Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Jaime Harrison talked with MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross on Saturday about the 2022 election prospects for Democrats, and agreed with a take from Roland S. Martin that this is no time for the party to “play fair.”

Cross had a one-on-one discussion with Harrison for her show The Cross Connection during which they covered the midterms and how Democrats can overcome what looks like a wave for Republicans in November. They covered a variety of angles, including their shared belief that the “mainstream media” isn’t doing enough to get the party’s message out there.

After saying she agreed about the media covering Democrats unfairly, Cross shifted to Republicans, saying, “let’s talk about the fascists on the other side.”

She brought up remarks from Roland Martin earlier in the show, who said that Democrats have to go to “war” to change their fortunes ahead of the election. “You cannot play fair with people who don’t play fair. There are no rules,” he said.

After playing the clip, Cross asked the DNC chair for his thoughts, adding, “I felt like that was a good road map.”

“It is a good road map,” agreed Harrison.

TIFFANY CROSS: Let’s talk about the fascists on the other side. So I hear that, but I do think there are a lot of people – because you know, like we were just talking about, you and I, we consume, you know, eight papers in the morning. We look at the minutia of politics and most Americans are not doing that. And there are still a lot of people who feel disconnected from the party or maybe even disappointed in the party. Fair enough. I want you to take a listen. We had Roland Martin on at the beginning of the show–

JAIME HARRISON: Brother Rolo.

TIFFANY CROSS: Brother Rolo Is never shy about giving his opinion.

JAIME HARRISON: No I know, I do.

TIFFANY CROSS: So he had a lot to say about what he thinks Democrats should be doing. I want you to take a listen to get your thoughts.

JAIME HARRISON: Sounds good.

ROLAND S. MARTIN: You’ve got to have President Joe Biden stop being scared of Senate Joe Manchin and go make the argument in West Virginia and go to the rand parts of Mississippi and Alabama and say, this is what we have done and these folks voted against it and this is how we have delivered. They’ve got to be willing to engage in war. You cannot play fair with people who don’t play fair. There are no rules. The other side has shown that they will do whatever is necessary in order to win. So you’ve got to say, America, when they didn’t care about you, we did.

TIFFANY CROSS: What are your thoughts? I felt like that was a good road map.

JAIME HARRISON: It is a good road map.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC’s The Cross Connection.

Comic and pundit Bill Maher said President Joe Biden needs to realize immigration is a “big fucking deal” for U.S. elections, and cited the presidential election in France as evidence.

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host spoke with guests former Senator Doug Jones and MSNBC host Ali Velshi about the prospect of a Democratic bloodbath in the midterms. Maher raised the immigration issue, and cited Marine Le Pen’s 18-point loss to French President Emmual Macron as evidence, saying she’d been “within striking distance” of a win:

BILL MAHER: So what about the other big “I” issue, which is immigration? I… Joe Biden famously used the phrase big fucking deal. What is he going to understand? This is a big fucking deal. It is. We just had an election in France, and Macron pulled it out pretty handily. But I mean, Marine Le Pen is, you know, started at nothing and now she’s.

ALI VELSHI: Within 18 points.

BILL MAHER: I mean, you know, within striking distance. And this is the same issue as Brexit in England. This is same issue as Trump voters in America. I mean.

ALI VELSHI: Orban just won an election in Hungary on the same issue.

BILL MAHER: Yes. But I mean, this is France. Yeah. And, you know, working-class voters feel like they’ve been ignored and abandoned. And when I’ve been to France, they certainly were ignoring and abandoning me. I seem to remember that about France. But that is a reasonable argument, that there’s this elitist group that’s running the world that’s left us behind.

DOUG JONES: Yes. Look. And people think that to some extent about Democrats. Democrats have lost their way in the sense that they have not been talking to mainstream America. They’ve been talking to urban this and this group and a coalition. But they have lost their way talking to to rural America, to folks and on Main Street. We have got to get back to giving those message. You talk about inflation and all. We need to be talking to those folks to say, look, we are working, we are doing things, we’re releasing oil, we’re doing this. The Fed is doing that. Rick Scott is proposing to tax you… His proposal is to tax people under $50,000 to raise their taxes. We’ve got to get that message out to folks.

Watch above via HBO.

If only pie recipes asked you to roll the dough into an amoeba shape. I’m excellent at that one. But perfect circles or rectangles of dough? That takes a few reps.

Pies, cut-out cookies, cinnamon rolls, and danishes require a dough that is rolled out into a specific shape. If you decide to take the I’ll-fix-it-later…

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The brilliance of the Nintendo Switch is how it gives you the ability to go from playing a game handheld to experiencing it on your big screen in seconds. That brilliance is certainly dimmed, however, if you have to deal with intermittent blackouts on your TV. If you’re experiencing this issue with your Switch, there…

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After tweeting out a joke and a screenshot of someone messaging me on Hinge, I recently read through a lot of complaints (mostly from men) about how it feels like there are only two options when you reach out to someone on dating apps: Get ignored or get mocked.

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Ohio state representative and former Congresswoman Jean Schmidt defended Wednesday the Ohio legislature’s proposed “trigger law” that would instantly ban abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the Supreme Court.

During a legislative hearing, Schmidt was asked to account for the instance of unwanted pregnancies due to rape in the proposed abortion ban. Schmidt did not waiver and insisted that there would be no exception in the proposed ban for instances of rape.

Democratic State Rep. Richard Brown asked Schmidt:

If a 13-year-old girl was raped by a serial rapist … this bill would require this 13-year-old to carry this felon’s fetus to term, regardless of any emotional or psychological damage or trauma that may be inflicted upon this 13-year-old girl

Schmidt responded, noting that “rape is a difficult issue and it emotionally scares the individual,” but insisted “if a baby is created, it is a human life, and whether that mother ends that pregnancy or not, the scars will not go away, period.”

“It is a shame that it happens,” the lawmaker continued, “but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being.”

The bill, HB 598, has not passed either chamber in Ohio’s state government and only allows for abortions in the case that the mother’s life is at risk. Other provisions in the bill would make “abortion a fourth degree felony, and criminalizes the use of medication abortions,” according to Insider.

OH Rep. Schmidt (R) on her abortion ban bill: “Rape is a difficult issue… but if a baby is created, it’s human life. Whether that mother ends that pregnancy… the scars won’t go away. It’s a shame it happens, but there’s an opportunity for women no matter how young or old…” pic.twitter.com/PVOHWlFvPq

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) April 27, 2022

Watch the full clip above

The next time you’re deep in conversation with someone, whether it be a platonic, romantic, or business interaction, notice: Are you sitting or standing in similar positions? Are your voices speaking at the same volume? Are your arms or hands doing the same thing?

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Spotify is reporting a successful first quarter despite controversies surrounding star podcaster Joe Rogan and the company’s decision to pull the platform from Russia this month.

The report shows that its premium subscribers list rose by 2 million people since the start of 2022, reaching 182 million users. The amount of monthly active users topped 422 million, gaining 16 million since December.

The company’s CEO and Founder Daniel Ek tweeted this morning “We delivered another strong quarter building on momentum from 2021. Grateful for the tireless work of the @Spotify team on behalf of creators and listeners around the world.”

We delivered another strong quarter building on momentum from 2021. Grateful for the tireless work of the @Spotify team on behalf of creators and listeners around the world https://t.co/jnNPFgm9YK pic.twitter.com/ddq1NiJf5n

— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) April 27, 2022

This comes months after powerhouse artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell decided to pull their music from the platform over concerns that Joe Rogan, whose podcast is exclusive to the network, was spreading medical misinformation regarding Covid on his show.

The streaming service responded to calls to censor Rogan by opting to provide content advisory warnings to any show discussing Covid.

At the beginning of March, Spotify also decided to officially suspend its premium services in Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine. Newsweek reported that, at the time, Spotify was expecting to lose over 1.5 million subscribers from Russia alone.

The company later decided to suspend all work and access to their platform in the region at the start of April.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Former President Donald Trump said in a sworn deposition that he was worried about his critics throwing “dangerous” fruit at him during campaign events. Yes, really.

Insider reported on a deposition Trump gave in October over a lawsuit claiming he dispatched his security to deal with protesters outside of Trump Tower back in 2016. During the deposition, attorney Benjamin Dictor confronted Trump with past statements where he encouraged violence during his rallies.

One of the rallies that came up was the one where Trump told his audience to “knock the crap out” of any protesters who seemed like they were going to throw a tomato at him.

“I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees,” he said. Asked if that was his statement, Trump answered “Oh yeah. It was very dangerous.”

“What was very dangerous?” Dictor asked.

“We were threatened,” said Trump

“With what?” Dictor asked again.

“They were going to throw fruit,” said Trump. “We were threatened. We had a threat.”

…It got weirder, per Insider:

The lawyer followed up: “How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?”

Trump answered, “We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. But we were told. And you get hit with fruit, it’s — no, it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.”

Here the lawyer clarified the record.

“A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess,” he asked the former president.

“And you know what–” Trump continued.

But he was quickly interrupted, the transcript shows. The lawyers held a brief side discussion on tomatoes. Were they fruit? Or vegetables?

“It has seeds,” offered attorney Jeffrey L. Goldman, there to represent Trump’s campaign, also a defendant in the lawsuit.

Trump broke in.

“It’s worse than tomato. It’s other things also,” he said, according to the transcript.

The report says Trump and Dictor kept going back and forth on how the former knew of some tomato-y threat from the crowd. Trump said his remarks were “sort of in jest. But maybe, you know, a little truth to it. It’s very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things.”

Dictor asked, “So you were trying to incentivize people to engage in violence?”

“Objection,” said the campaign’s lawyer.

Trump answered anyway.

“No, I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than — tomatoes are bad, by the way. But it’s very dangerous.

“No,” the former president continued, “I wanted them to watch. They were on alert. I remember that specific event because everybody was on alert. They were going to hit —they were going to hit hard.”

And here’s the part of the report where Trump reflected on what other kinds of fruit could’ve been a major threat to his rally.

“Well, a tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw,” he said. “Yeah, if the security saw that, I would say you have to — and it’s not just me, it’s other people in the audience get badly hurt. Yeah, I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening.

Fidelity announced on Tuesday it’s going to launch a way for workers to put up to 20% of their 401(k) savings and contributions directly in Bitcoin. This would make Fidelity the first company in the financial services industry to allow this service without having to go through a separate brokerage window, bringing us…

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Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin confronted Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin with a series of questions about U.S. strategy vis-a-vis Ukraine.

Griffin interviewed Austin following the defense secretary’s trip to Kyiv alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The two met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Austin drew attention afterwards when he described America’s goals by saying, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Speaking with Austin in Germany, Griffin asked, “Why not say ‘defeat Russia?’ Are you expecting Russia to pull back to the pre-February 24th line or the pre-2014 line?”

“To be clear, we’re not in a fight with Russia. Ukraine is in a current struggle with Russia,” Austin said. “And what Ukraine desperately wants is to make sure it can protect its sovereign territory. We want to make sure that we’re helping Ukraine do that.”

The interview continued with Griffin asking Austin about Russia’s warning against the U.S. sending weapons to Ukraine, even as he attends an international conference about providing further assistance to the country. As Austin spoke of the weapons being given and whether they might have deterred Vladimir Putin if Ukraine had them already, Griffin turned to the conference and asked “are you worried this might turn into a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia? Is this turning into a proxy war?”

“It’s not,” Austin responded. “This is clearly Ukraine’s fight and Ukraine’s neighbors and allies and partners are stepping up to make sure that they have what they need in order to be successful”

Watch above, via Fox News.

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One of my favorite genres of hacks is “elevating” the store-bought. Making a box of cake or brownie mix taste homemade, zhooshing up mayo, using fast food chicken to make chicken salad—this kind of stuff is extremely my bag, baby.

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For many, summer is synonymous with the adventure of outdoor activities. Long hikes through the forest, morning runs along the beach, and picnics in the park are just some of the activities I will not be participating in during the next several months, though. That’s because for me, the season is synonymous with one…

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Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) warned her fellow Democrats they are going to lose the 2022 midterm elections unless they can make more headway on their legislative agenda.

Warren gave an interview to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday — who questioned whether President Joe Biden’s attempts to promote his White House accomplishment will help Democrats. Warren said Biden deserves “real credit” for his performance in office, “but it’s not enough.”

“We’ve got less than 200 days until the election and American families are hurting. Our job, while we are here in the majority, is to deliver on behalf of those families,” Warren said. “And that means making government work for them.”

Warren called for action on price-gouging, corruption and student loan debts, saying “there is so much we can do, and if we do it over the next 200 days, we’re gonna be in fine shape.”

“This is what democracy is about. Take it to the people what we’ve done, but we need to get the work done,” Warren said.

“And if you don’t, will you lose control of Congress?” Bash asked.

“Yeah,” Warren answered. “I think we’re going to be in real trouble if we don’t get up and deliver. Then I believe that Democrats are going to lose. Democrats win when they do what? When they work on behalf of working people. we can’t just rest on what we’ve already done. We need to be fighting going forward.”

Warren’s remarks come amid Biden’s continued low approval ratings, and similar warnings from Democratic strategists that the party’s prospects in November seem bleak. Warren also recently wrote an op-ed in which she took shots at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while sounding the alarm about what could happen if Democrats don’t deliver on their agendas.

Watch above, via CNN.

Fox News’ Howard Kurtz defended his network’s lack of coverage on Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) newly-revealed comments by suggesting it might not be a “big story” that the House minority leader was caught in a lie.

Kurtz was interviewing Glenn Greenwald for MediaBuzz on Sunday when he brought up McCarthy denying that he suggested former President Donald Trump resign after the events of Jan. 6. McCarthy claims he never went through with that suggestion even though he was caught on tape speaking to Republican leadership and saying he wanted to ask Trump to resign.

The Fox News host said the media is accusing McCarthy of “telling a falsehood,” Greenwald agreed with the charge, saying McCarthy is “trying to move the goalpost” after denying what he was recorded saying.

It is so clear that he got caught lying. If you want to defend him…it’s a very hard job to manage a Republican caucus with 250 very disparate voices with Donald Trump hovering over you. There was a lot of emotions surrounding 1/6, but we should demand from our political leaders the basic obligation not to tell lies to the public, and the fact that he got caught red-handed should be a pretty significant event for him.

Kurtz followed up by remarking that CNN and MSNBC covered the story “around the clock” on Friday while Fox mentioned McCarthy three times. A search via the media monitoring service Snapstream reveals that two of the mentions were brief, on Martha MacCallum’s The Story, and Shannon Bream’s Fox News at Night. Bret Baier covered the audio more extensively on Special Report Friday, presenting a full report followed by a panel discussion. Prior to MediaBuzz, no Fox News opinion show had mentioned the audio since it was released Thursday night.

“Is it a big story?” Kurtz asked. “We already knew McCarthy, who had publicly criticized the president at the time, later went to Mar-a-Lago and mended fences. But again, it comes back to denying what was already on tape.”

Greenwald took the position that “covering it is reasonable, but excessively covering it is what happened because obviously there’s a partisan agenda involved.”

“That’s a measured way of putting it,” Kurtz said as he wrapped up the segment.

Watch above, via Fox News.

Former President Donald Trump promoted the long-deleted video message he tweeted on Jan. 6 under the apparent belief it bolsters his case that his conduct was above board.

In a statement on Saturday night, Trump shared a Twitter link to the video which the social media platform deleted shortly after it was posted late in the the afternoon of January 6th. The former president questioned why the House January 6th committee isn’t talking about the video.

“Why did Twitter quickly take down this video that I made on January 6th, and why isn’t the Unselect Committee of political hacks talking about it?” Trump wrote.

The video that nobody got to see because Twitter took it down 5 minutes after it launched on J Six. pic.twitter.com/dxpX7noOYd

— JMAN (@ProducerJMAN) April 23, 2022

In the minute-long video — a clip which he evidently considers a boon to his argument — Trump referred to the attackers who breached the Capitol as “very special” people, and railed about the 2020 election having been rigged against him.

“We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side,” Trump said. “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

He added in the video, “There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home, and go home in peace.”

Twitter explained its decision to delete the video at the time by saying, “As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy.”

Watch above.

Piers Morgan is standing behind his portrayal of a yet-to-air interview with former President Donald Trump as contentious.

Appearing on Fox News’ MediaBuzz Sunday, Morgan — whose full conversation with Trump will air on Fox Nation Monday — was pressed by Howard Kurtz about the claim that the former president walked out of their interview. A preview clip of the interview was cut to make it seem as though Trump cut the interview off, but subsequently released audio demonstrated that he didn’t.

“It was uncomfortable,” Morgan told Kurtz, describing the interview. “I’ve never seen him like that. He was very angry. Quite profane, in fact.”

Morgan described what happened after he told Trump that he does not believe the 2020 election was rigged.

“At that point, the fuse kind of went with him,” Morgan said. “He started insulting me, called me a fool seven times. I was very respectful back, I accepted if he wanted to call me that. That’s fine. But he wasn’t going to change my mind. … He couldn’t accept that. He has a kind of bling, pathological belief that it was taken from him.”

The Fox Nation host then talked about the end of the interview.

“At the end, I thanked him and I shook his hand, which is completely true,” Morgan said. “But then he just got up, barked at our cameras. ‘Turn the camera off!’ And then he walked off. And as he walks off, he muttered loudly — we have all this on film — ‘So dishonest! So dishonest!'” About me. And I just thought that was rude and churlish, and I felt that constituted a walkout, actually.”

Kurtz followed up — confronting Morgan with the disputed account presented by the audio.

“However ticked off the former president may have been, he thanked you, you thanked him,” Kurtz said. “You said ‘great interview.’ It didn’t sound like he was storming off in anger.”

“I didn’t claim it was some ferocious, screaming, storming off,” Morgan said. “I just said that actually, right at the end, he got up, barked ‘turn the cameras off,’ and called me dishonest and walked away. Now, you can call that what you like, I’ve never experienced that with him before. It’s always been a lot more friendly than that.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf told SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Disney-punishing law could kill “tens of thousands” of good jobs.

On Friday’s edition of The Dean Obeidallah Show, the host talked with Ms. Rumpf about her recent column analyzing the ramifications of a law that DeSantis signed to punish Disney by dissolving its special district — and according to Rumpf, dissolving a mess of middle-class jobs:

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: What would the impact be on these two counties now with the really Creek Improvement District ending? And specifically, as you note in your article, how much each taxpayer is going to be stuck paying for Ron DeSantis trying to run for president in 2024? Because it really is around DeSantis tax incentives tax. so he can run for president. So what is the the Santos tax? What’s going to cost people?

SARAH RUMPF: Their Orange County tax collector estimated to be between twenty two hundred and twenty eight hundred per family.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: So Republicans voted for a middle class tax increase on middle class, lower class, everyone there to have to pay $2200 to $2800 per family of four. And that’s the bare minimum. So Ron, this is going to run for president and we’re going to like how we raise taxes on the middle class. So I love this. This is just the worst thing he’s ever done, but the greatest at the same time.

SARAH RUMPF: Let’s play pretend that this is not a political ploy, and that the grievance against Disney is legit. What they’re actually complaining about is speech from the corporate head honchos, and speech from the content creators, the entertainment side. That video of them, oh, we want to, you know, they’re convinced that Disney is going to corrupt all their children. What they’re doing. They’re not going after the content creators. They’re going after the blue collar workers and first responders. Reedy Creek directly employs 800 people. In addition to their eight hundred direct employees. They have 2000 the contractors that they work with for everything from construction projects to landscaping. You know, all that kind of stuff. Now that’s a contractor, that means a business, that means every single one of those contractors has a who knows how many employees. I don’t have that figure because no one’s done an economic study to find out. So let’s say each of those contractors, I mean, you know, if you’re just going to come in, you know, most of them land, you might have a couple of, you know, you might have a handful of employees for a neighborhood, but you’re you’re doing a landscape maintenance for Disney. You might have dozens of employees, eight hundred employees directly plus two thousand contractors. We are potentially talking about tens of thousands of middle class jobs that Ron DeSantis just signed to eliminate on June 1st, 2023.

Watch the clip above, via SiriusXM.

During a lengthy press conference on Saturday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he will be meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday.

Blinken and Austin will be the highest-ranking American officials to visit the war zone since the Russian invasion began almost 60 days ago.

The Pentagon has convened a summit in Germany, inviting 40 nations to take part on Tuesday for discussion on Russia and Ukraine. Various reports this weekend put the number of confirmed attending nations at 20.

At the time of this post, the United States has not confirmed the Sunday meeting that President Zelensky announced at his presser.

On MSNBC’s Weekends with Alex Witt on Saturday, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said it is “highly, highly unlikely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin would order a rocket strike or attack on the Secretary of State or Defense.

“He barely has the capability to fight against the Ukrainian army. He has zero capability to fight against NATO, anchored by the greatest military in the world, the United States,” said McFaul.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was asked by Wolf Blitzer to explain the biggest differences between covering former President Donald Trump’s White House, and that of President Joe Biden.

One of the better innovations of soon-to-be-defunct streamer CNN+ was The Interview Club, which allows viewers to submit questions to an upcoming guest — at least for another week.

Collins was a guest this week, with Blitzer moderating the curated questions. One came from a viewer named David, who wanted to know how the two administrations differed for Collins. Her answer included the fact that they were both busy, but in different ways, and that both administrations are connected in that “they hold the same power” even if they use it in different ways:

MR. BLITZER: And a lot of our viewers, of course, got to know you during the Trump administration. And David has this related question for you. How was your experience covering the Trump White House compared to now covering the Biden White House?

MS. COLLINS: They’re very different because, of course, the two presidents are very different, and that is something I think either of them would tell you. What I would say that’s not that different is it’s still incredibly busy. It may not be as quite as quite as busy during the Biden administration as it was during Trump. It’s just a different kind of busy because with Trump, you would wake up at six a.m. and you would think the news story was going to be one thing, one day. And of course, through his Twitter feed, it would often change and adjust multiple times during a day, and you would think you’re talking about one thing. And by the time Wolf was on air that night, you were talking about something totally different. So that is something that’s changed, because you don’t see as much of that. However, it’s still been so busy with Biden in office. From all the changes that he made when he first started to, of course, what’s been happening with the pandemic and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And so it’s been very different, but it’s still really busy, and you still know it’s, it’s still very important because it’s a different administration. But of course, they hold the same power that the last one did. And so that has really been something cool to see that kind of underlying connection in that sense. And it’s also fun to learn different presidents and what they’re like. I’m obsessed with the presidency. I love learning about different presidents. And you definitely see clearly, up close, you know, how different they are from a policy perspective, but also the difference in how they lead and how they think that they should run the office.

Watch above via CNN+.

L:Elsa/Getty Images – R:Alex Wong/Getty Images

Multiple Democratic strategists sounded less-than-hopeful notes about the midterms in interviews with The New York Times, one of whom joked “Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?”

On Friday, The New York Times published an article by Blake Hounshell entitled “‘It’s Time to Head for the Lifeboats’: Democratic Fatalism Intensifies,” and subheadlined “Strategists and pollsters are increasingly talking about limiting the party’s expected losses in November rather than how to gain new seats.”

The article noted headwinds facing Democrats that include inflation and President Joe Biden‘s stubbornly low approval ratings, but was noteworthy for its collection of quotes. A sampling:

• “Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?” one Democratic strategist quipped at the outset of a recent phone call.
• “The vibes just feel very off,” said Tré Easton, a progressive consultant.
• Others use words like “horrible” and “debacle” to describe a political environment that has gone from bad to worse over the last three months
• “It’s going to be a terrible cycle for Democrats,” said Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser to Bill Clinton.
• “What you’re seeing is people feeling like it’s time to head for the lifeboats rather than trying to steer the ship,” said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary who worked under Barack Obama.
• “Frankly,” he said, “the most important thing is to preserve the ability to have elections in the future.” — Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way.

The White House has consistently messaged the midterms as what Press Secretary Jen Psaki calls a “choice” election.

In a theme she has touched on frequently when asked about the midterms, Psaki told reporters this week that “everybody looks at a choice and what each party is fighting for, is advocating for, has gotten accomplished, but also what their vision is for the future.  And we’re proud of our vision.”

And President Biden leaned heavily into the type of choice he wants Americans to see this week, excoriating Republicans over anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, their retaliation against Disney, and their loyalty to and fear of former President Donald Trump.

Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

New York’s proposed congressional map was drawn “to discourage competition and favor Democrats,” violating the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, a mid-level appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision by the five-judge panel was split 3-2, with the majority writing they were “satisfied that petitioners established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Legislature acted with partisan intent.”

In the opinion, the judges noted that “democratic leaders in the legislature drafted the 2022 congressional redistricting map without any Republican input, and the map was adopted by the legislature without a single Republican vote in favor of it.”

The judges also noted that “under the 2012 congressional map there were 19 elected Democrats and 8 elected Republicans and under the 2022 congressional map there were 22 democrat-majority and 4 Republican-majority districts.”

Those two points were not enough by themselves to constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but those points couple with testimony of RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende “confirmed the inference from the above two points that the legislature engaged in unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering when enacting the 2022 congressional map.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul and other top Democrats are expected to appeal the decision to the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. Oral arguments could begin as soon as next week.

If upheld, the newly drawn district lines would not be used in November’s midterm elections.

Politico reported that the court’s decision was “a partially victory for Democrats,” as the judges determined that the process lawmakers used to enact the maps was constitutional and that the new districts  for state legislators were properly drawn.

“We are pleased the Court upheld the legislature’s process and the right for the legislature to enact these maps,” state Senate Democratic spokesperson Mike Murphy said in a statement. “The newly-drawn Senate and Assembly maps are now valid. We always knew this case would end at the Court of Appeals and look forward to being heard on our appeal to uphold the Congressional map as well.”

Outside of New York, courts have blocked maps gerrymandered by Republicans in North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and gerrymandered by Democrats in Maryland, according to WNBC. As a result, primaries were delayed in North Carolina, Ohio, and Maryland.

I wish I knew how to truly savor things and prolong pleasure, specifically when it comes to things that fall under the Food & Beverage category. Maybe it’s an instinct buried deep in my DNA—a by-product of coming from a long line of war-suffering village stock—but I tend to eat with the voracity of a starved wolf…

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Stephen A. Smith outdid himself this time, taking the second to last segment of the week on First Take to stage a presidential campaign, claiming he’d never lose a debate if he ran for president.

The mock campaigning happened Friday on the show as the conversation was originally about the NBA playoffs before moderator Molly Qerim asked Smith a presidential-related question.

“Is that going to be your campaign slogan when you run, ‘the brilliance of others’?” Qerim asked her co-host.

“For me to run for presidency of the United States, here’s what I will say, Kendrick Perkins. I will sit up there and say, ‘listen, I’m going to give it to you straight. I ain’t gon’ tell you what you wanna hear, imma tell you what you need to know. And I ain’t gonna do what you want me to do, I’m gon’ do what’s best,'” Smith stated as Molly put her hands to her head.

“Some days I’m gon’ flow left, some days imma flow right. But at the end of the day, and see how I’m holding my fist, this is what they do as politicians,” Smith pointed out, holding up a fist. “At the end of the day, I’m the man of the people. I’m about America, America first, baby. This is what we gotta do. I can assure you this, Molly. I can assure you this, I’ll never lose a debate. If I run for presidency of the United States, I will not lose a debate, ok. I’ll tell you that much right now.”

“I wish I had an eject button and I can just eject myself from this conversation right now, I can’t even look at you,” Qerim said, turning away from Smith as he finished his monologue.

“It wouldn’t be about red states. It wouldn’t be about blue states. It would be about the United States of America, all of us!” Smith proclaimed to the world.

“I can’t,” Qerim said, getting out her chair. “i just threw up in my mouth, just you go to break. I can’t, I’m gone.”

“My name is Stephen A. Smith and I approve this message,” Smith finished with a thumbs up and a smile to the camera.

“Just fade to black. Tell the producers, just fade to black right now,” Qerim stated.

Smith did in fact take the show to break as Molly Q tried to help Smith, who got mad at her for interrupting “the future POTUS”.

Watch the video above via ESPN

One of my biggest takeaways from taking first aid and CPR classes is that if you’re going to have a medical emergency, do it with a friend. You can’t perform CPR on yourself, after all. But there are plenty of ways you can attempt to handle an emergency if you’re still conscious, so we’ll go through a few of them here.

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I hate talking about cast iron. It’s just a pan (or a material with which they make pans, Dutch ovens, etc.), but it’s a pan that brings all the nerds to the yard, and they’re like “my seasoning method is better than yours.” They love to talk about thermal conductivity and polymerization, two subjects I’ve tried my…

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You renovate your bathroom, only to realize too late that you haven’t accounted for sufficient storage in the shower. Or you’ve inherited an existing shower that has exactly one modestly sized niche that will never be big enough to store all your necessary bottles. You might think you’re doomed to a life with one of…

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