Steve Benen

“covert surveillance inside houses of worship… “interrogations of churches’ staff… “ICE agents hauled off a nun who was wearing her habit and walking down the sidewalk en route to Sunday Mass… “suing a Catholic diocese in New Mexico to seize 14 acres of their land…” www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Reading about an ailing priest literally being carried out of an ICE facility, as well as Team Trump spying on churches, I kept thinking about one thing: The Trump White House last year accused Biden and his administration of having “abused and targeted Christians.” www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Administration has a real data manipulation problem: - DHS exaggerates immigrants who’ve left US - Patel's FBI pads crime stats - IRS hides tax cut data until after midterms - Census excludes immigrants www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump’s team urged him not to celebrate higher oil prices ahead of the midterms. He ignored them — again. The guy seems convinced that consumers will celebrate Big Oil cashing in, even as they suffer at the pump. This probably isn’t what Republicans want voters to hear. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Remember: Trump’s Greenland rhetoric isn’t just regular ol’ lying; it’s lying intended to put a positive spin on one of the more humiliating foreign policy fiascoes of his second term. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

For those keeping score, Trump had already received made-up awards from the NRSC, FIFA, the coal industry, and House Republicans. Then a desperate candidate in Iowa added a “Man of the Century” honor to the pitiful list. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump’s Justice Department filed a preemptive lawsuit to block a possible Democratic win in Alaska’s Senate race. It’s a dramatic escalation, which comes a month after Trump publicly directed AG Todd Blanche to pursue the matter. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

HHS is hardly the only part of the administration that’s misused AI, but RFK Jr’s department has suffered more than its share of humiliations. After the first incident, it’s tempting to think these guys would’ve learned a lesson. After four incidents, they have no excuses www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Hegseth’s team broke Eisenhower’s globe. The White House tried to give away one of Eisenhower’s swords. Trump wants to turn the Eisenhower Exec Office Bldg into a giant white blob. Moral of the story: Maybe these guys should stop messing with stuff related to Eisenhower? www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

For the fourth time, the Social Security Administration has sent an unsolicited political email to beneficiaries. The latest — sent 12 days before Election Day — references Trump literally 10 times in a relatively brief message, which is a rather obvious abuse. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

As Hillary Clinton endorses expanding the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13, it’s evidence of a reform idea that’s clearly gone mainstream. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

I know the writers’ room sometimes turns to ham-fisted metaphors, but c’mon. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

JD Vance had an opportunity to take the high road on the year’s most disgusting attack ad. Predictably, the VP instead flunked an important test of his character: Vance is “disgusted,” not by Ramaswamy’s vile commercial, but by Republicans “whining” about it. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump said he’s prepared to settle the Camp Lejune cases — but he won’t if voters fail to make him happy. This transactionalism has become so common — and so scandalous — that I put together a growing list of recent incidents. (If I missed any good examples, let me know.) www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump keeps saying he successfully acquired Greenland, which is a development that only occurred in his overactive imagination. But stepping back, it’s worth noting that he’s lying because the truth is far more humiliating for him. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

There’s no shortage of problems with the White House’s new fraud whistleblower program, though there was one quote from the rollout that’s tough to overlook: “People will make millions of dollars by turning others in,” Trump said. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

The E15 policy might seem obscure, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: At his latest campaign rally, Trump told Kansans he’s prepared to hurt the state on purpose if he dislikes how they vote in the Senate race. How is this not a scandal? www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

As polls show two-thirds of Americans agreeing that Trump is using his office to enrich himself, JD Vance keeps saying, “I’ve not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself.” It suggests the VP is either remarkably unobservant or deliberately unobservant. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

The pattern isn’t exactly subtle: In 2016: Russia targets U.S. elections, tries to help Republicans win In 2018: See above In 2020: See above In 2022: See above In 2024: See above In 2026: See above www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Remember, when you see reports about Russia launching an operation against U.S. elections to help Republicans, this is the *sixth consecutive* cycle in which this has happened.

Trump’s stated rationale for showering Putin with unearned gifts, in exchange for nothing, doesn’t make a lot of sense. So naturally we have to turn to alternate explanations — including his former DNI’s concerns about what Putin might have on Trump. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

As the dust settles on the humiliating Zacharia debacle, there are some lessons for White House officials to at least try to consider. At the top of the list: Meritocracies are good, and hiring random people because the president saw them on TV is bad. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump’s comments about a possible self-pardon matter, but don't overlook his talk about sweeping pardons for his team. Corruption is already a systemic problem. The signal he’s sending to political appointees throughout the executive branch is likely to make matters worse www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump told supporters last week, “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap.” This week, he suggested those attending one of his rallies would struggle to pass a cognitive test. Ever get the feeling he doesn’t exactly hold his loyal followers in high regard? www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Remember when Trump picked this guy to serve as the U.S. attorney general, and JD Vance invested time and effort, shepherding Gaetz around Capitol Hill, trying to generate support among Senate Republicans for his AG nomination? Nearly two years later:

Confronted with evidence of his own failure on inflation, Trump couldn’t think of anything coherent to say. Saying “your prices have come way down,” just hours after reality showed prices rising quickly, probably isn’t going to work. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

I had a great time talking with @gregsargent.bsky.social on his pod, and we covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. I hope folks will check it out.

Guilfoyle, Bondi, Noem, Chavez-DeRemer, Gabbard: The White House has been willing to part with beleaguered, scandal-plagued officials, but on Team Trump, men appear to have fared far better than women. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump treats every day as if it were Putin’s birthday, and he wants to demonstrate his cartoonish affection for the Russian dictator with lavish unearned gifts. In exchange, Trump’s getting ... nothing. Remember when Trump’s own DNI wondered what Putin had on him? www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Part 1: Trump publicly demands an investigation into Ilhan Omar Part 2: Trump admin opens an investigation into Omar. Part 3: Trump pretends he had nothing to do with Part 2, despite Part 1 www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

The new inflation data is obviously awful news for consumers, but it’s also a political disaster for the White House in the run up to the midterms. Remember five days ago, when Trump told voters that consumer prices are “coming down very fast”? They’re really not. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

It’s a go-to tactic Trump has utilized for years: The minute an ally runs into trouble or becomes inconvenient, he pretends to barely know them. Kimberly “she, I guess, dated my son a long time ago” Guilfoyle has joined the sizable club. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

OK, how about this: Katie Zacharia, Trump’s new nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Greece?

It’s possible the White House hired Katie Zacharia because it didn’t know about her crackpot social media history. Or maybe it knew and didn’t care. Or maybe Team Trump hired her *because of* her record of pushing utterly bonkers nonsense. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump’s support among voters who backed him in 2024: Jan 2025: 95% Jan 2026: 83% July 2026: 75% Oct 2026: 67% The more he lies about the strength of his support with the GOP base, the more relevant this shift becomes.

A brief timeline on the White House misappropriating public funds for propagandistic campaign ads: Oct 5: Trump says he’ll stop using taxpayer money Oct 6 –11: Trump doesn’t actually stop Oct 12: A federal judge tells Trump he has to stop Oct 13: Trump still doesn’t stop www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

I’d argue the turning point in the Kansas race came when voters heard about Roger Marshall garnishing paychecks and pushing arrest warrants when his patients couldn’t afford their bills. The latest on the interest rates he charged makes matters a noticeably worse. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Four weeks ago, Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine that didn’t exist. Yesterday, he did it again. Remember when the White House would be pressured to explain how/why the president managed to get something like this so terribly wrong — twice? www.ms.now/news/trump-e...

Late Friday — a time notorious for politicians trying to bury news they don’t want the public to notice — Hegseth’s Pentagon quietly acknowledged a tragic fact: The actual number of U.S. fatalities in the war with Iran is 21, not 18. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

After Russia invaded Ukraine, trade between Moscow and the West stopped, not just to punish Putin, but also to deny him the resources needed to help fuel the deadliest conflict in Europe since WWII. Trump now claims he’s struck a deal to buy Russian fuel, which needs to be seen as a real scandal.

“His words are dangerous and incite hostility” seems like it’d more applicable to Trump calling on Minnesotans to “fight back” against their Somali-American neighbors.

Dear White House, if you’re going to base your entire election-season messaging around the words “socialism” and “communism,” you should at least have some basic understanding of their meaning. Right now, you don’t. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump keeps claiming that, out of his deep and abiding concerns about propriety, he deliberately decided not to go after Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton. He’s asking us to pretend we didn’t see the recent history that played out before our eyes. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Trump is increasingly brazen in politicizing federal disaster relief, explicitly tying approvals to campaign endorsements and elections. It’s one of the underappreciated scandals of his second term. Or as one governor put it yesterday, it’s “complete and total bulls---.” www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

If Pete Hegseth looks at what transpired aboard the USS Lincoln and thinks the real problem is with “a few folks in the media,” his relationship with reality is badly broken. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

For years, even Democrats who liked Medicare for All assumed it was too unpopular to endorse. It’s time for them to reassess: The latest KFF poll found 66% public support for Medicare for All, an all-time high. (It’s even increasingly popular among Republicans) www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Team Trump is effectively saying it misappropriated $11.5 million in taxpayer money, but they're promising not to misuse any *additional* funds. That’s nice, but there’s still the matter of the money that the White House already (and illegally) took from us. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...