The Bulwark

(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)DONALD TRUMP ON MONDAY hosted a forty-minute Oval Office event focusing on maternal health, and mostly it got attention because he seemed to nod off in the middle of it.But the president and his invited guests also got some news coverage for the intended message, which was about a series of initiatives like reducing the cost of some fertility drugs, and launching an informational website called Moms.gov. These are supposed to demonstrate, as one attendee put

Congressman Jake Auchincloss joins John Avlon to lay out a new “patriotic center” for Democrats—from taxing social media companies to fund education, to rebuilding America, fixing housing, confronting China, regulating AI deepfakes, and reclaiming patriotism from Trumpism. They also debate school closures, social media addiction, AI’s impact on democracy, and why Democrats need a more aggressive economic message heading into 2028.Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San

Sarah Longwell and Ben Wittes discuss the Supreme Court mifepristone fight and why it could reshape abortion politics for years to come, then dig into Trump’s proposed $1.7 billion “weaponization” fund for Jan. 6 allies, the DOJ’s effort to protect Jeffrey Clark, and Kash Patel’s increasingly bizarre behavior as FBI director.Leave a commentshow notesPre-order Sarah’s book, How to Eat an Elephant, coming in September!Bulwark Live: California tickets are on sale

A Man for All Seasons is one of cinema's great moral arguments—six Oscars, a cast of legends, and a story about conscience under autocracy that feels more relevant than ever. Mona Charen and Sonny Bunch dig into why this 1966 film became a touchstone for conservative intellectuals, what it says about people who preach virtue and then fold when it counts, and why Robert Bolt—a leftist—wrote the right's favorite movie. Plus: the rule of law, the seduction of power, and what it me

Will Saletan takes on Donald Trump’s own words on the Iran war, gas prices, inflation, and the economy — and methodically shows how Trump keeps contradicting himself on camera. From $300 oil to “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” this is a devastating walkthrough of Trump’s economic and political logic.JOIN US! We’ll have some chatty friends joining us on stage for Bulwark Live in San Diego on May 20 and Los Angeles on May 21. For

Happy Saturday! Overtime is for everyone. If you’re a Bulwark+ member: thank you. If you’re not, there’s no better time to subscribe to Bulwark+ than today. If you like today’s issue, you can share this newsletter with someone you think would value it, especially since this issue features a poignant essay from Mark Hertling.ShareGeneral views of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial on July 5, 2025 in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)Respect at USS

Georgia’s primaries for Governor and U.S. Senate have LOTS of things for political nerds (like you, dear listener) to chew on. But the Republican and Democratic voters we talked to felt pretty sick of politics. Some of what we learned:How Republicans feel about their chances against Jon Ossoff in the fall (not good)Why a Trump-like billionaire is overshadowing Trump’s endorsed candidate for governorWhether Democratic voters will tolerate a former Republican Lieutenant Governor runnin

Tim Miller is joined by Johnny Garcia, a Democrat running in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, where a closely watched runoff on May 26 could help decide control of a key House seat. Garcia, a deputy sheriff and former hostage negotiator, outlines his background in law enforcement and his pitch to working-class voters who are struggling with rising costs and economic uncertainty. They also talk about the unusual dynamics of the race: Republicans are reportedly spending significant money

Tim Miller talked to Nicolle Wallace on MS NOW to give his take on Trump’s embarrassing summit in China, where Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and left with no results for ending the war in Iran. Plus, Tim gave his take on the proposed $1.7 billion fund tied to Trump allies and January 6-related figures, raising fresh concerns about corruption, political favoritism, and taxpayer money being directed toward controversial recipients.Watch Deadline: White House on MS NOW: https://w

If the IRS goes ahead and gives in to Donald Trump's demands for a MAGA slush fund, it would be outright theft of the public's money and corruption on a scale that we've never even contemplated in this country. What would stop him from plundering even more from the American people? Plus, Kash's ghoulish snorkel at Pearl Harbor, the Supreme Court's VRA ruling gave permission to practice discrimination, MAGA loves the racism and sexism of the 1950s, and the penile implant expert managing the Hanta

Elliot Page in The Odyssey. (Courtesy Universal Pictures)Few filmmakers regularly inspire weirder freakouts than Christopher Nolan.You saw inklings of it with The Dark Knight and his casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker. It’s easy to forget now—for nearly twenty years The Dark Knight has been the go-to descriptor for comic book movie excellence and Ledger’s Joker is the gold standard against which every movie villain is measured—but this was a wildly controversial choice.

Catherine Rampell and JVL went LIVE to give their takes on Trump's reported plans for a secretive $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund that could quietly reward Jan. 6 defendants and Trump political allies behind closed doors.Leave a comment Read more

Last night news broke that President Trump would drop his $10b lawsuit against the IRS if the people who work for him at the Justice Department would create a $1.7b fund out of taxpayer dollars and allow him to appoint five commissioners to run this fund and they would award money to anyone they deemed fit.Oh, and that the list of people given money would be secret. And Trump could replace the commissioners any time he wanted, for no reason.The Trump administration is positioning this as a &#822

(Photo by Hannah Yoest)I know we should talk about the amazing summit Our Favorite President just had with the wise and very good-looking—right out of central casting, many people are saying—Chairman Xi.But sometimes I need to do one for myself. And that’s what today is.We’re going to talk about how, yes, capitalism is good. Lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, higher standards of living, blah blah blah.Also: It can kind of suck?Today I want to tell you three stori

An officer wearing the logo of the GEO Group private prison company outside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center detention facility in Adelanto, California, on July 11, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)THE NEW HEAD of Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be David Venturella, a former executive of the GEO Group, which I think of as the Coca-Cola of immigrant detention—the ubiquitous, hugely profitable, default option wherever you go. (That would make CoreCivic, Ame

This morning, amid the ongoing negotiating stalemate in Iran, Donald Trump made a sudden public concession: He was no longer calling, he said, for Iran to permanently abandon its nuclear ambitions, but rather to accept a twenty-year moratorium. “Twenty years is enough, but the level of guarantee from them is not enough,” the president said aboard Air Force One while returning home from China. “In other words, it’s got to be a real twenty years.” Happy Friday.Preside

Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza González, and Henry Cavill in In the Grey. (Courtesy Black Bear Pictures)The hardest-working Guy in showbiz is back.Since 2019, Guy Ritchie has directed eight feature films and created a pair of TV shows for two separate streaming services. Even more remarkable is the varied nature of the work: big-budget family-minded fantasy fare (Aladdin and Fountain of Youth), Brit crime callbacks to his earlier work (The Gentlemen, both the movie and TV spinoff), hard-bitten crime

Hey everyone, so: This posted in the Takes feed over the weekend. (You can watch the video on Substack here or YouTube here.) I Just wanted to make sure this episode got into the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood feed in case you don’t subscribe to the Takes feed (though you should!) and also to give everyone a heads up that Mona Charen and I will be doing an episode of her podcast on A Man for All Seasons. You can watch that movie for free on YouTube, so long as you don’t mind ads.

Vladimir Putin on May 9, 2026 in Moscow. (Photo: Getty Images)IF I WERE TO SIT DOWN AND CATALOGUE all of the abject lies Vladimir Putin has told over the span of his political career, it would take months to account for them all.The latest lie? Just last weekend, Putin stated that Russia’s war against Ukraine is coming to an end. Some people believed that meant he was ready to make peace. Then, just a few days later, his barbarian army—there is no other way to describe a military so

Tim Miller takes on reports that Kash Patel is snorkeling at Pearl Harbor, rigging the most wanted list, and jetting his girlfriend around Europe on your dime. Meanwhile Trump just created a $1.7 billion slush fund for his criminal allies—no Congress required.JOIN US! We’ll have some chatty friends joining us on stage for Bulwark Live in San Diego on May 20 and Los Angeles on May 21. For details or to grab your seats today head to TheBulwark.com/Events. More Leave a commentAs always: