It was a very busy week in politics and we've got a lot to get to, but let's start out on a happy note for once, shall we? NASA's Artemis II mission is on its way to circle the moon, the first time humans have done so in over 50 years. So check out some awesome photos the astronauts took of Earth, including one that shows some Northern Lights (at the very edge of image). Out of this world! Something America can be proud of (during a time when that is rare indeed)....

Speaking of things quickly rocketing upward, this week the average national price of a gallon of gasoline blew through the "four bucks a gallon" milestone and hit $4.10 today. To which we can only say: "Ouch!"

Back here on Earth, things have taken a grim turn for the worse in Iran. The breaking news today was that Iran shot down an American F-15E warplane over their territory, the first time they have managed to do so in the whole war. One of the crew has been successfully recovered (as of this writing; this is a fluid situation), but so far the second member of the crew has not.

Iran has also claimed it has shot down a second U.S. warplane, an A-10 Warthog, but (again, as of this writing) so far the only information is that it "crashed" near or possibly in the Strait of Hormuz, and that the pilot (the sole crew member) has been rescued. No other details are available yet.

This week, Donald Trump gave a primetime speech on the war, in which he boasted that: "They [Iran] have no antiaircraft equipment. Their radar is 100 percent annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force." Obviously, those statements are not what one might call 100 percent accurate.

Trump tried to project confidence during his speech, but it wound up impressing virtually no one. Here is what Ramesh Ponnuru -- who is a very conservative guy -- had to say about it in the Washington Post:

Adolf Hitler, in a contemplative mood, said that every war at its start is like opening the door to a dark room. Not true in the case of the U.S. war with Iran, which has been more like entering a hall of mirrors. President Donald Trump's first extended speech about the war, delivered 32 days into it, did not provide a clearer picture.

This is not the fog of war. It's the fog of Trump's rhetoric and perhaps his thoughts. Consider this abbreviated timeline: On March 1, he gave a short interview in which he seemed to change his mind about whether he wanted regime change in Iran. On March 6, he demanded unconditional surrender in all caps. On March 13, he said Iran had been "totally defeated." On March 21, he said the operation had achieved his objectives "ahead of schedule" -- although there has obviously been no surrender, with or without conditions. Later that day, he said he would start hitting Iran's power plants, which would arguably be a war crime, unless the supposedly already defeated country let oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The White House address on Wednesday provided more of the same dissonance: The war has already achieved its objectives, so the United States will keep waging it, and it will end soon. Regime change, he said, was not his goal but has happily occurred anyway, and he will keep bombing the new, much more reasonable Iranian leaders.

And that's from a very rightwing guy, mind you. Also not impressed by Trump's speech? The markets. Stocks were down and oil prices shot up just after Trump delivered his remarks.

Trump's speech was a giant nothingburger. It answered no questions (Will we commit ground troops? When will it be over? What is going to happen to all that enriched uranium Iran has?). It broke no news. There was no new information in it at all, in fact. It was just Trump desperately trying to halt the slide in his own polling numbers that his war of choice has caused. But the price of gas keeps going up, so the American people are making their own minds up about whether all of this has been worth it or not.

Trump's response, as HuffPost pointed out this week, resembles nothing more than his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be classified as "woefully stupid" (and even that's being generous).

Trump would much rather talk about something else (anything else!), such as his plans for his wonderful new ballroom that will sit where the East Wing of the White House used to be. A federal judge blocked the construction of the ballroom this week but Trump is trying to exploit a loophole in the ruling and just keep building it anyway, so we'll see what the judge has to say about that in the near future.

Trump also attempted a few other distractions this week. For the second time in the space of a month, Donald Trump fired one of his cabinet members. After a remarkably stable first year -- with no high-level firings at all -- Trump now seems a lot more open to shaking up his team of advisors. Perhaps he is contemplating the possibility of a Democratic-led Senate after this year's midterms? Or perhaps he is just looking for convenient scapegoats? One never knows, really....

Attorney General Pam Bondi was unceremoniously shown the door this week, after Kristi Noem had been similarly defenestrated a few weeks earlier. By week's end, Bondi's official photo at the Department of Justice had been quite literally chucked into a trash can.

This was all somewhat surprising (to us, at least), since Bondi and Noem were not only true MAGA believers but also willing to get as performative as humanly possible for the television cameras, in an effort to please their Dear Leader. Watching either of these women testify before congressional committees was like watching a scene from Mean Girls, and that's about as politely as we can put it. Which Trump loves -- watching his people scream at and belittle Democrats and "RINOs" with the cameras rolling. Her firing spurred cries of "Good riddance!" from both sides of the aisle, in fact. So they would have been pretty far down our list for candidates to be fired by Trump, but the danger in putting yourself out there in front of the cameras like they did is twofold: they can either outshine Trump in some way (a mortal sin in the MAGAverse), or they can say something that somehow puts Trump in an awkward position.

For whatever their perceived sins, they're both now gone, and the speculation has turned to: "Who will be next?" Rumors are flying. Will it be Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick? Or Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer? F.B.I. Director Kash Patel? Or perhaps Stephen Miller might have overstayed his welcome? The most far-fetched guess we've seen is that Pete Hegseth is on thin ice, but then our reason for calling that a "far-fetched" guess is that Hegseth seems to be comfortable doing his cosplay act in front of the cameras -- which was the same thing we thought about Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem before they were given the boot. Our guess as to who will get canned next -- and we have to stress, we are basing this on absolutely nothing but gut feeling -- would be Marco Rubio. There are two reasons we say this. The first is that Rubio occasionally (much more often than most Trump cabinet members) injects a heavy dose of reality when he speaks to the press, rather than repeating whatever Trumpian fantasy is currently supposed to be "reality." The second reason is that Rubio would certainly make a dandy fall guy, if the Trump's War truly does go south in a big way. But then again, so would Hegseth, we suppose. Oh, well, we'll all have to wait and see which is the next MAGA lickspittle to get thrown under the bus. Place your bets, folks!

The other big news of the week happened in the Supreme Court. They heard oral arguments on Trump's attempt to nullify the clear and plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment this week, and Trump actually showed up to listen. This is (as far as anyone's been able to tell) absolutely unprecedented in American history. No sitting president has ever done so before, but that didn't stop Trump.

Trump being there, however, didn't stop the justices from clearly showing their disapproval in various ways, and the professional courtwatchers all seemed to agree that Trump's going to lose this one. Our guess is a 7-2 decision against him (we're being optimistic, obviously), and also that it will be the final decision handed down in late June or early July when the court wraps up its judicial year.

And to end on an upbeat note as well, we have to say that seeing millions of Americans take to the streets once again and demand "No Kings!" last weekend was heartwarming indeed. Some of the signs were fantastic (our favorite was a slogan that appeared with Trump's face: "Does this ass make my country look small?") and the energy was high, as the No Kings! rallies continue to break records for the biggest American protests of all time.

We have a couple of Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week, the first of which goes as a blanket award for both the organizers of and all the participants in last weekend's "No Kings!" rallies, held in every state in the country. Millions of people turned out once again to protest Donald Trump's monarchical obsessions, and a good time was had by all (as always).

Our next Honorable Mention goes to Ben Cohen (of "Ben & Jerry's" fame), for hiring two artists to create a statue of Donald Trump holding a golden umbrella with plenty of holes in it being attacked by missiles from above. That's pretty funny, but the statue was only up for one day and it got outclassed by a different art installation on the National Mall this week.

Which is why we are giving "The Secret Handshake" our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, despite not knowing their official political affiliation (of which they may have none). We figured "close enough," due to the subject nature of their installations, and decided they were eligible.

Nobody knows who is part of The Secret Handshake (hence the word "secret" right there in their name). They file for permits from the National Park Service (to allow their artwork to appear on the National Mall) through an intermediary, and nobody's ever personally claimed public credit for their works.

But we simply don't care who they are, because their art stands for itself.

Case in point is their latest artwork, entitled: "A Throne Fit For A King." Right after the weekend "No Kings!" protest, a statue of a golden toilet surrounded by fake marble appeared on the National Mall. People are encouraged to climb the three steps, have a seat (the toilet is not functional and is sealed shut), and perhaps tear off a square or two of the Secret Handshake toilet paper for a souvenir. We wrote about all of this in more detail earlier in the week, as we officially crowned them Trump's "court jester" (since every king needs a jester, right?). But we'd like to update the list of all their art installations we provided in that article, because we have now weeded it down to just the artworks that The Secret Handshake has taken credit for (we had included a few others that were speculative, but the following should be considered a definitive list of all their artworks):

• Dictator Approved (a giant "thumbs-up" hand, crushing the crown of the Statue of Liberty)
• The Dancing Gold TV (or "Untitled," perhaps -- there doesn't seem to have been an official title for this one. It was created in response to the White House calling the "Dictator Approved" statue "ugly art," and it featured a golden television set with a video loop of Trump doing what he calls "dancing" playing on it)
• Best Friends Forever (Trump holding hands and skipping along with his pal Jeffrey Epstein)
• The Epstein Birthday Card (a giant birthday card from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, complete with Trump's birthday note/crude drawing of a female body.)
• King of the World (Epstein and Trump in the "I'm the king of the world!" pose from Titanic)
• A Throne Fit For A King (this week's new installment, a golden toilet)

Some say the best way to deal with a bully is to walk up to him and punch him in the face. But we've always preferred an alternative -- laugh at him, loudly. Point fingers while laughing. Encourage everyone else to join in.

And that is precisely what The Secret Handshake has been doing to Donald Trump, in exemplary fashion. Which is why we are not only proclaiming them Trump's official court jester but also handing them this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. We heartily await their next installation!

[You could try to congratulate The Secret Handshake on their webpage, if you'd like to let them know you appreciate their efforts, but we have to warn you it is spectacularly uninformative.]

It's been one of those happy weeks when we find we have no candidates for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, so we are going to place it back on the shelf for another week.

Volume 835 (4/3/26)

Even though Kristi Noem obviously doesn't have a compassionate or empathetic bone in her body, we had to decide not to create a talking point about the scandalous photos a tabloid published of her husband this week. But we did want to at least point out one thing -- imagine if this had happened to a Democratic cabinet member's spouse? You want to bet Republicans would hold investigations and hearings on how this could have been a gigantic blackmail threat for the sitting the secretary of Homeland Security? Those investigations would last years -- that's our guess, at any rate.

In any case, here are the talking points we came up with instead. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly!

   You'd have to ask an expert...

This one was both the funniest soundbite of the week as well as the best response to Trump's big war speech. When Representative Seth Moulton was asked about what he thought Trump's war strategy was, he commented:

I'm not a child psychologist, so I can't understand the mind of Donald Trump.

   $4.50? $5.00?

This is the strongest talking point Democrats have right now, so use it at every opportunity.

"When is Trump finally going to stop his disastrous war with Iran? When the price of gas hits $4.50 a gallon? Five bucks? What will it take for Trump to realize he has made an enormous mess? What will it take for Trump to actually give a crap about how Americans are paying the price for his idiocy? How much worse is it going to get before he calls an end to it all?"

   Trump gives Democrats another gift

Trump now seems to be offering up ready-made campaign ads for Democrats to use against him in the midterms, on a weekly basis. This week's -- from an Easter lunch, no less -- is an absolute doozy. It's Trump's answer to the old "Guns or butter?" question, except it goes beyond just butter. Here is what Trump had to say -- and any Democrat worth his or her salt should be able to create a campaign ad out of this in about two minutes flat (emphasis added, to make it super-easy):

The United States can't take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of day care. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of day care. You gotta let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too. It's not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.

   No kings!

With a nod to the No Kings! rallies, of course.

"No kings in America! We don't need some narcissist with a giant gaping hole of neediness and insecurity that has to be constantly filled by fake awards and plastering his name and face all over everything! We fought a war so we didn't have to feed some monarch's monstrous ego, right? Now King Donnie wants his signature on every dollar bill printed. When will it be enough? When will he realize that he's being showered with 'participation awards' -- something conservatives used to heap scorn upon? You see, that's the problem with kings: their egos can never be satisfied; they always want more. And that's exactly why we fought a war so we would never have to bow down to a king here in America!"

   Wouldn't it be funny?

Jack White (of the band "The White Stripes") went on an epic rant about Trump's dollar-bill idea this week. Among other snarky things, White calls Trump "a manipulative, loophole finding, egomaniacal, conman," and suggests to Trump: "Why don't you use your small hands to sign into law that your oh so stern orange face appears on the front of the hundred dollar bill as well?"

But it's what he wrote at the end that made us smile. He very carefully distances himself from inciting others to break the law, but this is indeed a valid form of protest (even though it is technically illegal to deface money). In fact, the British Museum publicly displays a U.S. dollar with a word balloon coming from George Washington that reads: "I grew hemp," which was a popular thing to draw on dollars, back in the days of the War On Weed (since it was true). In the same vein, here is White's not-quite-a-suggestion:

Wouldn't it be funny if someone started a campaign to black magic marker line out his name every time you receive a new banknote? I think that's against the law to deface U.S. currency, so I would never suggest that becoming a nationwide campaign, but is everyone allowed to break the law when they feel like it or just donnie?

   The last one to leave

An oldie but a goodie.

"The number of Republicans deciding to retire rather than run for re-election in the House of Representatives is nearing an all-time high. I guess they can read the writing on the wall and realized it would be better to resign rather than have the voters chuck them out of their seats. So I just have one thing to say to House Republicans: would the last one of you to leave please turn out the lights?"

   Sure, sure... just one thing, though...

It's a pretty obvious response.

"Donald Trump included in his budget request to Congress $152 million to reopen Alcatraz as an active federal prison. You know what? Sure, let's let him reopen Alcatraz. There's just one condition, though -- that Trump spends the rest of his days locked up there for all his crimes against the U.S. Constitution. Then it'd definitely be worth the money!"

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground