The Dictatorship
The complicated political legacy of ‘Saturday Night Live’
In a book released next week, “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels addresses the show’s politics, saying “SNL” has never favored liberals or conservatives. “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels is quoted as saying in “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live” by Susan Morrison. “We have our biases. We have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”
Michaels’ insistence on impartiality will likely bring howls from conservatives, who have complained for decades that “SNL” has been a liberal viper pit, mocking right-wingers and taking it easy on the icons of the left.
‘It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,’ Michaels is quoted as saying.
In 2019, after the show ran a sketch satirizing one of his press conferences on border policy, President Donald Trump lashed out at its “Republican hit jobs,” vowing “retribution” for making fun of him. Over the years, conservatives have called for the show to be “put out of its misery” because of its political slant, suggesting the executive producer is either “stupid or a liar” for claiming the show is nonpolitical.
And progressives, of course, see “SNL” as their own playground. In a 2003 interview, then-head writer Tina Fey told a reporter“We have a liberal bias, obviously,” and her fellow progressives have never doubted her. This is why, when the show steps out of line and allows anti-woke celebrities like Shane Gillis to host, “SNL” fans react with horror — after Gillis’ hosting gig in 2024, one comedy writer said Michaels was “unfit … to run a major network show in 2024.”
“SNL” was forged in the post-Watergate leftism of the 1970s, an era when politicians were viewed with heightened scrutiny and distrust. Michaels and young progressive writers like Al Franken and Chevy Chase drove the show’s political conscience. Three days before the 1976 Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford election, the show simply replayed the speech in which Ford announced he would be pardoning Richard Nixon, which Michaels later listed as one of his proudest moments as the producer of the legendary comedy show.
But despite “SNL’s” progressive roots, a full review of the show’s history (which I have undertaken as part of a two-year podcast project called “Wasn’t That Special”) uncovers some truly inspired moments of traditional political conservatism.
In the show’s first sketch after Trump’s election in 2016, comedian Dave Chappelle’s character attends an election night party filled with fellow progressives. As the sketch proceeds, Chappelle’s white, New York City-based friends grow increasingly incredulous as election night progresses and Trump keeps winning states. Chappelle’s character, by contrast, simply laughs at how naive his liberal friends had been throughout the election year.
To conservatives, the sketch was an admission by the show that it had been operating in a liberal bubble, unable to see why support for Trump had been growing over the past year.
Or take, for example, a 1990 “Weekend Update” desk bit in which Chris Rock complains both about how much he hates taxes and how he doesn’t mind if prisons are uncomfortable for the inmates. (“Jails are so nice, they come back twice. … They don’t have this problem in Iran because it’s hard to snatch another purse if you don’t have another hand.”) A year later, Rock returned to support the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing him only of the crime of using bad pickup lines in the workplace.
An array of recurring characters in the show have mocked progressive activism. Eddie Murphy played a recurring character named Tyrone Green (first introduced in the famous “Prose and Cons” short film), an illiterate, poetry-writing prisoner who was regularly feted by New York’s rich elite. The whole series of sketches, in which rich progressives are harshly lampooned, has a strong Tom Wolfe-ean “Radical Chic” vibe to it.
Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person.
The show also had a particular sore spot for public sector employees. In March 2001, Maya Rudolph portrayed a sassy postal worker who has no time for customers, lending comfort to those who think customer service improves when privatization reigns. In 2010, a brutal sketch featured the “Public Employee of the Year Awards,” in which government workers were given awards for being surly and amassing outlandish benefits packages.
Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person. But those who complain about Tina Fey’s broad Palin impersonation also fail to mention a sketch from 2008 in which editors at The New York Times try to enlist their newsroom’s reporters to spend six weeks in Alaska to cover the vice presidential nominee.
The sketch savages the newsroom, portraying reporters as naive Manhattan elites who had never seen the real America. The reporters, confused about Alaska culture, wonder how they will get around without being able to call a cab, worry about polar bear attacks, and mistake a photo of a snowmobile for a “baptizing machine.”
But perhaps one of the most observant political sketches in show history ran just before the presidential election in 2016, when actor Tom Hanks joined in a performance of “Black Jeopardy!” It is assumed that Hanks, playing a red-hatted MAGA enthusiast, will embarrass himself when posed with questions (or “answers,” in “Jeopardy!” style) meant for Black contestants. Yet everyone is shocked when Hanks’ answers comport perfectly with “Black culture,” crystallizing something that had yet to be put into words — politics is a horseshoe, and Trump supporters had more in common with Black Americans than we all thought. (For instance, Hanks’ character, Doug, downplays the importance of voting, saying the outcome of elections are decided months ahead of time, anyway.)
Of course, the show hands plenty of ammo to Republicans who argue the show is hopelessly biased in favor of Democrats. When Trump won, cast members Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata all sang songs either bemoaning Clinton’s loss or mourning the end of the Barack Obama era.
But just a year earlier, “SNL” allowed Trump to host an episode while he was running for president. Trump hosted twice, eventually becoming the first president to have hosted the show. And who can forget the ratings-busting show when Palin finally showed up in Studio 8H? The New York Times even gave Palin a rave reviewcalling her “remarkable” and “delightful.”
Whatever your opinion of ‘SNL’s’ politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed.
Nonetheless, there is clearly a pattern in how Republicans are depicted on the show versus Democrats. Generally, GOP politicians lampooned by the show fall into a few select categories: Palin (stupid), George W. Bush (stupid), Dick Cheney (old, evil), George H.W. Bush (old, clueless), Dan Quayle (stupid), Bob Dole (old, clueless) and Trump (clueless, old, evil). And yet, one of the show’s most inspired political sketches featured Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan as a secret genius, which suggests the show perhaps should have inverted the formula more often.
Meanwhile, the show has regularly depicted Democrats as being too brainy for the presidency (Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore). Of course, Bill Clinton got the full treatment once his priapic activities threatened his presidency; his travails were simply too juicy a target to ignore. (Even Monica Lewinsky made an appearance on the show, in 1999.)
Whatever your opinion of “SNL’s” politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed. “Democrats tend to take it personally; Republicans think it’s funny,” he said in 2014. We will know if that’s true in 2025 if Michaels avoids a Trump-mandated prison term.
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday halted President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with a coalition of nearly two dozen states that challenged the Republican president’s order in granting a summary judgment. Her ruling applies to this year’s midterm election cycle.
Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuitsboth filed in federal court in Boston, that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The judge agreed, saying in her ruling that the provisions of Trump’s order seeking to create a federal list of eligible voters and using the U.S. Postal Service to determine who can receive a mail ballot are “legally void” because they “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”
It was the second ruling in as many days against executive orders Trump has signed seeking oversight of the nation’s elections. A separate ruling Wednesday prohibited an executive order he had signed last year that would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote.
Order targeted mail voting, administration likely to appeal
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose state was among the plaintiffs, celebrated the court’s decision.
“Millions of independents, Republicans and Democrats across Arizona have voted by mail for decades,” she said in a statement, noting that nearly 80% of ballots in the state are cast by that method.
Mayes, a Democrat, singled out military families, voters in the state’s rural expanses and Native Americans who cast ballots from tribal lands.
“Donald Trump’s executive order targeted all of these voters,” she said. “But today, the courts affirmed what the Constitution makes clear: States run their elections, not the President.”
AP AUDIO: Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports President Trump has suffered a legal setback for a second straight day in his bid to get oversight of the nation’s elections.
The White House stood by Trump’s executive order and indicated the administration would appeal the ruling. The order, said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, “lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation.”
The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits challenging the order, argued that the motions were premature and that plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to bring their claim based on the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
But in an interim order before Thursday’s ruling, Talwani said the motions pertaining to this year’s election cycle were relevant: “In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” she wrote. That order denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the challenges.
Executive order sought to give Postal Service a central role in elections
Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.
Trump issued his second order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government — through the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration — create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list.
Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.
Postal Service workers have pushed back against the order, saying they are not equipped to determine who is eligible to vote in each state. After Trump issued his order last spring, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association said forcing its members into such a role “risks politicizing one of the nation’s most trusted public institutions.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state was among the plaintiffs, said the executive order illustrated how Trump was attempting to “abuse power in previously unthinkable ways” to interfere in elections.
She said it “strains credulity” to think the U.S. Postal Service could set up a workable system for pre-screening individual voters to determine whether they would be allowed to vote by mail, adding that it would be “a shocking violation of American constitutional rights.”
The Postal Service did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Trump’s second election executive order faces multiple legal challenges
The lawsuit seeking summary judgment was filed by Democratic attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia. Also signing on were attorneys representing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which has a Republican attorney general.
The states also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution. Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, had argued that no one would be prosecuted for violating the order.
The other lawsuit filed in Talwani’s court was by the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups, which have sought a preliminary injunction against the executive order.
In yet another lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups, which have appealed.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe BidenTrump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigationsincluding ones run by Republicansfound it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
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