Cartoons Monday!

Plus John OIiver, Noah Kahan and Richardson, Krugman and Kristof.

May 11, 2026

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. You can also show appreciation by pledging a small sum if we go partly “paid” one day.

John on the SCOTUS evil use of Shadow Docket.

The Daily Beast:

The sculptor of the 22-foot golden statue said he was told to get rid of the turkey neck and make the president thinner.

Wuerker:

New York Times:

Lebanese Mourn Eight Members of One Family Killed in Israeli Strike

Israel has escalated attacks on Lebanon since Thursday, further unraveling a truce in its war with Hezbollah. Among those killed on Saturday was a 6-month-old infant, relatives said.

Nick Kristof posted this online explaining his article in today’s paper:

This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured -- they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews -- but they found the courage to do so.
One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused.
Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they're equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape.

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Paul Krugman on the evil of the Tech Bros:

At this point, however, it’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the “malefactors of great wealth” called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison.
Some widely used measures of inequality suggest that income disparities, which soared in the 1980s and 1990s, have plateaued since then. But the concentration of wealth at the top is continuing to soar. Today’s oligarchs control a huge share of America’s wealth — much larger than their share even at the end of the 1980s:
Tellingly, unlike the robber barons of yore, many modern plutocrats show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune, little inclination to give back to society by devoting a significant part of their wealth to good works. Forbes reports that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have devoted almost none of their wealth to philanthropy, while Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are only slightly better.
More important than the stinginess of the superrich, however, is the fact that their wealth has brought great political power, arguably more than the robber barons ever possessed — power that they abuse on an epic scale.

Heather Cox Richardson:

As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted in McFaul’s World, Putin’s war on Ukraine has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany and has achieved none of the goals Putin set out for the conflict. He has not subjugated Ukraine and has not succeeded in regime change. He has not “demilitarized” Ukraine; indeed, Ukraine is more militarized than ever before and has become an important player in global weapons systems. And not only has Putin failed to stop NATO from expanding, but in response to his invasion of Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden have joined the defensive alliance.
Instead of achieving Putin’s goals, the war has killed or wounded more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers and eaten up the economy. As criticism of the regime has become more outspoken, the Kremlin has curbed access to the internet, not only exacerbating that criticism but also, as McFaul notes, making it harder for people to use mobile banking, order a taxi, or use other online services. Rumors are circulating that Putin is increasingly concerned for his own safety. Rather than walking to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to lay flowers as usual, yesterday he took an armored bus.