Zelenskyy Holds Next-Steps Talks as Kyiv, Moscow Trade Strikes

Trump Endorses for South Carolina Governor Primary; Nancy Mace Hardest Hit

NJ Man Charged After Allegedly Biting, Kicking ICE Officers at Newark Detention Facility

Stephen Miller’s Wife Doxed This Young Dem. Then the MAGA Rage Hit.

Katie Miller, who is married to Stephen Miller, lashed out at a young Democratic operative on Thursday, after the Democratic Party’s official account called Miller’s husband an “ugly f–k.” The aggrieved wife of the top White House adviser posted the operative’s picture on X and ridiculed her personal life, declaring, “She’s 30, unmarried with no kids,” and adding: “This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like.”That liberal is Paulina Mangubat, 30, who writes many of the Democratic National Committee’s tweets as its deputy chief mobilization officer. After Katie Miller named her and posted her picture, the MAGA fury started rolling in. I spoke with Mangubat Friday morning. The MAGA backlash has been swift, with people circulating images of her engagement photo shoot and insulting her and her fiancé’s appearance. People are posting decade-old pictures of her while commenting on her appearance, weight, and even her happiness in life.But in our interview, Mangubat stressed emphatically that this dustup should refocus everyone on the real victims of the moment.“Ultimately, this is not really about me,” Mangubat told me. “It’s about the people who are really being attacked by the Trump administration.”This saga all started after MAGA extremist Ken Paxton won the Texas GOP Senate primary, after which the DNC posted a fairly conventional tweet that included a picture of the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, adding: “It’s time to take back Texas.”That prompted Stephen Miller to tweet: “Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.” It’s a strange claim—Talarico is not transgender, though he’s spoken up for trans rights—but it’s obviously in keeping with the GOP strategy, which is to portray Talarico as woke and effeminate. Regardless, that’s the tweet that the DNC feed—Mangubat—responded to with “Shut up you ugly f–k.”Mangubat’s tweet was approved by the DNC. She says that the effort to make the Democratic Party’s social media presence more nimble and responsive is the much more important story here, especially given how well Trump and the GOP prosecuted the information wars in 2024. The DNC says its program has grown, pointing to an additional 6.3 million followers across all its social media platforms. It claims the programs have produced over nine billion impressions since Trump took office.Mangubat says that when Democrats did research into how to reach more people, “overwhelmingly what we heard is people want us to be more direct, speak more like real people, and be faster.”Speaking like real people also means letting them react in real time with real feeling—which is what happened here with Stephen Miller, Mangubat says.“All we did was say what everyone else is thinking, which is, ‘Shut up—that’s not what people care about right now,’” Mangubat says. She added that there’s no reason to regret using the “ugly” moniker to describe Miller.“What he’s doing is ugly—siccing federal agents on civilians, applauding when families are separated. It is ugly behavior,” Mangubat said. “The reason this happened is because Stephen Miller, who is one of the most powerful men in the country, decided that it would be a good use of his time to go on Twitter and hurl an untrue and transphobic attack against James Talarico.”It’s worth stressing that the roots of this saga lie in the depiction of Talarico as transgender—and that this was intended as a vicious insult. Indeed, Stephen Miller went on a tear after this exchange, going on Fox News and ripping Talarico as soft and effeminate in every way he could. Miller derided Talarico as “transitioning to female,” mocking his testosterone count and claiming Talarico’s blood is made of “soy milk.”It’s also worth dwelling on the vision of masculinity that Paxton presents. His wife divorced him on biblical grounds, he’s been impeached and indicted while in office, and he has subjected LGBTQ people to relentless abuse.But this is very much the MAGA vision of masculinity in action, according to Stephen Miller. During that Fox News hit, Miller described Paxton as a “real conservative” and “patriotic” and “God-fearing,” while claiming that Talarico will be roundly rejected by red-blooded Texans, given their manly “pioneer heritage” and “frontier history.” The roots of this saga, then, really lie in the MAGA-approved view that Talarico doesn’t count as a Real Man, while Paxton somehow does.Mangubat, the daughter of two Filipino immigrants, tells me she was born in Louisiana and raised in Arizona. She said Katie Miller’s claims about her being an unhappy liberal are false. “I feel very blessed in my life,” Mangubat said. “I love this country.

Trump announces plans to transfer Kennedy Center operations to Congress after judge order removal of his name from facility

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” the president continued. 

Gleeful Nicolle Wallace details Trump's 'humiliating' day in court: 'Hits keep coming'

President Donald Trump has been having a very bad day in court — and MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace barely managed to contain her glee reporting on his losses."The legal hits keep coming," said Wallace. "Today, earlier, a federal judge out of Virginia ruled that DOJ's so-called 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' must freeze and that no money can be disbursed until she hears a motion challenging the fund's very existence." Then, she noted, just hours later, a different federal judge "permanently blocked Trump from adding his name to the Kennedy Center," demanding that any name other than Kennedy be removed from the signage and promotional material within two weeks, and putting the planned two-year renovation on hold as well.Wallace then turned to her panel, focusing on New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush. "There's the humiliating aspect to these stories for these came up ... there's all of the losing. I mean, what is left in terms of legal acumen in the Department of Justice if they can't win a case?"Thrush argued that, privately, even a lot of people in the Trump administration were hoping for the "weaponization" slush fund to get killed in court."There are people, political appointees in the Justice Department and in the White House who are really, really happy, or would be very happy, if this thing died a quiet judicial death so that they were not forced to defend it" — especially considering Senate Republicans who feel "newly liberated from Donald Trump" are "antithetical" to the plan and had been drafting legislation to stop it. Bottom line, he added, "this is one of those instances in which a court rebuke against Trump probably is viewed relatively positively by a lot of people at DOJ.""But that's pathetic," Wallace burst out in reply. "They're too weak to tell Donald Trump this is a crappy idea, so they waste the country's time ... I mean, that's pathetic, wrapped in tragedy, wrapped in a waste of everybody's time and money." - YouTube www.youtube.com

Kenya Blocks U.S. Plan for an Ebola Facility for Americans

A Kenyan high court blocked the opening a facility for triaging American citizens exposed to Ebola.

Suit filed against ICE over ‘dire’ conditions at largest US immigration detention facility

In first suit over conditions at Texas’s Camp East Montana, plaintiffs allege ‘dangerous and abusive’ environment with ‘abhorrent’ medical careThe first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.“abhorrent medical and mental health care”;“inappropriate use of force”;“indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;“terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;“outbreaks of disease”;“unsanitary living conditions”;“sexual harassment by guards”. Continue reading...

New Jersey says state police will replace federal agents outside ICE facility

Announcement coincides with reports of influx of federal agents to Delaney Hall, site of protests and hunger strikeTop New Jersey officials announced on Friday that the state police will be taking over policing functions from federal immigration officers outside the contentious Delaney Hall facility, as reports surface of an influx of federal agents making their way to the area.As part of the state police’s takeover of “public safety operations” at the site, they will establish a “peaceful protected zone” for demonstrators and will have protesters “move there today”, according to New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, and attorney general, Jennifer Davenport. Continue reading...