They want Pedro Pascal to do WHAT?

Politico

2 days ago

Former Vice President Kamala Harris could have been the predictable frontrunner in California's gubernatorial race, but ever since she announced her decision not to run, the once subdued campaign to lead America's most-populous state has broiled with uncertainty.
Most voters are undecided. Most of the declared candidates are people you haven't heard of. Which has politics-watchers from Sacramento to Washington wondering: Who, oh who, could it be?
So we asked a range of experts from within and beyond the POLITICO newsroom — journalists, academics, political operatives and others — how they'd answer that question. And we added an important caveat: They could pick anyone, no matter how unlikely it is that they'd ever make a bid for the governorship irl.
Realistic or not, their choices reveal a lot about this moment. Some of their picks spoke to the long arc of California politics. Some engaged with the ever-evolving relationship between politics and culture. All of them made one thing clear: The race to lead the state President Donald Trump loves to hate is going to be a doozy.
Read the story.'I'm not naive enough to think that the president is going to get rid of RFK, but I will say that … there are concerns about some of the staffing decisions over at HHS.'
Can you guess who said this about HHS? Here's a hint: They seemed to direct this at RFK Jr.'s principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear. Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**Why Is D.C.'s Mayor So Zen? ... For a blue-city mayor, Washington's Muriel Bowser has made a lot of concessions to President Donald Trump — from tearing up the Black Lives Matter street mural to launching a hate-crime investigation over anti-Tesla graffiti to pushing through a football-stadium subsidy favored by the GOP. 'And he kicked her in the teeth anyway,' writes Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer. With the White House assuming control over the police department, Schaffer spoke to insiders — and Bowser herself — about her strategy for dealing with Trump.What's all this about a deposition? We get it — no one can keep up with everything Laura Loomer says or does. But her deposition for her case against comedian Bill Maher, who speculated that Loomer might be having an affair with Trump during the 2024 campaign, is sure to come up in conversation this weekend, so make sure to throw out these talking points. Otherwise, your friends in Washington might look down on you for being a well-adjusted person with a life beyond social media. (From Associate Editor Dylon Jones)
— Everyone will immediately reach for the most outlandish pull quotes, but as a refined student of cyber-MAGA, you can provide background context on the key players: 'It's interesting that the whole basis of Loomer's lawsuit is that Maher is the reason she isn't working in the White House, because she seems to have quite a lot of influence over staffing the federal government herself. The Daily Beast found at least 16 people who got fired after she called them out.'
— Show off your knowledge of this whole scandal by pointing out something important that the wild parts of the deposition have overshadowed: 'Why do we even have this deposition? Puck wrote that Loomer's legal team released it, even though the judge wanted it to be confidential.'
— Bring the conversation up out of the gutter and try for a serious point about geopolitics: 'The MTG vs. Loomer feud actually speaks to the broader rift within MAGA over Israel, with MTG, Rep. Thomas Massie and others in the party growing increasingly skeptical of our support of the country.'
— Do not say anything about that fast-food restaurant. Special Forces Made Her Life 'a Living Hell' ... Courtney Williams' job was to help the Army's most elite and top-secret unit cover its tracks in the field. But when she got to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, she says she faced a culture of misogyny, harassment and discrimination — turning her life into 'a living hell.' Williams shares her story with investigative journalist Seth Harp in this excerpt adapted from his new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. 'Her story is a cautionary tale for just how bad it can get for female service members and civilian employees in elite units shrouded in secrecy and steeped in privilege and impunity,' Harp writes. 'It is a rebuke to those who believe, wrongly, that the military panders to women and minorities.'Dining With Putin's 'America Guru' ... Russian President Vladimir Putin has a top foreign policy adviser who spent 10 years in Washington as Russia's ambassador to the United States. It's because of that background that he's known as Putin's 'America guru.' But before that, back in Washington, he'd get lunch every few months with Toby T. Gati, who used to work for the State Department and the National Security Council. 'Looking back, I can see now how my interactions with [Yuri] Ushakov reflected larger trends in U.S.-Russian relations,' he writes. 'They feel the U.S. is the enemy; their hope had been that making money would always be more important to us than anything else. That hope was misplaced. As the Russians see it, the U.S. is now driven by hegemonic aspirations.'A Shift on Israel ... Amid starvation in Gaza, the longstanding bipartisan consensus in the U.S. of supporting Israel is beginning to shift on both sides of the aisle. 'Strategically and militarily, Israel is more powerful in the Middle East now than at any time in this century,' writes Daniel Drezner. 'The price Israel has paid for these military successes, however, is considerable. The erosion of public support could have long-lasting effects on Israel and its relationship with vital allies.'From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker.**Who Dissed? answer: It was conservative influencer and longtime Kennedy critic Laura Loomer, speaking to POLITICO Playbook.
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