Mimosa, Bloody Mary, nice flute of champagne — or maybe a favorite tipple in your coffee. Make yourself one and join me at our own Algonquin Round Table, the spirit of Dorothy Parker abides.

Good Sunday morning to you all – your regular hostess Darleen is away for the weekend, so she has yet again entrusted me with your drinks and buffet table. This being Memorial Day weekend, and the unofficial start of the summer, please remember to raise your glass and give your thanks to those who gave their “last full measure of devotion” for this nation. Help yourself and let’s get started.
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The only Democrat who can say “I told you so”

Remember former Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips? He was the only sitting Democrat who had the balls to challenge both Joe Biden and the DNC for the presidential nomination, even though the DNC had well and truly rigged the 2024 Democrat primary to make sure Biden went unchallenged. Phillips ended up persona non grata within the House caucus, and decided to not run for re-election. Well, with the publication of the “Original Sin” book, he’s reminding the Democrats just how right he was in an op-ed in The Free Press.

Constant lying and gaslighting the public about Biden’s health has cost the Democratic Party the public’s trust. Rebuilding it first requires the courage and honesty to admit to what happened.

In 2021, I had a front-row seat on two occasions when he addressed the House Democratic Caucus. I also spent time in close proximity to the president during two flights on Air Force One, in 2021 and 2022, where I was alarmed to see the president’s obvious decline in communication skills, gait, and leadership capacity. After the White House holiday party in December 2022, at which the president’s decline was too graphic to ignore, I was left with no doubt in my mind—Biden was unfit to serve a second term.

My opinion wasn’t an outlier. My congressional colleagues, like me, had eyes; behind closed doors we acknowledged the reality, lamented our party leadership’s inaction, and recognized the impending disaster awaiting us in November 2024.

By the fall of 2023, I realized not only that Biden was in serious decline, but that the polling was clearly showing he couldn’t win. My party was sleepwalking into a second Trump term. So, with no one else willing to step forward—I entered the race.

No one puts themselves forward for president if they don’t believe they’re prepared and would do a good job—and I was no exception. But I knew I had a longer-than-long shot. More realistically, I was trying to spark a competitive primary—and at the very least to force a single, televised debate for Americans to assess the president and other candidates firsthand. I simply wanted Americans to see up close what I had seen and what the White House was trying to hide from them, and before it was too late.

I announced that I was running for president on October 27, 2023. Almost immediately, the party mechanism was activated, and I became persona non grata. The media, in particular MSNBC, where former Biden staffers wielded positions of influence—essentially deplatformed me and those supporting me. Party activists, paid and volunteer, took to social media to attack and discredit me.

The Democratic National Committee announced proactively that there would be no debates. State Democratic parties took steps to keep anyone not named “Biden” from being on the ballot, forcing us to file several lawsuits. In Florida, state Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried moved immediately to prevent my name from appearing on the primary ballot—literally disenfranchising millions of Florida voters by denying them the opportunity to even participate in a primary.

This wasn’t a fight for democracy, rather a coordinated fight against democracy—executed by a private corporation with no accountability to voters.

For a party ostensibly focused on protecting democracy and expanding voter rights and access, denying Democratic primary voters a single alternative to Biden was nothing short of rank hypocrisy.

The Democratic Party can still redeem itself. But the first step is for everyone that was aware of Biden’s condition to come clean. No more evasions. No more insistence that he was sharp when you met him. The whole truth will come out, and they would be wise to get ahead of it. If a relatively little-known congressman like me knew that Biden was incapable of leading the country in a second term, what does that say about the complicity of the real party bosses whose names we all know?

Phillips bemoans that Democrats are not learning from what happened to them, or taking responsibility for it. He has far too much faith in his party. The whole reason this is all coming out now is so it can be dead and buried before the midterms. Democrats are not interested in learning a lesson from this. They are interested in “moving forward” and winning the next election.
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They all knew, but they kept quiet

One of the Obama Pod Bros has gone to “confession” about what he knew regarding Joe Biden’s cognitive decline – and admits he kept quiet because Orange Man Bad.

Ex-Obama aide and “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Lovett admitted on Jon Stewart’s “The Weekly Show” podcast that he withheld his concerns about President Joe Biden’s physical decline during the 2024 campaign.

Lovett told Stewart and his fellow “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau that he didn’t want to publicly voice his concern over Biden’s declining health because he wanted him “to f—— win.”

“I remember feeling I want to talk about this as a huge liability. To talk about this is something Joe Biden can overcome, but I’m not going to go so far as to say, ‘I think Joe Biden must drop out. He is too old to be president,’” Lovett said on the podcast. “A, because I didn’t know exactly what was going on behind the scenes, but B, if Joe Biden is the candidate, I want him to f—— win.”

Lovett said he was worried that expressing his concerns would be weaponized against Biden by political opponents.

He claimed he kept his concerns to himself to avoid “having the words we’re saying taken out of context and all of a sudden be part of the case against Joe Biden from the right — that would use any person criticizing Joe Biden from the left as a weapon against him.”

“So it was about being honest about Joe Biden’s age as a liability while knowing that if he is the nominee, I want to be clear that I thought it was important to make sure we did everything we could to reelect him,” Lovett claimed.

I expect that more of these “confessions” will keep trickling out as time goes on.
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SCOTUS needs to get the courts in line

Professor Jonathan Turley has an excellent op-ed regarding the very messy situation that the Supreme Court needs to deal with immediately – the nationwide injunctions that district judges are using to block the Trump administration.

This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration.

The court has long failed to address the problem, and so-called “chronic injunctivitis” is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy. For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures. Any one judge can halt the entire government.

Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law. Kagan lashed out at the obvious “forum shopping” by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting “It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.”

In his first term, Trump faced a more than 450 percent increase in the number of such injunctions over the number issued under Obama — a rise from 12 to 64. The number then went down to just 14 under former President Joe Biden. With Trump back in office, district courts have now outstripped that record and may surpass the total from the first term in the first year.

If the Supreme Court doesn’t limit the reach of these federal district court judges, then we are going to be under rule by judicial fiat. This issue has been brewing for a long time, and it is past due for the Roberts Court to slap down the district judges.
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Hillary Clinton has homework for you

Coming to you from the Secretary of State for the Obama administration, who also thought Thanksgiving was the perfect time to preach to relatives about Obamacare…

I'm giving you a mission for this Memorial Day holiday weekend.

I want you to talk to two people—friends, neighbors, cookout attendees—about why Trump's proposed budget would be a disaster for American kids.

We owe the next generation every chance, and this isn't it. pic.twitter.com/NmcfgXfRB5

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 23, 2025

What the hell. We are supposed to be honoring our fallen, not annoying people with trying to discuss the federal budget over the BBQ grill. Hard pass.
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A very important PSA

Since this is the unofficial start to summer, it is the perfect time for this reminder about being vigilant when children are in the water.

I wrote about how Altima almost drowned when he was 2yo: https://t.co/FNoT6ayXzT https://t.co/lLEI3yiIIn

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) May 22, 2025

As our regular readers know, I have two sons on the autism spectrum, and water safety for autistic children is one of the causes I champion personally. Accidental drowning is one of the leading causes of death for ASD children, often because these same children often elope from homes or adults, and are drawn to water. My oldest son lost a classmate while he was in middle school to an accidental drowning over Memorial Day weekend, and explaining why his classmate was never coming back to school was among one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. If you do have children on the autism spectrum in your life, putting them into swimming lessons (preferably in a one-on-one setting) can give them the tools to save their lives. If nothing else, swimming is an excellent form of exercise, and has the added benefit of sensory feedback for those on the autism spectrum. But no matter the setting, beach or pool, if you have a loved little one in the water, keep your phone down and your eyes on target.
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Your Sunday palate cleanser

Project Benjamin is a non-profit organization that has dedicated itself to correctly identifying Jewish American soldiers that have been mistakenly buried under crosses in American military cemeteries. This happened often, especially during World War II, as Jewish soldiers often did not designate their faith on their dog tags in case they were captured by Nazi forces (for obvious reasons). Recently, three headstones were replaced in Italy with the help and cooperation of the American Battle Monuments Commission, and CNN’s Dana Bash documented the story.

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Your Sunday smile

Graduation season is upon us, and Kermit the Frog gave the commencement address at the University of Maryland this week.

Kermit the Frog told this year’s graduates at the University of Maryland that “life is better when we leap together.”

The beloved Muppet and creation of the late Maryland graduate, Jim Henson, delivered the main address at the university’s commencement Thursday evening in… pic.twitter.com/kv3aQsMUQA

— PBS News (@NewsHour) May 23, 2025

This is not the first time Kermit has given a commencement speech, but it is the first time that he has spoken at the University of Maryland, which was Jim Henson’s alma mater. Given the quality of most commencement remarks and how often people just zone out during these speeches, I feel like this was a fun improvement upon the practice.
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Well, dear readers, our time together has come to a close. May you all have a restful Sunday, and may you carve out some time tomorrow to geniunely reflect on the sacrifices made by those who served this country over the last 250 years to establish our independence and keep us free. Your regular hostess will be back with you next week. Until then, cheers!

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click