Let’s begin with this one: Both T-Bone and Scott sent in this piece from the American Prospect about the divergent career paths of Lina Khan and former Obama and Harris advisor Stephanie Cutter. As we know, Khan now advises Mamdani in New York as well as other good things. Cutter is going on the board of the prediction market Kalshi. She’s not the only one:
Cutter is not the first prominent Democratic insider to have moved from selling cryptocurrency to peddling prediction markets. Sean Patrick Maloney, the former DCCC chair, recently launched a prediction markets trade group that is backed by Kalshi. David Plouffe, Cutter’s former colleague on the Obama and Harris campaigns and at Precision Strategies, might also be interested in joining the effort. He has previously advised both Coinbase and Binance. Perhaps the most shameless sellout of the Obama presidency, former principal deputy solicitor general Neal Katyal, is also working on behalf of Kalshi.
Prediction markets and crypto are a bunch of corrupt bullshit and if any candidate hires one of these corrupt clowns as campaign advisors, it’s a legitimate campaign issue, as far as I’m concerned.
Moving on, let’s contrast Rueben Gallego’s frantic dash to the microphone yesterday to disavow his “friend” Eric Swalwell, to, well, pretty much every Republican ever when one of their own is accused of something. Elias Isquith made this observation, which is true as far as it goes:
man, this is such a bad asymmetry. eventually Ds are going to get so black-pilled by the double-standard that they give up the standard entirely (cough maine cough). and frankly i'd understand the impulse. media is allowing this to happen - facilitating it, in fact.
— elias isquith (@eliasisquith.blog) 2026-04-14T19:03:42.750Z
While I agree with Isquith that there’s a double standard, I have a bit of a different take: Gallego had the option of shutting his fucking mouth and giving a statement at a later date. Instead, he had a sweaty, impromptu press conference. And now I wonder what he really knew, because of quotes like this:
While Gallego conceded he had long heard rumblings that Swalwell was “flirty,” he insisted he was unaware of the severity of the charges being lodged against Swalwell by former staffers — including rape.
“Look, we socialized. We went out. But I never saw him engage in any of the predatory behavior, harassment, sexual assault or even like anything that,” Gallego said. “I’m sorry that we didn’t listen closer.”
He apologized to the victims of Swalwell’s alleged misconduct and pledged to hand over to the authorities electronic communications he had with Swalwell as part of any legal proceedings. Gallego also said revelations about Swalwell have made him reconsider rumors he’d heard previously about sexual transgressions involving elected officials in Washington — and reevaluate occasions where he might have crossed boundaries within his own professional circles.
Until his panicky press conference, I had forgotten (if I had ever known) that Gallego was the campaign chair of Swalwell’s short 2020 run for President. Plus, what the hell does “flirty” mean? What boundaries did he cross? Talk about pulling out your gun and shooting yourself in the foot.
To be clear: the right thing for Gallego to do was to cut Swalwell loose. But it is possible to do the right thing the wrong way, and I think this is a prime example.
Finally, one of these things (JD Vance) is not like the other, Pope Leo.
First, Vance is a prickly little asshole who acts like a first-year law student. Leo isn’t. But that’s not the big difference. The Pope of Vance’s church is infallible on matters of theology, unlike JDV, and because of another little thing called Papal Supremacy, the Pope is also the final authority in the Catholic Church. I hope that Leo will deny Vance communion, but I don’t think he’s as petty as the Klan Catholic clerics who tried to do that to Pelosi and Biden.
