Prem Panicker retweeted
The tweet posted by Trump on Modi’s controversial claim of ‘longest serving’ Indian PM came at a price paid to a lobbying firm. On the Indian tax payer’s money. 👇🏾
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Oh good, the BJP is doing its best to reprise Pathan and make King a big hit.
Deepika Padukone’s saffron outfit in Shah Rukh Khan’s upcoming film ‘King’ has sparked a political row. BJP MLA Ravinder Negi objected to her look in the song ‘Tu Mil Jaaye’ and issued a warning to the actor, saying, “If Shah Rukh Khan does not remove the bhagwa scene, we will oycott of King.”
#DeepikaPadukone #ShahRukhKhan #KingMovie #RavinderNegi #BollywoodControversy
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Prem Panicker retweeted
-From Himalayan dams & river-linking schemes to Godavari’s pollution crisis, The Marginlands explore what our plans for rivers leave out: fish, floodplains, livelihoods, culture, tradition, songs & stories. youtube.com/watch?v=is_1En… @Parineeta_River @AratiKumarRao @prempanicker
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RT @SushantSin: Last para here. The wishes that Trump put out for Modi on social media were gotten by a US lobbying firm the Modi govt has…
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"Your Mangalsutra will not be safe under Congress rule" -- Modi, circa 2024, in rallies across Rajasthan.
5/5: The factory that started under Rajiv Gandhi to make India self-reliant in vaccines is now a mere ghost. For more, read #ThePrintGroundReport by @Nootan98
Modi govt pulls plug on polio vaccine PSU BIBCOL. Workers ‘starving’, selling mangalsutras
tinyurl.com/yeeyy3ma
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Ooo, just imagine a member of a party being able to hold the leader of his party accountable! If only this guy belonged to... oh wait...
Watching Republicans question the US President’s policies highlights that US politics has a culture of accountability. Leaders who lead parties to defeat face consequences, not endless promotions by sycophants. Imagine if Indian parties were truly democratic. We’d have better policies & be unstoppable!
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Approximately how much money has been spent on a card that is proof of absolutely nothing except that you have an Aadhar card? And, related, who earned from this?
आज रात से पूरे देश में आधार कार्ड बंद हो जाएगा। आज से आधार कार्ड का कोई मतलब नहीं है।
क्या देश के साथ मजाक चल रहा है, फिर से पूरे देश को लाइन में खड़ा होना पड़ेगा।
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"Unlike in the past, Democrats mostly ignored the daily Trump distractions and sought to connect corruption to costs. They also told a story of a government focused on elites while average people struggled — from Jeffrey Epstein’s protected associates to the president’s $2.2 billion in personal profits."
Ignoring daily distractions -- something to think about right here at home.
Ignoring daily distractions -- something to think about right here at home.
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Prem Panicker retweeted
BJP's way to save democracy.
Fought Gokul. Won 12 out of 25.
Cong won 13 out of 25.
BJP minister demanded amendment in cooperative org rule.
Cabinet made decision. 4 govt appointed directors with voting right.
Now BJP will have 16 members.
Democracy saved in Gokul!!
Fought Gokul. Won 12 out of 25.
Cong won 13 out of 25.
BJP minister demanded amendment in cooperative org rule.
Cabinet made decision. 4 govt appointed directors with voting right.
Now BJP will have 16 members.
Democracy saved in Gokul!!
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So why bust a gut from the stump? Call Parliament into session - you ARE the government. @KirenRijiju , thank you for your attention to this matter.
#WATCH | Karnal, Haryana: At the 'Loktantra Bachao, Arajakta Hatao' rally, Union Home Minister Amit Shah says, "Today, from this platform, I want to issue a challenge to Rahul Gandhi. You challenge Narendra Modi ji to a debate—well, Rahul ji, there is no need for Modi ji himself; ust write a letter to him. We are prepared to convene a special session of Parliament to hold this discussion. We will have the debate—we will discuss everything there. Stop spreading lies..."
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Prem Panicker retweeted
Now this, my friends, is how you write the first line of a story, from @helenlewis
theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/11/…
theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/11/…
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Oh man!!! 👇
Now this, my friends, is how you write the first line of a story, from @helenlewis
theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/11/…
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Prem Panicker retweeted
An extraordinary post from the vice president, written as if he has no idea that he's the vice president.
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
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"Leading Democratic strategists said the game plan this year was simple: Focus on economic issues, push as deeply as they could into red territory and hope that Republicans keep focusing on the culture-war issues that dominated most of their advertising, like the party’s relentless focus on transgender issues."
The political opposition here might want to read this post-mortem. There are ideas here worth internalising. 👇
The political opposition here might want to read this post-mortem. There are ideas here worth internalising. 👇
NEWS - Inside the GOP cataclysm, from redistricting backfire to nightmare mid-Sept polling.
"The Trump coalition came apart at the seams."
& a secret DCCC polling program to save $10M in Sept
w/ @Alex_Roarty @reesejgorman
washingtonsun.com/campaigns/repu…
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"This is what the GOP base chose in early 2024, and this is the world they're living with now. Where they handed the reins of history to a fat, vain, washed-up old man and let him drive"
Republicans are going to have a terrible night, and the simple reason why is that Trump has put up perhaps the worst *performance* this term of any president in a century or more.
Remember that he entered with an actual mandate: the House and Senate, a popular vote victory and a swing-state sweep, and 6-3 Supreme Court. Democrats were afraid enough to vote for mild but real immigration restrictionist legislation in the Laken Riley Act. Everyone wondered how far the "Vibe Shift" would go.
Trump managed to turn that into essentially zero durable wins whatsoever. He personally *hates* the very idea of legislation, the notion that he would have to spend time going back and forth with Congress, learning details and making compromises. So he simply didn't do it! He didn't make a compelling case for abolishing the filibuster. He didn't try communicating clearly to the public in support of popular bills to get to 60 votes. He just decided not to do it at all.
So they passed an unpopular tax cut, some funding for ICE, and a sop to the crypto industry, and that was basically it. Least productive Congress in decades, due to the tastes of one man.
Trump adopted one of the worst macro policies we've ever had: high deficits, high tariffs, and attacks on central bank independence. We managed to pay higher interest rates while still having high trade deficits AND weakening the dollar. Just a total failure.
On immigration, perhaps THE signature issue, Trump essentially min-maxxed effectiveness and backlash. Instead of trying to leverage the political moment for new laws and a self-deportation agenda (that is, walling off the economy to remove the benefit of irregular presence in the US), he opted for a maximally aggressive approach. The administration spent attention, funds, legal manpower on stunts like deporting random people to Salvadoran prisons with essentially no due process. ICE and Border Patrol were encouraged to be aggressive and confrontational, which helped contribute to the shooting deaths of American protestors. It turns out, that's extremely unpopular!
What about the approach of going after employers? The obvious vector? Trump hated that idea! He repeatedly has said he doesn't want to target businesses (especially farms) that use large amounts of illegal labor. This is just an incomprehensible position. Instead of charging a few dozen businessmen and removing the incentive for millions of illegal workers to be here, you arrest people off the street one by one at the cost of thousands of dollars in manpower per each, while their crying wives and kids post TikToks about it.
Upshot on immigration: electoral strength turned into a crippling electoral weakness in exchange for deporting maybe 6% of the illegally present population.
The tariffs were a total shitshow. Embarrassing rollout, no underlying theory of action at all. No targeted focus on key industries. Our country tariffed products we can't grow. We tariffed *inputs* of our own valuable exports. The schemes and amounts changed constantly, sending the stock market reeling and presenting scenes of chaos to the world.
Trump's messaging throughout has been generationally bad. While facing nearly 2:1 unpopularity, he spends his days posting AI slop, saying he'll rename New Mexico or invade allies, among other bizarre remarks. He brags about a ballroom and a pool repainting while gas hits records. At no point has he ever attempted any kind of message discipline.
Then there are the deeply unpopular attacks on rule of law, his "game-recognize-game" pardons for all manner of scammers and criminals, the crypto schemes that he and his family engage in, the evilly conceived and embarrassingly executed legal attacks on Comey, Jerome Powell, and others. With his monthslong stand on NOT releasing the Epstein files, he became maybe the first president ever to stake out a 99-1 issue on the 1% side.
That's not even getting into Iran, DOGE, his candidate recruitment choices, or countless other things. Simply put: Trump has managed to royally screw up virtually every single facet of his presidency. It's been undeniable, voters have noticed, and there's really no escape from it. This is what the GOP base chose in early 2024, and this is the world they're living with now. Where they handed the reins of history to a fat, vain, washed-up old man and let him drive.
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