by David Rohde | May 23, 2026 | News Analysis
Critics say Tulsi Gabbard’s ambitions and conspiracy theories she peddled defined and marred her short-lived tenure as the United States’ most powerful intelligence official.
Gabbard’s spokesperson described her 15-month stint as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence as one of “unprecedented transparency, record-breaking declassifications, historic operational reforms, and a relentless focus on putting Americans first.”
But Democrats said Gabbard’s use of conspiracy theories to gain political support doomed her. They said Gabbard will be remembered for her willingness to please Trump — at seemingly any cost —and, most dangerously, her violation of rules put in place to prevent U.S. intelligence agencies from meddling in American politics.
Gabbard’s public declaration that she had found evidence of a “treasonous conspiracy” by former President Barack Obama and her role in the seizure of 2020 election records in Fulton County, Georgia, were cited by Democrats as a return to the abuses of the Cold War, when the CIA spied on Americans.
“Her other legacy is lack of respect for guardrails between intelligence and domestic law enforcement,” a U.S. official with knowledge of the intelligence community told MS NOW.
Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard, bluntly dismissed those criticisms.
“The description you cite is false, and frankly, insulting,” Coleman told MS NOW. “DNI Gabbard began a transformational effort to reshape the Intelligence Community in ways no predecessor had ever attempted.”
Critics said Gabbard, who announced Friday that her last day as DNI will be June 30, came into the job vowing to expose vast conspiracies involving the 2020 election; the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations; Amelia Earhart’s disappearance; UFOs and myriad other topics. But she failed to prove any of them.
“That’s
by Kurt Hackbarth | May 22, 2026 | Bay of Pigs, cuba, Foreign Policy, Havana, Latin America, News Analysis, oil blockade, Sanctions, Trump Administration
For a Caribbean city known for its effervescent, out-of-doors culture, Havana has relatively few cars on its streets, not many people on its sidewalks, and a handful of places open for patrons. Life at midweek feels like a Sunday or a holiday. The background noise of competing internal-combustion engines, common to every modern city, has been replaced by the discrete whir of electric vehicles.
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by Julianne McShane | May 22, 2026 | News Analysis
Spencer Pratt doesn’t approve of all the Trump comparisons.
The former reality TV star gets them a lot these days. He’s a celebrity — best known for his breakout role on MTV’s “The Hills” two decades ago — who is now running for mayor of Los Angeles. He doesn’t have much experience in politics or city government, but he comes with an A-list Rolodex and a built-in fanbase that includes more than five million followers across X, Meta and TikTok. He’s bombastic, confident and has a habit of rambling his way through speeches that veer into conspiracy theory. And, by his own admission, he has harbored an absurd, borderline toxic obsession with money since he was a teen.
Pratt, 42, is a registered Republican, but rejects the notion that he is aligned with MAGA or following in Trump’s footsteps. In February, while gathering signatures at an early campaign event on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, he joined the livestream of celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton to give his elevator pitch to be mayor. When Hilton asked about claims he’s a MAGA candidate, Pratt pushed back.
“I’m not a political person — I’m somebody with basic expectations of our tax money and our quality of living,” he told Hilton.
Pratt’s primary motivation for the career pivot, he said, stemmed from the Palisades fire that ravaged his neighborhood last January, destroying his family home and killing a dozen of his neighbors. He blames Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom for the devastation, which he believes was preventable were it not for the “corruption” in city government.
Talking about the fires on Hilton’s show, Pratt began to ramble, meandering
by Austin C. McCoy | May 21, 2026 | Jim Crow, labor, News Analysis, Racial Justice
Nearly a decade ago, Donald Trump infamously asked Black voters in his pitch to garner their support: “What do you have to lose?” The Federal Reserve answered Trump’s question in its recent Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households report for 2025: Black Americans lost more financially than every other racial group. According to the report, 60 percent of Black Americans expressed that their…
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by Jonathan Ng | May 20, 2026 | cuba, Donald Trump, Imperialism, Marco Rubio, Militarism, News Analysis, Sanctions
At night, the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, Cuba appears like a tangled string of Christmas lights along the coastline, casting colored silhouettes across the waves that lap ashore. Sailors and Marines pack the local sports bar blaring pop music. Others frequent the bowling alley or play video games under intense strobe lights. Yet in contrast to the brightly illuminated base…
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by Ja'han Jones | May 19, 2026 | News Analysis
Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.
GAO’s DOGE probe hampered
Officials at some federal agencies are reportedly stonewalling the Government Accountability Office’s investigation into what sensitive information Elon Musk and other federal employees may have accessed while working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The Washington Post reported on officials who have spurned requests from the GAO, which conducts audits and investigations into federal misconduct. Wouldn’t you like to know whether and how Musk and his minions garnered access to some of the government’s most highly guarded documents? I, for one, am certainly curious why some officials are blocking these efforts.
A GAO spokeswoman told the Post that the agency remains “committed to fulfilling our statutory audit responsibilities,” adding, “Timely cooperation from [a] federal agency is essential to ensuring Congress has the information it needs to conduct effective oversight.”
I don’t know about you, but to me that sure sounds like “you better hand over the documents.”
Read more at The Washington Post.
Elon’s latest L
Musk lost his lawsuit against OpenAI that could have led to a massive overhaul of the artificial intelligence company. The ruling, which the X owner has vowed to appeal, was something of a victory for OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.
But Altman didn’t survive unscathed, as there were parts of the trial that made him appear quite untrustworthy.
Read more at Bloomberg.
Trump’s stock trades
I wrote about a new financial disclosure showing that President Donald Trump bought and sold stocks in tech companies, including Palantir and Nvidia, while his administration has had a hand in regulating — and enriching —
