killings

Puck reports Ben Shapiro’s MAGA entertainment site Daily Wire, “with its sweeping layoffs and a steep drop-off in audience, has actually been a long time coming.”

“Media analysts have noted a drastic decline in The Daily Wire’s audience, including the loss of 80,000 YouTube subscribers so far this year,” reports Puck media writer Dylan Byers. “Kyle Tharp, a researcher who tracks political influence online, said Ben’s hemorrhaging audience represented ‘the steepest decline of any major political channel in 2026.’ (‘He’s lost the juice,’ Kyle told me.) Meanwhile, The Daily Wire recently enacted layoffs that, I’m told, affected 42 employees, or a little under 20 percent of the headcount.”

Sources close to the company claim the cuts are a course correction after years of mismanagement and overhiring, and they attribute audience loss to platform algorithms. But Byers reports Shapiro’s competitors and other industry insiders suspect the falling off more concerns a “MAGA vibe shift,” and the growing unpopularity of his support for Israel and the war in Iran.

“In any event, political pundits are a notoriously combative species, and Ben’s critics have delighted in the chance to twist the knife,” said Byers. “Candace Owens, who has been in a perennial fight with Ben since her termination from The Daily Wire two years ago in the wake of her antisemitic remarks, has alleged that much of Ben’s audience comes through inorganic paid channels.”

MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, claimed Shapiro represents “the outer fringe of the outer fringe. … Nobody watches this stuff, there’s no audience for this, there is no constituency for it.”

A shift is some of it, wagers Byers, but Shapiro and the other co-founder and co-C.E.O. Caleb Robinson were growing increasingly disillusioned with Jeremy’s Boreing management, particularly with his infatuation with an eight-figure in-house behemoth called The Pendragon Cycle. Boreing began working on that project, a seven-episode Arthurian fantasy series, in 2023.

Just before his departure, Boreing told Axios that The Daily Wire was “not closed off to an offer” from a potential buyer like Fox.

“Eighteen months, seven episodes of The Pendragon Cycle, and one vibe shift later, one wonders if they’ve already missed their window,” said Byers.

CNN Senior writer Zachary Wolf says President Donald Trump keeps teasing that a deal to end the war with Iran is nearly over, but it never is — and voters are getting angry.

“It’s one of a series of Iran talking points he has been repeating for months,” said Wolf. “The war itself has changed — evolving from one of shock and awe to a monthlong ceasefire in which each side has imposed a costly blockade on the other. But Trump’s talking points have stayed the same.’

Like a skipping record, Wolf said Trump keeps repeating that the U.S. is in charge, Iran’s military is devastated and things are going to be over soon. However, these aren’t answers. They’re not even correct.

This, said Wolf, is a problem because situation’s change but Trump’s braggadocio never does.

“There is a ceasefire, but Iran has gained leverage by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. But the talking point remains the same,” said Wolf. And just before the ceasefire, Trump argued the war was going according to his plan, claiming we are “weeks ahead of schedule." But days later, on March 26, he got mad that Iranians were not willing to agree to a U.S. proposal and began lobbing threats on Truth Social. Indeed, the only thing that’s changed was Trump stopped claiming the was is “ahead of schedule.”

“All this makes it very difficult to know how seriously to take his assurances about the proximity of a deal,” said Wolf, and “the White House messaging on the war has been ineffective, if dour polling is to be believed.”

Still, Trump keeps going with it: “It’ll be over quickly,” he told a tele-rally for a Republican candidate in Georgia this week.

“… I think it’s got a very good chance of ending, and if it doesn’t end, we have to go back to bombing the hell out of them,” he told PBS earlier in the week.

“… Very soon,” he told reporters on March 9.

And with each timeframe slippage the end of the war remains “just off in the distance,” far enough away to infuriate voters and bedevil his Republican Party fighting to maintain a House and Senate majority.

Mediaite reports President Donald Trump kicked off his Saturday morning social media rant with a poll “defending” his war in Iran.

The problem: It’s old information — and he read it wrong.

“Very important. This is where our Nation stands!!! President DJT” Trump wrote, while posting a link to an article from a pro-Trump outlet.

But the outlet did not deliver the news he was probably looking for, despiteits nature as Trump-friendly propaganda.

The article, “Majority say preventing Iran from acquiring nukes more important than ending war: Poll,” used a single data point from a Rasmussen-affiliated poll claiming “a narrow majority of 53 percent of U.S. voters say it is more important to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon than it is to end the fighting, according to a Napolitan News survey” and that “a further 60 percent prioritize preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon on stabilizing energy prices in the U.S.”

But Mediaite reports both the article and the poll was from early April — and that the rest of that poll delivered no good news for Trump’s deeply unpopular war.

“Currently 39 percent of voters favor the attacks on Iran while 54 percent oppose them,” Mediaite reports, citing the poll. Additionally, Traditional GOP voters opposed Trump’s attacks on Iran by a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent.

Support for the war was near 40 percent since its onset, while opposition has fluctuated from a low of 46 percent, after the first missile strikes, to a high of 61 percent at the beginning of April as Iran’s retaliatory closure of the Strait of Hormuz and subsequent fuel and grocery costs increased.

New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker found himself surprised by the Trump administration’s sheer aggression in pursuing the perceived enemies of President Donald Trump.

CNN reported on Friday that DOJ southern district prosecutor Jason Reding Quiñones arrived in Washington DC, last month to update top Justice Department officials about a distinct lack of progress. Trump’s people wanted prosecutors building criminal cases against former CIA Director John Brennan and other government officials who dared to investigate Trump between 2016 and 2024.

But sources told CNN that Quiñones’ office opened the meeting with a “firm” assessment that there was not a strong case, and that any case the DOJ fabricated would never make it to a guilty verdict — if it even managed to struggle past a grand jury.

“With Reding Quiñones sitting near her, Maria Medetis Long, the seasoned prosecutor who has led the probe since its start, told acting Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald and Trent McCotter, his top deputy, that the case against Brennan was too weak to bring, and the evidence didn’t support the charges of lying to Congress that Justice officials and House Republicans have sought,” said CNN, according to “people briefed on the matter.”

But Long’s assessment got a frosty reception from Trump’s lieutenants.

“That’s not good enough,” was the message she received, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

It was an ominous warning, considering Trump had fired former Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to prosecute his political enemies.

It did not help that at an earlier meeting with Bondi in April — the day Trump fired her, according to CNN — Reding Quiñones had told Bondi that prosecutors in his office “could bring the charges over lying to Congress against Brennan by the end of the year,” according to people briefed on the matter.

Now, with Trump’s personal lawyer Todd Blanche holding sway over the freshly politicized DOJ, “the latest update from Florida set the stage for a major shakeup to deliver on what Reding Quiñones has been promising since last fall,” reports CNN.

CNN reports nonpartisan prosecutors working in Florida began evacuated the department soon after Trump installed or elevated his hatchet-men.

“We all saw what Trump had said during the campaign, so people knew what was possible,” a former senior prosecutor in the office said. “But no one expected them to just come in and destroy everything. So much experience in that office, just gone.”

It comes at us in waves …

It relentlessly pounds away at our heart and soul, threatening to break us in two …

This week it again washed ashore in all the likely places — Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and finally our corrupted, irredeemable “Supreme” Court housed in what was once the world’s cradle of democracy, Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump’s Republicans not only refuse to atone for America’s original sin, but are intent on re-injecting its poison into a new generation’s veins just to make good and sure we never properly heal.

Anytime our so-called united states get within striking distance of truly congealing into a democratic republic where there really is liberty and justice for ALL, the well-funded GOP fiends, who stay plenty flush by dividing us, spread their unlimited cash and outsized influence to make sure the crack between us widens and can never be crossed.

Nothing scares these morally busted garbage peddlers more than a cohesive electorate, or a fair election.

The reality of a Black president, and a Black woman vice president was so unbearable for these bog-snorters and their shattered moral compasses that the final House district in Tennessee that stood on a foundation of fairness and true representation was set aflame by their tiki torches Thursday.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is now just a relic from a time America at least gave the appearance it was interested in evolution.

The Republican Party has become so brazen in their odious efforts to erase Black people, they no longer feel the need to wear hoods while they pile high barriers to voting booths, and leadership positions in our government, universities, and places of influence.

This is a national emergency.

Better to just incinerate a healthcare program that insures tens of millions of Americans with no viable alternative in place, than to continue anything with Obama’s name on it.

Better to enter an unwinnable and costly war with Iran than continue with the peace our nation’s only Black president brokered in our planet’s most volatile region.

At its core America is a racist country, and there is plenty of dirty money to be made by the clutch of bankrupt billionaires who spend all their time keeping it that way.

America is not, nor has it ever been, a great nation. The insistence on implying anything different is borne of weakness not strength. We are a dark room without mirrors. We can’t bear to look at ourselves, so we look outside our windows and find fault with others who don’t share our skin color.

If actions are stronger than words, then a nation that engages in one senseless war after another, steps on the necks of its own citizens, and confuses a truly rich life with one of wealth and appalling privilege is a complete and utter failure.

It is not remotely great.

Time and again, America has diagnosed its sickness, and made good-faith efforts to cure it, before grotesque men like Rupert Murdoch have decided there was no money to be made in a nation strong enough to admit its weaknesses.

Exploiting our original sin for their gain is, to quote Hillary Clinton, “deplorable.”

I have seen far too many people of both political parties say we cannot make everything about race. Well, I say we can no longer afford not to, because looking away has never worked.

Without fail, these pleas come from the mouths of white people, who are either insulated from hard truths, or worse are just too cowardly to address this terribly sad reality.

I cannot pretend to know what is truly inside a Black man’s heart and mind, but I can seek it out, and do what I can to help with their centuries-old afflictions.

Better to look like a fool while running a good and noble errand in the name of equality, than doing the fool’s work of pretending everybody is good and equal in America.

As an old, white man I am highly qualified to diagnose my condition which is, and always has been, privilege. Too many white men were born halfway up the ladder, but confuse it with making a mighty climb. These are the people who go through their empty lives holding onto a lofty status that was never earned.

There are the people who are inside this corrupted Trump White House who are almost too stupid and ridiculous to imagine. Forget the president, what about his crooked, no-talent cabinet that includes Pete Hegseth, Markwayne Mullin, Lee Zeldin, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Sean Duffy and RFK Jr.?

None of these people got their jobs on any merit. Quite the opposite: They got their jobs because of their allegiance to a broken and bigoted man, who grew up in a world where loyalty and respect weren’t earned, but claimed by a wretched, cold hand holding tight to a whip.

There has never been a single time and place in history where diversity, equity and inclusion was needed more, because America has never been sicker.

This strain of bigotry might be the most lethal one yet, because it is coming from the very top of our government, and filtering its way through our elected offices, our military, our highest courts, and into our schools.

It is crawling over us, and there are seemingly no barriers to prevent its spread … except one: US.

We must all do what we can to turn racism away, and stay true to our hearts. We must rally like-thinkers, and amplify our quest to finally and once and for all address America’s inequity, and grab it by its roots and shake it.

We must call it what is.

Silence is not an option, only a pacifier.

Until this is finally done — and it must be done — millions of beautiful people will continue to suffer needlessly for simply entering this world a certain color.

Is there really anything more sickening and tragic than that?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.