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The leopards ate another face today

Senate GOP tank Trump's ICE-CBP-Ballroom slush fund. Also: the DNC not-opsy

Author

Brad Johnson
May 21, 2026

PRESENTED BY RADICAL CLIMATE CHICKADEE HOODIES

Tonight at 8 pm, join Brighter Futures, an online fundraising gala for the amazing climate coalition Stop the Money Pipeline, featuring Bill McKibben, Roishetta Ozane, and many more. Seriously, if you even mildly enjoy this newsletter, you will be inspired and overjoyed by tonight’s event.

I thought I didn’t want to write today’s post, but it turns out I was simply waiting for the highly amusing, good news of the day.

The First Branch of the U.S. Government, currently “led” by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation), is going on break without achieving the one big thing they meant to do this month, namely passing $70 billion-plus in funds for Trump’s fascisti ICE and CBP through a party-line reconciliation bill.

Oooooooops.

“We don’t need Democrats,” they said proudly, “We are big boys!”

Of course, they are not.

The data-center-industry-like greed of Trump, ever demanding more, more money, more obeisance, more tribute, more violence, more destruction, his ugly emptiness ever unfillable, blew up the GOP secret-police appropriations plan with demands for a $1 billion East Wing ballroom fund, plus a $1.8 billion J6er heist, plus an announcement of permanent tax evasion immunity for the Trump family from his pet Attorney General, plus the ongoing Hormuz debacle, plus the planned invasion of Cuba.

Die Schafstelze (Motacilla flava). -deutschland

Who am I kidding? The real reason the Congressional GOP fell apart is that Trump is taking out Republican incumbents like Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La., lost his primary on Saturday to a Trump-endorsed challenger), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky., lost his primary on Tuesday to a Trump-endorsed challenger) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas, about to lose his primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger).

So this afternoon, at 2:34 pm, Thune announced the Senate was going on break until June.

The ICE and CBP agents who have been illegally and unconstitutionally funded without Congressional appropriations since February 14th will now be even more illegal!

Fun, that.

This is what drinking water in Georgia looks like after Meta began data center construction in the community. Yesterday I called for EPA and Congressional investigations into the impact of data center construction on local drinking water supplies. We cannot take water for granted.

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@ocasio-cortez.house.gov)2026-05-21T17:07:10.146Z

Let’s check in on the health of our other major political party, shall we?

Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, whose campaign for chair last year showed a mastery of long-term political organizing, has had a rocky first year, to say the least. Though not Chuck Schumer-level bad!

Ken’s most visible failure has been unequivocally promising a public post-mortem of the 2024 presidential campaign, and then announcing it was spiked with no explanation. Last week, Kamala digital staffer Rob Flaherty published a narrative of his lessons from the campaign entitled “Here’s What I Told the DNC Autopsy,”1 with this aside:

“My understanding—based on Dem-world hearsay—is that the truth is stupider than the fiction: No autopsy was released because there is no actual autopsy. The members of the “autopsy team” were in over their heads and struggled to put the thing together. What they produced was a loose summary of a bunch of interviews that were largely done without talking to the campaign or big spenders.”

With CNN’s Isaac Edward Dovere getting a copy of the “loose summary,” Martin’s hand was forced. He posted a mea culpa for screwing up the autopsy process by picking the wrong person to lead it2 and released the commissioned but very incomplete report, which has many errors. The not-opsy is a total disaster; when the sections aren’t blank they include factual claims that are obviously wrong.3

Martin admitted he screwed up by trying to cover for the failed project. The DNC needed to have leaked this to friendly press ages ago. There are journalists, podcasters, advocates, content creators who support Martin's mission of democratic reform!

Martin should have just declared that the DNC Organizing and Political Playbook he released in March was the autopsy. The playbook features interviews with campaign organizers, allied groups, and voters about what worked and what didn’t, with concrete lessons on building effective political campaigns.4

Despite making 300+ million phone calls in 2024 — more than any campaign in history—only 3% of the calls the Harris campaign made actually resulted in a contact with a voter. At scale, this organizing model rewards transactional voter contact: call the voter, repeat the script, log a result, and move on. This model provides no incentive for organizers and volunteers to actually build relationships with the voter, follow up, and feel ownership to move them closer towards turnout over the course of the cycle. The problem goes a step further: varying contact rates across different demographics using `traditional' tactics has limited who the campaign can actually reach. In 2024, the Harris campaign contacted 28% of Black women registered to vote over the age of 65; meanwhile, they contacted only 7.5% of Latino men registered under the age of 25. DEMOCRATS' PLUMMETING VOTER CONTACT RATES

From the DNC Organizing and Political Playbook

Some fun updates from the climate-hawk campaign trail!

POLL: Do you think the Democratic Party should put their left foot in, take their left foot out, put their left foot in and shake it all about?

— weeder (@weeder.bsky.social)2026-05-21T13:59:47.184Z

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

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1  TLDR: Biden shouldn’t have run, the Democratic brand was weak, the 2020s are online and weird.

2  “I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report. When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close.” From Dovere’s reporting, the “someone” was New York political operative Paul Rivera.

3  E.g., the report claims GOP candidate Mark Robinson got 45% in the 2024 NC Gov election, when he actually got 40%. It’s that bad.

4  It’s clearly the do-over of the autopsy project.

5  Seriously, this is sweet swag and will help Dave Messier and Phil Wight win seats on the Golden Valley Electric Association board.

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