Andrew Prokop

Pulte as Fed Chair still seems a remote possibility at this juncture. He's viewed as an unserious pick for such an important role, he has his enemies in the administration, and his selection may not go down well with investors or senators.

But if Trump wanted to do a Matt Gaetz-type pick, well...

Now, Pulte's been going after Jerome Powell too. When Trump waved around a letter calling for Powell's firing — the letter had been given to him by Pulte.

And guess who some people are trying to put in the mix for the next Fed Chair? Pulte, of course...

But Pulte's donations to Trump's Super PAC and Charlie Kirk's group helped get him a key post in Trump's administration: FHFA director.

It's an important policy job that Pulte quicjly weaponized it to win Trump's favor— by investigating Democrats' mortgage documents, and claiming they lied on them.

Pulte later became a supporting character in a "memestock" debacle, trying to cultivate super-online investors as his own fanbase. It got messy, and resulted in public feuding with his own family members.

The grandson of a homebuilding company founder, Pulte started going viral on 2019 by offering to give away money to people on Twitter.

That proved to be an excellent way to increase his Twitter following.

NEW: FHFA director Bill Pulte is leading Trump's push to get Jerome Powell fired — and to get Adam Schiff and Tish James prosecuted.

Who is this guy and why does he have 3 million X followers?

And just how high will he rise in Trump's administration?

www.vox.com/politics/421...

We're about to reach previously undreamed-of heights of "doesn't look like anything to me..."

Shows up!

Brooke reflects on America’s culture of political violence

@awprokop.bsky.social on the hawks and isolationists vying for Trump’s ear

@micahloewinger.bsky.social w/ the story of a campus newspaper that went to war with its school admin and won

Inside the most intense debate roiling the right today Tucker Carlson, JD Vance, and Donald Trump Jr. vs. the GOP foreign policy establishment.

A very good analysis. Gave me a lot to think about. And who knew I'd basically side with Vance/Tucker/DonJr????

www.vox.com/politics/416...

The infighting on the right on Trump's foreign policy has been intense —an upstart group of "America Firsters" has tried to displace traditional intervention-minded GOP hawks.

At points in Trump's first few months, it's seemed as if the America Firsters won the upper hand. Then last week happened.

To an extent many don't understand, opposing US aid for Ukraine was crucial to launching JD Vance's political career in 2022.

That's because it helped win him support from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.— who then convinced dad to endorse, which won him the primary.

www.vox.com/politics/416...

NEW: My deep dive into the right's bitter divide on foreign policy.

The "America Firsters" are in many ways repellent to Democrats— they want to cut off Ukraine and pull back from the world.

They're also the most influential people on the right who oppose war with Iran

www.vox.com/politics/416...

Berating holdout senators from your party to try and pass a reconciliation bill with the acronym BBB? Is it 2021 again?

The argument of "IEEPA actually gives the president unlimited power to do whatever tariffs he wants if he says the word 'emergency', but nobody has noticed it until now" does seem like it's kinda begging for a SCOTUS smackdown akin to the student loans ruling. We'll see.

But Democrats have struggled with this in recent years. For years they hoped they could portray Trump as on the side of bigots. More recently, they argued he endangered democracy. It turned out that, to voters, such arguments either weren't convincing or weren't disqualifying.

Trump and Stephen Miller understand this innately. They use policies, controversies, & rhetoric to try and signal that they're on the side of the prototypical "ordinary" American, and that their opponents are on the side of dangerous criminals, unauthorized immigrants, liberal elitists, etc.

Swing voters aren't scrutinizing white papers or going down an issue checklist but they are looking for signals about whether the politician is with people "like them" or people not like them.

Policy positions, handling of daily controversies, rhetoric, candidate profile all feed into this

The popularism debate (both pro- and anti-) often seems blinkered to me because so much of it is about policy position-taking in a vacuum — which is indeed important, but is just one of many things that tell a larger story about *whose side you're on.*

The rise — and fall? — of the New Progressive Economics Progressives conquered economic policy under Biden. Would they lose it under Harris?

Tremendous overview of the progressive economic policy moment in the Democratic Party over the past decade by @awprokop.bsky.social

www.vox.com/2024-electio...

"A newly toughened immigration law allowed the government to expel noncitizens whom it judged to be political radicals."

New Radical Division of the Justice Department would "compile lists of subversives, track them," & build deportation cases -Adam Hochschild, American Midnight

For sure. It's a highly niche issue and likely will make no difference.

But they're seemed to be some confusion of what exactly the "bait" is for. I'm pointing out that their goal is to say "Ohhhhh, you'll welcome every refugee or illegal immigrant except these ones, huh, wonder why?"

The centerpiece of Trump/Miller political strategy is to bring every issue back to "I care about people *like you,* while Dems and the left only care about people unlike you."

Hence the spectacle of bringing in white refugees — hoping progressives will say "no, go away, we don't want them"

I think what the people behind this policy want is to bait progressives into criticizing and attacking the white South Africans, arguing that they're not "real" refugees, don't deserve help, etc.

As White House Steers Justice Dept., Bondi Embraces Role of TV Messenger

New NYT piece on Pam Bondi portrays her as hapless, out of the loop, obsessed with going on TV, and argues that Stephen Miller is the one actually running DOJ

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...

I'm interested in rebalancing my media consumption a bit more toward print.

What are the best print magazines currently out there?

The Miracle Woman is a lot of fun.

Oh boy he's mad

How's the future of America and Western civilization looking?

Back in May 2024, Trump told donors that, if he won, he'd expel any foreign student who protested Israel from the US.

"We're going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years," he said.

This probably should have been taken more seriously at the time.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

You're not behaving, JD, I'm calling the teacher