Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is 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. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.
Split results in key Midwest primaries last night: Progressive beat moderate Dem in Minnesota Senate race but moderate upsets DSAer in Wisconsin governor’s contest. Here’s Steve Brodner on the winner in Minn.:
Will Bunch:
When the D.C. federal appeals court on Friday ordered the White House, which never got congressional approval for either the demolition or the ballroom addition, to halt aboveground construction, Trump took to Truth Social and described the ruling as akin to treason.
“The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents,” Trump posted, using language that’s probably never previously in human history been used to describe a “ballroom.”
Trump didn’t say in his post anything about crystal chandeliers, or great acoustics, or things you might expect in a world-class ballroom. Instead, he said the facility will have bomb shelters, a state-of-the-art hospital, top-secret military facilities, protective missile-resistant steel, columns, roofs, and beams, drone-proof ceilings and roofs, military-grade venting, and bullet-, ballistic-, and blast-proof glass.
It sounds like somebody is expecting a last tango in Washington.
Trump’s post was alarming — shocking, really — but in case anyone missed the point, or doesn’t know how to read, he also posted some AI-created renderings, which again did not depict waltzing diplomats, but instead showed a rooftop “DronePort” that was packed to the gills with ominous-looking military drones, manned by troops and also with armored vehicles that somehow drove up there. The vibe was Darth Vader’s Death Star, except with “military-grade venting” this time around.
Music Picks
My friends at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa yesterday announced they had chosen Bette Midler as winner of the 2026 Woody Guthrie Prize. She joins earlier winners such as Bruce, Seeger, Mavis, and Morello. Bette has done a lot of good works for decades—see story here—and this year recorded Woody’s “All Your Fascists Bound to Lose.”
Also this week, Death Cab for Cutie paid a visit to NPR’s Tiny Desk.
From Tunes to Toons
Barry Blitt in the aftermath of news about Trump getting carted off Air Force One in a catering container leaving journos as sitting ducks:
Ann Telnaes offers some other ideas:
Clay Jones:
deAdder:
Ohman:
Bramhall
Luckovich:
Molina:
Very good cartoons about that abomination.
Bravo for “coup-coup”!!!! The ideal chuckle with my morning coffee.