Ted Cruz Wants Venezuela Democracy — Just Not More Than Its Oil

The Oil Comes First, Ted Said So Himself

Two days after the Trump administration announced it would take control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, Cruz sat down with NBC News' Meet the Press and did something impressive: he called for democratic elections in Venezuela while explicitly saying those elections don't need to come before the oil deal. "There need to be democratic, free elections in Venezuela," Cruz told the program, adding that elections should happen "midway through next year."

He also praised the oil seizure. Enthusiastically. In the same interview.

So to be clear about the logical architecture here: the U.S. is taking a country's oil, and the senator demanding that country hold free elections is fine with the oil grab happening first. This is the foreign policy equivalent of saying you believe in paying for your dinner while actively walking out of the restaurant without paying for your dinner.

Cruz has spent years positioning himself as a champion of Venezuelan democracy, using it as a reliable applause line at conservative events and a cudgel against Democrats. That positioning has now quietly evolved into: democracy yes, but after we've locked in the extraction deal.

Lindell, Still Going, Will Not Stop

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the state Supreme Court on Saturday rejected MyPillow founder Mike Lindell's bid for a full recount of his loss in the GOP gubernatorial primary, according to NBC News. Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson wrote in a six-page ruling that the Secretary of State's Office and the State Canvassing Board followed the law and were not committing any "wrongful act, omission, or error" as Lindell had claimed.

Lindell's response to losing in court was, predictably, to announce he will keep going. He told NBC News by phone that he plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. "I'm willing to pay even more money. I don't care what it costs," he said.

This is a man who pledged $825,000 to fund a full hand recount and audit of the race, then refused to actually pay that money when the state's Monday deadline arrived. He won't pay for the recount he demanded, but he will pay for a Supreme Court appeal. The logic is Lindell-specific and cannot be explained by conventional means.

The MyPillow founder has been denying election results since 2020. At this point he has lost in court so many times that his legal strategy appears to be less "win" and more "outlast reality by attrition."

Google Renamed a Great Lake and Nobody Can Stop Them

Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" for users in the United States, according to a Google statement cited by NBC News. This reflects an executive order Trump signed renaming the lake.

Lake Ontario, which has existed under that name for centuries and sits on the border with Canada, is now "Lake America" on the most widely used mapping application on the planet, at least if you're looking at it from the American side. Canada, presumably, is fine.

This is the kind of story where the facts are the joke and the joke requires no embellishment. A sitting president renamed a Great Lake. A major tech company complied immediately. And now millions of Americans are receiving driving directions that route them past something called Lake America.

Nepal Catastrophe: 781 Dead, Thousands Still Missing

The disaster news out of Nepal and China's Tibet region is devastating and deserves more attention than it has received between the political noise. Five days after a glacier collapse sent floodwaters tearing through communities, rescuers were still struggling to reach devastated areas as the full scale of the destruction came into focus, NBC News reports.

Nepal's disaster agency puts the death toll at 781, with more than 2,500 people still missing, including 592 foreign nationals. China has separately reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing in Tibet, including 261 foreign nationals. The State Department confirmed Saturday that approximately 100 Americans are among the missing across both countries.

"The disaster here is overwhelming," Ferrin Cole, operations director with Crisis Response International, told NBC News. "The flood that came down that mountain just wiped out cities." Authorities have warned of further flooding as heavy rainfall continues. The Nepal Tourism Board said 289 foreign nationals have been rescued so far, but with thousands still unaccounted for, those numbers offer limited comfort.

NASA Launched Something Genuinely Extraordinary

Amid the relentless churn of political catastrophe, NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, lifted by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, according to NBC News. After about 32 minutes, the telescope separated from the rocket and began its journey to orbit around the second sun-Earth Lagrange point, roughly 1 million miles from Earth.

The Roman telescope is expected to survey hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies, with the potential to fundamentally change what we understand about dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe itself. Scientists have compared it to the Hubble Space Telescope in terms of its likely cultural and scientific impact.

It is worth sitting with that for a moment. While Congress bickers over oil deals and a pillow salesman demands Supreme Court review of a gubernatorial primary, humanity quietly launched a machine into space to look at billions of galaxies. We contain multitudes.

Quick Hits: Clyburn, Swift, and a Senate Candidate's Bad Week

Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina told Meet the Press that Democrats should not make impeaching Trump a priority if they win back the House in the midterms, NBC News reports. He said the focus should be on making life more affordable. Clyburn also said he regrets supporting Clarence Thomas at his 1991 confirmation hearings. "I had no idea that Clarence Thomas would rebel the way he has against his own background and experiences," Clyburn said. That's a sentence that took 35 years to deliver and landed exactly as hard as you'd expect.

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, apologized for comments he made following a synagogue attack in March, in which he linked the attack to Israel's actions in the Middle East. That apology is doing a lot of work right now.

And Taylor Swift donated $50,000 to Ashley Taunton, a Rhode Island mother who was severely injured after stopping on I-95 during a rainstorm to help teenagers whose car had hydroplaned off the road, NBC News confirmed. A second vehicle then hydroplaned into Taunton as she helped them. Swift's donation, Taunton said, left her "overwhelmed with gratitude." This is the rare news item from the weekend with no conceivable dark angle, so we're leaving it alone.