by Steve Benen | Apr 16, 2026 | Intelligencer, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Last summer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unveiled a report with a title that read, “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.” In an accompanying press release, the hapless DNI added, “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”
In reality, the report showed no such thing, and independent analyses characterized Gabbard’s report as “ludicrous.” An analysis from The Bulwark explained, “[E]ven a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows … a nothingburger. There is no actual substance.” Officials from Democratic and Republican administrations urged the public to recognize Gabbard’s conspiracy theories for what they were: obvious nonsense.
The DNI sent her findings to Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless, and wouldn’t you know it, the hyper-politicized DOJ took Gabbard’s vacuous findings quite seriously.
Eight months later, a suspiciously similar process is unfolding. MS NOW reported:
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a former intelligence community inspector general and a whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger the first impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The whistleblower complaint, deemed credible at the time by then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, set off a chain of events that culminated in Trump’s impeachment in 2019 for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his then-political rival Joe Biden. The Senate later acquitted Trump in a largely party-line vote.
The criminal referral was first reported by Fox News. A spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed to MS NOW that she had sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department but
by Kevin B. Blackistone | Apr 15, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
One of the first things President Donald Trump did after his second inauguration was invalidate an executive order from former President Joe Biden that prohibited discrimination against transgender people, especially those playing sports.
How did the major sports institutions react? They lined up behind Trump’s transphobia. In February 2025, the NCAA banned transgender athletes from women’s sports. Late last month, the Olympics followed suit.
Sports are not on the vanguard of social change, as we’re asked to believe every April 15 on Jackie Robison Day.
The disappointing responses from the NCAA and International Olympics Committee serve as yet more evidence that sports are not on the vanguard of social change, as we’re asked to believe every April 15 on Jackie Robison Day.
Historically, and much to our detriment, those who lead sports leagues and associations have been followers at best. The leaders of the NCAA and the IOC have showed us that.
But we in the media created a mythology that the games we love are the tip of the spear in social progress, and we’ve done that in large part by distorting Robinson’s arrival in Major League Baseball in 1947 after the league spent 80 years or so segregating itself for white men only. The MLB doesn’t deserve its reputation as a revolutionary social change agent in this country. To the contrary, much like leaders of the NCAA and the IOC have bended their knee this Trump era, it had a long, regrettable history of reactionary politics. Indeed, its embrace of segregation served as a model for other leagues that conformed to, and didn’t confront, a racially partitioned America.
Not long after the MLB’s first
by Steve Benen | Apr 15, 2026 | 2026 election, Maddowblog, News, Politics
As consumers struggle with high gas prices and the White House quietly concedes that relief probably won’t arrive anytime soon, congressional Republicans, especially those running for re-election in the fall, are trying to figure out what to say about the issue.
They should probably avoid following the example set by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas. The New Republic noted:
Republican Senator Roger Marshall wants Americans to stop complaining about gas prices because they’re necessary for ‘national security.’
Speaking on Newsmax’s ‘Wake Up America’ Tuesday morning, Marshall was asked about the Iran war, and the Kansas politician was dismissive of its negative economic effects on the American people.
“I’m sorry the gas prices are going up, but help is on its way, and your national security, yes, is even more important than your pocketbook,” Marshall said.
Sen. Roger Marshall: “I’m sorry that gas prices are going up, but help is on the way, and your national security is even more important than your pocketbook.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-14T12:15:12.895Z
It’s worth emphasizing for context that the GOP incumbent will be on the ballot in Kansas in the fall.
Hours later, during an appearance on CNN, the same senator tried to argue that it’s “good news” that consumers in the U.S. are still paying less per gallon than European consumers, reinforcing the impression that Marshall believes American should quit their bellyaching.
At the heart of the Kansas Republican’s pitch was a simple proposition: The war in Iran is causing economic problems and pushing the cost of the living higher, but the alternative is a nuclear-armed theocracy in the Middle East. Your pocketbook is important, Marshall argues, but national security is
by Steve Benen | Apr 15, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
For reasons that still don’t make sense, Donald Trump picked a fight with, of all people, Pope Leo XIV, lashing out at the pontiff on Sunday night as someone who “likes crime,” caters to “to the Radical Left,” is taking steps that are “hurting the Catholic Church” and who’s met with “Obama Sympathizers.”
On Monday, the president was offered an opportunity to apologize, or at least to walk back his rhetorical offensive. He refused, insisting again that the pope “said things that are wrong.” A day later, the Republican kept going, scolding the pontiff during an interview with an Italian newspaper, and shortly before midnight on Tuesday night, Trump apparently thought it’d be a good idea to chide the pope once again by way of his social media platform.
Not to be outdone, his vice president — the first Catholic Republican to ever hold the office — has joined the rhetorical offensive.
On Monday night, JD Vance appeared on Fox News and insisted that “it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality … and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Putting aside the fact that the president isn’t supposed to be “dictating” anything, the Ohio Republican’s advice didn’t make a lot of sense: The pope drew Trump’s ire by speaking out on matters such as a deadly and destabilizing war in the Middle East and the plight of immigrants seeking a better life, both of which are, by any reasonable measure, “matters of morality.”
A day later, he upped the ante in an unexpected way. NBC News reported:
Vice President JD Vance said
by Samarth Gupta | Apr 15, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
Some of the basketball fans who watched the University of Michigan dominate last week’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament or saw UCLA win the women’s bracket may believe that those tournaments have always started with 68 (or at least 64) teams. But there used to be a lot fewer teams — and a lot fewer brackets — for those tournaments. The original men’s tournament, played in 1939, tipped off with only eight teams. As the sport spread and became more popular, more competitive and more stratified, we eventually got to a round of 64. And not only that: Four more teams play for the chance to get into that round.
From 1918 to 1921, the United States had 56 tax brackets. But today there are only seven.
As the basketball tournaments’ brackets have become more expansive, the U.S. tax code has essentially worked in the reverse. At its peak, from 1918 to 1921, the United States had 56 tax brackets. But today there are only seven. This quiet collapse in the number of tax brackets has come along with a new Gilded Age fueled by growing income inequality. While March Madness has come and gone, April 15 — Tax Day — is a good time to examine this madness in our tax code.
Let’s start with how we got here. Since the Clinton administration, every U.S. president has passed significant tax legislation, but the basics of the federal income tax have changed little: We’ve gone from five to seven tax brackets, and the top marginal tax rate has bounced between 35% and 39.6%. By historical standards, these are minor changes. From 1916 to 1986, on
by Steve Benen | Apr 14, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
For Americans who expect the government to remain neutral on matters of faith, leaving religious decisions to Americans without political interference, Donald Trump’s second term has been unsettling.
Federal agencies are pushing overt Christian messaging to the public while inundating federal workers with religious communications. Powerful cabinet secretaries have abandoned all subtlety in their embrace of Christian nationalism. Republican officials at the state level have passed laws to impose the Ten Commandments in public schools.
The vice president has insisted that the United States is a “Christian nation,” raising unavoidable questions about whether people of minority faiths or no religious beliefs have been relegated to second-class citizenship. The president, who has claimed the ability to inform the public about God’s wishes and who has implored Americans to gather in groups of 10 to hold weekly prayers ahead of the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, recently used his social media platform to promote an image that appeared to present himself as some kind of American Jesus.
If it seems as if Team Trump and its allies are opposed to the separation of church and state, it’s probably because it’s been quite explicit in its rejection of the constitutional principle. My MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones highlighted the final hearing of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission, which didn’t appear focused on religious liberty.
To give you a sense of the tone, the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, went on a rant calling the separation of church and state ‘the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding.’ Each speaker after him parroted a similar line, framing liberals as some kind
