Well, another crazy day, you'll tab the night away, and forget about everything ...
After years of chastising Trump voters for self-abasement, suddenly the guy with a literal SS tattoo is a “good, decent man.” https://t.co/FtvfYyS6zO
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) April 30, 2026
Ed: The socialist with the literal SS tattoo, Mark. That's the difference. The people who tried to paint the Latin Mass and parents objecting over critical race theory at school board meetings as indicators of domestic terrorism now have to mainstream the Totenkopf in order to get another Democratic Socialist into the Senate.
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CBS News: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are calling for a new way to tax the rich. They want the state to reduce something called the Pass-Through Equity Tax credit, aka PTET. ...
Gov. Kathy Hochul slammed the door on their proposal.
"That's not happening," Hochul said. "We are not changing PTET."
Hochul said she has already found over $4 billion in state aid for the city, and that Mamdani and Menin have a spending problem.
Ed: Yes, that's a key issue with socialists. They keep promising "free" stuff and then start shaking down taxpayers to fund it, only to discover that capital has a way of finding better environments. Hochul knows that well; she was just recently begging former New Yorkers to come back and fund her "free" stuff. I'm glad that Mamdani is getting called out, but let's not pretend that Hochul is much different.
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Fetterman on Graham Platner:
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) April 30, 2026
“Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine, but the Republicans fucking love him.”
“If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.”
Ed: Well, Democrats seem pretty eager to send the Totenkopf to the Senate. Given the rhetoric of their progressive allies over the last 2.5 years, it's hardly surprising, but kudos to Fetterman for at least attempting to warn his party of the consequences. Of course, Fetterman is an old-school Democrat who still has moral intelligence and the courage to use it.
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JTA: A key Jewish Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in a statement that he would support Platner’s bid to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. Schumer had initially recruited Mills to run.
“After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” Schumer said in a joint statement with fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who runs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.
Ed: This speaks volumes about the Democrat Party. And about Chuck Schumer. Republicans need to Akinize Platner and make every Democrat running for Congress go on the record about supporting a candidate who sported a Nazi tattoo for years until getting called out for it by his primary opponents.
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Maine Kampf
— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) April 30, 2026
Ed: Say, remember when the media declared decorated combat vet Pete Hegseth to be fascist-adjacent because he had a tattoo of the Jerusalem cross? I certainly do. Now we have someone with a literal fascist totem inked on his pec, and suddenly his combat experience makes criticism of it off-limits. If it weren't for double standards, the Left wouldn't have any. Jon's response is the tweet of the day, too.
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Matt Taibbi: Donald Trump appeared on 60 Minutes last night. Correspondent Norah O’Donnell read the passage, eliciting a much-publicized quote from Trump: “I was waiting for you to read that” because “you’re horrible people.” That wasn’t all. Watch how O’Donnell tries to get Trump to connect the dots for her, as if surprised he’d see himself in Allen’s description: “Oh, you think he was referring to—?”
Trump is not a person who needs to be lied about to be criticized. His provocations in word (“a whole civilization will die tonight”) or deed (using the military to bomb civilian boats, hitting civilian infrastructure because Iranians are “willing to suffer,” etc.) provide enough fodder for opponents. Lying not only isn’t necessary, it’s ineffective. False media narratives did more than anything to get him reelected in 2024. But we keep getting them, and getting assassination attempts and shootings, which are covered with increasingly undisguised sympathy for assailants. Why? ...
Editors know what they’re doing when they use these charged words, with most trained to avoid them with non-public figures because they’re so inherently damaging. This is on top of years of wink-nudge content by pundits and politicians subtly or not-subtly encouraging the general public to take matters into its own hands, as well as idiocies like Jimmy Kimmel’s pre-shooting joke about Melania Trump having the “glow of an expectant widow.”
Ed: Exactly. Matt's column goes in a different direction after that, defending Michael Tracey from smear attacks coming from other reporters. On this point, however, Matt hits the nail on the head. Democrats and the Protection Racket Media have spent more than a decade grooming their consumers to make political violence mainstream.
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Here’s how you flip a “gotcha” question on race into reality:
— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) April 30, 2026
Americans don’t want quotas.
They don’t want optics.
They want results.
The kind of representation this country actually demands is simple:
QUALIFIED. https://t.co/hmhbnMbIQ5
Ed: Exactly. Well done, Rep. Hunt.
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CBS News: But there is a big obstacle for any more GOP redraws in 2026: time.
Many states either have conducted their primary elections, have them coming up soon or have already passed the qualification deadline for candidates to get onto the ballot. Legal challenges are likely, and last-minute changes to the maps could run into trouble with the "Purcell principle," which establishes that federal courts cannot change voting or election rules too close to an election.
Another obstacle for 2026 is the uphill political environment for the party, stemming from voter frustrations with the economy and continuing U.S. war waged on Iran.
"If you draw a Trump +7 district or even a Trump +10 district, that may not be enough. So why not wait til' an election cycle in 2028 that might be better for your party?" said Michael Li, senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program.
Ed: Those are points worth considering, plus it does not appear that there are big gains left on the map anyway. Texas and Florida were the big hauls, and Indiana may have been a moderate gain. The rest of these are just +1 pickups.
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🚨 LIBERAL: We haven't had a black Republican Governor since reconstruction!
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 30, 2026
SCOTT JENNINGS: Republicans tried to elect one in Virginia.
LIBERAL: ...uh, OK, well, I'm just saying...
JENNINGS: And a white Democrat gerrymandered the state.
🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/vCnPXfAJ2e
Ed: Uh ... oh yeah. "We're going to end this here," to no one's surprise at all.
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As you can tell, Graham Platner's candidacy is the opportunity for a lot of dark humor. But no, I don't believe that he "accidentally" got the symbol of the Nazi SS tattooed on his chest and that the guy previously described in flattering profiles as a "military history buff"… pic.twitter.com/qt46R8KLPh
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 30, 2026
... just never noticed, for 18 years, that he had the SS Totenkopf staring back at him in the mirror every morning, and only realized the tattoo could be a problem when he heard other campaigns were doing opposition research about him.
His own former campaign staffers contradict his account. The guy was, at minimum, Nazi-curious for a while, probably a long while.
Ed: If Platner loses, and I certainly hope he does, I can't wait for the Protection Racket Media reporters who should be reporting on this issue instead wait until after the election to publish their "now it can be told" campaign books.
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Times of Israel: The resolution by Lawler, a New York Republican, and Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, states that it is “condemning antisemitic hate-filled rhetoric and content disseminated by prominent online personalities, and urging social media platforms and public leaders to denounce and address such conduct.” Early draft language was published by Jewish Insider.
It states that Piker “has often used antisemitic rhetoric, including expressing support for Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and lists several other inflammatory comments the streamer has made. ...
Owens, the resolution states, “has employed rhetoric that has included conspiracy theories accusing Israel of controlling the United States Government, promoting false claims that Jews are taught by ancient religious texts to hate non-Jews, and casting doubt on the truth of the stories of Holocaust survivors.”
Ed: Meh. I don't think Congress needs to focus on the rantings of non-members. There are plenty of issues with the rhetoric of those in both chambers, not to mention the upcoming Democrat nominee for the Senate in Maine. Piker and Owens are both despicable, but I'd rather see the House and Senate clean up their own benches before passing resolutions about podcasters and broadcasters, even on a bipartisan basis.
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Not a single person crying about how the Supreme Court has made it impossible for black people to get elected supported Winsom Sears over the affluent white lady.
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 30, 2026
Not one.
Ed: Fact check: true.
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WSJ: The Trump administration is on course to blow past an initial deadline for congressional approval for the Iran war on the grounds that the ongoing cease-fire stopped the clock on a 60-day deadline—an assertion met with outrage from Democrats and skepticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Under a 1973 law called the War Powers Resolution, the president is required to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and withdraw U.S. troops 60 days later, unless lawmakers declare war or authorize the use of force. The expectation on Capitol Hill was that the 60-day deadline expires on Friday.
In testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the current cease-fire with Iran, which began April 8, stopped the countdown.
Ed: I will write more about this tomorrow for sure. I have quietly anticipated this argument and predicted it to a few friends; I believe Duane and I discussed it in our podcast last week. The length of the ceasefire plays into this argument. I'll have more tomorrow.
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For perspective: The cost of California's high-speed rail is now estimated at over $230 billion. https://t.co/EPquIH8BZa
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) April 30, 2026
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Less than a week after the 3rd assassination attempt of our President, "moderate" Democrat @sethmoulton compares the @SecWar to (wait for it....) NAZIS, and accuses him of war crimes.
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) April 30, 2026
I don't care what your politics, this is insane, anti-american, and dangerous. https://t.co/BeJH50f89G
Ed: Yes. And it’s the same game plan they have been using on Trump for the last eleven years.
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