Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

This really is a full service blog.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Let there be snark.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

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Late Night Open Thread: Creatures of Darkness

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New York Young Republican Club gala draws white nationalist, far-right Germans as elected officials skip out

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— Politico (@politico.com) December 15, 2025 at 12:23 PM

Many familiar names here. Per Politico, “New York Young Republican Club gala draws white nationalist, far-right Germans as elected officials skip out”:

… Inside Cipriani Wall Street, a lavish event space in the financial district, amid the sea of tuxedos and ball gowns, was white nationalist leader Jared Taylor. Across the room sat EmpathChan, an influencer who went viral recently for wearing blackface on Halloween. And appearing on stage was Markus Frohnmaier, a far-right German politician, whose political party the club had cheered with a German-language phrase popularized by the Nazis. At least nineteen other members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party joined him…

Just eight weeks after the city club’s statewide counterpart was disbanded by the New York State GOP, the city-based club showed on Saturday night how a Young Republican organization can throw a party. Its 113th annual gala came as local chapters are still reeling from the racist and antisemitic “I love Hitler” chat — and as the GOP faces a larger reckoning over whether anti-Jewish voices have space within the party.

On Saturday night, the festivities provided a glimpse of what the party’s youth wing looks like amid those conditions. Over the course of the gala, a club member struck an attendee in the face outside on the sidewalk, President Donald Trump was endorsed for a third term and a protester wearing a Nazi armband and waving a swastika-laden banner popped up from his seat to shout, “I guess we’re all Nazis!” in an attempt to disrupt the event, according to two attendees and a release from Goofball, the group behind the protest..

Meanwhile, Democratic state senators, assemblymembers and city council members were outside protesting the event at a demonstration hosted by the Manhattan Young Democrats….

Later in the evening, white nationalist Nick Fuentes — whose friendly October interview with Tucker Carlson has splintered the GOP — lingered on the sidewalk outside Cipriani after the club’s organizers banned him from entering.

“This is the worst event they’ve ever thrown,” the club’s press chairman, Lucian Wintrich, told reporters huddled together in the “press pen” where the media was restricted for much of the event. Wintrich had been expressing frustration that the dozens of outlets he welcomed to the gala were relegated to a distant corner by his fellow organizers.

Conspicuously absent from Saturday night’s event were five GOP elected officials — including one congressman — who the club had announced would be there…

From the stage, the speakers took an increasingly anti-immigrant bent.

“If dubiously elected or rather naturalized illegal immigrants are polluting our politics, the new right must have courage to deport them,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), in reference to his call to deport Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, which he said would “resurrect our nation.”…

Reader Interactions

54Comments

  1. 1.

    Shalimar

    As a white person who doesn’t think I am better than everyone else, there is nothing more disgusting than the terrible people who think I am.

  3. 3.

    prostratedragon

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick 🧵 on the newly-announced “common sense” visa and immigration restrictions. Fits right in with the original post.

    [1] President Trump is expanding the previous 19-country travel ban to a whopping 39 countries (plus the Palestinian Authority), and appears to expand a block on legal immigration to now include spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens, who were previously exempted.

  4. 4.

    Anonymous Expat

    The New Deal managed to pretty handily defeat America First a century ago; I’m convinced it can do so again.

  7. 7.

    Jay

    @John Revolta:

    Yeah, that Biden-Mar Hyper-Inflation was really something. I took my last wheelbarrow of pennies into town and an entire wheelbarrow bought me one Krispy Kreme donut.

  8. 8.

    bjacques

    The comments at the link “struck an attendee in the face” (caution: Xitter link) are comedy gold!

  9. 9.

    scav

    Virginia, I regret to inform you there is no Santa Claus and even Father Xenophobic Patriarchy isn’t going to sneak in and stuff success and meaning into your sad little lives.  But there they are in their barb-wire enclosed pumpkin patch .  . .

  10. 10.

    Kathleen

    @bjacques: I thought this was comedy gold:

    “This is the worst event they’ve ever thrown,” the club’s press chairman, Lucian Wintrich, told reporters huddled together in the “press pen” where the media was restricted for much of the event. Wintrich had been expressing frustration that the dozens of outlets he welcomed to the gala were relegated to a distant corner by his fellow organizers.

    You know it’s bad when a press secretary says that to a huddled media yearning to be free to roam in search of cocktail weenies. I laughed out loud.

  14. 14.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Just one anecdote but the wanton cruelty of the administration’s immigrant detention policies is turning off some conservative christians if my parents’ church is any indication. Their church isn’t wall to wall Trump supporters but they’re pretty thick on the ground to the point where my parents had to ask folks to stop talking about the guy in their presence because they can’t stand him and it was to the point where they were looking for a new church for the first time in more than a half century. To their credit the folks at their church listened and did tone it down.

    Despite being somewhat Trumpy the church has been ministering to immigrants – helping them get settled here etc. That has morphed into ministering to detainees at a detention center somewhere near Ionia Michigan. The people doing the ministering are pretty outraged about the lack of all human feelings with which the detainees are being treated. I don’t know how widespread that attitude is among the churchgoers generally but at least some are pretty disgusted. Disgusted enough to vote for a Democrat? I couldn’t say, but I don’t think they’d be very enthusiastic about voting for Trump or anyone of his ilk anytime soon.

  16. 16.

    Princess

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: In general, people like that have been able to blame local conditions on local abuses and bad apples, and keep their Republican votes intact. Which is why not having responsible news media who can report on this across the country and show widespread patterns is such a problem.

  19. 19.

    mappy!

    In a special election for Kentucky State Senate District 37, Democrat Gary Clemons has won with a staggering 72.5% of the vote, defeating Republican Calvin Leach, who received 25%.

    Harris won the district by 6. That means Clemons outperformed the 2024 results by roughly 42 points. substack.com/@meidastouch/note/c-188646511

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    Speaking of young Republicans, the two shooting victims at Brown University have been identified, and one was the Vice President of Brown’s Republican Club. That would be sophomore Ella Cook, from Birmingham, Alabama.

    The other victim, Mukhammad Aziz Umarazov, was a freshman who graduated last Spring from Midlothian High School near Richmond, Virginia.

  27. 27.

    Princess

    @hueyplong: The 37th seems to take in a lot of Louisville, which is about 60% white and 23% Black, well over the national average. The winner last night was a white male union guy. It’s obviously a strong Democratic district. One might be able to draw conclusions about why Harris did so poorly there but I bet everyone’s conclusions will match their priors. I know there was disappointment with turnout in largely Black areas of North Carolina.

  29. 29.

    mappy!

    @Princess: Somethings afoot. The complacent view that only the crazies will vote for (spit) has become something of if I don’t vote, Rs win?

    I know from my own tracking of local voter rolls that there are people who only vote every four years, some every eight years, fewer every two and fewer still every year (fed, state & local: yearly budget referendums, town offices).

    This is different.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @Gin & Tonic: I read that Brown’s Republican club had only 19 members.

    But I am reading all kinds of stuff about the shooting and the shooter. The rumors are really flying in this story.

  35. 35.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Reports are that Mukhammad Aziz Umarazov’s familiy emigrated to Virginia from Uzbekistan in 2011. The Brown freshman’s ambition was to be a neurosurgeon.

  37. 37.

    RevRick

    @Elizabelle: @Anonymous Expat:

    I would rephrase it, why does this keep happening to us? 
    And as for the New Deal handily defeating America First, it was actually a close thing prior to Pearl Harbor. The late 30s saw the rise of Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and, yes, Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement. The German-American Bund even conducted a rally in Madison Square Garden in 1938(?).
    But we need to remember that when the Nazis came to power, they actually sent a delegation to Arkansas to study how we did fascism: Jim Crow.
    Fascism, which always begins with an assertion of racial or ethnic superiority, has always found a ready home in America. Just think of the wars against and displacement of Native American Indigenous peoples, race-based chattel slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of the Japanese.

  38. 38.

    p.a

    @Geminid: Saw a Daily Mail article on her and family and how proud they were she got into Brown and, given their politics, wondered, why?

    Wondering about their 2nd Amendment position now.  Not expecting any change.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @p.a: Parents will be proud of a daughter who gets into an elite school. And they might not be as fixated on politics as stereotyping might lead one to believe.

  40. 40.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I’d just like to note that Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson* take the exact same position and use identical framings of AIPAC as some (((sinister threat to America))), as many Progressives, including many here.  When virulent antisemites on the Right sound exactly like Progressives on the Left, that should be a pretty major red flag that we need a big-time clean up on our side.  If you really care about Dem Messaging!!1! a pretty good rule of thumb should be: never sound like Nazis.  Ask yourself: what is it precisely that makes demonizing AIPAC so appealing to Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson?  Because I see only one obvious answer.  And that speaks volumes.

    * And Candace Owens, David Duke, MTG, etc.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: How many dead Palestinians do we have to be OK with?

    I speak as a person with, shall we say, very personal reasons to not dehumanize Israelis. It’s a terrible situation with no good guys in power, and regular people on the ground suffering. But the Trump administration also flings around accusations of antisemitism as a way of cracking down on free speech and controlling the universities. If you go by these associations you’re gonna have bad ones on both sides of this.

  42. 42.

    Steve in the ATL

    @p.a:

    how proud they were she got into Brown

    @Geminid:

    Parents will be proud of a daughter who gets into an elite school.

    Good lord, people.  Freakin’ Omnes got into Brown!

  50. 50.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin: I know plenty of people who advocate for Ceasefire, Two-State Solution, War Crimes investigation of Bibi etc., but also condemn the modern libel of AIPAC as some sort of cabal of puppet-masters.

    It can be done.  I see people do it every day.  Tons of Zionist Jews in Israel do it all the time.  It’s actually not that hard to say: Fuck Bibi, investigate him and the IDF, etc., but this language framing Jews/Israel/Zionism/AIPAC as existential threats and unique evils is dangerous bullshit that is helping fuel a current wave of antisemitism.  You can hold BOTH of those positions simultaneously.  The idea that if you object to jewish conspiracy dogwhistles then you must be somehow “okay with dead Palestinians” is a ridiculous conflation that only serves to defend those dogwhistles.  I don’t think Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, MTG are bashing AIPAC to try to make Progressives look bad, I think they do it because it’s a great way to vilify Jews.  That should give Progressives some serious pause about using the exact same framings.  Intent is not magic.  Good intentions don’t magically undue the damage of using antisemitic tropes.  That’s like Social Justice 101.  And it’s weird to watch so many Progressives suddenly throw that rule out the window (and so many others too) if it means they have to be a little more careful in how they bash Israel.

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