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How Sports Betting Came For EVERYTHING
26:13
The Bitchuation Room • Feb 7, 2026

How Sports Betting Came For EVERYTHING

Migration Is an Underdevelopment Issue
Scheer Post • Feb 7, 2026

Migration Is an Underdevelopment Issue

The global number of migrants has nearly doubled in the past thirty-five years, underscoring rising inequality and the imposed underdevelopment of the Global South.

The Hilarious Decline of MAGA’s Brief Cultural Relevance
New Republic • Feb 7, 2026

The Hilarious Decline of MAGA’s Brief Cultural Relevance

Donald Trump is trying not to make a big deal of the fact that he won’t be attending Super Bowl LX when it kicks off on Sunday. The game, which is being held in Santa Clara, California, is just “too far away,” said the president, who regularly flies across the world on a taxpayer-funded plane that solely exists to take him wherever he wants, whenever he wants. In the same interview, though, Trump did indicate another possible reason why he wasn’t attending: the Opening Ceremony and halftime show. The latter will feature a performance from Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny and the former will feature Bay Area punk rock band Green Day—both of whom have been sharply critical of the president, his administration, and, particularly in the case of Bad Bunny, ICE. “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” Trump said. It’s tempting to dwell on the delicious irony in Trump’s statement: There is no one in recent American history who has sown more hatred than the president. But it doesn’t matter. Trump wouldn’t be at the Super Bowl even if Kid Rock were performing alongside a host of country singers no one has heard of—which is, incidentally, the slate of the right-wing Turning Point USA’s “alternative” halftime show, which is sure to attract dozens of viewers. Trump isn’t going to the Super Bowl because he is, one year into his term, more unpopular than he’s been since the January 6 insurrection. He knows that when the cameras inevitably found him in his box, he would be mercilessly and loudly booed. Staying home and stewing—and posting incessant (and most likely racist) drivel on Truth Social—is preferable. It’s still humiliating, just less so. Trump’s absence at Super Bowl LX, combined with TPUSA’s show, tells us where his second term is headed. A year ago, Trump had real cultural power, particularly in the sports world. He attended Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans and was applauded. Pro athletes celebrated goals and touchdowns by breaking out the “Trump dance.” There was wide concern that the right had achieved massive cultural power through influencers, popular YouTube shows, and comics. Now Trump is staying home, and the best counterprogramming his allies can come up with is a performance by one of the most talentless performers American culture has produced in the last quarter-century. The rise of the “Trump dance”—seen everywhere from college football stadiums to international soccer—was, as I argued shortly after the election, a sign of the wider cultural normalization of Trump and the utter failure to make him societally radioactive. It also pointed to one of the more disturbing trends revealed by the 2024 election: Trump had gained ground with a lot of people who, not so long ago, didn’t like him at all. Young men, in particular—not just white men without college degrees, but from a wide array of social, racial, and economic backgrounds—had warmed to the president. They thought he was funny, someone worth imitating—and saw no social cost for embracing him. And Trump was winning over these people in part because American culture—particularly online culture, but sports as well—had gotten more right-wing and reactionary. TPUSA’s show is amusing for a lot of reasons. One is that Kid Rock is terrible, not just musically but lyrically; his songs celebrating statutory rape have gone viral recently. “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see / Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory),” Kid Rock rapped on the soundtrack to the 2001 children’s movie Osmosis Jones. Kid Rock was a cultural force of sorts in 2001, but in 2026 he’s been a has-been for two decades. For the past decade, he’s been clinging to MAGA out of desperation to maintain some semblance of cultural relevance. And TPUSA, a nominally Christian organization, is happy to embrace a man who celebrates statutory rape because he’s a vocally pro-Trump artist and there just aren’t that many of those right now. TPUSA needs Kid Rock as much as, if not more than, he needs them. (Who was their backup option—Lee Greenwood?)This is a familiar, lowly position for the right, which has spent most of the last half-century whining about how American popular culture is mean to conservatives. But what is surprising is that, a year ago, it seemed like that was finally changing. The right had made real progress, from podcasters (and comics) like Joe Rogan and Theo Von to comics (and podcasters) like Matt Rife and Tony Hinchcliffe, to the aforementioned athletes doing the Trump dance last fall and winter. Rogan recently called ICE the “gestapo,” and you don’t see the Trump dance very often anymore. Amon-Ra St. Brown, the Detroit Lions star receiver, apologized after doing it last fall during a game that Trump attended. Other than that, the two most recent examples of the Trump dance I’ve encountered both came from South American leaders: Javier Milei, Argentina’s extremely weird president, did it at a White House event last November. And Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro did it in January to mock the president, who responded by sending Delta Force to kidnap him days later. Instead, what you’re seeing is a fierce backlash to Trump everywhere. There are anti-ICE protests at the Winter Olympics in Milan (agents have been sent there to protect U.S. officials). Athletes and sports teams in Minnesota decried ICE’s presence in their state last month. Bad Bunny criticized ICE last week at the Grammys, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—who no one has ever called “woke” with a straight face—defended him for it. Even fans of All Elite Wrestling—admittedly a somewhat woker pro wrestling league than the WWE—chanted “Fuck ICE” at a recent match in Las Vegas. Trump is widely loathed. Supporting him, even by doing a silly dance, is reputationally suicidal. The biggest story of the last year is that Trump has, in a very short amount of time, squandered most of his political capital by running a belligerent, unlawful, and fascist regime. But the second biggest is that the right has squandered all of the cultural capital his election brought them. A year ago, it seemed like the right was on the verge of total dominance throughout American society. Now they’re back to pretending to like Kid Rock, while everyone in the country gets to enjoy the real Super Bowl halftime show.

When Will Democrats Decide to Join the Resistance?
New Republic • Feb 7, 2026

When Will Democrats Decide to Join the Resistance?

Lately I’ve been wondering what it might be like for the residents of the embattled Twin Cities to receive one of those trademark email solicitations from the Democratic Party. You know the ones: The sender is Chuck Schumer, the subject line reads “THIS IS THE END,” and the body of the email explains how the gyre is widening and the falcon can’t hear the falconer and it’s up to you to send $5 to hold back the blood-dimmed tide. These are annoying during whatever times we might have once considered to be “normal.” With federal agents wilding on the streets and kidnapping children, to hear our problems reframed as something that we can fix by handing the nearest Democrat the change in our couch cushions is anger-inducing.I’ve heard and read enough accounts from Minneapolitans to know that they’re feeling little connection to Beltway lawmakers, and that by and large they feel abandoned by most Democrats in Washington. This can only go on so long before something breaks: Ordinary people are showing remarkable valor protecting their communities from a corrupt and violent federal presence, egged on by a senescent and (allegedly) incontinent president and his ghoulish hangers-on. Democrats have the power to recognize this effort to protect democracy, provide it with material support and media cover, and thus knit up the fabric between themselves and these brave Americans. Let us acknowledge that the answer will not come with a legislative fix. Senate Democrats held the funding of several executive branch agencies hostage over demands to reform the Department of Homeland Security, precipitating a partial government shutdown, but earlier this week a deal was struck to fully fund those other agencies while only keeping the lights on at DHS for another two weeks as lawmakers negotiate reforms.One Democratic lawmaker to whom Axios granted the veil of anonymity suggested that Democrats expect the base to “get upset” but believes the discontent will wash away because “then you’re going to have the real fight in two weeks.” Whether or not that period ends with any meaningful change in the status quo remains to be seen. Much of what Democrats seek would merely require various federal agents to obey rules and regulations that they’re already supposed to follow as a matter of agency directive—though enshrining these policies as laws would be a step in the right direction.  That said, there’s still the thorny matter of enforcing any new constraints that are imposed on ICE and Border Patrol. I hope I’m wrong about this, but by the time all is said and done, I don’t expect much in the way of material change where the president’s paramilitaries are concerned. At best, perhaps, people will see the faces of the thugs who are beating them—though not always, if Schumer has his way. I think people, by and large, can accept that when it comes to enacting policies, Democrats have little room to maneuver given their minority power. Moreover, the revival of arguments over the party’s unwillingness to use what leverage it has out of fear that closing the government on a long-term basis will lead to larger downside liabilities is, by now, parlor-room talk. Looking toward the future, Democrats must pivot to combat an even greater danger, which Senator Chris Murphy articulated on the podcast of TNR’s Greg Sargent: “I think if people don’t see us fighting on something as existential as whether we condone the federal government murdering our own citizens, then there will be a mass withdrawal from politics altogether.”Murphy continues:I do think this is a critical moment. The whole country is seized by what they have seen—the statistics suggest that 80 to 90 percent of Americans have seen these videos—and they desperately want somebody to stand up for the rule of law. So, yes, if we do not make a fight right now, I think it could result in just a massive withdrawal of participation in our civic life. And that is how democracies die. Democracies die not often simply by force—it would be totalitarian—but by citizens deciding that there’s no one that is willing to stand up and save them.Democrats, stymied as they are on Capitol Hill, have a freer hand to act in other venues—to undertake the necessary work of standing up for the people and proving that they are all on the same team. They must fight on these remaining fronts with an eye toward forging a greater connection with the broader civil resistance, providing it with rhetorical and material support. There are a number of ways in which Democrats can interact with those fighting to protect their families and neighbors from Trump’s predations that aren’t subject to a presidential veto.First and foremost, Democrats should play the leading role in waging a campaign for the truth. In the past two weeks, the media has been suckered into front-running for the Trump administration, presenting a favorable narrative that spins a gauzy story: Forces are being drawn down, and the temperature is being lowered in Minneapolis. None of this is true: Minneapolitans are still living with the same brutal fear they were experiencing before Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was sent packing. People with legal citizenship are being abducted from the streets of the Twin Cities and sent to Texas, where they are released and abandoned without the means to get home. Democrats are uniquely positioned to echo and amplify the voices on the ground that are simply saying that the Trump administration is lying; that its abuses are escalating.  Democrats should ignore calls to keep their distance from the people who are impacted by Trump’s mayhem. That doesn’t mean we need every septuagenarian lawmaker in front of Border Patrol truncheons outside Minneapolis’s Seventh Street Entry, but being present and visible in any way makes a big difference. New York congressional candidate Brad Lander trekked to Minneapolis to help locals protect their neighbors in the same way he’s helped those in his home state. Joaquin Castro and Ilhan Omar made personal intercessions to return the abducted Liam Conejo Ramos home. Castro personally made the trip home with the 5-year-old; his efforts garnered a ton of well-deserved positive attention from the media. Democrats have able-bodied staff, connections to important and influential people, and a bully pulpit. All of these resources can be mobilized to help embattled citizens survive Trump’s onslaught, whether it’s getting more media attention on the daily abrogations of our constitutional rights, helping organizers on the ground with logistical support, or kickstarting fundraising efforts to help the mutual aid organizations central to the fight. They can also bring these efforts home to their own districts: As TNR contributors Ana Marie Cox and Sarah Jaffe separately reported, Minneapolitans were well positioned to offer a stern resistance to ICE because they’d prepared for it in advance. Knowing that the president views any Democratic district as a potential venue for ICE violence, lawmakers should get their own communities prepared for the worst by building the necessary resilience now. This is, of course, a midterm campaign season, and there’s no better way to reconnect with those suffering under Trump’s bootheel than to make the solemn promise to hold him and his cronies accountable; impeach them, remove them, forever discredit them, block their paths to power indefinitely. And look, if you’re a one-note Democratic lawmaker who feels like the only thing you can freely talk about is affordability, you too can suck it up and play a role: ICE violence is currently one of the primary drivers of the affordability crisis. Recently, Indivisible’s Ezra Levin said something interesting about the kind of email missives I made fun of at the top of the piece. Today’s “political system,” Levin wrote, “largely treats people like small-dollar ATMs that vote every two years. Everybody gets deluged with emails asking for money. It feeds cynicism and burnout. Rarely do you get a ‘help me organize our community’ email.” To Levin’s reckoning, it may not be the case that Democrats are asking too much, it’s that they are asking for “too little.”  People under tremendous pressure and mortal fear have spontaneously spun up a vibrant civil resistance that puts the lie to so many of the assumptions upon which Trumpism was built. The democracy movement already has leaders. It would be to the benefit of all if Democrats find new and novel ways to join them.This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

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