Jeffries might be going through the 25th motions to appease the demand for impeachment by going with a method less likely to work, and thereby killing both. Or, most benignly, today’s briefing is to educate House Democrats on the 25th Amendment the way that time-share informational meeting you naively agreed to will not end until you concede. Newsfuckers, I am so so cynical. And yet, right on cue, Axios reported that, yeah, Democrats actually don’t want to impeach: Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Axios she supports both the 25th Amendment and impeachment, but doesn’t think they’re “the best use of our time.” A few things are going on here. Dean supports 25th Amending and impeaching. What she doesn’t support is dedicating resources to whipping other Democrats in line and making this a strategic priority. Why not? Because Democrats think they can’t win. As Axios helpfully reminds us, Jeffries also refused to back impeaching former Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Kristi Noem, because they didn’t have the votes. There’s a mentality among some Democrats that things aren’t worth fighting for without assured victory, even though the Constitution doesn’t require assured victory for members to fight. All Americans ask of their representatives is that they at least fucking try. We’re adults: We understand we don’t get guaranteed outcomes. But at least fucking fight. Some Democrats reject that argument, and said so publicly on Thursday. Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) said Democrats should only force an impeachment vote once they don’t have to force it because they have the majority. Y’know, in 2027. What happens then? According to Walkinshaw, “hearings where we lay out the case” for impeachment. Imagine believing that in the year of Trump’s Lord 2027 hearings will change anyone’s mind. But also: Hold hearings now. Lay out the case now. What are they laying out instead now? According to Walkinshaw, “priority number one [is] put bills on Donald Trump’s desk that will bring down costs.” This, in short, is Walkinshaw’s plan: Hand Trump a bill to fight inflation which will either fail so no one remembers it or succeed, in which case Walkinshaw’s walkin’ Republicans to the polls in 2028 without inflation around their necks. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said Thursday that impeachment “wouldn’t likely succeed, so we’re not running it.” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) said a failed impeachment vote “is worse than no impeachment at all.” It’s the wrong answer because, with Democrats refusing to force a vote, they’re cementing their image as non-fighters and taking the brunt of public outrage instead of shifting it to Republicans by forcing a vote in which Republicans would go on record keeping Trump in office — just months before the midterm elections. But therein lies the other issue with shunning impeachment: It’s not just Republicans being protected. What Jeffries and other Democrats really don’t want us thinking about is the fact that some Democrats not only oppose strategically focusing on impeachment — forcing votes on it every day — they also literally oppose impeachment itself. Some Democrats do support impeachment. But when Rep. Al Green (D-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, most House Democrats helped Republicans kill them. Democratic voters understand that congressional Democrats lack the votes in Congress to do anything without Republican help. But forcing votes every day wouldn’t just force Republicans to defend this historically unpopular and bad president — it would repeatedly expose any Democrats who would vote against impeachment, too. Democrats aren’t forcing impeachment votes because that would force Democrats to go on record opposing impeachment. Democratic leaders can’t say that’s their reason for not forcing votes, so they retreat to the argument that the votes would fail. The real issue in Congress isn’t age, it’s institutionalism. Too many House members think winning House votes is all that matters. They don’t want to fight because they don’t want to lead. Using the media and their bully pulpit to shift our politics and culture would be uncouth. So instead of forcing votes, they get force-fed headlines like this: Too many members of Congress got their seats by being party functionaries who rose through the ranks. What we need is not necessarily younger members, but members who win their seats by fighting for what’s right regardless of the odds. Because that’s how you change the odds. Oh, Look, Actually Fighting a War They Also Can’t Win According to congressional Democrats who apparently believe they can only do one thing at a time — even though Pres. Donald Trump is capable of fucking us more ways than one at a time — the fight to have now is over war powers. It’s a fight already settled by the Constitution, but whatevs. Democrats who argue against impeachment because it would fail argued on Thursday to fight instead another battle even more doomed to fail: A war powers resolution. Even though I’d bet good money — except on prediction markets — that Trump would veto it. Why allow this doomed fight? Because some Democrats are fine letting voters see that they support the war. So Democratic leaders will allow Democrats to fight this fight. Even though, sure enough… …House Republicans on Thursday blocked a vote on blocking Trump from waging his unconstitutional war that he already won. And yet, guess what House Democrats who won’t force a vote on impeachment will do when the House returns next week? They’re gonna force a vote on restricting Trump’s war powers that the Constitution already restricted. Why would Democratic leadership let members force this vote? And why am I asking a question I already answered? Because pro-war Democrats are thrilled to broadcast being pro-war. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is so happy to broadcast his positions that he went on cable news to do so. In fact, he did it on Fox. Worse, he did it on Hannity. Far worse was Fetterman’s reasoning. He wasn’t just wrong, he was embarrassingly facile. Like an embarrassing assile. Here’s what he said: “We have to stand [with] our military to allow them to accomplish the goals of Epic Fury.” I have notes. Only one is pedantic! The “[with]” was added to Fetterman’s quotation by The Hill, leaving me desperate to know what Fetterman actually said. “…stand on our military”? “…stand in our military”? Release The Fetterman Hannity Files!™ But also, we still don’t know what those Epic Fury goals are. And whatever they are, Trump has already said he’s already accomplished them with his Epic Fury. And if that’s true, wouldn’t getting the troops out of there be the best way of standing with the military? Or in? Or of? But also, this childish canard that supporting the troops means supporting whatever half-assed, half-cocked, half-other-body-part mission the current president sends them on should have died in Iraq after getting gravely wounded in Vietnam. “I’m old enough to remember we used to root for our military,” Fetterman said, smearing every Democrat and American who’s not comfortably “rooting” for the military on TV but actually working to get the military out of a dangerous, ill-thought-out, open-ended, closed-minded mission. If Fetterman wants to root for the military, maybe he can take a stand against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forcing Jesus on the troops the way Hegseth forces himself on women he later pays to be silent about it. Iran War and Ceasefire Somehow Both Still Happening Simultaneously Despite Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy Pres. Donald Trump’s Tuesday night ceasefire continued to not cease the firing today, the way Trump’s peace-talking doesn’t make peace and his inflation-ending doesn’t end inflation. And yet, corporate media still refer to the ceasefire as being challenged or threatened, as if there is a ceasefire thing that exists. ⁨Saying today’s Israeli strikes in Lebanon threaten ceasefire is like saying rotting bag of garbage in operating room threatens sterility. Massive root beer belch in library threatens silence. Suppose I declared TFN is a Red-Spotted Toad. And then, day after day, the media covered the lack of Red-Spotted Toads in your inbox as a threat to TFN’s Red-Spotted Toadness. Corporate media don’t try to be gaslighters, but their not-gaslighting-ness is threatened by gaslighting us. The semantic problem here is that a ceasefire is when fire ceases, but the media use “ceasefire” as shorthand for the deal to cease the firing. That deal isn’t dead, so they still say “ceasefire,” despite the unceased fire. As for the actual ceasefire, if it’s not actually a ceasefire, what the fuck is it? We’re gonna go with easefire, since some of the fire has eased. But Israel’s still bombing Lebanon. Threatening the easefire. Worst. Ceasefire. Ever. President Donald Trump on Wednesday implemented his ceasefire with Iran about as well as everything else he does… …with all the grace of an inebriated stork and the elegant refinement of a dead-sober Donald Trump, Jr. In the hours immediately after the ceasefire not took effect, Israel bombed Lebanon and Iran then bombed Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and re-unopened the Strait of Hormuz. As for the apparent terms of the ceasefire deal itself, it’s hard to pick favorites. Vice Pres. JD Vance, the top negotiator-in-training, said Iran misunderstood the peace deal it agreed to. Trump is now business partners with Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Iran will now get billions of dollars. Oh, and centuries of free access to the seas of the world just ended with barely a ripple in the media. Not to mention learning in the midst of it all that the Pentagon tried to muscle the Vatican. And there, as always, was Trump waving the mission-accomplished banner. Here’s what Trump’s misaccomplished mission has accomplished so far at the cost of billions of dollars, a couple thousand dead, more than a couple thousand wounded, and hundreds of thousands displaced: Iranians have won what U.S. voters have sought for years: A virtual emptying out of the ranks of rigid, old, hard-liners. Iranians have won what voters in the U.S. have always dreaded but might consider now: Political power residing in the hands of the uniformed military. Iran still didn’t have a popular Iranian uprising or an unpopular Iranian Kurd uprising. Iran is still supporting militant allies. Iran still has its uranium. Iran still has missile launchers and drones. Iran still has its theocratic autocratic regime. Iran now has virtually uncontested control of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will now make money charging tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will also benefit economically from Trump easing sanctions and unfreezing assets. The price of oil is now lower, although still less lower than it was before Trump started the war. The stock market is now back up, although still less high than it was before Trump started the war. Of course, the real purpose of the “ceasefire” was to exfiltrate Trump from his genocidal threat to destroy the Iranian civilization when it failed to produce what he usually uses threats to get in dressing rooms: Compliance. Signs of the ceasefire’s lack of existence revealed themselves almost instantly. Iran’s parliamentary speaker wrote that the U.S. itself had violated itself’s ceasefire in multiple ways by early Wednesday afternoon. Failing to get Israel to stop Gaza-ing Lebanon, the very first item on the 10-point Iranian plan that Trump himself called a good starting point before immediately violating that point. Sending a drone into Iranian airspace, as if Iran were a teen pageant dressing room. Claiming Iran agreed to hand over its uranium as if it were Venezuelan oil. In his defense, Trump had an excuse for violating the terms of the ceasefire: The real terms were secret. Despite publicly endorsing Iran’s ten points as a good framework, Trump posted Wednesday that: There is only one group of meaningful “POINTS” that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations. These are the POINTS that are the basis on which we agreed to a CEASEFIRE. According to Trump, no one’s actually seen the real ceasefire. It’s the Sasquatch of international diplomacy. Trump’s bigfooting Iran like Bigfoot. In other words, it’s not that an actual ceasefire doesn’t exist, you just haven’t seen it…yeti. Because it’s a secret ceasefire! Sshhh! No one tell Israel to stop Gaza-ing Lebanon. No one tell oil tankers whether they can go straight through Hormuz’s strait. In fact, it was so secret, Iran got it wrong. And Israel definitely didn’t have the same secret draft Trump was looking at. Israel’s assault on Lebanon continued Wednesday, with 1,500 now dead there and a million people displaced. That’s one million people forced from their homes to go, uh, somewhere else. Here’s Vance explaining that Iran misunderstood what they agreed to, which is admitting that the U.S. misunderstood what Iran understood it was agreeing to, only without taking responsibility for the U.S. part like a big boy: Just so we’re clear, the point of diplomatic talks is to eliminate misunderstandings, whether they’re legitimate or whether they’re like most of Trump’s kids. If the two sides don’t understand the same thing, the talking failed. And Vance didn’t exactly clear things up claiming Israel wasn’t part of the deal, namely because his explanation included saying Israel was part of the deal. As Vance said, “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise. We never indicated that was gonna be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran and the ceasefire would be focused on America’s allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states.” The whole point of talks is for both sides to agree on what’s been talked. And if what the U.S. said was that “the ceasefire will be focused on Iran and America’s allies both Israel and the Gulf Arab states,” well, I’m pretty sure the “Israel” part includes Israel! No wonder it wasn’t just Iran that thought that Trump meant Israel when he said “Israel.” Egypt, which helped mediate the deal, apparently thought the same thing, because Egypt accused Israel of undermining the Israel part of the deal, which Israel could only undermine if the “Israel” part of the deal referred to Israel. When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the ceasefire on Tuesday, he also mistook the word “Israel” as referring to Israel, because he said the ceasefire would apply “everywhere” — which includes Israel! — “including Lebanon and elsewhere,” which also includes Israel. And instead of using the non-existent ceasefire to address Iran’s ongoing receipt of Russian weapons, Trump Wednesday pooped out another makeshit remedy to make good for the makeshit ceasefire he made up to make stop the makeshit war he made happen. What remedy? No points for guessing: Tariffs. Trump’s negotiators are his failson-in-law and a Manhattan real estate guy, so he has only two real weapons for international diplomacy: Tariffs, and weapons. So, at 7:30am Wednesday, Trump announced a 50% tariff on any country selling military weapons to Iran, “effective immediately.” Meaning, Trump had to wake up the tariff guy. Because amateur presidents think tariffs are implemented immediately. Launch photon tariffs, Mr. Sulu! But here’s the thing about tariffs: Trump doesn’t have full power anymore, and even Mr. Scott canna get it back. That’s because the Supreme Court last year ruled that Trump can only do certain kinds of tariffs without Congress. And all of them have to be related to U.S. trade issues. In order to justify tariffs against countries that sell arms to Iran, then, Trump would, I guess, have to let U.S. arms dealers sell arms to Iran first? That way, the tariffs would be related to trade and Trump could make the Middle East policies of Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan look smart. And here’s the truly Trumpian make-things-worse accomplishment. The Strait of Hormuz used to be a passage through which anyone’s ships could travel unimpeded. Y’know, like, water. Not any more. Iran started bombing shit coming through because that was one of the few leverage points it had to inflict pain on the U.S. and U.S. allies. Trump’s response: A tollbooth. ABC News on Wednesday asked Trump whether he was okay with Iran charging a toll — that’s $2 million per ship, all of them in the exact-change lane — on the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s response: “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people.” “It’s a beautiful thing.” So Trump has now bestowed upon world trade the two things Americans hate most: Tollbooths and high gas prices. And he’s acknowledged that the first beneficiary will be the Islamic Republic of Iran, which will then be able to use the profits to buy more weapons to (a) police the tollbooth and (b) raise the price of gas by bombing Saudi Arabia, which will mean (c) Iran’s oil will sell for more. Basically, in Trump’s deal, Iran is like Germany after World War II, if Germany got bombed less, got a better deal than the Marshall Plan, and got to charge fares on the English Channel while the U.S. somehow ends up with concentration camps and a Nazi leader threatening genocide. MONEY WATCH The price of oil dipped to about $92/barrel Wednesday, and then started creeping up again. And whatever relief people might see at the pump will likely take months to trickle through the system, the Washington Post reports. The price of gas goes down a lot slower than it goes up, if it goes down at all. Sorry, boys, it’s gonna stay up a lot longer than four hours. And you can’t even afford to call your doctor. MEDIA WATCH If the firing doesn’t cease during a ceasefire, then the ceasefire isn’t at risk or imperiled or disturbed or however else the media described it. If the fire doesn’t cease then the ceasefire isn’t. LOGIC WATCH The entire raison d’ipshit for this war was to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because Iran might threaten to do something terrible with them. Like destroy a civilization. Some Context Americans are not as popular with Iranians as good-faith peace-mongers might have you believe. Which, fair! We keep electing war-mongers who aim their monging at Iran. America once had good relations with Iran, when the UK and the USSR were the primary colonial predators in the Middle East. So what happened? America attacked Iran for no (legitimate) reason (other than oil). British oil interests were cheating the Iranian people and refused to open their records. So the Iranian parliament voted to kick them out and take (back) the oil. It was one thing when Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh began un-dedistributing Iran’s wealth by taxing landowners and stopping them from — I wanna say enslaving? — people. But fuck with the oil and you’ll have America to deal with. Here’s the official form that the U.S. State Department filled out, the Coup Proposal Application, for the UK pitch to coup the guy standing up for Iran’s people. Who ended up in power, instead? A tyrant with secret police and secreter torturers. Thanks, America! No wonder a brutal theocracy seemed like a viable alternative. Then, for most of the 1980s, the U.S. supplied Iraq with weapons, money, and supplies to wage war against Iran. The low end of Iranian fatality estimates is around 180,000 people. There have also been U.S. embargoes and sanctions along the way. So, yeah, Iran has done and does do some shitty Shi’ite shit, but let’s not pretend capitalism didn’t start it. Okay. You can stop feeling insane now. Go have a day. Avoid news sources and platforms that will flood your brain. Feel the sun on your face. Know that you are the majority and we are building towards our time. Trump’s Iran Insanity Overshadows Towering Budget Insanity Last Friday — approximately Avogadro’s number insanities ago — Pres. Donald Trump released a massive insanity already largely forgotten. It was his proposed 2027 budget. Trump wants to increase military spending from just under $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. And cut spending on things that actually protect people. Trump’s budget would slash non-military spending by 10%, cutting $73 billion on things that actually defend us, like environmental regulations/enforcement and renewable energy. In fact, last Wednesday, two days before releasing the budget proposal, Trump said America’s federal government can’t do anything except military shit. For the record, Pres. Jimmy Carter managed to figure out how to do more than military. Hell, even Pres. George W. “al Qaeda who now?” Bush never claimed he couldn’t get the government to do more than military. He just said Americans would have to work three jobs to afford it. And that that’s fantastic! Trump’s 2027 budget proposal is so stupid even congressional Republicans can tell somethin’ ain’t right. “I’m very wary of voting for excessive spending in defense,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), who never once thought military spending could be too excessive under Democratic presidents. The Republican rationale — by which I mean Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) — is that America needs to spend all of this money to defend against America’s enemies. It would, of course, be cheaper to stop creating enemies by continually fucking over the rest of the world. Costa Rica, for instance, seems to be defending itself pretty well despite having an army of one zero. Of course, Costa Rica spends plenty on actual defense, providing its citizens with what America can’t provide Americans: Universal health care (not to be confused with United HealthCare). Which might explain why Costa Rica keeps getting invaded … by American tourists. THE GOOD NEWS Congress ignored Trump’s last budget. And that was before they had to worry about the midterms. I’d Rather Be the Pope U.S. military officials early this year told the Vatican to support Pres. Donald Trump or else. According to the Free Press — which often prints bullshit but let’s see Trump call out this fake news — Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned the Vatican’s equivalent of its ambassador for a meeting at the Pentagon. This has never happened before. If it happens again, it’ll be at the rePentagon. Earlier that month, Pope Leo XIV had criticized “diplomacy based on force,” which Trump officials somehow took to mean them. Now, how might one respond to a claim that you use force to get what you want? By using force to get what you want. So Colby told the cardinal that Leo “better take its [the Trump administration’s] side” because the U.S. military has the power to do “whatever it wants.” Which is weird because Iran still runs the Strait of Hormuz! It’s also weird because the Vatican has barely any oil in its reserves, and most of it is holy, not Brent crude. And it’s definitely weird when you consider that Trump’s planning an IPO with the ayatollah while threatening a hostile takeover of the pope. I know, it’s hard to remember the last time anyone had reason to feel sorry for the Vatican. And now, thanks to Trump, Americans don’t even know which group of pedophile protectors to root for anymore. As always, TFN is here to help. If you’re not sure whether you’d rather be the president or the pope, ladies and gentlemen… Prince: New Episode Drops of Streaming Series Exposing DHS Lies The latest video to expose Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) lies dropped on Monday, soaring up the streaming charts. The New York Times premiered the new installment of the DHS anthology series, in which each new episode focuses on yet another DHS victim, revealing yet another DHS lie. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) originally claimed that they shot Julio Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis this January only after he and two other men viciously beat an ICE agent for three minutes. Apparently, ICE’s massive funding doesn’t include a budget for special effects, because the actual video obtained by the Times doesn’t include the action scenes from ICE’s script. The shovel written as a weapon doesn’t even have a starring role: Before the action even begins, the shovel exeunts. Critics have said the series is becoming formulaic; every new episode predictably exposes yet another ICE lie in a shocking twist ending. It’s not clear whether ICE will get new funding for another season, but there are no plans to cancel the series. Pres. Donald Trump just replaced the original showrunner, Kristi Noem — who enjoyed making cameo appearances — with new Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Mullin has played a role behind the scenes of other series, such as the bogus intel behind deportations and an alternate-history cult favorite in which Venezuela won the 2020 election.He Is Risening Some Hackles Remember a thousand years ago, on Power Plant Day Eve and Bridge Day Eve, when I reported about State Department staffers unhappy about the state of affairs there, what with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating his personal religious beliefs as fact on government platforms? Namely, that Jesus was risen before He disappeared again to raise suspense for the next time He rises again? Turns out, Rubio’s not the only one asserting God’s only begotten son as the only real one of humanity’s many gods. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took time from tending to the corporatization of America’s crops to wish her department’s 100,000 workers Happy Easter Which Is The Correct Holiday! The Washington Post reports that Rollins sent an email to her staff informing them that “[S]in has been destroyed [and] … Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life.” Rollins called it “the greatest story ever told … and the abiding hope of all mankind.” Even though that’s supposed to be Pres. Donald Trump. In fact, scientists tell us that coming back from the dead as a magical sky wizard is not actually possible and that science has already proven that the greatest story ever told is “Breaking Bad,” including the lost gospels of “Better Call Saul.” The whole Jesus story, it turns out, was actually plagiarized from previous greatest stories ever told like Adonis, Dionysus, Osiris, Prometheus, and Attis, who are all also risen and were risen even before ancient AI syncretized them for the greatest story Rollins ever told. Four Quickies I haven’t newsfucked any news about Russia fucking Ukraine lately, if only because it seems like Ukraine might be turning things around and I’m afraid I’ll jinx it like I just did. But I do wanna share this with you non-superstitious Newsfuckers. The Mirror reports that Serbian intelligence found bombs on a pipeline near the Hungarian border. The theory: Russia wanted to blame Ukraine for the bombing and give Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán an excuse to invoke emergency powers and quash the voting. The moral of our story? Don’t have emergency powers. (h/t) Conservation efforts have helped turn around the population decline of monarch butterflies. Two new reports found that the eastern migratory monarch population increased 64% over last year. Outside the churn of our stupid politics, people are making good things happen. Remember, No Kings means more monarchs. (h/t) The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration covered up the full extent of the damage done to the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia by last month’s Iranian attack in response to last month’s U.S. attack. On March 3, an Iranian drone evaded air defenses and blew a hole in the wall. And then another drone flew in through that hole. TFN has obtained exclusive animation of Trump’s proposed defensive measure: Imagine a war going so badly that Jeffrey Epstein becomes the thing you distract with instead of the thing you distract from. I don’t believe that big decisions are made to distract anyone from anything, but I could still appreciate the awesome beauty and majesty Thursday of First Lady Melania Trump reminding the nation about The Epstein Files™ by holding a press conference greeted joyfully by a war-weary nation. The first lady’s main point? To deny that she was a victim of Epstein. Culture Watch COUNTRY Apparently, country music is rejoining the country. MAGA country music is dying and New York Magazine reports that country’s rising stars may not be the Dixie Chicks, but they’re taking the Dixie out just like The Chicks did. THE COUNTRY Turns out, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band haven’t just added Tom Morello to the lineup for the Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour, they’ve also added a cover tune to the set list. Here’s Moriello, Springsteen, and the E Street Band in Los Angeles Tuesday doing The Clash’s Clampdown: If that wasn’t already one of my all-time favorite songs, man… Media Watch For a while now, your borderline-socialist Fucking News has been free for everyone. This has nothing to do with the goodness of my heart, immense as that may be. It’s because I wanted to make my journalism — here and at my original-reporting Substack — free for everyone in the hope that enough Newsfuckers would volunteer to pay to make this possible. And that enough of you could afford to do so. Every day, a tiny handful of you decide to do just that. Thanks to you, TFN has no paywalls. Not even ads. And I’ve been asked. I’ve been offered money to run ads in TFN. I don’t, because paid subscribers make it possible for me to preserve TFN as a space where you’re not being told to buy something. Where we can engage with each other as citizens and humans rather than as extractors and consumers. I didn’t invent this model of journalism, but as journalism and the internet itself are enshittifying, I do believe this approach is the future. And apparently I’m not alone. The American Prospect — an essential source of original reporting and home to utterly unique journalists whose digging no one else does — just dropped so-called programmatic ads. These are the automatic ads, banners and sidebars, that follow you around the internet and make you feel gross like you just bathed in Fox’s primetime lineup. The American Prospect’s reporting is free for everyone. They’re relying on the same resource TFN does: You, and your desire to empossiblify journalism that isn’t Beltway navel-gazing or gossipy outrage bait, but illuminates systemic issues that directly shape our world. You can check them out here. I just wanted you to know that the model you made work here has found a home somewhere else, too. We get to build the future. Totally Fake Collins Endorsement The dynamic comedy duo of Martha Previte and Jim Earl have struck again at their favorite struckee, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Here she isn’t, not actually endorsing former Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME). Warning: AI or DeepFakery alert, for comedic purposes only. Upcoming Elections Contributing writer Paula Schaap has contributed more writing to TFN’s page on imminent democracy-happening! You can check out Paula’s take on some of the upcoming elections right here. HUNGARY I think I said Thursday that Hungary’s elections were Thursday. I screwed up. Sorry about that. The voting happens on Sunday. And things look good for autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán … being voted out of office. TCB HOUSING Anyone in the Savannah, GA, area able to put me up on a couch maybe in the near/immediate future? Please LMK! SAVING TV NEWS Please check out Thursday’s Substack Live, “How To Save TV News: Kevin Newman.” My former colleague at ABC News shared some apparently never-revealed details about his stint as co-anchor of Good Morning America. Afterward, I texted Kevin and asked him how much of what he revealed on Thursday was stuff he had never shared publicly before. He said most of it. And it’s super-revealing about why TV news is what it is and isn’t what it should be. I’ve worked with a lot of folks in TV news. Kevin was one of the good ones. I think you’ll understand why and appreciate his insights. You can check it out here. April 16: “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane.” Former CBS News justice correspondent who made headlines leaving CBS News. You can catch us on the future of TV news here. And you can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here. All this TV-news saving is free for everyone because some Newsfuckers make it free by supporting TFN financially. How cool is that? SUPPORTING TFN If the weekly TFN roundup, Facepalm the Nation, is worth my aggregation aggravation, please consider letting me know by putting your money where my cursing mouth is with a paid subscription. Thank you. E pluribus fuckem. If you can afford it, your paid subscription will help TFN keep providing this weekly roundup. Thank you. Go get ‘em, kids! TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Apr 10, 202610 votes

25th Amendment My 1st Ass

April 10: Raskin to brief House Democrats on 25th Amendment … Proclaiming impeachment doomed, Democrats focus instead on doomed war-powers vote … Iran ceasefire enters bloody third day of not existing … Artemis II to return, racking up more firsts … More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal Take action: Your representatives Pres. Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in the Oval Office on Sept. 30, 2025, as Trump points to all the House minority leaders who won’t fight to impeach him. (Daniel Torok / White House photo.) You might see a lot today about House Democrats moving forward on using the 25th Amendment to remove Pres. Donald Trump from office. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) scheduled a briefing on the subject. Impeachment star Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will lead today’s briefing at 3pm on the 25th Amendment. You may already know that the 25th Amendment was ratified to address the issue of presidential incapacity after Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Both Kennedy and Trump suffered from severe lack of brain. Today’s activity all looks like congressional Democrats are finally moving forward on the agenda their voters have voiced so powerfully it literally motivated the nation’s largest national protest last month. Removing Trump from office is also an obligation created when members of Congress took their oath of office: They swore to uphold the Constitution. Can’t uphold the Constitution while abiding a president who uses said Constitution for toilet paper with the help of one of those extender-grabby things. My overly skeptical first reaction to today’s 25th Amendment briefing was, wait, why 25th Amendment? There are other methods for removal from office. Like impeachment. Or a large crane. Arguably, the 25th Amendment is harder to accomplish than good, old-fashioned impeachment. (Although impeachment requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, it at least lets a simple House majority initiate the Senate trial in the first place.) The best-known method for 25th Amending a jackhole president is if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet agree to remove said jackhole. That clearly ain’t happening. So what exactly are Democrats doing? Well, Amendment 25 has another clause that allows Congress to designate a body other than the cabinet that can oust said jackhole. What body? The Constitution doesn’t tell us. Like an asshole. It could be the Board of Peace. Or FIFA. Or Congress could make up a whole new body expressly for jackhole-ousting. But the original problems remain — Democrats lack the same votes to designate a body that they lack to impeach. So WTF are Democrats doing? Is this all kabuki? Or bukkake? My overly cynical self wondered Thursday whether the complexity and improbability of success with the 25th are a feature, not a bug. Meaning that Jeffries might be going through the 25th motions to appease the demand for impeachment by going with a method less likely to work, and thereby killing both. Or, most benignly, today’s briefing is to educate House Democrats on the 25th Amendment the way that time-share informational meeting you naively agreed to will not end until you concede. Newsfuckers, I am so so cynical. And yet, right on cue, Axios reported that, yeah, Democrats actually don’t want to impeach: Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Axios she supports both the 25th Amendment and impeachment, but doesn’t think they’re “the best use of our time.” A few things are going on here. Dean supports 25th Amending and impeaching. What she doesn’t support is dedicating resources to whipping other Democrats in line and making this a strategic priority. Why not? Because Democrats think they can’t win. As Axios helpfully reminds us, Jeffries also refused to back impeaching former Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Kristi Noem, because they didn’t have the votes. There’s a mentality among some Democrats that things aren’t worth fighting for without assured victory, even though the Constitution doesn’t require assured victory for members to fight. All Americans ask of their representatives is that they at least fucking try. We’re adults: We understand we don’t get guaranteed outcomes. But at least fucking fight. Some Democrats reject that argument, and said so publicly on Thursday. Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) said Democrats should only force an impeachment vote once they don’t have to force it because they have the majority. Y’know, in 2027. What happens then? According to Walkinshaw, “hearings where we lay out the case” for impeachment. Imagine believing that in the year of Trump’s Lord 2027 hearings will change anyone’s mind. But also: Hold hearings now. Lay out the case now. What are they laying out instead now? According to Walkinshaw, “priority number one [is] put bills on Donald Trump’s desk that will bring down costs.” This, in short, is Walkinshaw’s plan: Hand Trump a bill to fight inflation which will either fail so no one remembers it or succeed, in which case Walkinshaw’s walkin’ Republicans to the polls in 2028 without inflation around their necks. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said Thursday that impeachment “wouldn’t likely succeed, so we’re not running it.” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) said a failed impeachment vote “is worse than no impeachment at all.” It’s the wrong answer because, with Democrats refusing to force a vote, they’re cementing their image as non-fighters and taking the brunt of public outrage instead of shifting it to Republicans by forcing a vote in which Republicans would go on record keeping Trump in office — just months before the midterm elections. But therein lies the other issue with shunning impeachment: It’s not just Republicans being protected. What Jeffries and other Democrats really don’t want us thinking about is the fact that some Democrats not only oppose strategically focusing on impeachment — forcing votes on it every day — they also literally oppose impeachment itself. Some Democrats do support impeachment. But when Rep. Al Green (D-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, most House Democrats helped Republicans kill them. Democratic voters understand that congressional Democrats lack the votes in Congress to do anything without Republican help. But forcing votes every day wouldn’t just force Republicans to defend this historically unpopular and bad president — it would repeatedly expose any Democrats who would vote against impeachment, too. Democrats aren’t forcing impeachment votes because that would force Democrats to go on record opposing impeachment. Democratic leaders can’t say that’s their reason for not forcing votes, so they retreat to the argument that the votes would fail. The real issue in Congress isn’t age, it’s institutionalism. Too many House members think winning House votes is all that matters. They don’t want to fight because they don’t want to lead. Using the media and their bully pulpit to shift our politics and culture would be uncouth. So instead of forcing votes, they get force-fed headlines like this: Too many members of Congress got their seats by being party functionaries who rose through the ranks. What we need is not necessarily younger members, but members who win their seats by fighting for what’s right regardless of the odds. Because that’s how you change the odds. Oh, Look, Actually Fighting a War They Also Can’t Win According to congressional Democrats who apparently believe they can only do one thing at a time — even though Pres. Donald Trump is capable of fucking us more ways than one at a time — the fight to have now is over war powers. It’s a fight already settled by the Constitution, but whatevs. Democrats who argue against impeachment because it would fail argued on Thursday to fight instead another battle even more doomed to fail: A war powers resolution. Even though I’d bet good money — except on prediction markets — that Trump would veto it. Why allow this doomed fight? Because some Democrats are fine letting voters see that they support the war. So Democratic leaders will allow Democrats to fight this fight. Even though, sure enough… …House Republicans on Thursday blocked a vote on blocking Trump from waging his unconstitutional war that he already won. And yet, guess what House Democrats who won’t force a vote on impeachment will do when the House returns next week? They’re gonna force a vote on restricting Trump’s war powers that the Constitution already restricted. Why would Democratic leadership let members force this vote? And why am I asking a question I already answered? Because pro-war Democrats are thrilled to broadcast being pro-war. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is so happy to broadcast his positions that he went on cable news to do so. In fact, he did it on Fox. Worse, he did it on Hannity. Far worse was Fetterman’s reasoning. He wasn’t just wrong, he was embarrassingly facile. Like an embarrassing assile. Here’s what he said: “We have to stand [with] our military to allow them to accomplish the goals of Epic Fury.” I have notes. Only one is pedantic! The “[with]” was added to Fetterman’s quotation by The Hill, leaving me desperate to know what Fetterman actually said. “…stand on our military”? “…stand in our military”? Release The Fetterman Hannity Files!™ But also, we still don’t know what those Epic Fury goals are. And whatever they are, Trump has already said he’s already accomplished them with his Epic Fury. And if that’s true, wouldn’t getting the troops out of there be the best way of standing with the military? Or in? Or of? But also, this childish canard that supporting the troops means supporting whatever half-assed, half-cocked, half-other-body-part mission the current president sends them on should have died in Iraq after getting gravely wounded in Vietnam. “I’m old enough to remember we used to root for our military,” Fetterman said, smearing every Democrat and American who’s not comfortably “rooting” for the military on TV but actually working to get the military out of a dangerous, ill-thought-out, open-ended, closed-minded mission. If Fetterman wants to root for the military, maybe he can take a stand against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forcing Jesus on the troops the way Hegseth forces himself on women he later pays to be silent about it. Iran War and Ceasefire Somehow Both Still Happening Simultaneously Despite Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy Pres. Donald Trump’s Tuesday night ceasefire continued to not cease the firing today, the way Trump’s peace-talking doesn’t make peace and his inflation-ending doesn’t end inflation. And yet, corporate media still refer to the ceasefire as being challenged or threatened, as if there is a ceasefire thing that exists. ⁨Saying today’s Israeli strikes in Lebanon threaten ceasefire is like saying rotting bag of garbage in operating room threatens sterility. Massive root beer belch in library threatens silence. Suppose I declared TFN is a Red-Spotted Toad. And then, day after day, the media covered the lack of Red-Spotted Toads in your inbox as a threat to TFN’s Red-Spotted Toadness. Corporate media don’t try to be gaslighters, but their not-gaslighting-ness is threatened by gaslighting us. The semantic problem here is that a ceasefire is when fire ceases, but the media use “ceasefire” as shorthand for the deal to cease the firing. That deal isn’t dead, so they still say “ceasefire,” despite the unceased fire. As for the actual ceasefire, if it’s not actually a ceasefire, what the fuck is it? We’re gonna go with easefire, since some of the fire has eased. But Israel’s still bombing Lebanon. Threatening the easefire. Artemis II To Make More History Tonight, four humans are going to move faster than any human has moved before. Faster than Pres. Donald Trump moving on from The Epstein Files™. Artemis II’s re-entry tonight is expected to reach speeds of almost 35,000 feet per second. That’s a faster descent than Trump’s approval ratings among Latino males 35 to 54 years old. And this is after already making history by traveling farther from Earth than any human has, even farther than Trump has deported Latino males 35 to 54 years old without due process. The astronauts will be wearing their suits, cooling suits, because the temperature outside will reach roughly 5,000°. That’s hot enough to melt Mar-a-Lago face. Artemis II will hit what’s left of Earth’s atmosphere at about 7:53pm eastern tonight. The re-entry phase lasts about 13 minutes. Presumably it slows down a bit before splashdown, due at 8:07pm. NBC has a good writeup on how daring this mission is, and, gulp, some of the reasons some skeptics consider it too risky. We love you, some skeptics! He Is Risening Some Hackles Remember a thousand years ago, on Power Plant Day Eve and Bridge Day Eve, when I reported about State Department staffers unhappy about the state of affairs there, what with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating his personal religious beliefs as fact on government platforms? Namely, that Jesus was risen before He disappeared again to raise suspense for the next time He rises again? Turns out, Rubio’s not the only one asserting God’s only begotten son as the only real one of humanity’s many gods. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took time from tending to the corporatization of America’s crops to wish her department’s 100,000 workers Happy Easter Which Is The Correct Holiday! The Washington Post reports that Rollins sent an email to her staff informing them that “[S]in has been destroyed [and] … Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life.” Rollins called it “the greatest story ever told … and the abiding hope of all mankind.” Even though that’s supposed to be Pres. Donald Trump. In fact, scientists tell us that coming back from the dead as a magical sky wizard is not actually possible and that science has already proven that the greatest story ever told is “Breaking Bad,” including the lost gospels of “Better Call Saul.” The whole Jesus story, it turns out, was actually plagiarized from previous greatest stories ever told like Adonis, Dionysus, Osiris, Prometheus, and Attis, who are all also risen and were risen even before ancient AI syncretized them for the greatest story Rollins ever told. One Quickie Imagine a war going so badly that Jeffrey Epstein becomes the thing you distract with instead of the thing you distract from. I don’t believe that big decisions are made to distract anyone from anything, but I could still appreciate the awesome beauty and majesty Thursday of First Lady Melania Trump reminding the nation about The Epstein Files™ by holding a press conference greeted joyfully by a war-weary nation. The first lady’s main point? To deny that she was a victim of Epstein. Upcoming Elections Contributing writer Paula Schaap has contributed more writing to TFN’s page on imminent democracy-happening! You can check out Paula’s take on some of the upcoming elections right here. HUNGARY I think I said Thursday that Hungary’s elections were Thursday. I screwed up. Sorry about that. The voting happens on Sunday. And things look good for autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán … being voted out of office. TCB HOUSING Anyone in the Savannah, GA, area able to put me up on a couch maybe in the near/immediate future? Please LMK! SAVING TV NEWS Please check out Thursday’s Substack Live, “How To Save TV News: Kevin Newman.” My former colleague at ABC News shared some apparently never-revealed details about his stint as co-anchor of Good Morning America. Afterward, I texted Kevin and asked him how much of what he revealed on Thursday was stuff he had never shared publicly before. He said most of it. And it’s super-revealing about why TV news is what it is and isn’t what it should be. I’ve worked with a lot of folks in TV news. Kevin was one of the good ones. I think you’ll understand why and appreciate his insights. You can check it out here. April 16: “How To Save TV News: Scott MacFarlane.” Former CBS News justice correspondent who made headlines leaving CBS News. You can catch us on the future of TV news here. And you can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here. SUPPORTING TFN Every day, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem. If you can afford it, you can join the ranks of Newsfuckers keeping TFN by upgrading to a paid subscription: Go get ‘em, kids! Democrats may not be doing anything real yet, but pretending to shows they’re feeling pressure to. That’s how it starts for real. And we, the pluribus, did that. TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

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