First Nations Should Come First

By Miss Kubelik

Quite a smackdown yesterday for the silly separatists in Alberta, Canada. A judge in Calgary squashed their petition for an independence referendum, saying that Alberta should have checked in with its Indigenous citizens and how they think secession would affect their treaty rights.

No surprise that the Maple MAGA white guys who want to leave Canada brushed the First Nations off. But how sad for them, since they swore they had collected well over the 178,000 signatures needed to force the referendum onto October's ballot. (They also managed to screw up by posting the private data of almost three million Albertans on the interwebs, and somebody may get hauled off the hoosegow over it.)

Moral of the story: You can't hold a referendum on whether to take something that isn't yours in the first place — like land covered by treaties that predate the creation of your province. The separatists' racism and sense of entitlement blinded them to this simple fact. We cats HISS and them and PURR at everything else.

"Be Very Careful What You Pray For"

By Zamboni

The world is on tenterhooks, waiting for the results of FBI Director Kash Patel's alcohol test.

LOL. Like it's gonna happen.

So let's talk about something that did happen: The South Carolina state senate has refused to consider redistricting itself for the 2026 midterms. The vote was 29 to 17. The Republican governor didn't back redrawing the districts, either, but last week, the state house went ahead and passed a calendar extension to get it done. Yesterday's senate vote was a smackdown of that vote — and of Benedict Donald.

None of this especially noble. The state senators didn't suddenly wake up and realize how wrong it would be to erase the votes of more than a million Black citizens. They just didn't think they could redraw the maps in time for an early June primary. And maybe they took note of Jim Clyburn's warning the other day: Trying to wipe out his district could put three and maybe four Republican seats in play. We cats PURR.

Rock-A-Bye, Donald

By Baxter

After the rumpus that the media kicked up over Joe Biden's debate performance nearly two years ago, why don't journalists ask what the heck is up with Benedict Donald? Biden's bad debate was a single event. But Trump has appeared both mentally and physically compromised for months, in many different ways.

Today, he fell asleep during a public event (again). He can't walk a straight line from Marine One to the White House, and he when he descends the stairs from Air Force One, he grips the handrails for dear life. Every month he disappears for days at a time, and then re-emerges with bruises on the back of his hands, slathered in bad makeup.

He rarely holds road rallies now, and when he does go out in public, there are strange bulges under his suit that suggest Foley catheters or ventricular assist devices (placed as a bridge to a heart transplant).

Yes, it's an old saw at this point, but can you imagine if Joe Biden did stuff like this? Jake Tapper would be busy churning out his seventh book. (That's how many deadly sins there are, you know.)

The press's lack of curiosity has naturally left the rest of us to indulge in speculation. Currently, the favored narrative is that Team Trump is quietly preparing not just for a Democratic Congress (yes, please) but for a time, perhaps soon, when Donald is decedent or completely incapacitated — when the ruse can't be sustained anymore, even with our compliant, knee-bending media. The question in our furry minds is: What, if anything, are the Trumpsters telling Vance? We're guessing, not much. It might be the most flagrant instance of keeping a veep in the dark since Roosevelt and Truman in 1945. We cats HISS.

You Should Be Dancing, Yeah

By Sniffles

Sir David Attenborough's birthday bash in London wasn't the only fabulous party this weekend. Hungary's new Prime Minister, Péter Magyar, took the oath of office yesterday in Budapest amid daylong celebrations that inspired some, shall we say, ecstatic moves from the incoming Health Minister, Zsolt Hegedűs.

Here's a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: The Trumpsters were so openly rooting for Hungary's far-right, anti-EU autocrat, Viktor Orbán, that they sent the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, over there last month to campaign for him. Disgusting and humiliating — for Vance. Orbán lost in a landslide. Someday, Americans will be able to dance like this, too. We cats PURR.

Sir David At 100, Part Deux

 

Big party at the Royal Albert Hall last night. It looks like a lot more fun than the Bezos-benighted Met Gala this week. The only problem with this video is that there are no cats in it. But we PURR anyway.

Peace, Not Apartheid

By Hubie and Bertie

Full disclosure: We cats are white. And we couldn't care less about the prediction that by 2045, the United States will become a minority-majority country. Are we falling down on the job as the dominant caste? Should we be defending our whiteness more?

Nah. In fact, total nah.

Who cares about that crap? In a democracy like America claims to be, racial imbalances are not supposed to matter, right? But — oh! Maybe we're not really a democracy, or white folks wouldn't be so worried about being outnumbered. Is that it? Yep, that's probably it.

There's always been a gap between what the US stands for and what it really is. We all know this. Thomas Jefferson may have written that famous line about everybody being created equal, but he was an enslaver, and his definition also didn't include non-property-owners, or Indigenous people, or women. But his words are immortal — so we've spent the last 250 years trying to live up to them. Sometimes we've done well. Most often, we haven't. It's a continuing struggle.

Even knowing this, though, it's been mighty dispiriting to see the developments over the last week: the Supreme Court obliterating the Voting Rights Act, the Southern states' rush to gerrymander Black people out of existence, and Virginia's top court tossing the Commonwealth's new map out on a technicality.

The Republicans' goal is clear. They're freaked out about 2045, so they're trying to make America a 21st-century version of apartheid South Africa, through draconian immigration enforcement and voter suppression. To see what they're doing in Tennessee, as just one example, is wildly depressing. But we can't believe they'll be successful in the long term.

First, the political and economic forces against the GOP in 2026 are just too strong to overcome. In a wave election, all the gerrymandering and suppressing in the world still won't be able to cancel out the will of the voters. (Important message here: Let's make it a wave, everybody. It doesn't happen without us.)

Second, the United States of America is a far more diverse country than apartheid South Africa ever was. We are too big and too cumbersome for minority rule to be effectively enforced (apartheid South Africa was, at most, 40 million people, with Black Africans accounting for 75 percent, while the current population of the US is 340 million, with 50 million identifying as Black). Still, the racist Trumpsters will try for it. But we have to believe most people in the US are not okay with segregation. Paws crossed.

We have our marching orders. The states will continue to wrangle over redistricting, but we have to keep registering people and getting out the vote in numbers like we've never seen before. We must have that wave election — not just to recapture the House, but also the Senate.

And once we do manage to get back into control, we have to follow South Africa's example in one respect: Hold a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Unless we grapple with our racist, enslaving past, and are willing to extend the American dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to all people, we'll still fall short of the ideal that the Founders envisioned. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

(IMAGE: Nicole Hester, The Tennessean)

Sir David At 100

By Miss Kubelik

On this, the eve of naturalist Sir David Attenborough's centenary — which, we're happy to say, he's with us to celebrate — we cats are in search of some gentler news.

So what better opportunity to revisit his memorable walk through the Buckingham Palace gardens with Queen Elizabeth in 2018?

You have to think that the Queen's interest in global warming was encouraged by her son Charles, but also by her keen sense of succeeding generations and what issues and challenges they will face. (The impending collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is our latest freakout, not to mention the 2026 El Niño, which promises to wreak some additional havoc this year.)

"I won't be here then," the Queen said, quite sensibly, eight years ago. But the rest of us are, at least for now. And in spite of everything, the United States is still the country the world looks to on existential issues like climate change. We have to lead on it, which means that we have to vote all these Trumpsters and Republicans out of office — this year, in 2028, and beyond. Let's get working, everyone. In the meantime, happy birthday, Sir David. You inspire us all. We cats PURR.

Chedrick Crushes It

By Zamboni

The press is buzzing about all those Indiana Republicans who got their heads handed to them in yesterday's primary election there (except for the one high-profile Trump resister who survived). But there was also a special election in Michigan, which (as you'd imagine, given the state of journalism today) isn't getting nearly as much attention.

Democrat Chedrick Greene was elected to the Michigan State Senate, which will keep the chamber in Democrats' hands until the end of 2026. Greene is replacing a Democrat who was elected to the US House of Representatives, and he'll run for a full term in November. Meanwhile, the Republican he defeated yesterday will have to earn his place on the November ballot in a contested GOP primary in August. (Greene is unopposed on the Democratic side.)

What's astounding, once again, is that Greene won big with 60 percent, in a district that Kamala Harris won in 2024 by just one point. Hello, everyone! We Democrats are still overperforming like gangbusters, but you wouldn't know it from reading corporate media. The story in The New York Times made absolutely no mention of Greene's margin of victory — journalistic malpractice, as far as we're concerned.

So forgive us if we find this result more important at the moment than Trump retribution in a solid-red state like Indiana. We cats congratulate Chedrick Greene, and we PURR.

Dear Donald, We All Hate You

By Baxter

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and his blow-up sex-doll wife may be presiding over the Met Gala tonight, but his newspaper, along with Ipsos, just published a poll that shows Benedict Donald in deep doo-doo. (Bezos's paper also won a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service today, in spite of everything he's done to destroy it.)

But back to the poll. It's brutal.

• Sixty-two percent of respondents disapprove of Trump overall.
• Seventy-two percent disapprove of how Trump is handling inflation.
• Seventy-six percent disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living.
• Sixty-six percent disapprove of how Trump is handling Iran.
• Sixty-five percent disapprove of how Trump is handling relations with our allies.

Have we ever seen numbers like this? This might be one instance in which Trump's bombast is justified (but of course about the wrong things, from his point of view). We cats will try not to ask how the media would handle this if it were about Joe Biden.

Well, we know the answer to that. Meanwhile, Republicans are saddled with catastrophe, but still don't seem to be able to grab an off-ramp from the disaster that is Donald. They won't support a War Powers Resolution, pull back their support for ICE, or condemn the non-release of the complete Epstein files. To those of us clear-thinking Americans, any one of these stances seems commonsense and obvious. But they're caught between a rock and a hard place — partially because they've already gerrymandered themselves into ruby-red districts where it would be fatal for them to break with Trump.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has added eight newly competitive candidates to their "Red to Blue" initiative — including two in Texas's recently redistricted map, LOL.

You know, it's only May, and a long way to November. But you'd be tempted to think that things have gotten so dire for the Trumpsters and the GOP that try as they might, they won't be able to redraw their way out of it. That would be hilarious, and would make us cats PURR.

Rococo Loco

"The White House was designed by James Hoban, an Irish architect who migrated to the US for economic opportunities (what a great American story!). He originally designed it in the Neoclassical style, drawing on Palladian and Georgian influences.

"Neoclassicalism was a reaction against the Rococo movement, which reactionaries saw as overly ornate and frivolous. A bit of gold used sparingly and strategically can look fine in a Neoclassical building, but the amount Trump used has so radically encrusted the room that it's now in Rococo territory, making it look like a mismatch of aesthetics.

"The Oval Office offends on at least three levels: the ersatz nature of the decor, the way it grates against Hoban’s Neoclassical vision, and the way it misunderstands the classical-republican symbolism that the White House was meant to project in the first place.

"As others have noted, this is the kind of decor you'd expect from dictators who rob their own country."

—Derek Guy, on Twitter