The Constitutional Crisis Has Arrived

First off, for those who are here just for the movies, I promise you that we will get to an actual film article soon (I'm nearly done with an OVP, hopefully right after Easter, as well as am not far off from a My Ballot), but we're getting another political article today.  It is a genuinely scary time in America right now.  Getting the most headlines are tariffs, primarily because these are bread-and-butter issues that impact Americans in their immediate lives-everyone can see if the prices of avocados and their smart phones are going up in real time, and watching that disappear from your bank account can be terrifying.  Donald Trump, in less than 100 days, has not just upended the world economy, but has removed America as the leader of the international financial world, leaving room for China & the EU to take our place.  That Trump is doing so despite clear frustrations from members of his own party like Ted Cruz & Thom Tillis and showing probable signs of mental health decline (his recent physical, where they made him look to be a marathon runner despite everyone being able to see, physically, that that is not the case, is almost comical if it wasn't reality) with continual word salad answers to questions, is kind of the point of this article.  "Who can stop Trump?" has become a very serious question that needs to be asked.

But it is not the focus of the article-that is on the deportations of a number of immigrants that were currently in the United States to other countries, including students that are being targeted for their political opinions.  Perhaps the most notable is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador who was illegally deported from the United States in mid-March.

First, let's get a couple of facts in order about Kilmar Abrego Garcia (age 29), and what is & isn't true about his status, given that there's a lot of misinformation about his case circulating right now.  Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, though his brother Cesar, his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura & son are all American citizens.  Abrego Garcia did illegally immigrate to the United States at the age of 16 (in 2011), and has lived here since then.  In 2019, he was detained by ICE on suspicions that he was a gang member with MS-13, a violent gang in New York (a place that Abrego Garcia has never lived).  Abrego Garcia was given protection by a judge from being deported (notably not being granted asylum) because of the threat of gang violence were he to return to El Salvador.  He has legally been in the United States since, though because he does not qualify for asylum, he does not have an immediate or assumed path to a green card or citizenship after a period of time.  He has reported to ICE yearly for a work visa.  To date, he has not been convicted of a single crime, either in the United States or El Salvador, and there is no evidence whatsoever (other than the accusation in 2019, which was unfounded given he has never lived in New York City) that he has any connection with a crime syndicate, including MS-13.

His deportation opens up a large amount of conversation.  For starters, while his specific status does not wholly prevent deportation, the immigration judge's case had stated that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador, which meant that if ICE felt there was a compelling reason to deport Abrego Garcia, they needed to get permission from a judge to be able to do so, which they did not.  Abrego Garcia's case stands out as unique because it was the first situation where ICE did admit that they made a mistake in the case, stating that they were aware of Abrego Garcia's status, but that he was deported due to "administrative error."  Judge Paula Xinis, a federal judge in the District Court of Maryland, stated that the deportation was illegal, the matter of how Abrego Garcia was deported violated the initial immigration judge's ruling, and that he would be irreparably harmed if he were to remain in El Salvador, and the government needed to return him.  This was backed up by the a Fourth Circuit panel (unanimously), including by a judge appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and then the Supreme Court unanimously called Abrego Garcia's deportation illegal, though it is worth noting that they said that the US needed to "facilitate" the release of Abrego Garcia.  The three liberal judges on the Court (Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, & Ketanji Brown Jackson) did write a separate statement to provide Abrego Garcia with all due process, and Sotomayor said that Chief Justice Roberts should not have issued a temporary stay that said that the deadline imposed by Judge Xinis had been missed (essentially Sotomayor & the liberal judges said that Abrego Garcia should be returned, and that Roberts was wrong for giving Trump an extension to return Abrego Garcia, as Xinis' order should've been followed).

That's a lot of information, but if you're still following, Trump's response is why this is particularly scary.  A lot of what's happened in the past few months has been a situation where Trump did something illegal or outside of his powers, and while Congress has largely done nothing to stop it, the federal judiciary has (aided by largely Democratic Governors and Attorneys General).  You've seen this repeatedly, with everything from illegal firings in the executive branch to cancelled spending at the NIH to Gov. Janet Mills' suing for Trump withholding funds to her state.  This isn't a good process, but it is how the process is supposed to work when someone breaks the rules-checks & balances.  This situation, though, has the Trump administration questioning Xinis' authority despite the Constitution saying she has the power to be able to stop this, unless a higher Court (like the Supreme Court or the Fourth Circuit) overrules her, which has largely not been the case, save for Roberts' extension of the stay.  They have also put the case back in Xinis' Court to resolve this.  It is very clear to anyone that the Supreme Court's intention with their ruling is that Abrego Garcia should be brought back to the United States to receive due process in his deportation case, which would likely mean that (following the law) he could continue to maintain his residency his wife & child in Maryland.

Yesterday, though, Trump and El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, both openly mocked the case, stating that they have no intention of returning Abrego Garcia.  This is despite the Supreme Court ordering him to facilitate this return, and Xinis is demanding it.  This is the first real case of the Trump administration openly and flagrantly denying a Supreme Court order during his second term, and sets up a true, very black-and-white constitutional crisis.  The Constitution is very clear-the executive branch must follow what the Supreme Court says, and if they do not want to, they need to work with the legislative branch (Congress) to either pass a law to override the decision, or to impeach those justices.  The Constitution intended to make the executive branch the weakest (so that the President would not become a de facto king), and this is an exact reason for it-the executive branch getting too powerful will essentially end democracy.

Where we go from here is uncharted territory, and for all of the chatter online, it's not clear exactly what the best path is here.  While Republicans have been largely silent, Democrats have been loudly outspoken on this subject, with Sen. Chris van Hollen and Rep. Maxwell Frost both stating their intention to either meet with the El Salvadorian president or to go to El Salvador themselves to confirm Abrego Garcia's condition (it is worth noting that we have no evidence at this point that Abrego Garcia is even still alive, or if he is, what his treatment has been...perhaps one of the main reasons Trump is openly defying the Supreme Court is that he doesn't want the world to find out Abrego Garcia is dead, or if he isn't, to not have him sitting down with Lesley Stahl the second he arrives in America).  The Court could continue to make life hell for Trump (John Roberts & Amy Coney Barrett, and to a lesser degree Brett Kavanaugh & Neil Gorsuch, will be pissed that Trump is negating their power and could be vindictive in retaliation), but the real test here is that if Roberts doesn't find a way to bring Abrego Garcia to Maryland, we have essentially crossed the Rubicon into a dictatorship.  It will mean that the President can openly deport any person, including those protected by judicial order (or even, as Trump insinuated yesterday, US citizens) from the country with no recourse once that person has left the country to be able to protect them.  When Trump was elected, it was clear that he would pose a constitutional crisis at some point during his tenure, but I figured it would feel more like a trickle than an obvious, marquee-blaring situation like this.  If Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not brought back to the United States, the Trump administration has essentially made the federal judiciary powerless...and in the process, ended the American experiment started almost 250 years ago.

The Democrats (Still) Long Odds in the Senate

Sens. Susan Collins & Thom Tillis

Donald Trump has spent much of the past few months tearing up the US government, and in the past week, destroying the world economy, essentially ending America's reign as the leader of the free world, and for the first time in almost 160 years, risking us being left behind as a first world country.  This is a lot to take in, and lord knows if you've looked at your 401k in the past few days, you'll find out that you've essentially been working free for all of Trump's presidency based on the losses (I know I have at this point).  This is awful, and kind of hard to comprehend, and I don't really have the words for it.  As someone who has lived through two recessions (and if we're being honest, 2014-15 was a uniquely troubling time for my personal finances due to the sector of the economy I work in, so this feels like my fourth) and am only 40, it's harrowing.  Perhaps at some point I will talk a bit about how I now have a Recession Routine (one that has largely been dictated by greedy Republican men who overreached & all of us got punished-and that's true in the case of all of them!).

But today we're going to talk about something more familiar on the blog: the US Senate.  While I am waiting to see if or when the Senate puts forward a bill that will stop the tariffs (so far a bipartisan quartet of Rand Paul/Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley/Maria Cantwell have put forward competing bills that will likely, in the end, end up being combined-I do feel semi-confident that this will get a vote in the Senate before this is done, even if the House is going to be a challenge, though Rep. Greg Meeks is working on that as well), it's clear that the electoral calculus has changed.  These tariffs, if you believe literally any economist and not a rambling 78-year-old man who has claimed to talk to Joan Rivers & Lee Iacocca (both dead) in the past year, you'll know that the tariffs are going to cause undue harm to the US economy, which historically has been very unpopular.  The US House was already going to be a stretch for the Republicans to hold in 2026 (they only have a 220-215 majority...even a blue puddle would be able to take that out in a midterm, much less a blue wave), but the Senate was always a challenge.  The Democrats badly screwed up in 2022 & 2024 by not beating Ron Johnson & Dave McCormick, and so they have to win 4 US Senate seats in 2026 instead of the much easier 2.  I thought I'd talk a little about that today, and exactly what it would take to win the US Senate.

There are a few ground rules that we should discuss when it gets to the math in 2026.  First, the Democrats need to hold all of their current seats.  This isn't as hard as you'd think it is.  While the offense for the year is brutal, the defense should be easy.  Democrats have open seats in Minnesota & New Hampshire, but this is the right time to do that (a favorable environment for the Democrats is a good place to bring in the new generation, and I'm hoping we see more of it in states like Illinois & maybe even Virginia), so I don't anticipate those move.  Same with the open seat in Michigan, a state Donald Trump won last year, but also that the Democrats held in the Senate (a miracle in retrospect), and in a traditional environment, this should hold.  The most vulnerable seat in theory would be Georgia, but that's predicated on incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp running (which is no guarantee, particularly with Gov. Chris Sununu declining this week in the wake of the tariffs...does Kemp want a career-ending loss on his shoulders when he has clear presidential aspirations?), and even then, Jon Ossoff is staking a very early money lead that will help him.  I think the Democrats are in a good position to hold all of their seats (there are no contests like Joe Manchin in 2024 where a loss is a foregone conclusion, or where they're even underdogs), which they'd have to do to have any shot at winning a majority.

The next phase is two specific states that are must-flips, both with their own set of problems but imminently winnable in the right situation: North Carolina & Maine.  North Carolina is probably the easier of the two to win, even if it's the redder state.  Sen. Thom Tillis, fighting for a third term, has never faced a blue wave year (North Carolina didn't have a Senate election in 2018), and there's still the possibility that he'll face a primary challenge, one endorsed by President Trump (who can't be happy about some of Tillis's comments about tariffs).  Tillis also is likely to face Gov. Roy Cooper in the general election (Rep. Wiley Nickel is clearly pushing himself as a Cooper alternative, but I doubt he stays in the race if Cooper runs, which I suspect he will).  Cooper is a very good opponent, one who won statewide twice with Trump on the ballot, and is different than the slew of governors trying quixotic bids for higher office (Larry Hogan, Phil Bredesen, Steve Bullock...it's a long list) in the past 15 years mostly because Cooper is doing so in a purple state.  I'll say this-at this point in the race I think Cooper would be favored to win.

Sen. Susan Collins in Maine is the only Republican representing a state that Kamala Harris won in the Senate, which should make her vulnerable.  Collins, though (unlike Tillis) has won in blue years-she managed to win races with both Obama and Biden winning her state, and while she avoided the one cycle she might've genuinely been vulnerable (I think she loses in 2018), she's going to get its sequel this year.  I think the biggest problem for Democrats against Collins isn't her very strong retail politicking skills (she's absolutely the most impressive politician in Congress in terms of crossover appeal), but that her inevitable ability to beat Democrats becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.  Already two high-profile Democrats (Secretary of State Shenna Bellows & Senate President Troy Jackson) have skipped her race, and are running for governor instead.  It's possible that others like Rep. Jared Golden soon follow.  Gov. Janet Mills has been flouted as a name, and she'd be an impressive candidate...if she wasn't 77-years-old (five years Collins' senior).  I maintain that, given Trump's unpopularity and Collins' being the only way for Maine voters (aka Harris voters) ability to send Republicans a message, that Collins is much more vulnerable than conventional wisdom dictates...but you can't beat her with nothing.  One of the major stars in the Maine Democratic Party needs to smell the opportunity (in a similar way to Chris Coons circa 2010) and try to get a promotion here (perhaps like Coons, jumping ahead of a candidate who would have been the nominee in an open seat circumstance).  Democrats have no realistic shot at the Senate without beating Collins (and honestly, they don't have a realistic shot of a majority in 2028 or 2030 without it either...this is too blue of a seat to let it be held by even a moderate Republican in a Senate that already doesn't give them any advantage).

Let's assume, though, that the Democrats pull this off-they hold every seat, and they beat both Tillis & Collins (if I was predicting the election as of right now, that would be my guess).  If this was all it would take, I'd say they were the favorites at this point...but they need two more seats to get a majority thanks to those aforementioned losses against Johnson & McCormick (the two states that stand out in the past 6 years as ones they badly biffed).  Beyond North Carolina & Maine, it's honestly slim pickings.  There are no other Republicans in states that Harris won by less than 5-points...hell, there are no other Republicans in states Harris won by less-than 10 points.  It is possible during midterms to win states that the other party won by more than 10-points but it's rare.  The last time it happened was in the 2010 midterm bloodbath for the Democrats, where they lost a gargantuan 7 seats leading up to & on election night, but only 3 (Mark Kirk in Illinois, Scott Brown in Massachusetts, & Ron Johnson in Wisconsin...yes, in 2008 Obama won Wisconsin by 14-points, it was a different era) were in states Obama had won by more than 10-points.  So if there are flips of this nature , they'll happen in states that are unexpected (Brown & Kirk, in particular, were not expected to win those races this far out), and likely in states that the party has little chance to hold onto in a subsequent election (i.e. flukes).

This means that it could end up being in states that were much kinder to Joe Biden than Kamala Harris (Florida, Ohio, Iowa, & Texas are all states Biden lost by less than 10-points but Harris didn't, and all four have Senate seats up next year).  It could be a situation where the tariffs hit agricultural states worse than average, and you see places like Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, & Nebraska get hit hard.  There's also the possibility that the "threaten to turn pink" (i.e. red states that have shown some blue-trending signs in the past decade) states could flip as well.  This occurred in Virginia in 2006 to flip the Senate, and there are a few of them this cycle (Texas, Kansas, & Alaska, specifically).  And of course, Massachusetts being on the 2010 list is telling because they could happen in states that aren't open yet; an unexpected death or resignation of a senator in a purple state would upend the map in the way Ted Kennedy's did in 2009 or John McCain's seat did when it flipped & got Democrats a Senate majority in 2020, two years before it would've been up normally in 2022.

Recruitment will play a role here-Democrats, in particular, probably need high-profile candidates in Ohio & Texas just to keep up from a money perspective if nothing else as a fluke in those elections would still require tens of millions of dollars compared to cheaper states like Alaska or Iowa...but it won't matter as much as you'd think.  No one thought of Scott Brown, Ron Johnson, Kay Hagen, or Jim Webb as particularly standout candidates, and indeed in all of those races there were other candidates who would've been the first-choice.  Waves sometimes find rockstars (Hagen & Johnson, in particular, were clearly more talented than a fluke candidate usually is), but they also carry all boats, and in a situation where a wave is big enough to win a Senate majority for the Democrats (something I still see as unlikely), it will probably bring along some names that we don't know yet.  So while I don't think the Dems can take the Senate...I'm now watching those long-shot states to see if some random state legislator or city councilor is about to become one of the most powerful people in America.

The Baffling Laziness of Donald Trump

A few times a year, I buy a lottery ticket.  It's always a Powerball or a Mega Millions, and it's usually driven by either a rough week at my day job or the number being so crazy that it's cracked into my worldview.  For those few days between the purchase and the drawing, I will secretly fantasize about what it'd be like to win.  To pay off my house, to travel the world, to buy an RV & fly first class to Europe...to take all of my friends to Harry Potter World for my birthday, and to give out checks to the people who matter most to me so that they can have that moment of bliss.  And then the drawing happens, and of course I don't win, and those dreams get tucked away for the next time I decide I want to spend $2 daydreaming for a bit.

This is relatively out-of-character for me, this occasional lottery ticket purchase, as I am by-and-large a very practical person when it comes to how I run my life.  I sometimes think that people confuse responsible with "not fun" (and perhaps sometimes, even with me, with good reason), but I do think of myself as a fun person...but I am confident I'm a responsible person.  When it comes to the standards I hold for myself, they are pretty high, and I pride myself in working hard to achieve them.  If I have a goal, I do the work to reach it, and I rarely give up if I don't get there right away.  I am planful when it comes to goals, writing them down, systematically crossing them off each month (we talked about this a lot here if you're into this, as I have a lot to say about the matter).  

And I am very conservative with my finances.  I never spend money I don't have, and I make a point of trying to save money when I can.  I do financial audits of what I spent cash on at least a couple of times a year, trying to see where I can trim some of the fat.  I'm not cheap (I like quality things), but I am also someone that is willing to save to get them, and am willing to make sacrifices to do it.  I sleep in my guest bedroom basement all summer, for example, to save on air conditioning costs, and rarely eat out.  I wear the same clothes for years at a time-if a shirt has entered my house, my friends will be stuck seeing it on me for the next decade.  I enjoy spending money on treats like books & movies, and set aside a little each month to do that, but by-and-large pretty much every dollar that leaves my house has gone through a screening, an allocation so that it won't come back as a surprise that I need that money later in the month.

However, the way that I spend my paycheck has never influenced my politics.  For starters, while I have frequently gone with less because I couldn't afford more (and have had months where I was barely making ends meet as an adult), I have been very blessed (knock on wood) in terms of my financial security in my life.  I do not have rich parents, but I never worried about where my meals were going to come from when I was growing up, and while I paid the bulk of my student loans, I'll own I didn't pay all of them by myself.  I have never been laid off (again, knock on wood) but I am aware that this is something most people experience in their lives and at some point I could well also; both of my parents, deeply hard-working people, were laid off at some point in their careers-half of all Americans experience it during their lifetimes, in fact.  I am extremely responsible with my money, but I'm not dumb-I know that because of bad luck (medical, occupational, etc) people have problems outside of what they can do in front of them, and so I support programs like unemployment, Medicaid, WIC, & SNAP because I know that there but by the grace of God go I.

What I've never understood, though, is laziness as an excuse...or wanting something for nothing.  I buy that lottery ticket to daydream, not as something that I actually think I deserve to win.  When "wanting something for nothing" is used in a political sphere, it's usually Republicans criticizing Democrats, but I've long thought it should be the other way around.  I think things like free community college or free health insurance are great ideas-we all pay in, we all get the rewards.  It's why I support public education, libraries, Medicare, & Social Security.  What I have never understood is trying to blame your problems on excuses, and trying to cheat your way to the top, oftentimes either at the chagrin of other people, or by stupidly thinking you have a magical formula that no one else does.

This, more than maybe anything else about Donald Trump, I have long found an impossible thing to wrap my head around.  Donald Trump is easily the laziest person I have ever seen in American politics, and I don't just mean this in the conventional sense (though given how often he golfs & eats McDonald's, it's also true there).  I'm talking about his inability to want to come up with actual solutions to problems.  This week he introduced tariffs that will essentially destroy America's international reputation, much of our financial infrastructure, and risk us becoming a second world country akin to what happened to Russia in the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union.  Trump is not doing this because it's logical, and he's not doing it because it's based on a specific ideology.  He is doing this because he is so utterly convinced he is a genius, a man of vision, that anything he says must end up being true.  That Trump has never done any actual work to become a visionary or an intellectual, living off of his father's money and declaring bankruptcy six times, getting married three times & literally not even bothering to write his own bestseller.  He has coasted his entire life...even the show that launched his comeback bid that resulted in him taking the White House, The Apprentice, was based on the genius of producer Mark Burnett, not Trump.

The idea that this man might have all of the answers, that he might be a genius, that his message has any resonance baffles me.  The concept of being so out-of-tune with your own day-to-day life that you can find this type of laziness appealing, that you think it could even be a good idea...it hurts my brain it's so foreign to me.  I believe in hard work...nothing about MAGA is hard work.  It's not even selfish-that would at least make sense.  Virtually every person in America is going to suffer from these tariffs...hell, virtually everyone in the world will suffer from them, and not a single one of his supporters can come up with a valid, fact-based argument as to how this will help them (mostly because there isn't one).  They either seem convinced that their lives were so miserable under Obama & Biden that nothing else could possibly be worse, or they are gleeful at the prospect of people that they hate (i.e. Democrats) also suffering along with them.

I just...I've never been that miserable.  I've never hated someone so much that I actively was willing to ruin my life just to make theirs bad too.  I've never been so lazy as to think that other people are the cause of every single injustice and misery in my own personal life.  I've never had so little wherewithal to assume that "playing the victim" was the only card in my deck.  I get that society can shape our destiny...again, this is why I support social safety net programs, because I get that we cannot completely control our fate.  But every day I think about the consequences of my actions, and how they will impact not just those around me, but also my life, and how I can work to make it better.  And I've never actively risked everything in my life to throw a "Hail Mary" pass that everyone in my world was saying was a cataclysmically bad idea...without any clue of what would even happen if it somehow connected.  

Trump's economic decisions this week are the actions of a madman, someone so bereft of accomplishment that he has spent decades trying to scream "look what I did!" to things he had no hand in achieving...an empty life, one without any sense of genuine pride or valor.  But that this is appealing to so many people in this country, that so many people admire his lack of work ethic & logic, and view it as aspirational...I'll never quite get over it.  It will always feel alien to someone who, sometimes to a fault, always believes that the only path forward is the one that you're willing to walk yourself.

5 Thoughts on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Elections

Well, it's Tuesday, and while we didn't have a primary last night, we did of course have a major election in Wisconsin (arguably the most important election this year, give or take the gubernatorial race in Virginia in November).  Given the turnout, a lot of Wisconsin voters thought so too, so let's dive into our Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking with my 5 thoughts on last night's race.

Judge Susan Crawford

1. Susan Crawford & Jill Underly Win

As you can imagine, the big headline last night was a major win for the Democrats, as Judge Susan Crawford held the blue majority in the Supreme Court while Democrats also reelected State Superintendent Jill Underly.  Crawford's win had been telegraphed if you looked at polling, and she pulled off an impressive victory (vote margins are still being ironed out, but as of this morning she was up by 10-points with 95% reported).  Wisconsin was the closest state in the nation this past November, with Donald Trump winning the state by less-than a point (the only state in the nation to be decided by such a thin margin), and so this is a rebuke of Donald Trump as much as it is a win for the Democrats.  Though this is a hold for the Democrats, it also solidifies a majority that the party achieved a few years ago after almost a decade of trying to regain the majority on the Court.

Judge Rebecca Bradley

2. The Republican Math Gets Harder for the Court

That majority is much stronger right now, and Republicans are about to have a mess in the Supreme Court.  It's hard to put into words how much the GOP needed a win here, but I'll give it a shot.  Wisconsin Supreme Court justices serve 10-year terms, but because there's 7 of them they are up most years, and those elections always take place in the Spring.  Though they are technically non-partisan, they are essentially D vs. R races at the end of the day.  The next Democrat up is Rebecca Dallet in 2028, but between then and now Republican incumbents Rebecca Bradley (in 2026) and Annette Ziegler (in 2027) will be up for reelection, and then again in 2029 Brian Hagedorn (the final Republican on the Court) is up for reelection.  In order to get a majority in 2028, the Republicans will need to win three consecutive elections, and to extend it, they'll need to win a fourth in 2029.  That's difficult math, particularly given that Bradley, specifically, will be up during a Trump midterm year (historically good for the Democrats), and is the most conservative member of the Court.  Incumbent justices almost always win, but Bradley would be the best way to test that given she's the biggest lightning rod on the Court (and it's possible we're in an era where these types of races function in the same way as partisan ones).  If the Democrats beat Bradley, the Republicans won't have a shot at getting a majority unless they win every race for the rest of the decade (Jill Karofsky is up in 2030, and they'd need to beat her as well).  This becomes a big deal because the Supreme Court has a big say in redistricting the past 20 years, and the state legislature (which was largely gerrymandered for much of the 2010's and until Janet Protasiewicz's win in 2023) will be redrawn with a much more liberal Court, potentially helping Democrats gain control beyond just the Court.

Rep. Derrick van Orden (R-WI)

3. Congressional Redistricting Comes into Focus

When the Democrats won the Supreme Court last cycle (in 2023) they redrew the state legislative seats, but it did not appear that they had time or the bandwidth to redraw the congressional seats (to be fair, given the veto override threat to Gov. Evers, redrawing the state legislature was more important, though given how close the House ended up, it's probable that had they redrawn the congressional map, the House would be 218R-217D right now).  But now, that math has changed.  Wisconsin is a difficult state to draw fairly, as it should have a 4R-4D congressional delegation, but most of the state's Democrats live in Milwaukee or Madison, meaning that you usually end up with 6R-2D, and those two Democratic districts are deep blue.  But if you wanted to, you could draw a map where Milwaukee & Madison are split in half, and have four relatively safe Harris seats.  This might not ultimately impact the House math in a fair way (similar to 2024 where NC GOP outdid Dems in Alabama & Louisiana finally getting fair maps, the Ohio GOP is certain to redraw, potentially imperiling Marcy Kaptur, Emilia Sykes and/or Greg Landsmann, so best bet it's probably a draw), but this would provide a counter as Ohio is near certain to happen.  Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick van Orden seem the likeliest options given van Orden nearly lost already in 2024, and Steil is in the a seat bordering Milwaukee (which hosts a county, Racine, that Crawford managed to flip last cycle despite Kamala Harris losing it by 6-points in 2024).  I would imagine it'll be a top House Dems priority in the coming months to get new maps here.

Elon Musk

4. Elon Musk Feels the Pain

Elon Musk has been in the headlines behind a lot of the Trump administration's decisions over the past few weeks while Donald Trump has been off harassing the Kennedy Center & putting tariffs on penguins, and he has been behind-the-scenes in Wisconsin.  Musk donated $20 million to getting Republican Brad Schimel a victory, including giving away $1 million prizes to two GOP voters which feels like it violated a lot of ethics laws (and likely became grounds for a future lawsuit), and it didn't do him a lick of good.  Musk & Trump have both been sending signals that the billionaire could be leaving his perch in the White House soon (and certainly the stock market for Tesla could use less of a MAGA glare from Musk...though after today no one's stock is looking shiny).  But yesterday proved that while Trump might still be an asset on the campaign trail, Musk certainly is not...which gives the famously duplicitous Trump a way to stab-in-the-back when he needs to (no one lasts forever in Trump's circle...the guy's on his third wife for a reason).

Rep-Elect Randy Fine (R-FL)

5. Florida Proves It's Not a Fluke

Wisconsin was the headline last night, but it wasn't the only place where Republicans dramatically under-performed, as special elections to fill the seats left vacant by Matt Gaetz & Mike Waltz were also held, and they were perhaps even more brutal for the Republicans than Wisconsin was if you look at the numbers.  In the 6th district, where Republican Randy Fine was admonished last night by President Trump for how badly he did, he under-ran Trump by 16 points, an enormous gap, but not nearly as bad as Jimmy Patronis in the 1st, where he under-ran Trump by 22-points (Patronis lost Escambia County, home to Pensacola, a county that hasn't given a majority of its votes to a Democratic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy in 1960).  It's worth noting that, with Rep. Elise Stefanik being forced to drop her bid to be UN Ambassador due to Trump's fears (which he said publicly) that her seat could go blue, that that risk was confirmed on Tuesday.  Had the Republicans under-ran in NY-21 (Stefanik's district) by as much as Patronis did, they would've lost the seat (and given that Stefanik's seat borders Canada & is disproportionately impacted by tariffs, that seems plausible).  The Republicans are now in a situation where seats that Trump won by 20-points are now at risk, an insane place to be given that if that uniformly happened, they'd have less than 150 seats in the next Congress compared to their current 220.

The Living Mystery Guests of What's My Line

Unlike the Academy Awards, we always care about Classical Hollywood on this blog (yes, I am never letting go of them skipping Mitzi Gaynor in the In Memoriam, and no, it is not something I need to get over), and one of the things that I like to do is make a point of celebrating those few figures that are still left from this era.  Film is a romance for me, and knowing there are people around from the great era of Hollywood (the 1930's to the 1950's) known as "Classical Hollywood" and the following era of the 1960's & 1970's known as "New Hollywood" is weirdly comforting...that that magic is still in the air somehow.

So I thought it'd be fun to take a look at one of the quintessential television shows of the era that ended up frequently celebrating cinema stars of the time, What's My Line.  For those who are unfamiliar, What's My Line was a game show, initially released in 1950, that ran all the way until 1975, though the original run on CBS, when it was a primetime television show presented by war correspondent turned game show host John Charles Daly, is my favorite run of the program.  The show was a success in its day, winning Golden Globes for Best Series & Best TV Star (for Daly), and was a Top 30 Nielsen hit for about half of its run.  If you watch it today, you'll notice it's weirdly sophisticated, even for a TV show of the era.  Everyone is frequently referred to by their last name, perhaps an offshoot of the South African-born Daly's upbringing at a posh New England prep school, wore elaborate gowns and three-piece suits, and had impeccable manners (all of the men made a point of standing when greeting another guest, specifically a female guest, and everyone wished each other good night before the end of each episode).  The show featured a chic panel, including Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, and comedian Steve Allen, the creator of The Tonight Show.

On the show, the panel would guess people's occupations, frequently ones that were silly or novel, and if they didn't guess it, the contestant would get money, at most $50.  Every night, there was a "mystery guest" and this is where the cinema connection comes in.  The guests would wear blindfolds, and a mystery guest would come in, oftentimes to rapturous applause, and they'd have to guess who the recognizable person was, with them usually disguising their voices.  It is kind of madness how many famous people ended up being on the show (including three presidents: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, & Ronald Reagan, all before they took office), but the movie stars are really the ticket for me.  You can see some of the few early TV appearances of headliners ranging from Bette Davis to Henry Fonda to Errol Flynn to Maureen O'Hara.  Doris Day made her TV debut on the program, and you can watch some of the funniest conversations imaginable with Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, Martin & Lewis, and Ernie Kovacs (my votes for the funniest Top 5, though it pains me to cut a clearly smitten Bennett Cerf flirting shamelessly with Rhonda Fleming).  It's a delight.  You need a pick-me-up, just start watching some of the original run.

The original run is key here.  The show originally went off of CBS in 1967, with the network wanting to move away completely from primetime game shows, with Daly himself serving as the final Mystery Guest.  That was 58 years ago, and so I was curious who was still alive who had, at one point, served as a Mystery Guest.  As you can see, everyone I just name-checked has passed, as have all of the major panelists, but surprisingly a robust number of Mystery Guests (the show was weekly, so it has almost 900 total episodes) are still with us.  Only counting Mystery Guests who were public figures and named on the show (contestants like, say, "Santa Claus" or the Von Trapp children, or relatives of the panelists, I'm not counting because it's too difficult to ascertain if they're still alive), there are 51 total Mystery Guests still living.  Let's take a look at them, huh?

Joey Heatherton

Cinema

Of the 51, nearly half of them were largely known for their work in movies, not super surprising given that CBS would've only really wanted stars of its own shows to be featured on the program (occasionally others were snuck in, though, which Daly relished by mentioning their networks in violation of the etiquette of the time, where you only mentioned your own network's name on your channel).  Only few of these were male movie stars, including Robert Wagner & George Hamilton, and then quite late in the run Warren Beatty & Michael Caine (very much a distinction between Old and New Hollywood there).  The remaining 20 film stars were actresses, and it's kind of interesting to see who did & didn't end up on the show.  For example, despite being guessed quite often, Marilyn Monroe never appeared on What's My Line, but many of her "rivals" of the era like Sheree North, Jayne Mansfield, and the still living Mamie van Doren did.  Van Doren is one of a number of ingenue stars who got into the series very early on in their careers, alongside Terry Moore, Jane Fonda, Nancy Kwan, Julie Newmar, Elizabeth Ashley, Jill St. John, Joey Heatherton, Hayley Mills, & Chris Noel (the fact that only Fonda graduated to proper icon status while the remainder didn't kind of makes this time capsule more fun-even fame is fleeting, and if you don't know one of those names, update your Letterboxd so you do!).  Other actresses who were slightly more established at the time included Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Joanne Woodward (who appeared with her husband Paul Newman), Barrie Chase, Sophia Loren, Joan Collins, Shirley Jones, Carroll Baker, Geraldine Chaplin, and Ursula Andress.  We'll talk about this a bit more in a second, but the fact that so many of these were "sex symbols" does not feel like an accident; oftentimes some of the beautiful women would walk out to wolf whistles and shouts from the appreciative audience (so a classy show...with an asterisk).

Carol Burnett

Television

While film was the dominant place to find screen actors on the show, television stars oftentimes were featured.  The problem for us to find living television stars is that TV stars of that era were more often-than-not washed up film stars (we did a whole season of Saturdays with the Stars about this phenomenon if you search back on this blog), so they were usually older than what we'd expect now.  Going by what they were famous for at the time, only two actresses who were known for TV when they appeared are still alive: Carol Burnett, who would've been on the show for her work on The Garry Moore Show (as well as her Broadway success in Once Upon a Mattress), and Mia Farrow, who at the time had not yet made Rosemary's Baby and so would've been best-known to audiences then as the leading actress on the TV sudser Peyton Place (and as Frank Sinatra's then-wife).  Sinatra, it's worth noting, was a guest panelist that evening and was the one to identify his wife, though he never appeared as a Mystery Guest, likely due to his longstanding feud with Dorothy Kilgallen (he was only on the show after her death).

Music

Thanks to the teen idol fads of the era, the gender split on Music is actually much more equitable.  Given it was a stodgier show, it's kind of surprising that some of the biggest pop stars of the era went on the show, though, like Marilyn, Elvis Presley never made an appearance (and neither did The Beatles, though their manager Brian Epstein did appear).  In total 10 singers of the era appeared on the show as Mystery Guest and are still with us (five men & five women).  They range from hits with the teenybopper set like Paul Anka, Tommy Sands, Pat Boone, Connie Francis, & Fabian, to chicer, late-in-the-series acts like Nancy Sinatra & Diana Ross, to largely forgotten musicians now like Abbe Lane (a night-club singer noted for her rather shocking outfits) and Michael Stoller, best-known today for composing a number of hits for Elvis Presley including "Jailhouse Rock."

The "Legitimate" Theater

A running joke for my brother & I (my brother also loves this show) is that the panel would regularly ask "are you in the legitimate?" or "are you legitimate" to the guests, which sounds rude, but at the time meant that you were best-known as a stage performer.  The show was aired in Manhattan, so the panel was quite familiar with what was showing on Broadway (Kilgallen, being a gossip columnist, was the best guesser in large part because her following of celebrities meant that she knew who was in town and what shows were playing, but it appeared that everyone was a regular devotee of the performing arts).  Amongst the six living theatrical stars of the era feature three future Oscar-winners for Best Actress.  At the time, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, & Liza Minnelli had yet to make their big-screen debuts (at least on their first appearances), but were sensations on the New York stage in shows like My Fair Lady, Funny Girl, & Flora the Red Menace.  Other stars include stage icons Pat Suzuki & Leslie Uggams and West Side Story leading woman Carol Lawrence.

Elaine May with Mike Nichols & John Daly

Comedy

Comedians, like TV stars, tend to gain fame a bit later in their careers, so we only have two comedians still with us from this era...and weirdly both would go on to be famous directors.  One of them, Woody Allen, actually holds the current record for most appearances on the original run of a living person, as he was a panelist multiple times in addition to being a mystery guest.  The second comedian is Elaine May.  May at the time was famous for her comedy duo with Mike Nichols, and appeared alongside Nichols (who, of course, would also become a great film director), in her Mystery Guest appearance.

Vonda Kay van Dyke

Beauty Queens & Models

You'll note that I haven't mentioned who was, chronologically, the first Mystery Guest in the history of What's My Line, and that's because we haven't gotten to her yet.  During the 1950's & 1960's, beauty pageants were a much bigger deal, and given that the show had a propensity for adoring "glamour girls" (the term of the era for a sexy, attractive young woman), it's not a surprise that a lot of the Mystery Guests ended up being beauty pageant winners.  This includes the earliest living Mystery Guest Lee Meriwether, who would go on to fame as an actress in Batman and Barnaby Jones, but was only known to the country when she appeared as a Mystery Guest as the then-reigning Miss America.  Two other Miss America's, Maria Fletcher & Vonda Kay van Dyke (who is, fun fact, the only Miss America to also be Miss Congeniality) appeared, as did two Miss Universe's (Carol Morris & Maria Fletcher).  The show also had two models.  While the concept of the "supermodel" didn't really exist until the late 1960's, one of the earliest supermodels was Jean Shrimpton who is (chronologically to the show) the last living Mystery Guest on the program, and before that Candice Bergen appeared with her father.  Bergen would of course become a major film & TV star, but honestly at the time was probably best known for being Charlie McCarthy's "kid sister" and a noted fashion figure & model, not yet having given her screen debut.

Is Pete Buttigieg Making a Mistake?

Sec. Pete Buttigieg (D-MI)

Last week former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-MI), who ran for president in 2020 (inexplicably beating multiple sitting US Senators to win the Iowa Caucuses), and then served as Secretary of Transportation during the Biden presidency, announced that he would forego a run for both the US Senate and Governorship of Michigan, both of which are now open during the 2026 midterms.  This was greeted by many, including yours truly, as a surprise.  Buttigieg's move to Michigan, despite what he said in the press (that he wanted to move closer to his husband's family), was always seen as a calculated move.  Buttigieg is a Democrat, and Indiana is a red state-moving to Michigan, a purple state with a long recent history of electing Democrats (despite going for Trump in 2024, every statewide office in the Wolverine State is blue), was a way for Buttigieg, who was criticized by many in his 2020 race for not having enough experience to be president, to gain elected experience and prove that he can translate his brand of polished, fact-based politics into a general election win in a crucial swing state.  That he wasn't invited is a surprise, and in my opinion (hence this article) needed some analysis.

To understand a bit about Buttigieg, we need to take a peek at his presidential loss in 2020.  Buttigieg took the country by storm as the antithesis of Donald Trump.  While Trump dealt with simplistic, oftentimes false arguments in his speeches, Buttigieg was engaging but always focused on results & the truth.  In many ways he more successfully navigated the "give me a plan" approach that other, more famous (at the start of the race) candidates like Amy Klobuchar & Elizabeth Warren attempted to base their campaigns upon.  But Buttigieg wasn't able to maintain his momentum, particularly given that he had virtually no cache with African-Americans, a huge voting bloc in Democratic Primaries, as they migrated to Joe Biden in South Carolina, and was out of the race before Super Tuesday, an early backer of Joe Biden (which paid off in a presidential cabinet position).

Buttigieg has done very little to calm those who worried that he lacked a broad base-of-support in 2020 in the remaining years.  He's noted for his steady appearance on cable news but has not done a significant amount of outreach to the African-American communities, which given the large Black vote around Detroit, was another reason I suspected he wanted to flex his muscles in the primary.  It's clear that he wants to run for president in 2028 and will go into that race with a larger name recognition than he did in 2020...but with the exact same deficits.  There are other likely candidates (Raphael Warnock, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris) who have stronger ties to Black voters and strong Black turnout in their previous elections, and unlike Buttigieg, they have a traditional launchpad to run for POTUS (which a low-level cabinet position is not).  Buttigieg, at only 43, has a lot of potential time to run for president coming ahead of him, but he can't really afford a second loss without being branded as a proper loser (ending his presidential ambitions forever).  There are candidates who have pulled off successful runs for president after multiple previous losses (Joe Biden being the most recent & obvious), but they did so with a lot more wins on a state-level than Buttigieg will have.  If he loses in 2028, he will do so with no safety net, and likely will be done with politics before he ever really had much significant power.

I think Buttigieg, if I was advising him, not running for the Senate is a mistake.  It looks to be a relatively good year for Democrats next year given economic and historical indicators, and being a US Senator would provide a significant back-up plan for Buttigieg.  He's the most famous person in the race, would raise the most money, and given Michigan doesn't have ranked-choice voting, in a multi-candidate race he'd leave the winner.  Not doing this is a pretty significant unforced error, one that will look more pronounced if/when he loses his next presidential bid...

...but it's almost certainly better for the Michigan Democratic Party, because they now have a chance to have a safer candidate run.  With Buttigieg out, it's looking like some combination of Rep. Haley Stevens, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, & Rep. Hilary Scholten will run and become the nominee in 2026; McMorrow, specifically, seems almost certain to run at this point.  These are better candidates.  They don't come with the carpetbagger label that Buttigieg would be tagged with, as they've all represented Michigan in government for years, and they're more natural retail politicians with no obvious presidential dreams (though being a senator could change that).  Buttigieg probably would've won next year, but the other women I just listed have a better chance, and as someone who cares more about a Democrat winning than a specific candidate winning, this is the right outcome for me.  Buttigieg getting a second chance (like Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, & Joe Biden in recent years) is not more important than the party winning a key Senate seat, and I'm glad he's out of the race.  I'm just stunned he's given up what might've been his best real shot at a presidential bid (albeit one in 2032 or 2036) to buy into his own hype in 2028.

My 2024 Oscar Ballot

Yesterday we tackled the 2024 Oscar Viewing Project, where I share all of the rankings I have for every feature-length, narrative category at the Oscars.  Today, though, it's my turn.  If you've been on the blog a while, you know that I do what I refer to as "My Ballot," the choices that I would've made if I had picked the Oscars in 2024.  As you'll see, 2024 was a year that I really got outside of Oscar's wheelhouse.  You can find all of the past My Ballots linked at the bottom of this page, but for only the second time in 27 years we've profiled (the other being 1931) none of the Best Actress contenders from the Oscars are cited this year for the My Ballot.  So you're going to see a lot of new names below.  A gentle reminder that I can't see every movie, and so if there's a title you're not seeing below that Oscar also ignored, double check with me before calling me out in the comments for not recognizing its genius, as that might be a future viewing for me!  With that, enjoy the choices Oscar should have made. 😉

Picture

The Brutalist

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

I Saw the TV Glow

My Old Ass

Nickel Boys

A Real Pain

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

We Live in Time

The Wild Robot

Gold: Sex, despite what Gen Z may think, is largely an endangered species at the movies right now, and even more so is forbidden romance.  And yet the center of Luca Guadagnino's masterpiece Challengers is just that-a sexy, romantic thriller of a love triangle, buoyed by some of today's hottest movie stars.

Silver: Sequels, especially in the middle of a trilogy, are oftentimes hard to judge, but while other movies this year feel incomplete without their companion (cough Wicked), you cannot say that for Dune: Part Two, which abandons some of the more avant garde aspects of the original but in the process gives us stronger acting & still sublime visuals.

Bronze: Finishing out our top medalists is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a movie smuggled out of its country because of its apt, shocking look at how an abusive marriage can serve (all too convincingly) as a metaphor for an abusive marriage.

Director

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

Luca Guadagnino, Challengers

Mohammad Rasoulof, The Seed of the Sacred Fig

RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two

Gold: Luca Guadagnino, seven years ago, gave us one of the quintessential screen romances, a fleeting escapade in the Italian countryside that would become one of my favorite movies (some days, it might honestly be my favorite movie).  Challengers, though, doesn't have that kind of romance-instead it has a competitiveness, about how even in love there are winners and losers...and people aren't fighting fair.

Silver: Denis Villeneuve's great trick in Dune: Part Two is that he doesn't give us the easy answers.  While the sequel is more literal than the first movie, he still crafts a vision of a man, one who looks like a hero, but it's hard not to wonder if there's a villainy underneath.

Bronze: While I cannot condone where we go in the second half of Brady Corbet's The Brutalist (I think it gets sloppy), the first half is 100% the best movie of 2024, and that is due in large part to the scale and ambition of its director, intent on making a classic even from the opening shot.

Actor

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothee Chalamet, Dune: Part Two

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time

Josh O'Connor, Challengers

Gold: Josh O'Connor's Patrick isn't the hardest role in Challengers (our female lead gets that distinction), but it is the role that's most crucial to you buying into it.  He needs to be sexy, talented (but how talented...always a question), and enthralling in the way that only a guy with a giant red flag on his visage can be.  O'Connor, our most consistent new star, once again dominates here.

Silver: Twenty years after his shocking, gut-wrenching work in The Pianist (for which he won our Gold Medal), Adrien Brody proves that film to be no fluke.  The Brutalist is a look at the immigrant experience, the way that capitalism steals so much humanity from those that it steps on in the way of profit...it's a wonder there's anything left.

Bronze: In some ways, Kieran Culkin has been here before.  The intonations here are not much different than his greatest performance as Roman Roy.  But while Roman was a sarcastic, cruel man, his Benji is the opposite, carrying too much emotion and feeling too fully.  As we move through the film, we understand his limitations, and through Culkin's searing final scenes, we realize he does too.

Actress

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

Julianne Moore, The Room Next Door

Florence Pugh, We Live in Time

Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door

Zendaya, Challengers

Gold: The performance of the year (my choice for the best performance in any category) goes to movie star par excellence Zendaya.  Her work in Challengers is so natural, and so layered.  She's a character that puts her motives & motivations out in front of everyone, and yet is impossible to read (particularly when it comes to the two men in her world, and whether she really wants either of them).  One of the great portraits of ambition (and why we constantly try to pass it off as something else in women).

Silver: Marianne Jean-Baptiste takes the prickliness of anger, and the way that we are expected to feel so much, all the time, as both a metaphor and a literal interpretation-we all know someone like Pansy, struggling to understand why the world can't make sense.

Bronze: Tilda Swinton is our last isolated woman in this category, but while Zendaya & Marianne don't reach out, her Martha is desperate for company, clinging to a world that she both is ready to let go of...and not wanting to leave.  A really moving, frequently heartbreaking look at how death comes too soon for us all.

Supporting Actor

Jonathan Bailey, Wicked

Yura Borisov, Anora

Mike Faist, Challengers

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Drew Starkey, Queer

Gold: I mean, I can't leave the last leg of the triangle without plating it gold as well.  We are going with Mike Faist for the fifth consecutive Challengers trophy (spoiler alert: it will take nine gold medals in total so we're only at the halfway point).  His Art is the loosest of the three, focused on wanting to win in all aspects of life, but clearly having a preference of where he wants to go...even if no one will let him get there.

Silver: Jonathan Bailey, like Mike Faist, has spent the past couple of years ascending into the cinematic pantheon (our first true, openly gay male movie star), and given the opportunity, he decides to steal Wicked wholesale with his flirtatious, dancing Fiyero.

Bronze: Yura Borisov's Oscar nomination wasn't inevitable...it might not even have been on the page.  But he brings so much heart, comic timing, & (let's be honest) sex appeal to the role that he's the performance you carry away as you leave the movie theater with the film's complicated final act.

Supporting Actress

Joan Chen, Didi

Rebecca Ferguson, Dune: Part Two

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Aubrey Plaza, My Old Ass

Tilda Swinton, Problemista

Gold: I always feel the need to point out at least once in these articles that these are given in a vacuum (i.e. I only base it on the merits of the nominees' quality, not anything more).  Does a pop star who is giving her first major performance really need to win an Oscar, particularly given she's doing so in only half a film?  No, no she doesn't.  But that doesn't mean that Ariana Grande, using her mile-high range, ace comic skills, and weirdly good impersonation intonation (the borrowing from Kristin Chenoweth is well-chosen) isn't the best in this field.

Silver: Growing a lot of the mystery that she built in the initial film, Rebecca Ferguson takes Dune up a notch with this performance.  Think of the physicality of her work, particularly in the water drinking sequence, and the way she is constantly playing on multiple plains.  A consistently brilliant character actress gets her moment.

Bronze: Finishing this off, we have another bronze medal for the world class performer that is Tilda Swinton.  Problemista is a movie that was forgotten by many, but for those that saw it, it's hard not to think of Tilda's work as one of the year's highlights, so selfish & vibrant & specific of a certain type of (oblivious) privileged white lady.

Adapted Screenplay

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Nickel Boys

Queer

The Wild Robot

Gold: I have read chunks of Frank Herbert's novel, and that what sprung forward from Dune is not a clunky, overwrought book (ooph I was not a fan), but instead a spry, generational bit of storytelling is due to the wizards behind the keyboard, not just the special effects crafting the visuals.

Silver: I have not, however, read Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-Prize winning book Nickel Boys, but I can tell when a story is being told properly, and when it has difficult source material to mine into cinema.  The way that it approaches this, through a unique perspective...it is jaw-dropping that this wasn't an original plan for the movies.

Bronze: The nostalgia for a good old-fashioned 1990's-style thriller was clearly there for a picture like Conclave, but that shouldn't be the only reason that you favor a picture like this with praise.  A ticking clock mystery on top of a fascinating multi-character study, it's like watching high stakes chess until the final moments (even if you guess where it's going it's a thrill).

Original Screenplay

Challengers

Hard Truths

I Saw the TV Glow

A Real Pain

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Gold: Sex is hard to write, and sex is as crucial to get right in Challengers as the tennis is.  We see shifting alliances, all characters who keep their true natures close to the vest (without ever needing someone to say "this is confusing")...that's a testament to a script that knows what it's doing.

Silver: The best asset in The Seed of the Sacred Fig is the slowly unfolding screenplay.  Told in a gigantic way, we get a sense of not just the metaphor but the claustrophobia of the picture, as these three women understand their world, and how much of it is predicated on the illusion of freedom, rather than the reality of it.

Bronze: Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain captures something we don't often see in the movies-a look at what keeps us in friendships that are long past their expiration date.  I love the way that he weaves in metaphors about loss & grief into a story about how aging causes both (and not always through death).

Animated Feature Film

Flow

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot

Gold: A tight race, but I have to go with the movie that tugged on my heartstrings so much it also made it into the Best Picture field.  The Wild Robot gives us such grace and humanity, with fabulous vocal performances from Lupita Nyong'o, Kit Connor, & Pedro Pascal, and it's honestly about something-the way that we form unlikely bonds that shape what we believe we can do in this world.

Silver: Do you remember playing the game Myst as a kid?  The almost insanely immersive experience of that computer game, like nothing I'd ever witnessed before, was what it was like taking in Flow in a crowded (god bless people going to the movies) theater.  Lovely animation, but more so really just smart realism of what would happen in a world where humanity is abandoned.

Bronze: If I was giving away a prize for Best Villain this year, it would not be to Jeff Goldblum's Wizard or Austin Butler's balding Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen...it would be to the most dastardly Feathers McGraw, the scene-stealing genius behind yet another lovely outing with Wallace & Gromit.

Sound Mixing

Blitz

The Brutalist

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

I Saw the TV Glow

Gold: Blending in a song and music score so flawlessly you almost assume the characters can hear it as well, Challengers creates a pulsating experience in the way it approaches the audible tone of the picture, using building sounds to capture the growing tension between the three main characters.

Silver: Slipping through Hans Zimmer's score and the sands of Arrakis, Dune: Part Two is deliberate in the way that it uses tone in each scene, giving us the elevation of Paul alongside a growing urgency in the sound room.

Bronze: I Saw the TV Glow is a movie that doesn't feel like it warrants tech nominations.  In some ways, it's kind of intended to give us a 90's afternoon fantasy show pastiche.  But the sound work shows why that's so intentional-the way that the song score & dropped noises inform the plot...this is the rare movie where I cited the sound work in my Letterboxd review (for a reason).

Sound Editing

Blitz

Dune: Part Two

Flow

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The Wild Robot

Gold: Oscar frequently confuses "more" with "best," but there are cases where the film with the most obvious sound effects also is the one that deserves the statue, and that's the case with our second go on Arrakis.  Dune's new crowd work & the growing importance of the sand worms underline how much what we hear is informing our experience in the picture.

Silver: Animated films can have some of the best work here (since nothing happening in an animated film is organic), and in picking between the two animated films cited here, I favored The Wild Robot, which has to incorporate not just nature & animals, but also the robotic gadgetry (that humanizes our inhuman title character).

Bronze: We'll finish up with the roving bandits & big, gigantic explosions of Furiosa, a film that builds upon the Mad Max world but doesn't abandon what made it so spectacular-the desert heat against these gigantic, maddening oil-rigged crashes.

(A quick note from John: I am aware that Oscar has combined the Sound categories for years now, but I view these as distinct art forms, and unlike when Oscar had them together, I am capable of not simply nominating the same 5 films, as is evidenced by only two overlapping pictures between Mixing & Editing.  For the curious who want a direct comparison, if I combined to one sound category I'd have gone with The Brutalist, Challengers (Silver), Dune: Part Two (Gold), I Saw the TV Glow (Bronze), & The Wild Robot as my nominees.)

Original Score

The Brutalist

Challengers

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

The Wild Robot

Gold: Daniel Blumberg finds a way to make The Brutalist's score a reflection of the buildings that Laszlo erects throughout the picture.  We get an elegant, sometimes conventional score that molds & shapes into modernist, industrial sounds.  Like Challengers (more in a second), you couldn't mistake this score anywhere else.

Silver: One of those nominations Oscar is going to forever regret not giving out, no film score quite encapsulates the picture it is conducting quite like Challengers.  Using what sounds like house music, it captures the frenetic energy of both tennis and sex, unrelenting right up until the final shot.

Bronze: I am not bound by Oscar's rules (and given that they nominated the almost exclusively pre-written music of Wicked, neither are they), and so I will include Dune amidst my nominees.  Like much of the movie, Hans Zimmer takes a bigger, larger, and more involved approach in giving us a build-up in the film's more traditional (than the first) narrative.

Original Song

"Claw Machine," I Saw the TV Glow

"Compress/Repress," Challengers

"I Always Wanted a Brother," Mufasa: The Lion King

"Kiss the Sky," The Wild Robot

"The Rider," The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Gold: Listen, the movie itself is not that bad until you remember it's directed by Barry Jenkins, but it is kind of funny how, once you get out of the "this isn't the original" canopy of Mufasa, the songs are generally super fun.  This year is admittedly a weak year for Best Original Song (apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda for tarnishing his third gold medal from me), but the best of the bunch is his bouncy, infectious "I Always Wanted a Brother."

Silver: Close behind it would be "Claw Machine" in the haunting I Saw the TV Glow.  This one works much better in the movie (Miranda's works anywhere which is why I ultimately picked it), and it was a close call between the two.  Proof that I can separate the category from the film, because lord knows I liked the silver medal film more...both really important & signature to their picture.

Bronze: While nothing else about The War of the Rohirrim lives up to the Peter Jackson sextet before it, the song at the end comes close.  A haunting, moving power ballad in the vein of Enya and Billy Boyd before it, "The Rider" tells the tale almost better than the movie itself.

Art Direction

Blitz

The Brutalist

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

The Room Next Door

Gold: I am not immune from that Oscar instinct of wanting to give a film a statue based on what its plot is, but it still has to be worthy.  That's the case with the cavernous sophistication of The Brutalist, which takes a fictional architect and has to find a way to make him a genius (on a relatively tight budget).  That the film succeeds is predicated on the ingenuity of the production design team.

Silver: Speaking of making cavernous inventive, we have Dune: Part Two, expanding the world of Arrakis.  I keep thinking of the cubed ceilings of the Fremen strongholds, or the gigantic picture windows of the Emperor's palace, the way that it feels carved for this world specifically.

Bronze: The Room Next Door takes a bizarre approach for a movie, as it tries to understand the death of a person who never made family work (even though, in this case, the person has a child to fit heteronormative expectations).  Instead, the production designers put at every corner of the picture books, movies, clothes, & music, of light and color, the personalities and enrichments that make life worth living (and worth missing).

Cinematography

Blitz

The Brutalist

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

Nickel Boys

Gold: The production team wasn't making The Brutalist mesmerizing on its own.  We also have the luminous camerawork, giving us unconventional angles and approaches that capture the unique perspectives of Laszlo's design.  One of the rare aspects of The Brutalist that continues to hold up just as well in the second half of the movie.

Silver: Dune: Part Two is not a similar movie to The Brutalist in terms of plot, but as I reflect on them both so often today (both are double-digit nominees in this write-up), I understand a lot of their power comes from their top notch tech teams approaching their work in the same way.  Here we once again need to build to something, with bigger and wider shots until we can see the whole world bow before Paul.

Bronze: It takes a lot of guts to try and copy the storytelling and camerawork of Terrence Malick.  It takes brilliance, though, to actually succeed, and that's what happens in Nickel Boys, giving us a first-person look into the world of two young boys, all of it feeding into the similarities and differences that will spring forth & shape their lives.

Costume Design

The Brutalist

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Wicked

Gold: Uncle!  There are a lot of things that I wish were better in the gigantic hit Wicked, but the Costumes...this is where I give in and just say "you get your kudos."  The green-and-pink motif could threaten to take over the film, but it doesn't, particularly in the way that Ariana Grande's Ozdust Ballroom has some touches of white.  Throw in everything Madame Morrible wears (that lavender dress!) and you understand the magic of this movie.

Silver: I am not one to turn down men's fashion when it comes to this category, and we get gorgeous black armor on Austin Butler to go with the hooded cape of Lea Seydoux and Florence Pugh's golden headdress in Dune.  Costumes inform the characters, and here they give us not just rank, but also which possess style.

Bronze: Oscar is generally oblivious to what contemporary costume design can bring to a movie, but thankfully I am not, certainly not when faced with all of the wonderful touches of Challengers.  The "I Told Ya" tee-shirt went viral, but it's everything (the sleeveless sexiness of Patrick's ensembles, the All-American boyish preppiness of Mike Faist's tennis polos and backward red hat, the transforming sophistication of Zendaya, deprived of her platform)...the movie gives great costume in every direction.

Film Editing

The Brutalist

Challengers

Dune: Part Two

Nickel Boys

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Gold: One of my best friends in college used to complain that there were no good tennis movies because you couldn't make tennis look realistic onscreen.  Challengers is the first (for me) to do so, because it captures the hushed-voice elegance of the game...and has the smarts to counter it with a pacing that seems like every scene is placing one more lob over the net.

Silver: Sorry, another situation where we're following Challengers with Dune (they were my two favorite movies this year for a reason), but the work here, building up to gigantic scenes (ones that are given their time to breathe) doesn't feel (like so many other movies of this nature) like padding a thin novel, but instead are rich with back story, giving us a proper epic.

Bronze: Speaking of proper epics, The Brutalist takes unconventional, and frequently risky moves with its editing (that upside-down Statue of Liberty could look silly if the movie that follows doesn't work), but it pays off (especially in the first half) with a glorious look at the shattered American Dream.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Dune: Part Two

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Gladiator II

Saturday Night

The Substance

Gold: Sequels are hard to gage in terms of tech categories, because some of what we've seen in Dune we can't really judge as it's already happened (Stellan Skarsgard, for example).  But we still have lots to work with, including the lettered face of Rebecca Ferguson, the balding sexiness of Austin Butler, and the subtle desert sand effects on the entire cast.  Details matter.

Silver: The showiest of the nominees here nearly won for me, and I suspect will have won for Oscar (I wrote this on February 18th, so I have no idea who is taking home the gold).  Horror movies so rarely win this prize, and The Substance is a gonzo example of why Oscar should be going to this genre for more of its nominees: iconic, haunting, and pushing forward so much of the plot, the makeup here is essential.

Bronze: I am not as much of a sucker for realism in my movies as Oscar is, but when it works, it works, and with Saturday Night, it very much works.  The transformation of these actors into the iconic looks of Chevy Chase, John Belushi, & Dan Ackroyd on the biggest night of SNL's history feels both plucked from a 1970's sketch show and with enough modernist flare (Dylan O'Brien's never looked sexier) to not feel like it's just a cosplay.

Visual Effects

Dune: Part Two

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

A Quiet Place: Day One

Twisters

Gold: Consistently one of my favorite categories, Visual Effects feels like a bit of a cheat in 2024, because, well, how are you going to beat Dune?  The sand worms, the giant vistas, the epic fights...even the crowd work in this movie is just on another level.  In an era where so many epics feel like they're in the shadow of past greats, Dune is forging a future that actually looks more fantastic.

Silver: We are now on our fourth nomination and third series medal since the reboot of Planet of the Apes (it has yet to miss since we saw this new iteration brought back in 2011), and in the Year of the Monkey (Better Man, Godzilla x Kong, Wicked, & Gladiator II also had their own primates to deal with), this is the one that felt beautiful, realistic, and like they had confidence in their CGI (Better Man fans who protest...please explain to me why the cinematography always got dark whenever Monkey Robbie shared the screen with an actual human & I might be more forgiving).

Bronze: Finishing this out is Furiosa, the one film of these five (which I really like-the category takes a steep drop after these five, but this quintet is very worthy of Oscar) to have a significant amount of practical effects, using George Miller's brand of fire & beauty in the beating desert sun.

Other My Oscar Ballots: 1931, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023