“They’re not even hiding it anymore. A US-led regime change war abroad to line the pockets of Big Oil—where have we heard this one before?”

Amid mounting alarm that Trump may take military action, Salazar said there were three reasons why “we need to go in” to the South American country. The first, she said, is that “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day.”

After journalist Aaron Rupar noted her remarks on social media, many critics weighed in, including Justice Democrats, which works to elect progressives to Congress. 

“They’re not even hiding it anymore. A US-led regime change war abroad to line the pockets of Big Oil—where have we heard this one before?” the group said, referring to the invasion of Iraq.

Fred Wellman, a US Army combat veteran and podcast host running as a Democrat in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, replied on social media: “They are sending our troops to war for the oil companies and not even pretending to lie about it. These sick SOBs are going to get our kids killed and it’s all a big joke.”

Salazar also described Venezuela as a launching pad for enemies of the US and claimed the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, leads the alleged Cartel de los Soles, or the Cartel of the Suns—which the Trump administration on Monday designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Venezuela’s interior and justice minister, Diosdado Cabello, has long claimed the cartel doesn’t exist, calling it an “invention.” As the UK’s BBC reported Monday:

Cabello, who is alleged to be one of the high-ranking members of the cartel, has accused US officials of using it as an excuse to target those they do not like.

“Whenever someone bothers them, they name them as the head of the Cartel de los Soles,” he said in August.

Gustavo Petro, the left-wing president of Venezuela’s neighbour, Colombia, has also denied the cartel’s existence.

“It is the fictional excuse of the far right to bring down governments that do not obey them,” he wrote on X in August.

The terrorist designation and Salazar’s comments came as the Trump administration is under fire for blowing up boats it claims are running drugs off the coast of Venezuela, and after a CBS News/YouGov survey showed on Sunday that 70% of Americans—including 91% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans—are against the “US taking military action in Venezuela.”

-Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams

"We Are Going to Have to Fight Three Wars" by David French

 

I have profoundly mixed feelings about the peace talks now underway to end the war in Ukraine. On one hand, the emerging military realities should tell us that this is exactly the right time to negotiate a cease-fire. The question, however, is whether Russia and, sadly, the United States are willing to agree to a just peace — one that keeps Ukraine free. But first, before we dive into the possibility of peace, let’s talk about the facts on the ground. Ukraine is under immense pressure. 

Russia is attacking relentlessly along the front in eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine is on the verge of losing an important battle — the city of Pokrovsk is in imminent danger of falling, and there is real concern that Ukrainian troops could get surrounded and trapped if Russia is able to take the city.

With its so-called Rubicon drone units, Russia has revamped its drone tactics and now might even be outpacing Ukraine in tactical innovation. The Russian war economy is producing huge numbers of Shahed drones — which Russia uses to attack Ukrainian cities and towns — and Ukrainian air defenses now face enormous swarms of attacking drones and missiles.

Ukrainian cities are being battered. The Ukrainian energy sector is under siege. At the same time, American financial support has almost disappeared (though we are still selling weapons purchased by Europe for use in Ukraine), and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is mired in a corruption scandal (in which a number of Zelensky’s close allies have been accused of receiving kickbacks from a Ukrainian nuclear power company) that’s weakened his political standing, arguably to its lowest point since the war began.

But Russia is also under immense pressure. By any fair measure, its summer offensive — which continues into the fall — has been a costly disappointment. It has gained ground, but at a staggering cost. Russia has almost certainly suffered more than a million total casualties in the war so far, and — as Edward Carr explained in The Economist — at the present rate of advance it would take five more years for Russia to take the four oblasts (provinces) it’s seeking to conquer and cost a total of almost four million casualties.

In fact, as Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who is one of the foremost Western analysts of the war, has reported, Russia’s unrecoverable casualties are approaching its rate of recruitment. In other words, it is focused on replacing losses rather than expanding the force. Its new recruits are lower in quality, and desertion is a problem.

And while Russia has innovated tactically, there are no immediate prospects for a breakthrough. These new tactics involve infiltrating through Ukrainian lines in small groups at terrible cost — often on motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles — and then trying to build on the small footholds that they are able to achieve.

It’s a tactic that works for incremental advances, but there’s no feasible way (at least not yet) for Russia to shatter Ukrainian lines. Given the drone swarms that saturate the front, large-scale movements of tanks or troops are almost always immediately spotted and attacked with drones and artillery. At the same time, Ukraine has improved its long-range attack capabilities, both with Western-supplied weapons and with its own home-built drones and missiles. Ukraine has systematically targeted Russian energy infrastructure and oil refineries.

If you put all this together, you know that neither side seems to have any real hope of changing the underlying dynamics of the war. The Russians push forward, inch by inch. The Ukrainians make them bleed for every advance, and each side looks to the other to finally crack under pressure, collapse, and yield.

That’s the immediate backdrop to the peace negotiations that kicked off in Geneva and continued elsewhere, but there’s an additional reality, one that I learned when I talked to Ukrainian leaders during my visit to the country in 2023. “We’re going to have to fight three wars,” a senior member of the government told me, “and this is only the second.”

The first war, in this telling, was the Russian invasion of Crimea and parts of the Donbas region in 2014. The second war is the one raging now, the war that began with Russia’s attack on Feb. 24, 2022. The third war is the next war — the one that Ukraine fears Russia will launch once it has had a chance to pause and rearm.

Winning, or better yet deterring, that third war is one of Ukraine’s chief concerns. That’s why, for example, Zelensky has signed letters of intent to purchase hundreds of advanced fighters from France and Sweden, even though deliveries won’t be complete for at least a decade.

A free and independent Ukraine will be no more tolerable to President Vladimir Putin after a cease-fire than it was before, and any peace agreement now has to be evaluated on the basis of a single key question — can Ukraine remain free after the shooting stops?

That’s the core problem with the leaked 28-point peace plan that the Trump administration tried to impose on Ukraine earlier this month. Even if you assume that Ukraine might be willing to trade some land for peace (a cease-fire on current lines, for example), it still must retain the means of preserving its political independence, or any peace agreement is little more than a surrender document.

Trump’s initial plan yielded all of the Donbas to Russia — including the parts of Donbas that Russia hasn’t been able to seize from Ukraine — and tried to force Ukraine to accept a cap of 600,000 military personnel, a number substantially smaller than its current force. There is no chance that a mere 600,000 men and women could hold the long border against a vastly larger Russian force.

The plan contains no corresponding limitations on Russia’s much larger force. Russia has more than 1.3 million active duty troops, and it’s planning to expand the military to a total of 1.5 million. In other words, Trump’s plan would shrink the Ukrainian military at the same time that Putin is increasing the size of Russia’s force. The resulting power imbalance would be extreme.

At the same time, Ukraine would have to give up the prospect of joining NATO, and NATO troops could not be stationed on Ukrainian soil. As a result, any security guarantee in the agreement would be paper guarantees only, and Ukraine knows from bitter experience that a mere paper guarantee is no guarantee at all.

It’s no wonder, then, that Zelensky had an immediate negative reaction — casting the plan as a choice between losing Ukrainian dignity and losing American support. But given the battlefield situation, combined with the possibility of losing American aid, it’s also no wonder that Ukraine feels intense pressure to try to strike a deal of some kind. The only way that Ukraine can stay in the fight over the long term is to rely on the United States and Europe to function as arsenals of democracy, matching Russian industrial might with their own production and their own weapons.

If Ukraine loses American aid — as Zelensky plainly fears — it’s unclear that Europe can pick up the slack over the long term, especially as the European powers rush to rearm their own militaries. Without steadfast American support, Ukraine could well face two terrible choices — accept the Russian/American deal and live as Moscow’s vassal, or reject the deal and face a doomed struggle against a superior force.

And so, Ukraine is negotiating. On Monday, The Financial Times reported that a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with their Ukrainian counterparts and hammered out a Ukrainian/American counterproposal to the Russian/American initial plan, including a potential increase of the Ukrainian troop cap to 800,000 (a number much closer to its present strength).

But the very elements that make a deal acceptable to Ukraine — such as ensuring that Ukraine has the ability to protect itself against renewed Russian aggression — are the same things that make it unacceptable to Russia. Its true war aims have never been solely about territory. Yes, it obviously seeks to exercise sovereignty over the Donbas, but it also wants Ukraine to be a rump state, a larger version of Belarus, a nation that is entirely in thrall to Putin’s Russia.

Putin doesn’t even view Ukraine as a legitimate country. He refuses to see Ukraine as a distinct nation with a distinct culture and history. For him, the only satisfactory conclusions to the war involve either the extinction of Ukraine or its total domination by Russia.

Ukraine might be too weak to retake the Donbas, but more than three years of war have taught us that Russia isn’t strong enough to take Ukraine. And since Ukraine understands that it can’t recapture the Donbas, the true path to peace lies in convincing Putin that he can’t seize control of Ukraine.

The fundamental objective of American diplomacy and the fundamental aim of American aid should be to deny Putin control of Ukraine. Rubio seems to understand this imperative, but much of the rest of the administration does not. If Trump uses the considerable economic, military and diplomatic power of the United States to coerce Ukraine into risking its independence, a cease-fire wouldn’t be a diplomatic achievement — it would be a national shame.

Actually, it would be worse than that. It would be a strategic disaster. We’d teach our NATO allies that we’re an unreliable partner, we’d teach Vladimir Putin that brute military force works, and we’d place NATO’s eastern flank at profound, immediate risk. We would have increased the chances of a wider war.

Russia can win the war two ways. It can continue to try to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield at immense cost. It can inch forward, day by day, in the hopes that someday Ukraine will finally collapse. But that course of action carries considerable risk. In the face of such horrific casualties, one wonders how long Russian society can carry that cost. The long stalemate in Afghanistan contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, for example, and Russia is fighting a bloodier, much more costly war now. It’s far from clear that it can maintain its current military operations indefinitely.

The second way that Russia can win is by leveraging American influence to pressure Ukraine into concessions that Russia could not win — and has not won — on the battlefield. And Putin has far more hope in the short term that he can influence America than he can break through in the Donbas.

We can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now, that Ukrainian diplomacy seems to have yielded a new plan, one that reportedly contains key differences with the old. In fact, there is even a degree of confusion as to whether the initial Russian/American plan had any American elements at all, or if it was simply a Russian plan delivered through the United States. Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican, said at a news conference that Secretary of State Rubio “made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives.”

“It is not our recommendation,” Rounds said, “It is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received, and as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it — and we did not release it. It was leaked.”

Rubio, however, tweeted, “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”

All this confusion led Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland and leader of a nation that has experienced recent Russian drone incursions, to respond with a tweet of his own — “Together with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, we have declared our readiness to work on the 28-point plan despite some reservations. However, before we start our work, it would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where it was created.”

This is not how American diplomacy should be done. Our support for Ukraine should be steadfast. Russia should be made to understand that we will not force Ukraine to yield its independence, and American arms and American support mean that Russia will continue to bleed itself dry if it pursues its maximal demands. At the same time, however, we have to deliver a hard message to Ukraine. Some of its territory is lost — perhaps not forever, but for the foreseeable future. Yet it has not shed its blood in vain.

When this all started, it was predicted that Ukraine would collapse in hours or days, but it has stood strong, inflicting devastating losses on one of the world’s most powerful nations. It would be an intolerable and catastrophic failure if the Trump administration delivers Putin a victory through diplomacy that he could not achieve in war.

-New York Times

-David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag). 

 

Trump's De-legalization

 

Donald Trump wasted little time exploiting the shooting of two National Guard troops to advance his lawless assault on immigrants and refugees, pledging on Thanksgiving Day to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn’t see as “a net asset” to the United States.

The president announced his proposal in a series of unhinged, racism-laced posts on his social media platform a day after two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington, DC. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with CIA-backed military units in Afghanistan and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration.

Trump ignored that fact in his Truth Social tirade, blaming his predecessor for Lakanwal’s presence in the US and using the shooting to broadly smear migrants and refugees.

“These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process,” Trump wrote. “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, highlighted Trump’s “outrageous claim” that most of the immigrant population in the US is “on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”

“As insulting as the ‘deplorables’ comment, and on Thanksgiving Day no less,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “This rhetoric is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”

How Trump’s rant will be translated into policy is unclear. Reuters reported Thursday that Trump “has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under former President Joe Biden’s administration and Green Cards issued to citizens of 19 countries.”

Like the president, his administration did not provide a specific list of nations, but it pointed Reuters to “a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.”

Trump’s posts came days after US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans to reinterview hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden.

The advocacy group Refugees International condemned the move as “a vindictive, harmful, and wasteful attack on people throughout US communities who have fled persecution and cleared some of the most rigorous security checks in the world.”

“The decision retraumatizes families, undermines faith in the legal immigration system, disrupts integration, and misuses taxpayer dollars to scrutinize valuable new members of American communities,” the group added. “This is part of the Trump administration’s unprecedented de-legalization of people who arrived on humanitarian pathways and erodes the US as a nation of refuge.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

As US hunger rises, Trump administration’s ‘efficiency’ goals cause massive food waste

 

The U.S. government has caused massive food waste during President Donald Trump’s second term. Policies such as immigration raids, tariff changes and temporary and permanent cuts to food assistance programs have left farmers short of workers and money, food rotting in fields and warehouses, and millions of Americans hungry. And that doesn’t even include the administration’s actual destruction of edible food.

The U.S. government estimates that more than 47 million people in America don’t have enough food to eat – even with federal and state governments spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on programs to help them.

Yet, huge amounts of food – on average in the U.S., as much as 40% of it – rots before being eaten. That amount is equivalent to 120 billion meals a year: more than twice as many meals as would be needed to feed those 47 million hungry Americans three times a day for an entire year.

This colossal waste has enormous economic costs and renders useless all the water and resources used to grow the food. In addition, as it rots, the wasted food emits in the U.S. alone over 4 million metric tons of methane – a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

As a scholar of wasted food, I have watched this problem worsen since Trump began his second term in January 2025. Despite this administration’s claim of streamlining the government to make its operations more efficient, a range of recent federal policies have, in fact, exacerbated food wastage.

A farmworker raises her hands as armed immigration agents approach during a raid on a California farm in July 2025. Blake Fagan/AFP via Getty Images

Immigration policy

Supplying fresh foods, such as fruits, vegetables and dairy, requires skilled workers on tight timelines to ensure ripeness, freshness and high quality. Help knowledgeable voices rise above the noise. Support The Conversation.

The Trump administration’s widespread efforts to arrest and deport immigrants have sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other agencies into hundreds of agricultural fields, meat processing plants and food production and distribution sites. Supported by billions of taxpayer dollars, they have arrested thousands of food workers and farmworkers – with lethal consequences at times.

Dozens of raids have not only violated immigrants’ human rights and torn families apart: They have jeopardized the national food supply. Farmworkers already work physically hard jobs for low wages. In legitimate fear for their lives and liberty, reports indicate that in some places 70% of people harvesting, processing and distributing food stopped showing up to work by mid-2025.

News reports have identified many instances where crops have been left to rot in abandoned fields. Even the U.S. Department of Labor declared in October 2025 that aggressive farm raids drive farmworkers into hiding, leave substantial amounts of food unharvested and thus pose a “risk of supply shock-induced food shortages.”

Food specially formulated to feed starving children is marked for disposal in a U.S. government warehouse in July 2025. Stephen B. Morton for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Foreign aid cuts

When the Trump administration all but shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development in early 2025, the agency had 500 tons of ready-to-eat, high-energy biscuits worth US$800,000, stored to distribute to starving people around the world who had been displaced by violence or natural disasters. With no staff to distribute the biscuits, they expired while sitting in a warehouse in Dubai.

Incinerating the out-of-date biscuits reportedly cost an additional $125,000. An additional 70,000 tons of USAID food aid may also have been destroyed.

Tariffs

In the late 20th century, as globalized trade patterns grew, U.S. farmers struggled with agricultural prices below their production costs. Yet tariffs in the first Trump administration did not protect small farms.

And the tariffs imposed in early 2025, after Trump regained the White House, severed U.S. soybean trade with China for months. Meanwhile, there’s nowhere to store the mountains of soybeans. An October 2025 agreement may resume some activity, but at lower price levels and a slower pace than before, as China looks to Brazil and Argentina to meet its vast demand.

Though the soybeans were intended to feed the Chinese pig industry, not humans, the specter of waste looms both in terms of the potential spoilage of soybeans and the actual human food that could have been grown in their place.

Mature soybeans sit unharvested in an Indiana field in October 2025. Jeremy Hogan/Getty Images

Other efforts lead to more waste

Since taking office, the second Trump administration has taken many steps aimed at efficiency that actually boosted food waste. Mass firings of food safety personnel risks even more outbreaks of foodborne diseases, tainted imports, and agricultural pathogens – which can erupt into crises requiring mass destruction, for instance, of nearly 35,000 turkeys with bird flu in Utah.

In addition, the administration canceled a popular program that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farmers, though many of the crops had already been planted when the cancellation announcement was made. That food had to find new buyers or risk being wasted, too. And the farmers were unable to count on a key revenue source to keep their farms afloat.

Also, the administration slashed funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency that helped food producers, restaurants and households recover from disasters – including restoring power to food-storage refrigeration.

The fall 2025 government shutdown left the government’s major food aid program, SNAP, in limbo for weeks, derailing communities’ ability to meet their basic needs. Grocers, who benefit substantially from SNAP funds, announced discounts for SNAP recipients – to help them afford food and to keep food supplies moving before they rotted. The Department of Agriculture ordered them not to, saying SNAP customers must pay the same prices as other customers.

Food waste did not start with the Trump administration. But the administration’s policies – though they claim to be seeking efficiency – have compounded voluminous waste at a time of growing need. This Thanksgiving, think about wasted food – as a problem, and as a symptom of larger problems.

 -The Conversation

Tevis Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Provost Associate Professor of Environment, Development and Health, American University School of International Service

American University School of International Service master’s student Laurel Levin contributed to the writing of this article.

 

War of the Brown Noses: The great Trump world crackup has only just begun

 

   

Donald Trump began this week calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a traitor. Standing on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Greene — someone not so much made by MAGA as made of it — flung the label back at him, unsubtly suggesting the president is captive to foreign interests. 

That same morning, Trump Whisperer and failed congressional candidate Laura Loomer issued her own dire warning to the GOP, tweeting, “I’m going to say it, the GOP has a Nazi problem.” She ought to know. The first time most people encountered her, she had her arm around one in a YouTube video, bragging about her “big tits and Ashkenazi IQ” and striking out with him anyway. Some metaphors have a long payoff.  

A war of Nazis vs. Neocons/Globalists might have remained an “ideological” battle behind closed doors, its final word a press release that got repeated until it sounded like conventional wisdom. What Loomer and Greene have done is make that battle active, present and public. They aren’t alone. 

As the Heritage Foundation is pulled in two directions by America First groypers and the significantly Jewish neoconservative foreign policy establishment, Candace “I am also a Black commentator who loves Hitler” Owens and Charlie Kirk’s widow are tearing up the young conservative grifter and YouTube maniac demographics. 

Practically before the body grew cold, Owens began suggesting that Zionist sleepers in the GOP, the Mossad and Kirk’s widow had a hand in his assassination. (Meanwhile, better check to make sure Erika Kirk isn’t secretly transgender.) 

America First is also at war with the tech fascists’ fondness for HB1 visas, just as their supposed populism confronts the reality of what the Trump economy feels like for anyone whose response to a foreclosure crisis won’t be loading up on discount property.

What Loomer and Greene have done is make that battle active, present and public.

Then there is Thomas Massie, the Republican representative from Kentucky’s 4th District, whose commitment to treating the Epstein case as exactly what it looks like has given the House permission to discuss the president as culpable in a massive child-sex-trafficking ring. 

Massie presents the tip of the spear when it comes to dividing a caucus that has been animated by the philosophy that “everyone I don’t like is a pedophile,” while also persistently ducking the “there’s a documentary on Netflix about this” reality that Jim Jordan still serves in the House, and perpetually skates on the fact that not a month and sometimes not even a week goes by without the police introducing new confirmation that “Pedocon Theory is a theory like gravity is a theory.”

Like the cartoon dog in a room filling with flames, Trump and company’s response will probably be, “This is fine.” It’s a meme from the internet, so look for it to appear on the social media timeline of something like the Department of the Interior. It will be childish, stupid and unconvincing, but you can’t fault them, because for 10 years childish, stupid and unconvincing worked. 

Like a golf handicap, Trump could count on a press corps willing to add the numbers needed to cover the gap between what he told us the score was and what he actually shot. The loss of this reflexive support is invariably depicted as his “eroding trust,” but it’s like any other Trump employer-employee relationship: He rewarded the media’s tireless work with nothing, then fired it without a plan for a replacement. 

The story that MAGA tells itself and dares anyone to contradict will find newer and odder bedfellows. If a MAGA incarnate like Greene can claim to patriotically defend it while essentially declaring its creator a traitor, then this is a game that anyone can play. Laura Loomer’s dedication to Trump is so great that she replaced whatever personality she had with his interests and his satisfaction, and she has no trouble imperiling the new base by accurately describing it. 

This is, if not courage, then at least opportunism instantly recognizable to a party full of hyenas. Every new voice creates more permission and support for the next, and every unapologetic counterargument shreds another part of an administration’s messaging almost wholly dependent on having everyone in the party respond to the damning presence of objective reality with, “Nuh-uh.” They may not call this resistance, but it is assuming the form. 

The trouble with pretensions to kingship is that they come with none of the ceremonial aspects of monarchy.

Trump would never use that word either, but he knows it when he sees it. Only five months after a big fan of his started hunting Minnesota Democrats on his kill list, Trump took to social media Thursday morning for another rousing rendition of stochastic terror. 

Democrats who encourage the military to disobey unlawful orders, he wrote, should be hanged. 

But after a decade of the Trump Death Penalty looming over their heads, they need no reminders of their sentence, nor do his followers need more encouragement to exact the punishment. No, this one went out to those in the party whose burden is maintaining whatever polite fictions the Trump administration needs to paper over divisions among the base. 

“Tariffs don’t raise prices, but our removing some just lowered them,” and “Our distinguished colleague from the SS with a doctorate in Great Replacement is very disturbed about campus antisemitism” — whatever fraud gets us over the next 24-hour hump. 

The reward for loyalty is more of the same, and the cost of disloyalty is death. The question now is whose.

The problem with polite fictions is that both parties have to keep being polite, and Trump never upheld his part of the deal, with either the media or his caucus. The latter features many people like Greene who punched their ticket by being as vindictive and self-centered as their leader. At the same time, mainstream journalism has less incentive to pretend along with him that he is intelligent and capable. 

The trouble with pretensions to kingship is that they come with none of the ceremonial aspects of monarchy — the perks and cheats — that indicate an oath binding the participants either to the royal will or the axe. The long dynastic chains bring the polite fictions to you, premade and pre-solemnized, without any of the strain on credulity that comes with inventing them on the fly in less than a calendar year. Even if King Canute’s command couldn’t halt the tide, he still ended the day as king, and he didn’t have to cordon off the shore with courtiers to pretend there never was an ocean in the first place.

 

AS CHAOS UNFOLDS, FIND SOLID GROUND…

In this time of unprecedented challenges, independent journalism is more vital than ever. At Truthdig, we expose what power wants hidden and give you the clarity to make sense of it all. Your donation helps ensure that truth telling continue.

 

The Silent Massacre of Millions in Ukraine

 

Holodomor- The silent massacre of millions in Ukraine. Murder through starvation in the “Breadbasket of Europe.” In a year where there was a record harvest, millions died slowly and painfully because Stalin and the Soviet killing machine wanted to get rid of the “Ukrainian problem” of resistance and national identity. One third who starved were children... One eyewitness noted, “When we returned to school in the autumn of 1933, two thirds of the seats were empty...”

To this day, Russia denies this happened and continues its genocide against Ukraine. Eternal memory to the lost souls... Вічная Пам‘ять!

Вшанування пам’яті жертв Голодомору / Commemoration of the Victims of Holodomor

https://holodomor.ca/holodomor-basic-facts/

“We were not sitting in the Netflix headquarters writing scripts that will be Oscar-nominated" -Sergiy Kyslytsya

The US and Ukraine have drafted a new 19-point peace deal but left the most politically sensitive elements to be decided by the countries’ presidents, according to Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya. 

Washington had previously put Kyiv under pressure to agree a 28-point proposal that had been developed by US and Russian officials and crossed several long-standing Ukrainian red lines. Kyslytsya, who was in the room as part of the Ukrainian delegation for high stakes talks in Geneva, told the Financial Times the meeting was an “intense” but “productive” effort that resulted in a thoroughly revised draft document that left both sides feeling “positive.”

After hours of painstaking talks that nearly fell apart before they started, the US and Ukrainian teams reached agreements on several issues but “placed in brackets” the most contentious points — including territorial issues and relations between Nato, Russia and the US — for presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to decide. The Ukrainians said they “were not mandated” to make decisions on territory — particularly ceding land as the original draft plan suggested — which under their country’s constitution would require a national referendum. 

The new draft, Kyslytsya said, bore little resemblance to the earlier leaked version of the peace proposal that had caused uproar in Kyiv. “Very few things are left from the original version,” he said. “We developed a solid body of convergence, and a few things we can compromise on,” he said. “The rest will need leadership decisions.” 

Each side will take the latest working drafts back to Washington and Kyiv to brief the presidents. The Trump administration was then expected to approach Moscow to seek to advance the talks, he said. Draft copies of the plan given to the heads of the US and Ukrainian delegations were the only texts to leave the room. Kyslytsya said all other copies were taken back at the conclusion of the meeting. The talks in Geneva almost fell apart before they started, according to Kyslytsya. 

The discussions were led on the Ukrainian side by Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak and National Security and Defense Council secretary Rustem Umerov, with Kyslytsya and a band of military officers and intelligence officials playing a supporting role on Kyiv’s side. The American delegation included secretary of state Marco Rubio, Army secretary Dan Driscoll, Trump’s special envoy for Russia Steve Witkoff, and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose presence initially surprised Ukrainian officials. 

Kyslytsya said the Americans were attentive, eager to hear the Ukrainians’ point of view and open to suggestions. “Almost everything we suggested was taken on board,” he said. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday said “everybody inside feels optimistic about what happened and transpired yesterday in Geneva... 

Ultimately, the vast majority of these points have been agreed upon.” While the talks ended on a positive note, they almost failed to begin, according to Kyslytsya, describing the mood in Geneva Sunday morning as “very tense”. The Americans had arrived frustrated by leaks to the media in the days leading up to the meeting and the public debate around origins of the first draft proposal. “The first hours were totally...” he said, pausing for several seconds, “hanging by a hair.” 

It took nearly two hours of talks between Yermak and the US delegation to turn down the temperature and get back on track. “Eventually we were able to go to the US mission and begin real conversations,” Kyslytsya said. A lengthy morning session with the Americans allowed the Ukrainians to air their concerns and requests. That was followed by a short break and a detailed point-by-point review of the proposed peace plan, he said. Kyslytsya said the US side appeared willing to remove a proposal to introduce a 600,000 cap on Ukraine’s army. 

He said the US negotiators had listened carefully to the Ukrainian arguments and agreed to take the points into account. “They agreed the Ukrainian army number in the leaked version [of the peace plan draft] — whoever authored it — was no longer on the table,” he said. “The military will continue to discuss the arrangements.” 

The presence on the American side of Jared Kushner, left, initially surprised Ukrainian officials. A proposal for a blanket amnesty for potential war crimes in the original draft was reworked in a way that addresses “the grievances of those who suffered in the war”, he said. A separate session later in the day brought in European allies, including representatives from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and EU institutions. 

Prior to the US talks, Ukraine had held private discussions with European national security advisers to co-ordinate positions and identify shared priorities, Kyslytsya said. He repeatedly praised the “constructive engagement” of the US team, singling out Rubio, Driscoll and Kushner. “There was no point where they said: We won’t discuss it. We went through all points carefully.” 

It remains unclear whether Trump will want Zelenskyy to approve the document with a signature, but Leavitt said “there are no plans at this moment” for a meeting between the two leaders. The US president said his Ukrainian counterpart should back a draft plan by Thanksgiving on Thursday. Washington must decide how and when to present the draft peace deal to Russia. 

The Kremlin on Monday said it had not seen or been briefed on the US-Ukrainian draft. Kyslytsya said: “It’s on the Russians to show if they are genuinely interested in peace or will find a thousand reasons not to engage ...Ukraine has no choice but to engage with US peace plan. Ukraine, for its part, has expressed willingness to continue working towards a fair end to the war and to travel 'wherever' to continue the process.” He also emphasized the broader significance of the meeting. 

“The fundamental achievement in Geneva is that we managed to preserve a workable partnership and dialogue with the Americans,” he said. “Despite the media hype and social media frenzy, both sides showed that the partnership is strong and capable of producing a viable document for the leaders.” Still, Kyslytsya remained cautious. “We were not sitting in the Netflix headquarters writing scripts that will be Oscar-nominated,” he said. “We should not be driven by excitement or hype, but by responsibility and the complexity of the issues.”

- Christopher Miller in Kyiv published November 24, 2025. Financial Times, Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Mexico City.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Resignation

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation didn’t just send a shockwave through Georgia politics — it ripped open a question Republicans have been terrified to ask out loud: What happens to the GOP after Trump?

People like Georgia radio host Martha Zoller are already saying it plainly: “People are kind of reeling.” And they are. Not just because Greene quit — but because of why she quit. Because behind the press releases and the vague political statements, there’s a darker truth circulating in Republican circles: Greene wasn’t just feuding with Trump… she was getting death threats from inside her own movement.

Let that sink in.    

The self-proclaimed “fighter,” the woman who spent years whipping up the base with apocalyptic rhetoric, culture-war hysteria, and violent fantasy politics — ended up on the receiving end of the same machinery she helped build. That’s not irony. That’s the logical end of a party that treats rage as a governing philosophy.

Georgia political observers are scrambling for explanations, but even they sound unsettled. Greene wasn’t predictable, but she was durable. She survived scandals that would have ended ten normal political careers.

She survived national humiliation, ethics investigations, and public ridicule. But she couldn’t survive this: a base turning on her, Trump turning on her, and the death threats piling up as the MAGA machine decided she was no longer pure enough.

And the biggest question Zoller raises is the one Republicans have avoided for nearly a decade: “What is the Republican movement once it’s not Trump?” Because if Greene — the loudest, most extreme, most unquestioningly loyal MAGA star — can’t survive breaking orbit from Trump, what does that say about the rest of the Republican Party? About anyone who tries to imagine a future that isn’t chained to one man’s ego?

Greene wanted to be the architect of the post-Trump right. Instead, she became proof that such a thing might not even exist.

-The Other 98%

A Father Buries His Child that the Russians Murdered in Ternopil, Ukraine

 

So-Called Ukrainian Peace Plan, Mamdani, Greene, and Kennedy Jr.

 

“Do I understand correctly that there is now a dispute within the administration about whether this ‘peace plan’ was written by Russians or Americans?” foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum asked last night on social media.

Applebaum was referring to confusion over a 28-point plan for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine reported by Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios last week. After the plan was leaked, apparently to Ravid by Kirill Dmitriev, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin who is under U.S. sanctions, Vice President J.D. Vance came out strongly in support of it.

But as scholar of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien noted in Phillips’s Newsletter, once it became widely known that the plan was written by the Russians, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to back away from it, posting on social media on Wednesday that “[e]nding a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas. And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

And yet, by Friday, Trump said he expected Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to sign onto the plan by Thanksgiving: next Thursday, November 27. Former senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said: “Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests.”

Yesterday a group of senators, foreign affairs specialists gathered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the Halifax International Security Forum, told reporters they had spoken to Rubio about the plan. Senator Angus King (I-ME) said Rubio had told them that the document “was not the administration’s position” but rather “a wish list of the Russians.” Senator Mike Rounds (R-SC) said: “This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form.” He added: “I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” Rounds said. “It is not our recommendation; it is not our peace plan.”

But then a spokesperson for the State Department, Tommy Pigott, called the senators’ account of the origins of the plan “blatantly false,” and Rubio abruptly switched course, posting on social media that in fact the U.S. had written the plan.

Anton La Guardia, diplomatic editor at The Economist, posted: “State Department is backpedaling on Rubio’s backpedal. If for a moment you thought the grown-ups were back in charge, think again. We’re still in the circus. ‘Unbelievable,’ mutters one [of the] disbelieving senators.”

Later that day, Erin Banco and Gram Slattery of Reuters reported that the proposal had come out of a meeting in Miami between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Dmitriev, who leads one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds. They reported that senior officials in the State Department and on the National Security Council were not briefed about the plan.

This morning, Bill Kristol of The Bulwark reported rumors that Vice President J.D. Vance was “key to US embrace of Russia plan on Ukraine, Rubio (and even Trump) out of the loop.” He posted that relations between Vance and Rubio are “awful” and that Rubio did, in fact, tell the senators what they said he did.

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, posted: “Foreign nations now have to deal with rival factions of the U.S. government who keep major policy initiatives secret from each other and some of which work with foreign powers as the succession battle for 2028 begins, is how one diplomat put it.”

The elections of 2026 and 2028 are clearly on Republicans’ minds as polls show Trump’s policies to be increasingly unpopular.

On Friday, Trump met at the White House with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Although Trump had previously called Mamdani a “communist lunatic” and a “stupid person” and had threatened to withhold federal funding from New York City if Mamdani won, the meeting was friendly. Trump, who has seemed warm and affable since snarling “Quiet, Piggy!” to a reporter on Air Force One on November 14, praised the mayor-elect and said he’d “feel very comfortable” living in New York City after Mamdani takes the reins.

Trump’s friendly banter with Mamdani appeared a way to acknowledge voters’ frustration with the economy. During his campaign, Mamdani promised to address those economic frustrations. Trump told reporters: “We agree on a lot more than I thought. I want him to do a great job, and we’ll help him do a great job.” This embrace of a politician MAGA Republicans had attacked as a communist left Trump’s supporters unsure how to respond.

On Friday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced she is resigning from Congress. Her last day will be January 5, 2026, days after she secures her congressional pension. In her four-page announcement, she maintained she was frustrated that those like her, who she said represent “the common American people,” cannot get their measures passed because “the Political Industrial Complex of both Political Parties” ignores them in favor of “[c]orporate and global interests.”

She blamed Trump for forcing her out of Congress, saying: “I have too much self-respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms. And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.”

Greene appears to be shifting to fit into a post-Trump future. “When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington,” she wrote, “then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.”

Another scandal coming from the Cabinet will not help the administration dig out from its cratering popularity. Just after midnight Friday night, the former fiancé of the journalist who had a romantic relationship with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped another installment of his version of the saga. It included a graphic pornographic poem that would have ended a cabinet member’s career in any normal administration. The ex-fiancé said other poems he had found were even more explicit.

This revelation came the day after Kennedy acknowledged that he had personally told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change information on the CDC website to say the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based.” As Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times notes, Kennedy admits that studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism, but he wanted the change because there are still other studies to be done. As Stolberg wrote, “He said he is not saying vaccines cause autism; he is simply saying there is no proof that they don’t.”

Kennedy is neither a doctor nor a scholar of public health, and Stolberg notes that “[i]t is highly unusual for a health secretary to personally order a change to scientific guidance.”

In order to get support for his cabinet nomination, Kennedy promised Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician, that he would not remove from the CDC website a statement saying that vaccines do not cause autism. That statement is still at the top of the “Autism and Vaccines” page of the CDC website, but now it has an asterisk keyed to a footnote saying it had not been removed because of Kennedy’s promise to Cassidy, and the text of the page says that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”

Today, CNN’s Jake Tapper said to Cassidy: “He lied to you.” Cassidy answered: “Well, first let me say, what is most important to the American people, speaking as a physician, vaccines are safe. As has been pointed out, it’s actually not disputed. It’s actually quite well proven that vaccines are not associated with autism. There’s a fringe out there that thinks so, but they’re quite a fringe. President Trump agrees that vaccines are safe.”

Cassidy tried to suggest that focusing on Kennedy’s lie was “titillating” but that Americans needed to move on. Tapper answered: “This isn’t about titillation. This is about the fact that you are the chairman of the health committee and you voted to confirm somebody that by all accounts from the medical and scientific community and his own family…is actually making America less healthy.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

 

The Week Ahead

The Week Ahead: I prepped you for developments in several important areas: the National Guard cases coming out of both Chicago and Oregon, the Epstein files, and, in counterpoint to Trump’s revenge prosecutions, his pardons for those he favors. What Happens When the Government Loses Its Credibility: The Comey Prosecution: First context, then an in-depth analysis to help you understand the significance of developments in the Comey case, a case that is emblematic of the state the Justice Department is in. A reason to be concerned and to stay informed. "Quiet Piggy!": My thoughts on the president’s words to journalist Catherine Lucey and why they bear noticing and remembering at this moment. Live with Norman Eisen: Norm and I discuss the possible shift in mood around Trump, which we’re cautiously optimistic about—cautiously, because Trump has shown an ability to wear people down, distract them, and outrun challenges to his primacy. Is Trump on the verge of his Joseph McCarthy moment? Live with Stacey Abrams: Stacy and I offer practical advice for questions including: what are you going to do at Thanksgiving dinner? Whether you’ll be with family or friends, people who agree about politics or not, we offer specifics. I won’t spoil it—click on the photo at the top or read the transcript to see what we suggest, and please share your own ideas in the comments! Sorry, George Washington Would Not Have Hanged Them: We took a look at some of Trump’s most shocking recent comments regarding “seditious behavior from traitors” (lawful behavior by elected members of Congress). Read my take on why every American needs to understand this news and what it means. Five Questions with Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers: In a week where Trump took significant steps toward making good on the threat from Project 2025 of shutting down the Department of Education, we had the chance to hear from a fierce advocate for teachers and public education. These are complicated legal times, and it’s easy for the truth to get lost in the chaos. Civil Discourse doesn’t just track today’s headlines—it connects them to the legal and political history that explains why they matter. We won’t forget what’s at stake, or let Trump and his allies rewrite the past. You can subscribe to Civil Discourse for free and get clear analysis that helps you see the whole picture, delivered straight to your inbox. If you’re in a position to, your paid subscription helps me devote the time and resources it takes to write the newsletter. That means everyone has access to information they can share with friends and family—a constructive act we can all participate in right now, helping more Americans understand how critical this moment is. We’re in this together, -Joyce Vance

 

"Piggy Gets Polite" by Maureen Dowd

 

Step by slimy step, President Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty. The solipsistic Trump, with the parasitic tech emperors and the internet itself, is degrading American values, making honor and integrity seem anachronistic. Still, some moments shock as beyond the pale. Whatever the pale is anymore.

On Air Force One recently, Trump cut off Catherine Lucey, a Bloomberg News journalist pressing him about the release of Epstein files that could further implicate Trump in the lurid mess. Stabbing his finger at her face, the President of the United States snapped at Lucey: “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later preposterously explained, “The president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.”

It was nauseating, if not surprising. Trump loves to call people who annoy him “pigs” and “dogs,” and in the case of his inamorata Stormy Daniels, “horseface.” It was misogynistic, but Trump bullies both men and women, attacking their looks and character and hurling nasty, intensely personal epithets and nicknames. He mocked Chris Christie, once an ally, as “a fat pig,” “a slob” and “sloppy.”

When I interviewed him decades ago in his more appropriate incarnation as a flashy developer hogging attention in New York, he would rate the looks of supermodels and actresses, dropping snap judgments like, “Sadly, Heidi Klum is no longer a 10.” Sometimes, he sent me pictures of female journalists from newspapers, commenting with a Sharpie scrawl on who he thought looked good or bad.

Politicians were never insult comics before Trump. But in the 2016 primaries he learned sneering deflected from substance.

Trump followed up his “Quiet, piggy” moment by berating another female journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, who asked Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during his appearance with the president, about his culpability in the dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence concluded the prince gave the order.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump chided Bruce. When she later asked why Trump was waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files when he could do it unilaterally, he called her question “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.” He added that Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., should look into revoking ABC’s broadcast license.

Trump even defamed Khashoggi, saying that a lot of people didn’t like him and noting cavalierly that “things happen.” Yes, Things Happen when you have no morals and your family is doing lucrative business deals with the Saudis.

By contrast, Trump was his most charming self on Friday in his “fascist vs. socialist” meeting with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York. He had blasted Mamdani earlier as a “Communist” and “JEW HATER” and threatened to withhold federal funding for New York and send in troops.

But by the end of their Oval news conference, the two were so lovey-dovey, a Fox News anchor warned that JD Vance might have to move over for Mamdani. And Trump, who once warned that wealthy New Yorkers and businesses would flee if the democratic socialist were elected, dramatically flipped, saying he would feel very comfortable moving back to Gotham under this mayor.

(“It was a Great Honor meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of New York City!” Trump gushed in a bromance-y Truth Social post featuring pictures of the pair on a colonnade and posing in front of F.D.R.’s portrait.)

It just proved that Trump admires charismatic winners more than he cares about ideology — or consistency. Mamdani was prepared, focusing on their common ground while flattering Trump by noting his election statistics and hometown roots, and avoiding Dear Leader fawning. He strategically embraced Trump as he touted the affordability issue, which the billionaire president loved. Seeing Americans restive at his fixation on foreign conflicts, Trump is feigning a newfound interest in grocery prices.

The president was so taken with Mamdani, he even jovially told him, in response to a Fox News reporter’s question, to go ahead and repeat his campaign claim that Trump is “a fascist.” The president also defended Mamdani from the incendiary falsehood of Elise Stefanik, the Republican who’s running for governor of New York, that the Muslim mayor-elect is a “jihadist.”

Stefanik, a Trump henchwoman, broke away from the president on this issue, doubling down and posting Friday evening that Mamdani is “Kathy Hochul’s jihadist.”

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see this genial Trump very much these days. He’s mean when he’s cornered, like the snapping turtle I had as a pet when I was a child. Republicans got creamed in the recent elections. To extend the porcine metaphor, Trump’s polls are dropping, to use a Dave Barry phrase, “like a pig out of a helicopter.”

The president, ordinarily a master at recasting reality, had to give up his ludicrous attempt to paint the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Labeling Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former acolyte who now says she identifies with the Epstein victims, a “traitor” backfired.

Friday night Greene announced in a social media post that she was leaving Congress and said she didn’t want to face a “hateful” primary stirred by Trump. “Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men,” she wrote, “should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for.” She added, “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”

And Trump’s jeering post about Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the Republican cosponsor of the bill to get the files released, wasn’t well received. Trump mocked Massie, a widower, for marrying again 16 months after his wife died. “Boy, that was quick!” This coming from the man who went straight from cheating with Marla Maples during his Ivana marriage to marrying her at the Plaza a year later.

Maligning members of his own party raised questions about why he was so desperate to hide the files of a child molester who was once his pal; the two bonded over their leering predilection for young women.

In a rare show of rebellion, Republicans refused to bend the knee and pretend that it was OK to shield a sexual pervert and give his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, treats in prison and pardon dreams just because Trump didn’t want the details of his involvement with Epstein to surface.

In emails Democrats released, Epstein wrote that “Trump had spent hours at my house” with one of the victims and that he believed Trump knew more than he had acknowledged, and called Trump “evil beyond belief.” You know you’re in trouble when someone evil beyond belief calls you evil beyond belief.

Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The New York Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. She is the author, most recently, of “Notorious.” @MaureenDowd • Facebook