Daily Kos

A bizarre mystery is playing out in New Jersey’s most competitive congressional district—the district where I happen to live. Rep. Tom Kean Jr.—one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection—has been MIA since March 5, missing dozens of House votes and sending staff in his place to events in his district. Kean’s office said that he has a “personal health matter” that he’s attending to, but will “be returning to a regular full schedule soon.” His staff also told Politico that he’s running for reelection and that, “he’s looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail very soon.” “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Harrison Neely, Kean’s spokesperson, told Punchbowl News Thursday. “Congressman Kean is going to be back to a full schedule very soon. He will be 100% healthy and is excited to get back to work.” The spokesperson doth protest too much, methinks. But notably, not even GOP leadership—which is currently working with a narrowest of majorities, making it difficult to pass anything let alone critical legislation such as funding bills—knows what this vague “health matter” is. “I don’t have any idea what’s going on,” an unnamed House GOP aide told Punchbowl News, which reported that six other GOP lawmakers and staffers “in and around the GOP leadership” also have no idea where the hell Kean has gone. In April, after whispers about Kean’s whereabouts grew louder, The New York Times knocked on Kean’s door in his hometown of Westfield but got no reply. Neighbors also declined to comment to the Times on whether they’d seen Kean. Ultimately, one would assume that a “personal health matter” that requires you to miss 70 days of work and keeps you completely out of the public eye has to be serious. It’s also worth noting that in no other business could an employee disappear and not tell anyone, let alone their bosses, where they are. But given that Kean is asking voters to reelect him, those voters deserve to know the status of his health so they can make an informed decision, especially since he would be reelected to a full two-year term.

Outgoing Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday called a special session of the Peach State Legislature, ordering the GOP-controlled body to redraw the state’s congressional maps for the 2028 cycle to extract more seats for his party. Why would Kemp ask the Legislature to redraw the maps now, even though they wouldn’t go into effect until the next election cycle, you ask? It’s because Republicans are terrified they will lose the governor’s race this fall. If Democrats win the open gubernatorial contest, it would prevent Georgia Republicans from passing a rigged Republican map next year as the governor has veto power over the redraw. And Georgia electing a Democratic governor is a real possibility this year, as President Donald Trump’s abysmal approval rating threatens to sink members of his own party up and down the ballot. A recent poll from a Republican polling firm found the likely Democratic nominee leading all of the possible Republican candidates in a hypothetical general election matchup. It’s easy to see why. Already, Georgia is showing signs of Democratic strength. Democrats notched massive over-performances in a handful of special elections, including a 25-point over-performance in former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district. What’s more, in December Democrats flipped a seat in the Georgia state House that Trump had carried in 2024, according to data from the Downballot. And early voting in the state’s upcoming primaries on Tuesday has been heavily Democratic, even though both Democrats and Republicans have competitive statewide primaries. As of Wednesday, Democrats have a nearly 11% turnout advantage on Republicans. That’s a massive shift from the 2022 election, when Republicans outvoted Democrats at this stage of early voting by 15%. Worse yet for Republicans is that their early voting turnout is actually down from this same point in the 2022 cycle, which itself was a mixed year for the GOP with Kemp winning reelection but Republicans losing the Senate contest to Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a little short on cash. You see, the Army is apparently short $4 to $6 billion, and while that is a lot of money to the rest of us, it’s pretty much pocket change for the Pentagon. So Hegseth just needs to make a few small adjustments here and there, which led him to a terrific solution: drastically cut training for servicemembers. Chat, is it good when—in the middle of what the Wall Street Journal describes as “Air War in Iran Gives Way to Crippling Stalemate in Hormuz”—the Defense Department decreases its Army pilot flight training hours to the mandatory minimum? What about when it cancels its Army Sapper Leader Course on combat engineering or all of its artillery training courses? Pffft, warfighters don’t need that stuff. Whiskey Pete, pay no attention to the Pentagon’s internal plan saying that the Army Corps’ aviation units would be deploying next year at “a lower state of readiness” or that it would take an entire year for units to build back “combat proficiency.” Well, at least it’s only one branch of the military that has to deal with this, right? Wrong. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told Congress Tuesday that the Navy could run out of money by July, which could cause interruptions in training and other operations. It’s honestly astonishing that the military could be facing any sort of shortfall given that the Pentagon’s budget—initially set at $839 billion for this fiscal year—got a $156 billion boost, bumping it to nearly $1 trillion. And next year, if President Donald Trump and Hegseth get their way, it will have $1.5 trillion to completely mismanage. But Hegseth doesn’t have that money yet, now does he? Right now, Trump’s ridiculous war in Iran has burned through … well, the Pentagon doesn’t actually know how much the war has cost thus far. It could be $29 billion, it could be $40 to 50 billion. It’s neat how government spending is now an untraceable mess.

President Donald Trump and his entourage arrived in China Wednesday for what is ostensibly a diplomatic trip where he will try to persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more soybeans from U.S. farmers and also, pretty please, maybe help with the Strait of Hormuz. But this voyage is looking a lot like Trump’s Middle East trip last May, where handpicked CEOs tagged along so they could do some business deals. And this time around, we don’t just have some lucky ducky business titans hitching a ride. Also on the official diplomatic trip? Nepo baby Eric Trump and his wife, Lara. But don’t worry—Eric says they are merely joining the trip “in a personal capacity.” Honestly, we weren’t aware that one could somehow be part of an official diplomatic delegation but also just be there as a widdle guy taking in the sights or something. A Trump Organization spokesperson explained that Eric pinky-swears he is totally not gonna do any deals while he is there. “Eric is deeply proud of his father and the accomplishments of this term, and is attending in a personal capacity as a supportive son. He does not have business ventures in China nor plans on doing business in China,” the statement insisted. “He will not be participating in private meetings, but will instead stand alongside the president to mark this historic occasion.” Hmm. That might be more persuasive if Eric didn’t already have a partnership with a shady Chinese crypto company. Eric’s very own grifty crypto scheme, American Bitcoin Corp.—wow, such branding—has a partnership with Chinese bitcoin mining rig manufacturer Bitmain. Bitmain had been under a national security investigation here for months, in part over concerns that Bitmain computers could be controlled remotely from China.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum found himself on the hot seat during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing as Democrats pressed him over the possibly illegal $13.1 million no-bid contract for repairs to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado tried to pin Burgum down on who exactly approved the no-bid project. President Donald Trump initially boasted responsibility before backtracking and saying the interior secretary did. “Explain it to me here,” Neguse said. “My understanding of the federal procurement rules is that a no-bid contract is reserved for situations where ‘any delay would cause serious injury to the government.’ What is your proposition? There’d be ‘serious injury to the government’ if this company didn’t get the $13 million contract to do this particular project right now?” “Well, I think we do have a sense of urgency,” Burgum replied. Democratic Rep. Emily Randall of Washington confronted Burgum over his budget request, which includes $10 billion for a supposed “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program”—widely seen as a slush fund for Trump’s vanity projects—while allocating less than $3 billion for the country’s national parks. Randall even pulled out poster-board-sized photos: one showing a park trail bridge in desperate need of repairs and another showing an AI-generated image Trump posted to Truth Social, depicting himself, Burgum, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and an unidentified woman floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump was, for once in his life, honest with reporters on Tuesday when he admitted “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” when it comes to his inflationary war in Iran. And when asked to respond to Trump’s out-of-touch admission, Republicans are struggling to defend their Dear Leader’s indefensible remark. Get a load of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response when a reporter asked him at a Wednesday news conference whether Trump’s comment sends “the right message” to the American people.

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It’s more a question of the margin—i.e., how many seats Democrats will hold when all is said and done. And polling suggests Democrats have a number of opportunities to dip further into GOP territory, even in districts Republicans re-gerrymandered this year to try to stave off defeat. “Democrats remain favorites to flip the chamber in 2026,” Geoffrey Skelley, chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ, wrote on Monday. “The electoral environment remains quite positive for Democrats, such that they should win at least a fair number of light-red seats in November. This gives Democrats an ample number of seats to target—or fight to retain—that will more likely than not prove sufficient for them to claim a small House majority.” That’s because President Donald Trump’s popularity is mired in the mid- to low-30% range, as Democrats, independents, and even some self-identified Republicans disapprove of his job performance. What’s more, the generic ballot—which asks voters what party they want to see control Congress after the next election—has been steadily trending towards Democrats. Democrats now have a 6.1-percentage-point lead on the generic ballot, according to polling analyst Nate Silver’s average. That’s up nearly by 0.6 points since Trump launched his unpopular war in Iran.

The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has put out a public call for a right-leaning political figure to counteract New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if she decides to run for president in 2028. The appeal came in the second of two pieces written by the Post’s editorial board taking aim at Ocasio-Cortez over a 48-hour period. In the first piece, published May 7, the paper owned by one of the world’s wealthiest people (estimated net worth: over $276.7 billion) complained about a recent statement from the congresswoman on wealth inequality. Ocasio-Cortez was on a podcast when she shared her opinion that billionaires don’t earn their wealth. “You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that,” she said. That made the Post’s editorial board fume. “If someone becomes a billionaire selling expensive shoes, it’s because people want and are willing to pay for them. That’s something to celebrate, not admonish,” they whined. The paper also insisted that “to say that it’s impossible to legitimately earn a billion dollars is to put an arbitrary limit on human potential.” It is the sort of take made by people who answer to a man who owns a mega yacht worth $500 million but skips out on paying millions in income taxes, as Bezos does. Two days later, the Post was back on its anti-AOC crusade. The editorial board took issue with Ocasio-Cortez’s critique of Airbnb, who she said “could not exist at its current scale and size without the housing market destabilizations, displacements, and exploits that are supercharging the evictions of working people everywhere from Puerto Rico to Jackson Hole.”

President Donald Trump wants to suspend the gas tax to try to alleviate pain at the pump for Americans, who are seeing higher prices thanks to Trump’s idiotic war in Iran. “I think it’s a great idea,” Trump told CBS News on Monday. “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.” But suspending the gas tax—which Trump cannot do without congressional approval—would likely not do much for consumers, who are paying about 50% more per gallon since Trump started the war. “The irony of a gas tax suspension is that the higher prices go, the less of an impact it has,” Andrew Lautz, director of tax policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, wrote on X. “For a sedan at national [average] prices, filling up your car costs $18-$25 more than it did before the war. A federal gas tax holiday saves you up $2 per fillup.” That’s especially true if gas prices continue to climb due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused a catastrophic drop in oil accessibility. Indeed, economists say that suspending the 18-cents-per-gallon gas tax wouldn’t even amount to 18 cents per gallon in savings for consumers. Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the National Economic Council, said that Americans could see at most a decrease of 10 cents per gallon if the tax is suspended, as suppliers wouldn’t pass all of the savings down to consumers. “Per NBC, average gas prices are up $1.50 since the Iran war began, so a federal gas tax suspension producing a 10c/gallon reduction in prices at the pump is an expensive way to redress about 7% of the jump in prices from the administration’s decision to go to war,” Ramamurti wrote on X. What’s more, suspending the federal gas tax would make driving worse for Americans, as the gas tax goes toward the already underfunded Highway Trust Fund, which helps states repair highways.

It’s bad enough to see President Donald Trump destroy the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by making it look like a tacky Mar-a-Lago swimming hole. It’s worse to see that the whole endeavor has turned into just another grift. On Monday, The New York Times reported that costs for Trump’s so-called renovation of the pool have jumped sevenfold, which is … kind of a lot? Trump initially boasted that one of his pool guys was going to handle everything for $1.8 million, a lovely and magnanimous gesture to us taxpayers money. But that $1.8 million repair and ugly paint job is now up to $13.1 million, and it’s all going to a company called “Atlantic Industrial Coatings,” ostensibly chosen because it worked on the pool at one of Trump’s golf clubs. Was this contract a sweet no-bid deal, one where the administration just taps a vendor rather than engage the competitive bidding process that government contracts require? Of course it was! Was it given to a company that had never been awarded a federal contract? Of course it was! Was the initial contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings inexplicably initially for $6.9 million rather than the promised $1.8 million? Of course it was! To slide this pile of money over to Atlantic Industrial with no pesky bidding process, Trump invoked an exception allowing for no-bid contracts when there is “an unusual and compelling urgency” and that “delay in award of a contract would result in serious injury, financial or other, to the Government.” Of course, Trump hasn’t explained what the urgency is, or how not painting the reflecting pool blue would somehow cause “serious injury” to the government. Instead, we all know that Trump just wants it done in time for the Semiquincentennial on July 4th, which will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.. But now that initial $6.9 million contract isn’t enough, so the Interior Department nearly doubled the thing, turning another $6.2 million in taxpayer dollars over to the rando company Trump wanted to use.

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