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'Scumbags': GOP digital team in epic collapse following party's humiliating remarks

Bulwark editors Sam Stein and Andrew Egger took on the epic collapse of the RNC social media team after humiliating remarks from RNC Chair Joe Gruters threatened to diminish donations and curb GOP voter turnout.

Gruters said out loud this week that the Republican Party is likely headed to “almost certain defeat” in the upcoming mid-terms, which sent the RNC’s digital team into an obscenity-laced panic with accounts insulting and name-calling critics about the claims.

The reason this sort of matters is because it can deflate your donors,” Stein told Egger. “It can deflate members of your own party.”

Stein then cited Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs telling Sunday show, “Meet the Press,” that “no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.”

“It caused a multi-day crisis for Democrats,” said Stein. “Nancy Pelosi was p------. … Members were hot, hot, hot about it. He had to backtrack it. It was just bad. Again, this is not a normal utterance from a committee chairman.”

“But the funnier part of the story,” said Stein, “is how the RNC's digital team has handled it, which is not well.”

“You're a lying piece of s——,” RNC Research told Democrat influencer Harry Sisson. “Here's the full quote: ‘I LIKE OUR CHANCES IN THE MIDTERMS but let me put in perspective only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm. We're facing almost certain defeat. The only person who can bring the nose up and help us win is the President of the United States Donald J. Trump.’ F—— loser.”

The same account then attacked the Democratic Party X account, beginning with: “Here’s the full quote you, (sic) scumbags … ”, and they responded to Stein’s own post about Gruters’ statement, starting with “Hey, Jack--- …,” before citing Gruter’s full quote, which Stein says was not a denial.

Then they went after CNN political reporter Aaron Blake, saying “This is fake news — here’s the full quote, scumbag.”

“They really like ‘scumbag,’” Stein added. “Oh, Bill Kristol. They went after Kristol. This is a good one: ‘How much does Harvard charge these days to learn how to report b——? Is Bill being paid by Harvard still? He's a graduate.’”

“I liked what Town Hall did,” said Stein, referring to another Trump subsidiary on X that went into defense mode after Gruters’ admission. “They accused you (Egger) of misstating or misgiving no context to chairman Joe Grutter's quotes, but then they mangled the quote.”

“Yeah, they themselves actually then did mangle the quote,” said Egger.

See the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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'Bloodthirsty' MAGA commentators 'revolt' over Trump backing down in Minnesota: report

Far-right media figures are in open "revolt" after President Donald Trump signaled he would "de-escalate a little bit" in Minneapolis, Minnesota after the deadly shooting of 37 year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti last weekend.

That's according to The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer, who reported Tuesday that several MAGA commentators are viewing Trump's winding down of federal operations in the Twin Cities area as a white flag to the political left. Sommer said there was noticeable division between people who "really like this very cruel way" the administration is conducting immigration enforcement, and another camp asking: "Do we really want to sink everything else we want to get done over this?"

Stein commented that politics for many in the MAGA media realm is a "zero-sum game" in which acknowledging a "misstep" is effectively "handing a victory to the opposition."

"Some of the reactions have been – I struggle to find the right adjective – shockingly bloodthirsty or indifferent or devoid of empathy," Stein said, before playing a clip of SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly saying she doesn't "feel sorry for Alex Pretti."

"Do you know why I wasn't shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my a—— inside and out of their operations," Kelly said. "It's very simple."

"Look, just to openly say you don't feel sorry that someone was shot to death is, you've got to have a little bit of absence of something in your core for you to say something like that," Stein observed.

The Bulwark reporters then played a clip of far-right Newsmax host Greg Kelly (son of former New York Police Department commissioner Raymond Kelly), who justified Pretti's shooting by arguing that the phone he was holding to film federal agents resembled a gun. They also highlighted remarks by conservative pundit Allie Beth Stuckey, who suggested that Pretti was responsible for his own death because he was impeding traffic.

"I feel like these people are not really thinking through the steps here, because I think with a lot of things in this administration, it's assumed that they'll just kind of always be in power, or that Democrats would never turn this on them," Sommer said. "And so it's this idea ... if you'rein the way, if you're obstructing our policy — even by shouting or whistling — the government can feel free to shoot you."

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​Trump is 'declining noticeably' and could soon have a 'health event': ex-RNC spokesman

The staff at The Bulwark took inventory on predictions made as President Donald Trump muscled his way back into the White House last year. Some forecasts — such as Trump having the proper judgment to fire the worst of his bumbling staff — fell flat as Americans learned Trump’s mental state was a lower bar than predicted.

Others, however, panned out as expected.

“My dark horse prediction for 2025 is that Donald Trump has a health event,” said Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller. “And I think that this is inevitable based on the actuarial tables to happen during his presidency, because … Donald Trump's machismo and his strength is such an important part of his political brand.”

Bulwark columnist Mona Charen, acting as judge for Bulwark’s prediction, said Miller did not foresee the administration’s talent for covering up the president’s health, however.

“He's declining noticeably,” said Charen. “His health is declining. That's clear. He's got those things on his hands. He's stumbling a bit. He's falling asleep. But that's not a health event.”

Bulwark Managing Editor Sam Stein disagreed, however, pointing out that its not Miller’s fault the administration is a brick wall on the president’s failing vigor.

“I would give Tim at least one point,” said Stein. “I think with the hand stuff, there's something up there. And there's all this question about why he had an MRI. They're not really being forthcoming about it. We don't know. And because it's so clouded in uncertainty, I feel like that deserves at least one point. So, we have a little bit of a disagreement.”

Both “Judge” Stein and Charen ruled in favor of Bulwark writer Will Saletan, whose dark horse prediction for 2025 was that Donald Trump was going to pardon New York Mayor Eric Adams.

“Why would Donald Trump pardon a Democrat? The reason is Donald Trump is not fundamentally a Republican. Donald Trump is fundamentally a criminal,” said Saletan a year ago. “And so he loves white collar criminals like himself. … [H]e sympathizes with guys who have been convicted by law enforcement, by the justice system.”

Stein and Charen disagreed on the semantics of the pardon, however, seeing as how Trump did not pardon Adams but merely instructed his politicized DOJ to drop its corruption case against the mayor.”

The judges also awarded top points to Bulwark White House Correspondent Andrew Egger for correctly predicting “more MAGA infighting” in 2025.

“I actually had forgotten about Egger, so he also gets a five,” said Charen, referencing the current war underway between antisemitic and pro-Israel factions duking it out over the Heritage Foundation’s embrace of MAGA influencer and white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the people who give Fuentes a platform.

There’s also division in the MAGA ranks over Trump’s foot-dragging on the release of the files of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, wherein Trump’s name is generously peppered. That division appears to be between young MAGA influencers and aging Fox News elites.

“Completely spot on,” agreed Stein. “I mean, not exactly the craziest prediction — he didn't really walk out [on a limb] with that one. But I think the actual magnitude of the infighting is much bigger than I actually expected. So, Egger gets five. And everyone knows I'm loathe to give Egger any credit whatsoever. So, this is a real five.”

Watch the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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This liberal fantasy only helps Republicans

Here we go again, only this time it appears to be the Working Families Party that’s fixing to help elect Republicans. They’re proudly proclaiming that by the 2028 presidential election they hope to have candidates on the ballot in 18 states. The party’s national director, rapper/musician Maurice “Moe” Mitchell, told the Guardian:

“Less and less (sic) people are identifying as being a Democrat or Republican. The brand of the Democratic and the Republican parties are underwater consistently. I don’t think there’s been a better and more right time for a third party to emerge in this country that speaks to the interest of everyday working people. I believe that our time has come.”

You’d think by now we would have learned that having progressives seize control of the Democratic Party is a hell of a lot more successful strategy for rebuilding our democracy and our middle class than running against it. In Florida in 2000, for example, Ralph Nader on the Green Party’s ticket got 97,488 votes, while George W. Bush “won” Florida — and thus the White House — by 537 votes.

It strains credulity to assert that the majority of Nader’s voters would have either voted for Bush or not voted at all, which is why when David Cobb ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2004, he explicitly told people in swing states like Florida not to vote for him but to cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate John Kerry instead.

Vanity candidate Jill Stein had no such moral compunction with her Green Party candidacy in 2016. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin provided Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton that year, and, in each of those states, Stein pulled more votes than Trump’s margin.

(In Michigan she got 51,463 votes and Trump won by 10,704; in Pennsylvania she won 49,678 versus Trump’s margin of 46,765; and in Wisconsin Stein carried 31,006 votes but Trump only won by 22,177.)

In other words, had progressives not voted for Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000, Al Gore would have become president, and we never would have been lied into two illegal wars, given trillions in tax breaks to billionaires, or gotten John Roberts and Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.

Had progressives in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin not voted for Jill Stein in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have become president and America would have been spared the trauma of 500,000 unnecessary Covid deaths; Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch on the Court; another $5 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires; and the ongoing DOGE assault to our democracy.

America would be a very, very different country with a progressive Supreme Court and an expansion, rather than the destruction, of New Deal and Great Society programs that built and sustained the middle class. In other words, ironically, we’d be a lot closer to the goals of the Green Party today if they’d never run a presidential candidate in those elections.

This is not to say the Democratic Party is perfect. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is now hiding an autopsy of the 2024 election, there are still on-the-take Democrats in the neoliberal Problem Solvers’ Caucus and taking piles of cash from AIPAC and corporate PACs, and in many states genuine progressives in the mold of FDR and LBJ are still viewed by the party’s bosses with a jaundiced eye.

But America — with our 250-year-old operating system — is one of only a handful of democracies worldwide with first-past-the-post (FPTP) winner-take-all election systems, which pretty much force a nation into a two-party system. Under those circumstances, a third party will always pull votes (and, thus, victories) away from the main party it’s most closely aligned with philosophically.

This is why Republican donors have historically been so enthusiastic about supporting the Green Party and Democratic donors occasionally pitch in for the Libertarians.

Reporting from AP, CBS, and others document a broad 2024 GOP-linked network that helped Stein and Cornel West with ballot access and legal support in swing states including Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and others, often using Republican-aligned lawyers and consultants who have also worked for Donald Trump or state GOP organizations.

In 2016, so many Republican donors and politicians had helped fund Stein’s effort that the federal election commission forced her to return a fraction of it, almost a quarter-million dollars.

Most likely they’re now courting the Working Families Party, following Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular win running on both the Democratic and Working Families tickets in New York (Mamdani voted for himself on the Working Families ballot.)

But while the synergy of Working Families and Democrats worked in New York, that was only because it’s one of a tiny handful of states (including Oregon, Mississippi, Connecticut, and Vermont) that has fusion voting or its equivalent, allowing a single candidate to appear on the ballot under multiple parties.

Whether New Yorkers voted for Mamdani on the Democratic ticket or the line for the Working Families Party, the result was the same: a vote for Mamdani.

Anywhere else in the country, though, it would have been a vote drawn away from the Democratic Party because when the Founders put our system of voting together our form of democracy was a new thing. Voting was a novel experiment, by and large, after Europe had been ruled for almost two millennia by kings and queens.

It wasn’t until the year the Civil War started, 1861, that British philosopher John Stuart Mill published a how-to manual for multi-party “parliamentary democracies” in his book Considerations On Representative Government.

It was so widely distributed and read that nearly all of the world’s democracies today — every one of them countries that became a democracy after the late 1860s — use variations on Mill’s proportional representation parliamentary system.

In Mill’s system, if a political party gets, say, 12 percent of the vote then they also get 12 percent of the seats in that country’s congress or parliament. A party that pulls 34 percent of the vote gets 34 percent of the seats, and so on.

The result is a plethora of parties representing a broad range of perspectives and priorities, all able to participate in the daily governance of their nation. Nobody gets shut out.

Governing becomes an exercise in coalition building, and nobody is excluded. If you want to get something done politically, you have to pull together a coalition of parties to agree with your policy.

Most European countries, for example, have political parties represented in their parliaments that range from the far left to the extreme right, with many across the spectrum of the middle. There’s even room for single issue parties; for example, several in Europe focus almost exclusively on the environment or immigration.

The result is typically an honest and wide-ranging discussion across society about the topics of the day, rather than a stilted debate among only two parties.

It’s how the Greens became part of today’s governing coalition in Germany, for example, and are able to influence the energy future of that nation. And because of that political diversity in the debates, the decisions made tend to be reasonably progressive: look at the politics and lifestyles in most European nations.

In our system, though, if a party gets 12 percent of the vote — or anything short of 50 percent plus one — they get nothing. Whoever gets 50-percent-plus-one wins everything and everybody else gets nothing, which is why we always end up with two parties battling for the higher end of that 50/50 teeter-totter.

Australia and New Zealand have diminished the damage third parties can do to the main, established parties, by using a voting system called ranked choice voting. In a system like that I could have voted for Nader as my first choice in 2000, with Gore as my second choice. When it becomes apparent that Nader isn’t going to make it, my first choice is discarded by the system and my vote for Gore becomes the one that gets counted.

Over 300 communities in America are now using ranked choice voting (including my hometown of Portland, Oregon) and it works great. Moving from FPTP to proportional representation at the federal level would require amending the Constitution, though, so that’s not going to happen any day soon: ranked choice voting is a nearly-as-good alternative.

At the national level, though, the best way to solve the problem of some Democratic politicians not being as progressive as we’d like is to get active by joining the Democratic Party and becoming a force for positive change within it. To stand up for public office and actually elect more progressives to office, something that can only be done within the Democratic Party.

To not “throw away your vote,” but to help rebuild the party that brought America Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, Medicare, Medicaid, free college, regulatory agencies that defend and protect the environment and working class people, support for people in poverty, the end of legal apartheid, and that built the world’s first real middle class.

Yes, there are corrupt and bought-off politicians within the Democratic Party. Ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court fully legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision and its predecessors, there have been more than a few Democrats who have enthusiastically put their hands out. The most obvious and cynical ones call themselves corporate “Problem Solvers” or, to a lesser extent, the neoliberal “New Democrats.”

But voting for a third-party candidate and thus handing elections to Republicans won’t solve that problem: if anything it will make it worse, because the entire GOP has committed itself to being on the take and, as we saw with Nader and Stein, third-party candidacies often simply hand more power to the GOP.

Try to find, for example, even one Republican who isn’t benefiting from the billions in oil dollars that have flowed through the Koch network over the years and is thus willing to do something about climate change. Republican governance and their fealty to the fossil fuel industry is literally destroying our planet.

This is why real progressives like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Zohran Mamdani, and Pramila Jayapal stay and work within the Democratic Party. For progressives to take over the country, they know we must first take over the DNC. (Yes, Bernie is an independent and Zohran prefers the Working Families party, but both ran as Democrats.)

In other words, every one of us should be working to get inside the Democratic Party and take it over! It’s what hard-core conservatives did with the GOP over the past 20 years, starting with the Tea Party and the MAGA movements, and it’s what progressives must do today with the Democratic Party.

No third-party candidate has ever won the White House, and none ever will until we have nationwide ranked choice voting. And this is not a small or incidental issue: the stakes for 2028 may well include the continued survival of America as a democratic republic.

So, the next time somebody tells you how they’re going to only vote for “the best candidate,” you may want to give them this little Civics 101 lesson, along with the phone number, website, or email address for their local Democratic Party. And get behind the movement to bring ranked choice voting to national elections.

And, hopefully, the Working Families Party folks will turn down all the Republican money that will be dangled in front of them and choose not to run candidates in places where there isn’t either fusion voting or instant runoff voting.

We can’t afford any more George W. Bush’s or Donald Trump’s, who were both brought to us, in part, by Democratic-leaning voters thinking they were doing the right thing by voting for third party candidates.

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'Crazy and disproven' MAGA conspiracy likely fueling Venezuela invasion: analysis

Bulwark Managing Editor Sam Stein and Publisher Sarah Longwell say Donald Trump’s inconsistent reasoning for invading Venezuela and kidnapping its president suggests other ulterior motives behind the attack.

“He said in his Fox interview,” said Stein, speaking on a live podcast of the president’s Saturday morning press conference on the invasion. “… This gets to motivations and obviously there’s a question of [Venezuela’s] oil or is it the drugs. He did notably compare Maduro’s election to his own 2020 loss. … It seems wild but there’s … been this longstanding election conspiracy in MAGA circles that Venezuela was involved in rigging the election in 2020. It's crazy and disproven but could it be a motivation?”

Last November, Trump’s federal investigators began interviewing people pushing unfounded claims that Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election from Trump. Two conspiracy theorists, according to the Guardian, briefed the U.S. attorney for the district of Puerto Rico, W Stephen Muldrow, and shared witnesses and documents with officials, according to multiple sources.

Critics said the bogus investigation revealed the willingness of Trump’s justice department to make itself a major weapon in Trump’s efforts to rewrite the history of his 2020 failure, while also buttressing arguments to take military action against Venezuela.

“If that is part of Trump’s calculus then that is Trump’s addled, insane, conspiracy mind making it up,” answered Longwell. “It’s funny because it’s Jan. 3. We are up on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attacks resulting from Trump’s taking that [stolen election] lie and shoving that conspiracy theory to his supporters and the Republican Party.”

Longwell added that Trump offers “no consistent position for taking Maduro out,” while also pardoning proven drug kingpins including Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández just a few months ago.

“[Since] there [is no] direct American benefit from this then what you have left is Trump’s weird grievance over his belief that Venezuela interfered in his reelection and the cosplaying he loves to do looking like a tough guy on the international stage,” Longwell said. “Who can make sense of what’s going on in Trump’s head?”

Watch the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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Former RNC spokesman questions why 'trigger-happy' agent was deployed in Minneapolis

Bulwark editor Sam Stein and podcaster Tim Miller blasted the Trump administration for knowingly deploying a “trigger-happy” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent back onto streets to kill a Minneapolis mother.

That agent, Jonathan Ross, was based out of the agency’s St. Paul field office before he shot Renee Good in the face and killed her Wednesday, setting off a political firestorm and a flurry of defensive accusations from the White House.

Vice President JD Vance slammed the press for covering Ross firing upon the woman as she pulled away in her vehicle, accusing reporters of not being more understanding of the officer’s fear of cars.

“The way that the media by and large has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day. What that headline leaves out is the fact that that very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 33 stitches in his leg,” Vance told reporters on Thursday. “So, you think maybe he's a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?”

“The thing that caught my eye was this ICE officer who apparently has been hit before, had 30 stitches, put it in his leg, and according to JD Vance, therefore is justified for being trigger-happy,” said Stein. “I'm sorry, but if you think this guy is trigger-happy because he's been hit by a car, don't put him in a situation like that. That's obvious. Why would you deploy someone who you admit is trigger-happy? It's just totally irresponsible. This administration's entire approach to justifying what happened is impossible, kind of repulsive, but also doesn't make any sense whatsoever.”

Miller, a former Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesperson and ex-speechwriter for President George W. Bush, asked why Ross was standing in front of Good’s vehicle if he has a learned fear of cars in the first place.

“The theory that this guy's trigger-happy because he got run over by a car before, and so goes and walks and stands right in front of the driver of this car and starts screaming — like, the whole thing doesn't [make sense] like that,” Miller said. “You have an obligation as a public servant, as somebody that works for all of us, for starters, to show your face. And No. 2: to use discretion. There should be a higher bar for police than. … I’m just saying a law enforcement official should be better trained.”

Watch the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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'Dramatic exit interview': Political insiders stunned by bombshell chief of staff interview

An extensive interview with President Donald Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles dropped on Tuesday from Vanity Fair, sending shockwaves through the political world as she revealed what she really thought about Cabinet officials in the administration.

Bill Kristol, former chief of staff to ex-Vice President Dan Quayle, called the piece "a dramatic exit interview from Susie Wiles."

After reading it, Kristol posted, "Wiles lies to try to duck blame. 'In the interview, Wiles took issue with the quote about [Musk's] drug use. "That’s ridiculous, I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know." But Whipple played a tape for The Times in which she could be heard saying it.'"

Wiles quipped at one point, “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]" and referred to his "microdosing.”

Democratic strategist Jon Cooper agreed, questioning how much longer "Wiles will have a job."

NBC's Sahil Kapur pointed specifically to Wiles' comments that Attorney General Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" in handling the investigation files around Jeffrey Epstein.

The Bulwark's Tim Miller pointed to the excerpt on the report showing that Wiles still doesn't know how Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred from the Florida penitentiary to what Miller calls "Club Fed," a prison camp that typically doesn't allow sex offenders.

However, the text says that Wiles claimed neither she nor Trump "had been consulted about Maxwell's transfer to a less restrictive facility after Blanche's visit," the report said.

"The president was ticked," Wiles claimed. "The president was mighty unhappy. I don't know why they moved her. Neither does the president." However, she said that "if that's an important point, I can find out."

Political podcaster Joanne Carducci, a.k.a. @JoJoFromJerz highlighted the piece of the report in which Wiles confessed Trump is "using criminal prosecutions to retaliate against adversaries." The report also said that Wiles, "acknowledged that he was not telling the truth when [Trump] accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein."

"Tell us more, won't you, Susie Wiles," Carducci commented.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-N.Y.) communications director remarked about that same excerpt, "Damn. Susie Wiles still has to like, go to work today after saying this."

Never Trumper, Rick Wilson, cautioned, "Susie Wiles is gonna have a tough day."

The Bulwark's Sam Stein remarked, "This Susie Wiles interview is wild. But also shows that she really does see herself as a facilitator for Trump, not a strategist employed by him: Openly disagreeing with the boss on a host of big fronts with apparently zero thought that she might not be the right fit."

Meghan McCarthy, who previously worked Courier Newspaper, replied to Stein commenting, "The intention of doing this article seems to be humanizing herself, but instead she comes off like heartless robot. It’s wild to be like, oh USAID was very bad, moving on…"

Stein also pointed out, "Buried in the Wiles interview is that she concedes the president would need authorization from Congress if he were to authorize a land incursion into Venezuela. I'm sure they'll say she's wrong. But a notable marker there."

Writer Charlotte Clymer hoped the establishment wouldn't try to lionize Wiles after coming forward.

"I haven't yet read the Susie Wiles interview, but let me guess: the whole of legacy media are going to pretend she sincerely expected a competent and ethical environment under Trump and she's now 'speaking truth to power' and thus gets a pass on her willful complicity?" she asked.

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New videos show immediate aftermath of 'ambush attack' on 2 National Guardsmen in DC

Two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington D.C and remain in critical condition as of Wednesday evening. The suspect has been detained and their name has not yet been released.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Weija Jiang tweeted Wednesday that the shooting was an "ambush attack," citing additional reporting from CBS' Anna Schechter.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein posted video to his X account of what he described as "aftermath of the shooting" in the downtown area of Washington D.C., which took place outside of the Farragut West Metro station. The video shows a group multiple police and National Guardsmen who appear to be grappling with and punching someone on the ground, while a guardsman is seen lying motionless on the ground nearby.

Stein posted an additional video of police performing first aid on a shirtless man with no pants and wearing black underwear, describing it as "a bit gruesome."

In a CNN segment from Wednesday afternoon, reporter Evan Perez told host Manu Raju that the gunman fired three shots from a handgun at the two guardsmen, who exchanged gunfire with him. The suspect was injured in the altercation, though it was not immediately clear whether he was struck by gunfire or broken glass. There is currently no indication that any other suspects were involved.

Watch the videos below:

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New proof North Carolina's dysfunctional GOP is bent on destruction

It’s been a hallmark of most of the noteworthy political movements that have emerged and risen to power in modern times that their leaders aspired to use government power to improve society. Plenty of these movements were deeply flawed or downright fraudulent, but virtually all – even some of the worst authoritarian parties and leaders –have at least professed to have a plan for using the levers of power in an intentional way to make life better for average people.

Here in the U.S., until recently, even archconservatives who opposed many social welfare programs were still committed to strengthening the national defense in order to help defend the nation and its allies against foreign adversaries, and to boosting basic components of societal infrastructure that they saw as aiding in that effort — like public education, transportation and public health.

Weirdly and disturbingly, however, this is not the case with the MAGA movement. While it’s true that Donald Trump regularly dispenses absurd and delusional promises to magically solve every societal ill – promises that not even his most ardent supporters take seriously – when it comes to fashioning a real agenda for getting things done, the modern right is consistently and harmfully silent.

Indeed, save for their efforts to: a) enhance state police power vis a vis immigrant communities and women seeking to control their own reproduction, and b) strengthen their own capacity to remain in power through gerrymandering and election-rigging tactics, it’s clear that the main objective of MAGA conservatives when it comes to public structures is tearing things down.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in North Carolina where, after a decade and a half of conservative Republican dominance in state government, it’s virtually impossible to identify any public system or structure – public and higher education, public health, environmental protection, transportation, courts and corrections — in which things are demonstrably better than they were at the start of GOP rule.

And nowhere is this sad pattern better exemplified today in North Carolina than in the current destructive budget stalemate between conservative leaders at the General Assembly.

North Carolina is now almost five months into the 2025-26 fiscal year, and it continues to operate without a new state budget. As a result, numerous core public structures and systems – perhaps most notably, its already fragile and dramatically under-resourced Medicaid health insurance program – are operating under old law and old, inadequate appropriations.

Mind you, this is not – as an outsider might superficially surmise – the result of a conflict between the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and its Democratic governor.

No, in this case, GOP legislative leaders never even passed a comprehensive budget bill for Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to consider. Instead, the state is being held hostage to their internal disputes over how drastically and rapidly to further eviscerate the state’s regressive and inadequate income tax structure, as well as a series of other mostly petty matters – like Senate Leader Phil Berger’s need to appear sufficiently reactionary as he tries to fend off a far-right Republican primary challenger in 2026.

Gov. Stein has done his best to break the logjam and direct public attention to the destructive impact the stalemate is having – particularly on the Medicaid program, where the lack of funding certainty has forced his Health and Human Services department to slash reimbursements to providers to maintain program solvency. Earlier this month, he took the extraordinary step of calling lawmakers to Raleigh for a special legislative session to address the rapidly metastasizing problem that is likely to soon lead to preventable deaths of people no longer able to access health care.

It was precisely the kind of strong and common-sense leadership that North Carolinians undoubtedly expected when they elected Stein by a wide margin last November. The session was supposed to have commenced on Monday.

Unfortunately, legislative leaders were unmoved. Much like the Republicans in Washington who, despite their control of both Congress and the White House, allowed their own internal conflicts to translate into a record-breaking federal government shutdown and huge new health insurance rate hikes for millions of Americans, state Senate and House leaders have simply ignored Stein’s directive and, in true Trumpian fashion, tried to disavow blame for the Medicaid crisis that their own failure to act has created.

And so, it appears that, absent a hard-to-imagine political 180, Republican leaders will stick to their plan to hold no further votes during the on-again, off-again 2025 legislative session, thereby allowing the Medicaid program – and dozens of other vitally important public structures and services — to wither on the vine while thousands of North Carolinians needlessly suffer.

And once again, instead of coming together to intentionally use the levers of government power to make life better for the many, Republican leaders will, in true MAGA fashion, remain committed to a do-nothing agenda for which the only discernible unifying principles are dysfunction and cruelty.

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Trump heads to swing state NC as his approval drops to a record low

President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to North Carolina Friday to address the affordability crisis as his poll numbers in the state drop to record lows.

Newsweek reported Friday that the new survey by Elon University and YouGov from the second half of November shows his disapproval rate is at 51 percent. His approval rating dropped to just 35 percent.

North Carolina hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since the 2008 election for President Barack Obama, but there is an open U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in the 2026 midterms, as well as newly drawn congressional districts.

The report cited North Carolina State Board of Elections data showing that there are a little over 1,200 more Democratic voters in the state than Republicans.

The House and Senate have small Republican majorities, and if Democrats are able to win a minor number of seats it could sway the power balance to block the GOP agenda, effectively making Trump a "lame duck president" for his final two years in office.

One of Trump's strongest voting blocks in 2024 was men, but the new numbers show just 40 percent of men approve of his job while 48 percent disapprove.

"Separately, the poll also revealed that the overall approval rating of North Carolina's Democratic Governor Josh Stein stood at 44 percent, while 22 percent disapproved and 34 percent were unsure," Newsweek noted.

Read the report here.

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Lawyers 'astonished' at mass exodus from Trump DOJ as recruiting 'plummets'

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is has lost thousands of experienced staff — many of whom are attorneys — and it has so far been unable to bring in enough new talent to make up for its losses.

That's according to a Monday article by the Washington Post's Perry Stein, who reported that despite the DOJ previously being seen as a premier destination for graduates of top law schools, its recruiting numbers have since "plummeted" during President Donald Trump's second term. While the DOJ keeps roughly 10,000 attorneys on its payroll at any given time, the Post reported that the DOJ has since lost roughly 5,500 staff (not all of whom are attorneys) due to resignations, firings or buyout offers from the administration.

Many of the departures include the vast bulk of the 600 people in the DOJ's civil rights division, along with hundreds of prosecutors who worked on cases involving January 6 defendants, and those who assisted Special Counsels Robert Mueller and Jack Smith in their investigations of Trump. Other prosecutors have been driven out for refusing to bring cases against Trump's political enemies due to a lack of evidence.

Former Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor told the Post that the Washington D.C.-based university used to be a pipeline to the DOJ for its top graduates. However, he said there's since been "a total drop in who is applying."

"It’s very, very dramatic," he said. "It’s gone from a good amount of our graduating class to virtually no one applying for jobs at the Justice Department."

Stein reported that U.S. attorneys' offices are seeing much higher turnover than in previous administrations. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro (who Trump appointed to the prestigious District of Columbia office) admitted on Fox News in August that her office was "down 90 prosecutors, 60 investigators and paralegals" and used her interview with Laura Ingraham to beg viewers to apply to work at the DOJ. He also reported that U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros — who runs the DOJ's Chicago office in the Northern District of Illinois — also emailed former prosecutors asking them to apply to work out of his office and encouraged them to send his recruiting email to their colleagues, according to Stein.

"I was astonished. I have never seen anything like that. When I came to the U.S. attorney’s office, I had won 13 state murder prosecutions, and I still thought I had such a slim chance of getting a job because it was such an ultracompetitive place," retired Chicago attorney Mark Rotert told the Post. "Now it’s like, ‘If you ever threw a pass, do you want to be a quarterback?'"

Some of the dearth in the DOJ's ranks may be due to the administration not wanting to hire any attorneys who graduated from schools that have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming, according to DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin. But Stein reported that the DOJ has not officially blacklisted any universities in its efforts to bolster hiring. One unnamed source told the Post that the Trump administration is prioritizing applicants with more explicitly political backgrounds, like those who have worked for the Republican National Committee or applicants who have worked for right-wing advocacy groups.

Click here to read the Post's full report.

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