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THE BIG PICTURE
The Pope is calling out Silicon Valley. A Twitch streamer is being subpoenaed for delivering food. And the "nothing left to lose" caucus inside the GOP is growing — even calling out the First Lady — as midterms grow closer.
Memorial Day 2026 is not a quiet news day.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
1. Outgoing GOPers Massie & Tillis fire live rounds at MAGA
Two Republicans with nothing left to lose are saying out loud what the rest of the caucus whispers.
Thomas Massie — freshly primaried out of his seat by a Trump-backed Navy SEAL under mysterious circumstances — has gone fully unshackled, warning that Trump has "alienated" voters and his party faces what he's calling "Trump disappointment syndrome" heading into the midterms.
Then he dropped a genuine bomb: invoking Melania by name in connection with the Epstein files, saying "the first lady knows that Jeffrey Epstein didn't act alone.”
Meanwhile, departing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis used a CNN interview Sunday to unload on virtually everything: the $1.8 billion slush fund ("whoever did it should be fired"), Trump's MAGA-backed Texas candidate, and the Iran deal.(Huffington Post News). This is the same "stupid on stilts" guy we flagged last week, but it's now escalating from venting to on-camera scorched-earth.
When your own people are this loud on Memorial Day weekend, the volume this coming week will (hopefully) be deafening.
TODAY’S QUESTION
2. Trump's Iran Deal Theater Is Falling Apart in Real Time
The president declared a deal with Iran "largely negotiated" before anything was actually signed — and now he's catching fire from every direction. Republican hawks Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are calling it a "disastrous mistake." Senior officials are quietly walking back Trump's boasts and buying time.
Iran's own state media says the Strait of Hormuz — the supposed centerpiece of the deal — stays under Iranian control. Meanwhile, Cory Booker says Trump is being "played as a fool."
Even the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch property, is raising alarms about who actually holds the leverage. This is a story with multiple detonation points — the deal either collapses publicly or gets exposed as a hollow photo-op.
3. Russia Hits Kyiv With Hypersonic Missiles — and Nobody in Washington Is Watching
While American media was focused on Iran deal drama over the weekend, Russia launched a mass aerial assault on Kyiv using hypersonic Oreshnik missiles, damaging residential buildings, schools, and government offices. The attack is one of the most intense in months. Compounding the context: a new report suggests Putin is increasingly isolated domestically, with "profound disappointment" spreading even among the Russian elite — yet he remains determined to press on. With Trump consumed by Iran negotiations, the question of whether the U.S. has any coherent Ukraine policy at all is about to get very loud.
4. The Pope just released a major manifesto on AI — and it's not what you'd expect
Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical Monday — an 83-page document titled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) — and it reads less like a church document and more like a progressive policy agenda for the digital age.
The pope called on governments to regulate AI, warned that companies invoking ethics "in the abstract" isn't enough, and said every introduction of automation should come with "verifiable measures to protect employment" for workers displaced by it. He went further on wealth: global prosperity is "increasingly concentrated" in fewer hands, and the "invisible hand" of the market can no longer be trusted to fix it.
Oh, and he issued a historic apology for the Catholic Church's own role in legitimizing the trans-Atlantic slave trade — connecting centuries of colonial exploitation directly to the new forms of digital labor and extraction AI is fueling today.
The encyclical was presented alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. Yes, that Anthropic.
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5. Hasan Piker & CodePink Subpoenaed for Delivering Aid to People in Need
The Trump administration just sent a message to progressive media — and it came in the form of a federal subpoena.
Twitch mega-streamer Hasan Piker and CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin have been served subpoenas after traveling to Cuba to deliver humanitarian aid. Others on the same trip — including the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar — are reportedly facing similar legal pressure.
"The American government would rather try to criminalize delivering aid to a country we've starved, than punish the Epstein class," Piker said.
He says he cleared the trip with the U.S. government before going, and is calling the whole thing an "intimidation tactic." This is the Trump administration using the legal system to punish people for delivering food and medicine to a sanctioned country — the exact definition of criminalizing dissent.
Piker has a massive, young, politically engaged audience that will not take this quietly.
But this isn't really about Cuba. This is a pattern. The Trump administration has spent months testing how far it can go to silence voices that challenge it — rolling back press freedoms, punishing journalists, charging protesters under anti-terrorism statutes. Today it's a Twitch streamer. Tomorrow it may be a reporter, a documentarian, anyone.
That's not paranoia. It’s the lesson of the last several months.
KEPT OUT OF YOUR FEED
What the algorithm buried:
Megyn Kelly says MAGA is now down to a "tiny group" — and she's got receipts from the inside.
She also just said out loud what everyone already knew about Trump and his marriages.
Trump spent Sunday photoshopping Obama into a prison jumpsuit — and the Brady Bunch got dragged into it.
Trump is also posting that he's getting younger with each passing day — the 79-year-old's Truth Social feed is something else entirely.
JD Vance crashed a Supreme Court dinner — and Chief Justice Roberts didn't even mention him in his remarks.
Mike Johnson claims Trump is the "ONLY one" who could get Iran to the negotiating table — Twitter's Community Notes had thoughts.
Marco Rubio flew to New Delhi and accidentally called his own boss a "stupid person" — then the State Department quietly deleted the post proving it happened.
CBS tried to silence Stephen Colbert's final Trump troll — then quietly backed down
The ballroom at the center of Trump's second term tells you everything about who he's actually building it for.
Ron DeSantis's "Alligator Alcatraz" is costing Florida $1 million a day — and one diabetic detainee left so sick he couldn't get an MRI because of his ankle monitor.
SNAP used to exempt former foster kids from work requirements. Congress just ended that.
The Trump family is making billions off crypto and prediction markets — and gutting the agency that's supposed to stop them.
NOTICE POLLING
Yesterday, we asked, Do you think the recent “assassination attempts” are staged?
OVER 84% OF YOU SAID YES:
“Honestly, who knows? Who cares? One cannot believe anything coming from this administration. Wake me when they've been replaced by intelligent, caring beings who are strong and competent leaders.”
- capthonb3“He keeps the 38% by staging these stupid events. Keeps his name on the front page. Unfortunately I think it’s working. He will find a way to negate the midterms.”
- fdibble
“It seems too easy for these assassination attempters to get close enough to have a shot. How are they walking up to the White House with weapons? Where is the security? Just another ballroom/bunker attempt to scam money out of the taxpayers. He's nothing more than the boy who cried wolf.”
- obitlinda1712
“These ‘assassins’ make WAY too much noise BEFORE they ever get close enough to be a real danger. They have all been as inept as Trump's cabinet members. It's almost as though someone picked them up off the street and gave them the "job" by threatening their families.”
- michaelhogshooter
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WATCH THIS
The "Nothing Left to Lose" Republican. Massie and Tillis have started a new club: the GOP members who, freed from electoral consequence, are suddenly willing to say out loud what everyone else is whispering.
This group will grow as the midterms get closer and more Republicans decide Trump is too much of a liability. Watch for retirement announcements as a leading indicator.
That's it for today. We’ll see you tomorrow!