The Social World

Tag: Texas

  • Trump bromances MbS as Epstein Files loom

    Trump bromances MbS as Epstein Files loom

    The contrast could hardly have been starker. As Donald Trump palled around with Mohammed bin Salman in the newly gilded Oval Office, Congress was voting on a transparency act that would further expose Jeffrey Epstein’s grave misdeeds. Trump, who had worked overtime to try and quash the vote, was in his element with the Saudi crown prince. Transparency? Not a bit of it. Trump proclaimed that the crown prince “knew nothing” about the death of Jamal Khashoggi who was, after all, “extremely controversial,” the term that he often deploys to describe anyone he dislikes or finds nettlesome. 

    The hero, or, to put it more precisely, heroine, of the day was Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is a profile in courage. She stood up for Epstein’s victims in an honorable and upright fashion that underscored the sordid nature of Trump’s attempt to suppress the release of the files in possession of the Justice Department. What those files will reveal is an open question. The likelihood that they will divulge anything incriminating about Trump seems slender – other than the fact that he has battled so ardently to prevent them from seeing the light of day.  

    In seeking to bury the files, Trump has been defending the very establishment that he professes to despise. Greene, in battling to ensure the release of the files, has revealed the rampant corruption in elite America, including the escapades of former Harvard president Larry Summers. Trump has referred to Greene as Marjorie “Traitor” Greene. She hit back today outside the US Capitol in the presence of Epstein’s victims, one of whom eloquently demanded that Trump stop seeking to politicize the brouhaha over the files.  

    According to Greene, “I fought for him for the policies and for America First. And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition. Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of Americans and Americans like the women standing behind me.” Strong words. 

    If Greene has been on something of a tear lately, she’s not the only one that has administered a shellacking to Trump. He has been suffering a number of defeats in other arenas. The latest arrived this afternoon when a Texas federal court struck down the state’s redistricting map that was designed to ensure an additional five Republican seats in Congress. The worst blow is that Trump originally appointed the judge who wrote the decision, Jeffrey V. Brown.  

    Trump’s remedy has been to retreat to foreign policy, where he effectively enjoys a form of suzerainty, at least for now. He’s been making noises about attacking Nigeria and Venezuela. For the next day or so, he will enjoy his bromance with the crown prince, escorting him to a grand dinner tonight. Meanwhile, he’s planning to sell him F-35 fighter jets, a move that Congress may seek to block, particularly since Israel is opposed to the deal. A lucrative real-estate deal also appears to be in the offing, no matter the public outcry. 

    Trump himself could not appear to be more blasé. MAGA, as Marjorie Taylor Greene put it, is being “ripped apart.” Trump, though, is enjoying hanging out with his new pal from Riyadh. “We talk at night. We can talk, I can call him almost any time,” Trump said. “He goes, ‘Hi, how are you doing.’ It’s like, the craziest times.” It is indeed. 

  • Trump is creating a political Frankenstein

    Trump is creating a political Frankenstein

    During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump depicted himself as synonymous with winning. “We’re gonna win so much,” he said, “you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say please, please, it’s too much winning we can’t take it anymore.” Lately, however, Trump has been losing – losing not only in the court of public opinion, but also the courts themselves.

    The latest instance came with the decision of Utah judge Dianna Gibson to reject a congressional map that Republican lawmakers drew to try and ensure that a Democrat cannot win even a single seat in the state. Gibson ruled that the map “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.” Utah Democrats rejoiced. This is a win for every Utahn,” they said on social media. “We took an oath to serve the people of Utah, and fair representation is the truest measure of that promise.”

    The pickle for Trump is that in demanding that Republican state legislatures tilt the election playing field in their direction, he may have created something of a political Frankenstein. Democrats, incensed by what they see as a decades-long effort by Republicans to employ legislative skulduggery to squeeze them out of office, whenever and wherever possible, are starting to respond in kind. Gavin Newsom gambled that he could upend California’s legislative map with Proposition 50 and won. He not only boosted the chances of Democrats to gain an additional five congressional seats, but also his own presidential chances. Elsewhere, Democrats are looking to pad their margins, including in Maryland. Meanwhile, Republicans are starting to get cold feet. In Kansas, for example, top Republican legislators are balking at redrawing their districts. 

    Some of it may be principle. And some of it may be cold political realities. Divvying up districts, as Trump is demanding, could backfire on Republicans. There is no guarantee that Hispanics will vote for the GOP in large numbers in Texas. So the very efforts the right is adopting to try and shore up Republican prospects in 2026 could inadvertently undermine them. Trump, in other words, may be too clever by half. 

    Crybaby Republicans like Utah state representative Matt MacPherson are trying to go a step further. He’s demanding the impeachment of Judge Gibson. “I have opened a bill to file articles of impeachment against Judge Gibson for gross abuse of power, violating the separation of powers and failing to uphold her oath of office to the Utah Constitution,” MacPherson announced on X. This dog won’t hunt. Impeaching judges simply because they issue judges that politicians don’t like isn’t a winning political issue, any more than it was when conservatives erected billboards demanding “Impeach Earl Warren,” after the Supreme Court Justice issued the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that banned racial segregation in American schools.

    Trump’s real problem remains the fact that his popularity rating continues to sink as quickly as the fortunes of the Washington Commanders football team. The Economist reports that 39 percent of Americans approve of his presidency while 57 percent disapprove. Its verdict is terse: “dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump is widespread even in states that voted for him just a few months ago. The numbers will make anxious reading for Republicans facing competitive races in next year’s midterm elections.” 

    Small wonder. As he threatens to prosecute what may well prove to be a disastrous war in the Caribbean against Venezuela, Trump is neglecting domestic issues in favor of playing battleship. No amount of gerrymandering can compensate for a presidency that is literally at sea. Trump must right the ship of state or the GOP will run aground in the midterms.

  • Elon *does* have friends… in high places

    Where are you going, Elon? Where have you been?

    The 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates unleashed her X account to excoriate the app’s owner Elon Musk this weekend. “So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died… In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

    OK, Joyce. Or maybe Elon (who definitely reads, just not soggy literary fiction), is occupied with his many companies, sending driverless cars to space, and doesn’t have time to enjoy the fall foliage in Connecticut or root root root for the home team. 

    Besides, he does have friends. The Wall Street Journal today reports on Musk’s secret conversations with Vladimir Putin. At one point, “Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.” Very touching. Cockburn is sure if Putin’s dog died, Elon would send him a condolence Signal, too. 

    On our radar

    VETERANS DAY President Trump participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery this morning to mark Veterans Day.

    GRAN STANDING President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has been talking up “Gran Colombia” – a 19th-century state consisting of his country, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama – as the US ratchets up its naval presence in the region.

    TEARS OF UNFATHOMABLE SADNESS South Park’s creators justified their show’s recent Trump-bashing streak in a New York Times interview. “It’s not that we got all political,” Trey Parker said. “It’s that politics became pop culture.”

    Should Dulles become the Donald J. Trump International Airport?

    Whenever Cockburn gets gloomy with the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals gate at Dulles Airport. No matter how bereft he is, he tells himself, it could be worse – he could be packed like a sardine inside one of those claustrophobic Star Wars-esque people-transporters after touching down from a distant land. The main terminal itself is arguably the high point of architect Eero Saarinen’s career – but the airport’s means of moving arriving passengers toward it is decidedly outdated. Washington was offered a timely reminder of this yesterday, when one of the mobile lounges crashed into the dock it was supposed to be parked at. Eighteen people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. President Trump is currently fixated on rebuilding things in DC – the football stadium, the East Wing – and naming them after him. There is a strong case for adding a Dulles revamp to the list.

    The accident is just the latest of America’s aviation woes, after FAA cuts led to thousands of canceled and delayed flights. Even as the House prepares to end the shutdown, the chaos is expected to continue. “It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days,” said an Airlines for America spokesperson. Who’s ready to take the train for Thanksgiving?

    I ain’t no follow-back girl

    Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico follows several porn stars, escorts and OnlyFans models on Instagram, including Giselle Palmer, the “Honky Tonk Angel,” according to an Axios story this weekend. Rather than owning up to a calculated attempt to tap into the “gooner” caucus, Talarico’s spokesman J.T. Ennis said the campaign “follows back and engages with supporters who have large followings and does not investigate their backgrounds. James has never subscribed to OnlyFans or an escort service.” 

    Ennis also said, “While James was unaware of how these women make money, he does not judge them for it and will not play into an effort to smear them for clickbait articles. That’s exactly what his Christian faith calls him to do.” Love thy porn star as thyself. 

    No one would care were Talarico an ordinary man following OnlyFans models on Instagram. Cockburn finds this curious only because of Talarico’s gee-whiz Mr. Smith Goes To Washington political persona. He has cultivated a decent amount of hype in the Lone Star State through his pastor-esque addresses. More pertinently: who tipped off Axios to this follow-back indiscretion? Was it the bland former football player Colin Allred, whom Talarico is rapidly swamping in the Democratic primary? Or are his Republican rivals, such as the perpetually mid Senator John Cornyn and the disreputable Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (whose wife recently filed to divorce him for “Biblical reasons”) starting to feel the heat from his rising star? Regardless, liberal Democrats, who feign moral outrage every time a Republican even thinks about a woman’s breasts, seem willing to go to the rack for their new Texas golden boy. If Talarico’s campaign somehow falters, he can always start an OnlyFans.

    Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  • Wokeness ended my backroom Jeopardy! habit

    Wokeness ended my backroom Jeopardy! habit

    In May I got a Facebook message from a guy named Mikey Walsh, who I’d met once at a trivia night at Mister Tramps, one of the diviest dive bars in Austin, Texas. He told me he’d been running a quiz called “Buzz In Buzzed,” which was exactly like Jeopardy!. Several of the regular players had been on Jeopardy! like me, and he was looking for more contestants to play.

    “This is not a business,” he said. “It’s free to play, and there’s no prizes. It’s just nerds playing trivia for fun.” This wasn’t the kind of offer I turn down. The opportunity to play fake Jeopardy! in the back of the bar for no money? Sign me up, I said.

    A couple of weeks later, I went to Buzz In Buzzed. It had been several years since I’d been at Mister Tramps, but it was the black-walled grime-pit I remembered. Walsh set up a Jeopardy! rig in the back room, where Tramps usually throws its sparsely attended standup nights and drag queen bingo. I sat in an uncomfortable chair, buzzer in hand, at a fold-up plastic card table.

    Walsh, who works at a local sandwich shop, found himself with some extra cash. A lifelong Jeopardy! fan, he decided to use the money to buy an electronic quizzing rig, and a USB recording module so he could approximate the sounds from the game show. He rested it in a plastic crayon box.

    A $20 lifetime subscription from a service called JeopardyLabs allowed Walsh to create Jeopardy!-style games that have the same general topics and rhythms of the original. But he includes stuff you’d never see on the actual show – for example, forcing contestants to identify GIFs from Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid and answer questions about rock that’s so indie you would have had to attend the specific live show to know the answers. He throws in some old – slightly altered for copyright reasons – Final Jeopardy questions in a category he calls “Actual Hard Jeopardy! Fuck You.”

    At first, Walsh’s games were just him and regulars from Mister Tramps, mostly local mechanics having a beer after a long shift. Though Walsh was pretty good, regular scores of negative 6,000 were common. Then he posted the game on the Jeopardy! Reddit forum. Other Jeopardy! fans showed up and started playing. Suddenly the games were hard, as though NBA-quality players had started shooting hoops at the local playground. A young computer programmer appeared, lost, and decided she didn’t want to lose anymore. So she started studying, improved – and then she was doing the trouncing. Earlier this year she appeared on the TV show and easily won a game.

    I made my first appearance at back-room Jeopardy! after Memorial Day and played a game against another former contestant and also a guy who will probably be a Jeopardy! contestant one day. I absolutely dominated the proceedings until I shanked a Daily Double in the second round, putting me a little behind. And then the power went out in a massive hailstorm.

    Walsh conducted Final Jeopardy by flashlight. The answer to the question was Peep Show, the Mitchell and Webb sitcom created by Succession’s Jesse Armstrong. Somehow I missed it, even though I’ve seen every episode of Peep Show, and I lost the game. I also lost the following week. Then came my third game, where the Final Jeopardyquestion was: “In early 1976 this band from Salford, England, took its name from the sexual slavery wing mentioned in the 1953 House of Dolls.” I knew that this was Joy Division, won the game and got to pose for a smug photo.

    “I almost dumped this Final because someone told me they were triggered, but I thought, fuck it, it’s a fact,” Walsh wrote on Facebook. Fuck it indeed. I was hooked.

    Buzz In Buzzed has a distinct Austin, indie vibe about it, but it’s not an anomaly. A vast world of trivia competitions bubbles underneath the surface of ordinary life. Online leagues in a variety of formats run every day, featuring the best quizzing minds in the world. It’s a fiercely competitive world. My team, Crash Test Smarties, in the exceedingly tough and competitive Online Quiz League, includes a winner of the Jeopardy! teacher’s tournament, two three-time Jeopardy! champions (including me), an Only Connect quarterfinalist, and the 2021 winner of the UK Brain of Brains competition. Last season, we finished sixth.

    Buzz in Buzzed was fun all summer, but then, as often happens in subcultures, there was petty drama. I’ve made some of the dearest friends of my life playing trivia, but many players can be performatively woke. When answers come up at BiB that people don’t like, it’s tradition to boo loudly. Over the weeks, I’ve heard the great brains boo “Christopher Columbus,” “Pete Hegseth” and, in one egregious instance, “capitalism.” When one answer was “Houthis” I decided to boo, but no one else did.

    I went to play BiB on the day of Charlie Kirk’s murder, which was probably a mistake. One of the players said they “didn’t give a fuck.” I decided to give a little lecture, which made everyone uncomfortable. Then, later, they all loudly booed “J.K. Rowling.” I left the room with my cider in hand, thinking that these weren’t really my people after all, even though I love answering quiz questions just like they do. The next day I removed myself from the BiB Discord server and haven’t been back.

    Walsh, who prefers to keep things apolitical (though he did once hilariously refer to Dean Cain as a “piece of shit Superman actor” in a question), says there’s not a path for me returning. I miss it. It’s fun and competitive and the drinks at Tramps are cheap. Those are surely good enough reasons to overcome trivial political differences.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • An evening in Austin with Graham Linehan and Meghan Murphy

    An evening in Austin with Graham Linehan and Meghan Murphy

    It’s a telling commentary on our times that an Irish man and a Canadian woman have to go to Texas in order to honestly express themselves in public. But that’s how it played out on Thursday night at a suburban Austin “salon” that Cockburn attended. Cockburn, who also frequently travels to Texas to talk out his heterodox opinions, appreciated the hospitality of hostess Trish Morrison and her husband, who’s a catering paella chef, so the food is always good over there.  

    The Irishman was Graham Linehan, creator of the sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, among others, and more recently an embattled participant in the transgender wars. Standing up for feminist ideals and losing all his friends in the process, Linehan said, was like “being a spider having his legs pulled off bit by bit.”  

    Also in attendance was Canadian writer and journalist Meghan Murphy, founder of Feminist Current, and currently living as a kind of ideological refugee in Mexico. She discussed her “villain origin story” when, as a self-proclaimed socialist living in Vancouver, she stood up for an abused women’s shelter that refused to admit trans clients, which led to a shunning by her community and a five-year ban from Twitter. “I think women are the worst,” she said, sardonically. “The people who canceled me and libeled me, and the friends who said I can’t hang around you anymore, those were women.”  

    Though both Linehan and Murphy have a reputation for humor, their lives have been very serious in recent years. Our evening’s laughs came mostly from Austin comic Arielle Isaac Norman, who said, “I’m going to do some standup because it’s fun to have a bunch of TERFs in the same room.”  

    “I believe there are just two genders,” Norman said. “Dog people and cat people. There are people who are into ferrets and snakes. But are they a different gender, or are they just autistic?” Another good zinger was “You know how trans women are women? Because they’re always attempting suicide.”  

    Linehan described the transgender movement as a “middle-class revolution. I don’t think it’ll last because it’s unsustainable,” bemoaning the quality of modern music to appeal to young people and adding, “completely unintelligible academics and philosophers are the new rock stars.” Murphy said that trans mania, which may be on the wane, is “so unfortunate and so strange. How grotesque and irresponsible to tell your children that they’re in the wrong body. It’s like we’re Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, that we can stick body parts on each other and be whoever you want.”  

    Also in attendance was Austin podcaster, comedian and Spectator columnist Bridget Phetasy, who said that comedy is impossible these days because “we all got on the bus to crazy town. There’s no straight man.” Bridget’s worry has “moved off the trans thing,” and she said that she thinks World War Three is possibly imminent and “all the based people are going to die in a rice paddy.”  

    The striking thing about the salon was how little Linehan and Murphy talked. It was an encounter group for people who’ve deviated from the acceptable path. The two dozen or so attendees offered their own perspectives on matters, worried about the rise of “omnicause” progressives. Republicans, Democrats, libertarians and undecideds and undisclosed all fretted about the state of the world while vying for a bit of Papa Paella’s socarrat.   

    Norman closed the evening with one of the best dirty jokes Cockburn has heard in a while. Discussing the latest advancements in bottom surgery, she said that now surgeons are deploy transplanted pieces of colon to allow lubrication in the vaginas of trans people. “You trade in your balls and your dick and get a wet ass pussy.”  

    With that, everyone, Cockburn included, went home amused, stimulated and full.  

    “I’ve never done a salon before,” Linehan said. “Maybe this is the way forward. Here I am, in an Austin living room.” 

  • The Christian school revival

    The Christian school revival

    In Texas, empty church classrooms might just become new schools.

    On September 1, the state enacted the most expansive school voucher program in America. It will allow eligible families to receive up to $10,900 annually per student to be spent on private school tuition, or up to $2,000 to be spent on homeschooling. Students with disabilities could receive up to $30,000.

    The number of states with school voucher schemes is unclear, but governors across the country must decide whether to join President Trump’s new federal private-school choice program – the first national scheme, approved by Congress in July.

    In a recent study, economists Douglas N. Harris and Gabriel Olivier of Tulane University found that in the 17 states with school voucher programs, the funds had increased enrollment in private religious, and primarily Christian, schools with small student bodies – often 30 students or fewer. Overall, private school enrollment in voucher states has increased by 3-4 percent as compared to non-voucher states since 2021.

    If the trend continues and more states bring in voucher programs, enrollment in private Christian schools is set to rise dramatically.

    Emerging evidence shows that voucher programs are, in fact, associated with new private Christian schools opening or expanding. New Hampshire launched a school voucher program four years ago. Today, 11 of the 28 Christian schools in the state are either newly opened, or have grown by 50 percent or more. The same pattern is visible in Ohio. After the state’s EdChoice was launched, schools like Dayton Christian, whose enrollment increased by 106 students to 946, saw rapid growth.

    In Florida, voucher programs are fueling demand at religious schools, with schools like Mount Dora Christian Academy adding more classes and holding waitlists for almost every grade. Superintendent of the Miami Archdiocese Jim Rigg has said that the Archdiocese is actively discussing the opening or reopening of new schools, and is “moving into growth mode.”

    And while critics claim that vouchers will be used by wealthier parents and schools, private Christian schools in Texas have stated their intention to expand into rural, underserved and low-income communities with voucher funding. Texas, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association, Laura Colangelo, stated that private schools are “ready and willing” to expand into such areas. Similarly, Don Davis, head of school at Second Baptist School in Houston, said that vouchers would allow his school to grow in low-income communities that currently do not have private schooling.

    “Our desire would be to provide educational equity to the families in Houston to reach those families that currently don’t have access to Christian Education,” he said.

    While critics fear that any expansion could hollow out public schools, it’s important to note that only a small fraction of students in any given state are currently able to use vouchers due to enrollment caps and eligibility restrictions. Even in the largest and most expansive programs, the share of students using vouchers hovers between 4-10 percent. We are nowhere near mass exodus levels.

    And building a new school takes years. Accreditation – a requirement for allocation of voucher funds – often takes several years. Even if voucher programs continue to grow, it will take time for private schools to meet demand.

    But the savings could be huge. The average smaller Christian school being funded by vouchers charges a tuition of around $5,000 per year – a much lower figure than the $15,000 that states pay per student per year in public schools. Each student who uses a voucher is actually saving taxpayer money and allowing more resources to be given to those students remaining in public schools.

    For parents turning to private Christian schools, education is about more than simple test scores. They often feel that public schools are failing their students – not just academically, but morally and spiritually. This is what many parents are seeking through school vouchers. They are not looking for ways to “get their child ahead” of the others, but are instead looking for an education that draws out everything they believe their children were created to be.

    Voucher programs, then, are not simply redistributing tax dollars; they are paving the way to the restoration of education as a whole. Through the creation and expansion of private Christian schools throughout the country, voucher advocates hope and expect that more students will have access to institutions that cultivate both academic excellence and moral formation. Such reforms are not just about choice, but about reviving the cultural and civic mission of education itself.

  • Newsom rigs California

    Newsom rigs California

    Judging from how much Gavin Newsom talks about Donald Trump these days, the governor’s real project isn’t governing California – it’s raising his national profile ahead of an inevitable presidential run. He’s found an issue that lets him pit himself against Trump and gain coveted national media attention: reconfiguring California’s congressional districts to put more Democrats in Congress. He’s pitching it as a way to “fight fire with fire” after Texas Republicans passed their own partisan maps. In reality, it’s a political power grab dressed up as righteous urgency.

    The problem is that in 2010, Californians voted to take redistricting away from politicians and hand it to an independent citizen commission – a reform meant to end gerrymandering. Newsom’s plan to temporarily override it until 2030 needs a constitutional amendment, which requires the Legislature to cut short its summer recess, pass his so-called “Election Rigging Response Act” with a two-thirds vote before August 22, and put it on the ballot for a special election in November.

    That election will cost taxpayers an estimated $250 million, at a time when the state is facing a budget crisis. “No price tag for democracy,” Newsom shrugged. Newsom is going all in on this gamble, despite the fact that California voters aren’t buying it. According to an August 14 poll, 64 percent want to keep the independent commission, and just 36 percent support Newsom’s plan. The opposition is bipartisan: 66 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of Democrats, and 72 percent of independents want the commission left alone. In a state where Trump barely scraped 34 percent in 2020, that’s a resounding rejection.

    Faced with those numbers, Newsom is saturating the debate with the magic word that never fails to electrify his base: “Trump.” At a Thursday press conference in Los Angeles, he assembled a who’s who of California’s Democratic power structure. Among them was Jodi Hicks, head of Planned Parenthood California and wife of Paul Mitchell, a key player in the state’s redistricting world. Several union bosses took the microphone, including David Huerta of California SEIU – whose June arrest while confronting ICE officers helped spark anti-ICE riots. Huerta exhorted the crowd in Spanish to “correct the errors of November,” meaning Trump’s election.

    From there, it was a parade of Democratic officials hitting the familiar notes: Trump’s immigration policies, January 6, abortion, “the wealthy,” and the apocalypse if the President is not thwarted. Not a single speaker offered details about how the governor’s plan would actually work– just moral posturing. The mantra was “protect democracy,” though in this case “democracy” seems to mean “Democratic Party control.”

    Newsom and his allies openly framed this as a power grab, emphasizing the need to bend rules in the face of a unique threat. “We want to model better behavior [by having a nonpartisan redistricting commission],” Newsom explained, “but we can’t unilaterally disarm.” Senator Alex Padilla, switching to Spanish, added: “These are not normal times.” Apparently, if you’re a Democrat in 2025, there’s a convenient Trump exception to the rule that two wrongs don’t make a right.

    Underneath the official script, Newsom’s choice of guests sent quieter messages. The first was aimed at state legislators, whose votes he needs. Labor’s heavy presence was a reminder of who bankrolls campaigns and supplies the ground troops for Democrats in California. Oppose the measure, and you might find yourself on the wrong side of your biggest benefactors.

    The second audience was national Democratic leadership. Newsom wanted to show he’s a loyal soldier, willing to bend California’s rules and spend its taxpayers’ money to serve the Party’s larger goals. Most pundits think the plan is a long shot, but he doesn’t necessarily need to win to score points. Regardless of the outcome, he’s signaled to national party bosses that he’s ready to go to the mat for them – something that could pay dividends in 2028, given how shallow the Democrats’ bench is after years of rewarding loyalty over leadership skills.

    Perhaps he’s calculated that if he pleases the party’s power brokers, he won’t have to worry too much about the ire of California’s voters.

    Newsom’s repeated refrain of “Wake up, America!” emphasized that he was playing to a national audience. He warned that without his plan, the country will cease to exist because Trump will secure a third term. “Mark my word,” he insisted, citing as proof a hat someone sent him emblazoned with “Trump 2028.” For anyone immune to Trump Derangement Syndrome, the claim was laughable, but plausibility isn’t the point. The point is presenting Newsom as the hero standing between democracy and the abyss, the only man brave enough to take on Trump and the dastardly red states.

    For those not buying this fairytale, the episode serves as a reminder of how quickly politicians will discard principles when there’s political capital to be gained. Californians voted to end gerrymandering, and now Newsom wants to override that mandate to boost his party’s power. The excuse is that Trump is too dangerous for the rules to matter. But few things pose a bigger threat to democracy than overturning voter decisions simply because they’re inconvenient to your side.

  • Theater kids are holding Texas hostage

    Theater kids are holding Texas hostage

    The theater kids are at it again. The Texas Democratic party is engaged in yet another performative act of resistance – one perhaps less embarrassing than the likes of Representative Greg Casar’s iconic nine-hour “thirst strike,” but far more damaging to Texans in the moment.

    The decision by more than 50 Texas representatives to flee the state for the climes of California, New York and Illinois rather than confront the realities of their political margins doesn’t just act as a grandstanding method of opposition to a redistricting policy that would stand to Republicans’ benefit – it also is holding up the legislative response to the recent flooding disaster, something of significant need to the damaged communities. 

    The entire escapade seems only designed to slow things down and gin up donations from the Democratic base, while turning the political rhetoric about the normal battles of redistricting into the comfortable Democratic language of racial resentment. Speaking to Don Lemon, Democrat Texas State Representative Jolanda Jones likened their battle against the new districts to the Holocaust. No wonder we’re seeing such over-the-top drama, given that the whole escape to the borders is funded by the OG Texas Democrat “born to run” theater kid, Beto O’Rourke.

    In response, Governor Greg Abbott has threatened the legislators with arrest, and President Trump suggested he may have to deploy the FBI to bring them back to the state – both posturing threats, in their own right. The most hypocritical aspect of this is that California, New York and Illinois are all some of the most gerrymandered states in the country: in California, Republicans won 40 percent in the last election but netted just nine seats. And Governor Gavin Newsom seems intent on making an initial idle threat of nuclear response into a reality, promising to meet the Lone Star state’s attempt to add five more GOP-favorable districts with five more Democrats from on the West Coast.

    This type of escapade never really results in a positive outcome – gerrymandering is too explicitly partisan of an issue for anything otherwise. But in the meantime, it does give resistance people another thing to be mad enough to send in some cash – which is why it’s happening in the first place. Some theater works.

  • Trump starts Christmas now

    Trump starts Christmas now

    There’s no small irony in the fact that Texas Democratic state legislators, fleeing a congressional redistricting attempt by Texas’s Republican majority, have sought shelter in Illinois. They’re acting like political refugees in what is, in fact, the most gerrymandered state in the country.

    Look at Illinois District 13, which snakes up from the Missouri border nearly to the gates of Indiana, bisecting the state (and District 15) like Illinois’s small intestine. Chicago is a very populous city, but the state has carved up its Congressional districts like a turducken, giving us as many (D-Chicagos) as humanly possible.

    The Illinois Democratic machine has had an outsized influence on American politics, much less Illinois politics, for decades. Its favorite son, Barack Obama, even became president. Now that Texas is serving up a gerrymandering machine that’s just as powerful, and just as corrupt, Illinois is offering asylum. That’s rich.

    Cockburn has been to both states. They both offer occasional moments of grace punctuated by millions of acres of cow manure. May they gerrymander each other out of existence and let a non-corrupt state devoted to direct democracy, wherever that may exist, take control of Congress.

    With Trump, Christmas starts now

    It’s August, which means that Christmas is just around the corner. While Cockburn hangs around the house drinking spritzes and swatting mosquitos on the patio, the White House has announced it’s time to receive applications to help with Christmas decorations and to perform at holiday open houses. ’Tis the season, I guess! To the administration’s credit, they didn’t announce they’re officially renaming the holiday The First Lady Melania Trump Christmas Spectacular.

    While countless school choirs and dance teams will certainly bring the jolly, Cockburn would like to see various administration figures appear as part of the festivities. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard can finally reveal who was behind the cover-up of the Santa Files (not David Sedaris’s, the real ones). Pete Hegseth can dress up as Santa and send selfies to the group chat. We look forward to Barron Trump’s Christmas Crypto Bash. Most prominently, J.D. Vance can fulfill his destiny by dressing as Buddy the Elf and proclaiming “Santa? I know him!!!” – a nice summary of his relationship with President Trump.

    On our radar

    UP ON THE ROOFTOP Joined by several men in suits this morning, President Trump took questions from the roof of the White House. Apparently, he was surveying the building for his recently announced $200 million ballroom.

    RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA Pam Bondi directed the DoJ to launch a grand jury investigation into allegations that the Obama administration manufactured intelligence about 2016 election interference.

    EPSTEIN UPDATE Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred to a minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton are set to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee this October for their connection to Epstein.

    Going Postal

    News broke this week (in the New York Post, appropriately enough), that the paper is soon to begin publishing a California edition, called the California Post. These happy tidings are almost enough to make Cockburn want to move back to California, where he spent some very happy, idle months at the Chateau Marmont in the 80s, and also the 90s.

    Regardless, this is great news for California’s bleak, bland, hyper-woke media offerings, punctuated only by the occasional conservative opposition blog, Adam Carolla X account or grouchy late-night AM radio hosts. An active Page Six alone will help burst the Hollywood PR bubble, and Cockburn relishes the idea of holding Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass’s feet to the fire on any number of issues. Newspapers aren’t, in fact, dead. They’re just not giving people something that they want to read. And as much as they hate to admit it, everyone wants to read the Post.

  • Return of the King of the Hill

    Return of the King of the Hill

    The world has changed a great deal since September 2009, when the final episode of Mike Judge’s sitcom King of the Hill aired, and it has altered immeasurably since January 1997, when the show was first broadcast. Given that legacy television has become the new vogue – how else to explain the apparently endless resurrections of Dexter? – Judge can be forgiven for bringing back his second most popular animated show for a new audience. But the suspicion lingered that King of the Hill was a series very much of its time, and that the adventures of its well-meaning but vaguely idiotic patriarch, Hank, and his overbearing wife, Peggy, would not translate especially well to the colder, more demanding brave new world we now inhabit.

    Judge has half-succeeded with the new incarnation of King of the Hill: it is likely to appeal to the show’s greatest admirers while still attracting those who would have been casually watching it, beer in hand, when it was airing on Fox one evening in the early Aughts. Whether it will have any appeal to the uninitiated is harder to gauge. I can’t imagine that it will have any crossover to younger audiences, many of whom would not have been born when the show first aired, and those who disliked it when it first came along are unlikely to warm to it now.

    Still, Judge deserves credit for how he deals with the considerable passage of time. Hank and Peggy begin the show returning from Saudi Arabia (where he has had the very Hank-appropriate job of selling propane to earn enough money to pay for their retirement) and re-enter a different America to the one they left. It is a country of cancel culture and a fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, but it is also a place in debt to paranoid ideas of conspiracies, where Hank, Mr. Middle America himself, begins to feel like a foreigner in his own homeland of Texas.

    There are, obviously, jokes about the signs on bathroom doors and whether you should rate your taxi driver five stars on the app (Hank, of course, rates him four, “so that he has something to aspire to” and gets a punitive two stars in response), but there’s also something darker and sadder lurking in the shadows. Literally, in the case of Stephen Root’s now-gargantuan Bill, who took to his bed during the pandemic and has not left in the last five years, surviving on takeaways and completing Netflix in the process. Still, at least their son Bobby is now grown up, working in a restaurant and finding it just as hard to deal with life as a 21-year-old chef in a Japanese–German fusion restaurant.

    At its best, King of the Hill was always as much a character drama as it was a comedy, and so this decidedly autumnal return may be lower on laughs than its most devoted fans may have hoped for (although Peggy’s pronunciation of “Saudi Arabia” is one for the ages), but it manages to be a fresh and mainly engaging look at contemporary America through the eyes of a man who was cursed not to have come of age in the Fifties. If Judge’s masterpiece, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, was the full satirical treatment of Clinton-era America, and Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe was an outraged response to post-Covid strictures, then perhaps the 14th series of King of The Hill is something grown-up and more reflective. There will be those who blitz through all 10 episodes as quickly as they can, but in order to savor its disaffection with the changing world, this should be sipped like a frozen margarita, and not chugged down like beer. A fifteenth series would, on this evidence, be far from unwelcome.