“New York loves mr. trump.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Sunday’s Meet the Press brought back memories of my oldest daughter’s Montessori preschool days when this kid named Kyle — who couldn’t express much verbally — would bite anyone who dared to tell him off or tried to stop him as he terrorized the class. The well-trained teachers, faithfully doing their jobs, were not used to this kind of toddler resistance.
Montessori kids are taught to show respect to the point that, if they want to watch a kid doing their thing on their well-defined rug space, they hold their hands behind their back and ask if it’s okay to observe. That was one of the things I liked about her classmates. It made them a joy to have in the playroom in the basement compared to the kids allowed to run loose in our suburban Omaha neighborhood. But not Kyle.
Most politicians are used to being grilled by the media. They’re used to tough questions and continued follow-up, if granted a session with a well-schooled journalist in a situation any public figure would crave. But not Donald. I can only wonder what his teachers and classmates put up with before he got shunted to Military School.
So this is Forbes‘ Mark Joyella, today, explaining what could only be described as Trump’s Toddler Temper Tantrum. “‘You’re Either Crooked Or You’re Stupid’: Trump Walks Out After Kristen Welker Fact-Checks Him.” This is not the language of a mature adult. It should not be the language or tone of the leader of a large, powerful nation. However, I am completely beyond being shocked by his demeanor, acts, and speech. He’s definitely a Kyle.
An angry Donald Trump walked out of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker after an extraordinary exchange in which the president angrily insisted—without offering any proof—that “elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked…and so is ABC and CBS and CNN.”
The interview, airing on NBC Sunday, turned confrontational when Welker asked Trump about his idea to use $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for a “weaponization fund” to compensate people who believe they were unfairly targeted by a federal government “weaponizing” the justice system against them.
“If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve,” Trump said. “People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them.”
‘Where’s The Evidence?’
As the president made a series of claims about people he believed were falsely prosecuted, Welker pushed back, noting repeatedly that Trump had offered no evidence to support his claims.
“Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the weaponization fund,” Trump said as he shifted to comment on the news media and Welker. “I love the idea, because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he’s not smart enough to know what’s going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.”
Trump has long accused the news media of being “crooked” or “fake news” and even “enemies of the people,” but has rarely done so in such an angry and personal way, as Welker, who remained calm and professional despite the president’s personal criticisms, repeatedly pressed Trump to back up his sensational claims:
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.
KRISTEN WELKER: Mr. President –
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: And it’s happening again right now in California.
KRISTEN WELKER: – you’ve never presented evidence –
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s happening right now in California
KRISTEN WELKER: – that the 2020 election was rigged.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Right now, it’s look at what’s happening in California.
KRISTEN WELKER: Where’s the evidence to that?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s four days –
KRISTEN WELKER: The Republicans are doing well in California.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: In California, it’s, no they’re not. They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election. Let me tell you, it’s four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with the –
KRISTEN WELKER: That’s how they count the votes in California.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.
KRISTEN WELKER: There’s – What? Do you have evidence to support that?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s– all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.
KRISTEN WELKER: But that’s not evidence.
‘To Be Fair, I’m Not Crooked’
When Trump insisted—again, without any evidence—that the slow counting of votes in California indicated election fraud, Welker pushed back, saying “but sir, that’s not evidence, and that’s how they count the votes in California.”
This seemed to make the president even angrier, calling Welker “crooked,” which she immediately responded to. “To be fair, I’m not crooked,” Welker said. “But let’s continue.”
There’s more at the link. Coupled with the following headline, I worry about this country. I really do. This analysis is from the AP. “Fewer Americans say democracy is central to country’s identity, AP-NORC poll finds.” I bet they’re all home-schooled or schooled in those right-wing christian madrasas.
As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional, a new poll finds.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government — particularly among young people. It presents a jarring contrast as communities around the country commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it’s one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016.
Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.’s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.
“It’s not that the democracy part is not working,” said Derricka Wall, 24, of Chickasaw, Alabama. “It’s the people that are actually being put in office that is the problem.”
Meanwhile, it’s confirmed once again that it’s not the Press or the People leaving our democratic voting processes in the wind. This is from Jose Pagliery writing for NOTUS. “The Justice Department Hasn’t Taken Its Usual Steps to Protect the 2026 Election. The DOJ appears to be quietly scrapping its typical “command center” that would monitor Election Day emergencies.”
President Donald Trump says “if you don’t have honest voting, you can’t really have a nation.”
But five months out from the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, his Justice Department has canceled election-integrity training sessions for prosecutors and FBI agents, deleted a 281-page guide to prosecuting election offenses, fired most of the lawyers in its Public Integrity Section and failed to replace the director of its Election Crimes Branch.
Moreover, the DOJ has not taken the usual steps to establish a “command center” to monitor and address the typical emergencies that pop up around Election Day, three sources with knowledge of the situation told NOTUS. A command center team would address things like voter intimidation and targeted disinformation meant to hinder a fair process.
These actions — and inactions — have alarmed current and former prosecutors, who say the Justice Department is not prepared to deal with threats to election integrity in the November elections.
“That’s really concerning,” said Ryan Crosswell, a former public corruption prosecutor who recently ran for Congress as a Democrat. “Obviously, the command center and training are something that anybody who wants to protect election integrity would want. And this just feeds into the fear that rather than protect elections, the DOJ may try to interfere with them. That’s pretty scary.”
The DOJ did not provide any answers before publication to detailed questions about the training cancellations and the election command center, but a department spokesperson issued a statement that its top priorities are now “ensuring the integrity of U.S. elections and protecting Americans against voting fraud and civil rights violations.”
Former DOJ attorneys described the command center as an intense, around-the-clock operation at FBI headquarters. Investigators direct law enforcement responses nationwide, while public corruption prosecutors take long shifts answering phone calls about possible crimes and confusing situations. The anticipated emergencies are taken so seriously that department leadership has normally kept an auxiliary team of specialized prosecutors on standby back at DOJ headquarters. Everyone orders pizza and sits tight for shifts that span eight-plus hours.
“It spoke to how seriously we took this stuff,” Crosswell noted.
Does that mean we simply watch everything melt into fascism as our 250th birthday as a nation stands before us? I certainly hope not. Stories like these give me hope. Madiba K. Dennie writes this analysis for Balls and Strikesabout the ongoing purge of immigrants and naturalized citizens in our nation. “The Delaney Hall Strike Is Exposing a Massive Thirteenth Amendment Crisis. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery, except “as a punishment for crime.” But people in immigration detention haven’t been convicted of anything—and are still being forced to work for nothing.”
For the past several weeks, hundreds of detainees at Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a labor and hunger strike. Participants in the strike are refusing to perform their work assignments or eat meals in protest of what they describe, in a series of handwrittenletters smuggled out of the facility, as “unlawful and forced detention” and “inhumane treatment” that violates their constitutional rights. Among the myriad “injustices and irregularities” named in the letters are rotten food riddled with worms; persistent “unresolved issues” with bathrooms in “terrible and inhumane” condition; and detainees being forced to work for practically pennies or, more often, for no pay at all.
Delaney Hall was the first immigration detention center to open during President Donald Trump’s second term in office. And like almost all immigration detention facilities, Delaney is owned and operated by a private prison corporation. GEO Group, a company valued at approximately $3.3 billion, signed a 15-year contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February 2025, providing ICE with the facility and “support services” like security, maintenance, and food services, in exchange for over $60 million annually.
But it is the detainees—not GEO Group—who actually do that work.
“We were the ones who shoveled the snow during the winter,” said one Delaney Hall detainee, in a statement provided to The American Prospect last week. “We are the ones serving the food, we are the ones who clean the units, we are the ones who clean the bathrooms.” American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-founded social justice organization working with the immigrants at Delaney Hall, also said in a press release that detained workers can go months without receiving even the pittance they were promised, if they are compensated at all.
Forced labor practices like these are pervasive throughout ICE detention centers. In February, for example, the Supreme Court ruled on an immigrant labor case involving a GEO Group-operated facility, in Colorado. The company’s “so-called Sanitation Policy,” as Justice Elena Kagan referred to it in her majority opinion, required detainees to clean all of the facility’s common areas without pay or risk increasingly severe punishments, including solitary confinement. Additionally, “the so-called Voluntary Work Program” offered detainees a dollar a day for other necessary work like preparing food and doing laundry.
Former detainees had sued, arguing that these policies violated the forced labor provision of a federal anti-trafficking law, as well as Colorado’s prohibition on unjust enrichment. And GEO Group tried to get the case dismissed, claiming it was following directions from the government, so the trial cannot proceed. The Supreme Court didn’t buy it, which means that the case, GEO Group v. Menocal, can at least proceed to a jury trial.
Among the reasons GEO Group does not like trials: Trials can be very expensive for GEO Group, cutting into the money they make by coercing detainees to work for free. In a 2017 case involving another GEO Group-run ICE facility, the state of Washington and migrants detained at a detention center in the state both sued the company for violating Washington’s Minimum Wage Act. GEO Group fulfilled its contractual obligations with ICE by relying heavily on detainees whom it paid only one dollar a day, which GEO Group estimated saved it from having to hire 85 additional full-time employees. In 2021, a jury awarded the detainees roughly $17.3 million in back pay, and the court awarded $5.9 million in unjust enrichment to the state. GEO Group appealed, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed the ruling last year.
Since Trump’s return to office, the legal landscape has started to shift. Last year, in early January, the National Labor Relations Board filed a formal complaint against GEO Group. The NLRB alleged that GEO Group violated the rights of workers detained at an ICE facility in California by punishing the organizers of a labor and hunger strike with solitary confinement and transfers out of state. Within a few weeks of the complaint’s filing, however, Trump reentered the White House and fired members of the NLRB, and the remolded agency withdrew the complaint.
There is also this information reported by Camilo Montoya-Galvez at CBS NEWS. “Trump administration launches largest-ever effort to denaturalize U.S. citizens accused of fraud or other crimes.”
The Trump administration on Monday announced it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 U.S. citizens accused of immigration fraud, expanding its unprecedented denaturalization campaign.
CBS News exclusively reported about the plans before they were unveiled by the Justice Department.
Officials said the move represents the largest-ever effort by the U.S. government to use its denaturalization powers, which were rarely invoked before President Trump returned to the White House last year with promises to launch a historic deportation blitz. Between 1990 and 2017, the Justice Department filed an average of just 11 legal complaints per year seeking to denaturalize American citizens, historical figures indicate.
Federal law has long allowed the government to try to denaturalize foreign-born U.S. citizens who officials believe committed fraud to obtain their citizenship, such as by concealing information, like criminal conduct, on their immigration applications. But the process has been historically lengthy, complex and seldom exercised, requiring officials to persuade judges to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship in civil or criminal proceedings in federal court.
The Trump administration has sought to vastly escalate denaturalization efforts as part of its larger crackdown on illegal and legal immigration. In 2025, the Justice Department broadened the categories of naturalized citizens who should be prioritized for denaturalization. Last month, officials announced a dozen denaturalization cases, at the time the largest such effort in years.
Some of the 17 citizens targeted in the latest denaturalization campaign were convicted of violent or serious crimes, including sex offenses against children. Others were convicted of fraud crimes or accused of committing immigration fraud.
In federal court complaints filed across the country in recent days, Justice Department officials argued that the individuals concealed their criminal activity when they applied for U.S. citizenship or were otherwise ineligible to be naturalized, including because they lacked a “good moral character,” one of the requirements in the naturalization process.
Those targeted in the latest round of denaturalization cases include a Haitian immigrant who allegedly sexually abused his daughter; a man from the former Yugoslavia convicted of sexually abusing a child under the age of 15; an immigrant from Mexico convicted of receiving sexually explicit images of minors; a former Catholic priest born in Colombia accused of child sex abuse; and a Filipino-born man who pleaded guilty to a child sex crime.
The group also includes an Indian immigrant accused of filing fraudulent H-1B visa petitions; the daughter of a Colombian drug trafficker accused of money laundering; a man born in Jamaica convicted of wire fraud; and a Cuban-born woman accused of defrauding a tribal casino. Other naturalized citizens were accused of using false identities.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would have “zero tolerance” for abuse of the naturalization process.
“Criminal aliens are lying about their past crimes, including drug dealers, sexual predators, and fraudsters,” Blanche said.
And, again, we, the people, voting Orange Caligula out is essential to our nation’s future as a democracy. This analysis is from Vote Beat. “The Trump administration’s multiple investigations of the 2020 election may have more to do with 2026. Some experts say the FBI’s probes in Wisconsin and elsewhere could be a test run to challenge future election results. The lede for this story is by Dion Nissenbaum and Alexander Shur.
The FBI agents arrived at David Bolter’s Milwaukee home on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning in late May. They were armed with a list of questions for the 2020 poll worker, who had raised concerns about the way local officials handled the 2020 election, Bolter told Votebeat.
President Donald Trump relied on Bolter’s claims in an unsuccessful 2020 lawsuit that sought to throw out more than 220,000 votes. That would have been more than enough to move Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes from Democrat Joe Biden, who won the state, to Trump. Though courts, several election reviews, and many audits rejected Trump’s claims, the Republican never stopped believing that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020.
That appears to be why, last month, the FBI sent agents back to Milwaukee to question Bolter as part of an expanding national effort by the second Trump administration to investigate long-debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
The investigation into the 2020 election appears to be relying on already disproven allegations from people like Bolter. Bolter declined to divulge more about his conversation with the FBI, which has not been previously reported, but allegations from Bolter’s 2020 affidavit were central to some conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. For example, he alleged that somebody in Milwaukee’s absentee ballot counting facility announced around midnight on Election Day that a “huge truckload of ballots” was going to be delivered — an accusation for which there has so far appeared to be no additional evidence.
Around the same time Bolter says he talked to the FBI, two plainclothes agents with FBI badges showed up at the apartment of a former Milwaukee resident and 2020 poll worker about an affidavit she submitted, according to the former poll worker, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Christine, to give her the freedom to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Christine had also submitted an affidavit about the 2020 election, saying election workers had been told that all votes were counted, but she then saw workers continuing to count ballots around midnight. That affidavit was the focus of the agents’ questions, Christine told Votebeat.
“I suspected wrongdoing, but I’m not saying that it actually happened,” she said. “I’m just one lowly person that was working there.”
During the interview, she added, an agent showed her a photograph of Claire Woodall, the former Milwaukee election chief, asking her if she recognized the former election official who has been central to false allegations about the 2020 election. She identified her by name. Woodall didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Milwaukee office, declined to comment.
So, it’s hard to say we’re crawling out of this appalling man’s reign of terror. That doesn’t mean we have to roll over and take it. Look at how the cities that were invaded by ICE managed to drive them out. Look at the courts. Many Judges are still doing their jobs to protect the Constitution. We can do that whatever we can where we are. Support a candidate financially or with your feet. Show up at a protest. Talk to your neighbors. Just Do IT! Oh, and don’t be Kyle or Orange Caligula.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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That is a picture by my daughter’s boyfriend in Helen Georgia. They have an annual balloon race that starts in Helen and goes to the Atlantic Ocean. Aren’t they beautiful?
I’m going to start with the cartoons via Cagle:
Be safe today, this is an open thread.
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Today is the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. On that long-ago day, Americans fought beside soldiers from many allied countries to save the world from fascism. Very few of those heroes are still alive today.
Joe Picard perched atop a precarious mound of 300-plus-pound high-explosive shells as his ship churned toward Normandy’s beaches. The teenager had been at sea only once before, to cross the Atlantic, and now he was sailing across the English Channel to pile into the breach that Allied forces had opened in Hitler’s defenses weeks earlier, on D-Day. Smoke from the fighting still rose on the horizon, but Picard’s eyes scanned the gray water below for signs of German U-boats. “You know,” he told the soldier next to him, “if we ever get hit with a torpedo here, they won’t ever find a trace of us.”
More than 80 years later, few men like Picard remain: those who participated in the boldest military operation of the 20th century and can lay claim to membership in the “greatest generation.” Less than 0.5 percent of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still alive. Before long, the great invasion of France that began on June 6, 1944—and the Second World War itself—will be recounted only in documentaries and books alongside other historic conflicts such as the First World War and the American Civil War. The immediacy of personal experience will vanish. But Picard, now 100 years old, can still recall the feel of the straw he stuffed into his mattress, the blast of a mine soon after he landed on Utah Beach, negotiations in French for the use of a château, and a friend’s death in a cold forest in Germany.
“A lot of people have said to me, God, how do you remember all that stuff?” Picard told me when we spoke at his retirement community in Rhode Island, near where he grew up. “I don’t remember what happened yesterday, but I remember what happened 80 years ago.” The memories have “always been vivid ever since the day they happened.”
Picard is still doing his part to maintain D-Day as living history. He has become, in his later years, the narrator of his own war experience. He speaks with classes of schoolchildren, constantly amazed that they care enough to listen. He has revisited and reminisced on the battlefields of Europe with the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that returns veterans to the places where they served. His repetition of war stories across the years has also become a marker against which to measure how much he, and the country, has changed.
Back then, he and millions of others joined the military as volunteers or draftees. Most viewed fighting as a duty to be discharged before real adulthood began. The experience of war may have defined their lives but did not determine them. And the veterans were lauded for their service by grateful citizens, whether in France, in Germany, or at home.
Today’s service members are professionals, many of them dedicated to a career in uniform, separated to some degree from civilian life. The rancor and fissures in society run so deep that Picard finds it hard to imagine the national unity and resolve that would be required to risk millions of conscripts’ lives in pursuit of the liberation of others. “I hope that this type of situation won’t happen again,” Picard told me, with New England understatement, “because here in the U.S., I think our attitude is off a bit.”
The article is fascinating and well worth reading.
As an example of the current official attitude toward the D-Day anniversary, our so-called president chose to mark the day by posting an AI video of himself behaving like the childish idiot he is. I won’t share it here, but you can find it on Bluesky.
On the blood-soaked morning of June 6, 1944, the fate of World War II hinged not only on generals but also on thousands of ordinary people who fought their way onto the beaches and into the skies over Normandy, France, or otherwise joined in what became the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Over the years, the ranks of those who witnessed D-Day have thinned, and the event has receded from living memory into the realm of archives — and obituaries.
Here are the stories of some of those The New York Times has commemorated in recent years. They serve as a poignant reminder that the liberation of Europe required courage that transcended race, class and gender.
1921-2014
Walter Ehlers
Mr. Ehlers was the last survivor of 12 soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor — the highest American military decoration — for their actions during the Normandy campaign. (Nine of the medals were given posthumously.) On the 50th anniversary of the invasion, in 1994, he gave an address and walked along Omaha Beach with President Bill Clinton. Read his obituary.
1923-2023
Maureen Flavin Sweeney….
On her 21st birthday, June 3, 1944, Maureen Flavin, who worked in a post office recording weather data, unwittingly helped determine the outcome of World War II. Though she was unaware of it at the time, her weather reports were noticed by Allied military leaders. While working a late shift that day, she registered the likelihood of stormy weather on June 5, causing General Dwight D. Eisenhower to delay the invasion of Normandy by another day. Some say the effort would have failed if she hadn’t noticed the potential for disaster. Read her obituary.
1924-2025
Charles Norman Shay
“I saw there were many wounded men who were floundering in the water, who could not help themselves, and I knew that if nobody went to help them, they were doomed to die,” Mr. Shay recalled of his experience as a 19-year-old medic on Omaha Beach. One of about 175 Native Americans fighting for the Allied troops there, he repeatedly saved soldiers from drowning by turning them on their backs, dragging them ashore and tending to their wounds. Read his obituary.
1908-1998
Martha Gellhorn….
One of the first female war correspondents, Ms. Gellhorn hid on a hospital ship on D-Day and then sneaked ashore. She later accompanied British pilots on nighttime bombing raids over Germany. When the Allies liberated the concentration camp Dachau, she wrote of what she saw: “Behind the barbed wire and the electric fence, the skeletons sat in the sun and searched themselves for lice. They have no age and no faces; they all look alike and like nothing you will ever see if you are lucky.” Read her obituary.
1922-2023
Léon Gautier….
Mr. Gautier was the last surviving member of France’s elite Kieffer Commando unit, which was among the first wave of Allied troops to storm the heavily defended beaches in the northern part of the country. As they sprinted up the beach, they cut through barbed wire under a hail of bullets. They spent 78 days on the front lines, and of the 177 who waded ashore, only two dozen escaped death or injury. Read his obituary.
Trump sent Pete Hegseth to France for the D-Day anniversary. His message to our allies was that they are letting too many immigrants into their countries.
PARIS, June 6 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned on Saturday that Europe faced what he called an invasion of dangerous ideologies arriving by sea, linking immigration to the legacy of the D-Day landings in remarks in Normandy.
His remarks echo criticisms often made by the administration of President Donald Trump about Europe, a region Washington argues is hampered by weak defences, inability to tackle immigration, needless red tape and “censorship” of far-right and nationalist voices to keep them from power.
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive,” Hegseth said in a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.
“When will European capitals do something about that invasion or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” he said.
Hegseth was speaking during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, when U.S. and Allied forces crossed the English Channel to launch the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi occupation.
U.S. officials, including Trump — and Vice President JD Vance as recently as Friday — have often criticized European countries for failing to control immigration.
Other than Native Americans, everyone in the U.S., including our “founding fathers,” either came here as an immigrant or descended from immigrants. Trump married two immigrants. This anti-immigrant attitude is just plain sick.
This is a shocking story that demonstrates how the Trump administration’s anti-science policies are affecting U. S. scientific research.
Five diabetes researchers, including the editor of a leading journal, were removed from the field’s premier conference in New Orleans on Friday morning, after handing out copies of an editorial criticizing the TrumpNI administration’s “dismantling” of the biomedical research enterprise.
The incident occurred outside a conference hall where a keynote address had originally been scheduled to be given by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, at a gathering organized by the American Diabetes Association. A group of about 10 researchers, including some of the field’s leaders, were quietly handing out printouts of an editorial published in Diabetes Care, a journal the association publishes, according to three of the participants. Security and police told them to leave at the direction of event organizers and confiscated some of their lanyards and ability to attend the conference.
One of those ejected from the meeting was Steven Kahn, a University of Washington professor of medicine who is the editor in chief of Diabetes Care and the director of a federally funded diabetes research center. Kahn said in an interview that he had 1,000 copies made of an editorial that he had co-authored that called scientists to action to oppose changes to federal biomedical research funding that endangered diabetes research.
“A number of people who come to this meeting are scientists, who feel their livelihoods are threatened by what NIH is doing to science,” Kahn said.
Bhattacharya had been scheduled to give the keynote address, but it was instead given by Richard Woychik, a senior adviser to the NIH director for the agency’s Make America Healthy Again strategy. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Kahn said he was set to present a poster, give a talk and chair a session at the ADA Scientific Sessions meeting, which runs from Friday until Monday — but has since been informed by the scientific society’s leaders that he has been relieved of those duties.
Irl Hirsch, a University of Washington endocrinologist who was among the group handing out the editorials but did not have his badge confiscated, said that the group was peaceful and that there were no signs or chants. Hirsch described the situation as “censorship” by the scientific society — of leaders in the diabetes field who were sharing an editorial that pointed out that the NIH’s stewardship of biomedical research was having a destructive effect on diabetes research.
“It’s going to take generations to fix where we are now,” Hirsch said.
NEW ORLEANS — Members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) were escorted by police out of the convention center in New Orleans during the organization’s annual meeting on Friday as they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration changes to U.S. biomedical research.
Among them was Steven Kahn, MBChB, the lead author of the editorial, which published online in late April in the organization’s flagship journal, Diabetes Care. Kahn is also the editor in chief of the journal.
Kahn, Aaron Kelly, PhD, past ADA president Desmond Schatz, MD, Justin Ryder, PhD, Irl Hirsch, MD, and at least one other member were handing out printed copies of the editorial outside of a keynote speech given by an NIH official. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, was supposed to give the talk, but pulled out at the last minute, Kahn told MedPage Today.
Kahn said ADA leadership had inserted a statement in the editorial that the organization “had nothing to do with the writing of this manuscript. That is their insert.”
ADA’s media team confirmed that five registrants were removed for violating code of conduct rules that they agreed to when registering for the meeting.
“These attendees were escorted out by our onsite event security because they demonstrated behavior not consistent with this code of conduct,” the media team said in a statement. “They were respectfully given the opportunity to cease this behavior and chose not to which is why they were escorted out.”
I don’t even know how to react to this–professional organization so fearful of Trump that it won’t stand up for its more prestigious scientists. We may never recover from the cowardly actions of organization that are bending to the will of an ignorant, bigoted “president.”
There’s some good news from California, where the primary votes are slowly but surely being counted.
Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who was practically an afterthought until the final weeks of the California governor campaign, will advance to the November election after a top-two finish in this week’s primary, The Associated Press determined on Friday.
Steve Hilton, a Republican former Fox News host, and Tom Steyer, a Democrat and former hedge fund manager, remain locked in a close race for the second spot as election officials continue counting millions of ballots. In California’s nonpartisan primary, the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the November election.
Mr. Becerra’s primary performance caps his extraordinary come-from-behind surge in the tumultuous race and positions him to become California’s first Latino governor in the modern era if he wins in November. In interviews, voters said they appreciated his long career in government, which distinguished him from a sprawling field of less experienced competitors.
Mr. Hilton led in initial returns this week, but he was the beneficiary of Republican voters who turned in their ballots early. Many Democrats said they waited until the final week of voting because they found it difficult to choose among their party’s candidates and wanted to see how the race evolved up to Election Day.
The race was called on Friday when Mr. Becerra passed Mr. Hilton and moved into first place in returns. It remained to be seen whether Mr. Hilton could stave off Mr. Steyer, who has gained ground since Election Day but may remain stuck in third.
On what could happen next:
Mr. Becerra, 68, would be an overwhelming favorite if he were to face Mr. Hilton in the general election. No Republican has won a statewide office in California since 2006, and Mr. Hilton would be further hamstrung by his endorsement from President Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in California.
If Mr. Becerra were to face Mr. Steyer, he would endure a blistering intraparty fight over the next few months. Mr. Steyer, a billionaire who ran a hedge fund, spent $216 million of his personal fortune in the primary, and he has shown no indication that he would slow down in a general election. His spending helped make California’s primary the most expensive governor’s race in American history, according to an analysis by AdImpact, an ad tracking firm.
In the final stretch of the primary, Mr. Steyer attacked Mr. Becerra with negative ads. One suggested that Mr. Becerra could be indicted by the Trump administration because two of his aides pleaded guilty in the past year to corruption charges for siphoning off Mr. Becerra’s own campaign funds. Mr. Becerra has said he was unaware of the transfers, and federal prosecutors described him as the victim of his aides’ crimes.
Other attacks portrayed Mr. Becerra as beholden to special interests because the California Chamber of Commerce and other business interests put about $54 million into campaigns opposing Mr. Steyer and supporting Mr. Becerra.
I hope Steyer loses. He’s just another entitled billionaire.
In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is facing a storm of controversy. I don’t know if you’ve been following the story, but Platner has been accused of troubling behavior with women, and his controversial Nazi tattoo is back in the news.
Democrats are at each other’s throats about Graham Platner after his latest scandal. They don’t know what to do about it.
The New York Times released a report Thursday with disturbing accounts from several of Platner’s ex-girlfriends, just days before he is set to win the Democratic nomination to face GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, a critical Senate battleground. One woman described Platner grabbing her in ways that left marks and once locking her in a room. She also claimed he knew that his tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol when he got it — something he has repeatedly denied.
The report — on the heels of last week’s news that Platner had sexted other women while married — left Democrats torn. Some view Platner, whose campaign has persisted despite a series of scandals, as their only chance to take down Collins. He continuously led Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in primary polling before she suspended her campaign in April, and has led the Republican senator in public head-to-head polls.
“Several donors I know are still all-in for Platner because he’s not Susan Collins and he’s a Democrat,” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic strategist and donor adviser. “The line that keeps being thrown around is the double standard that exists between Republicans and Democrats, where if this was a Republican, they’d all be getting behind him.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is scheduled to campaign with Platner on Friday, reiterated his support. And some Democrats online were quick to cast the ex-girlfriend of Platner who spoke on record to The Times, Lyndsey Fifield, as a partisan activist because she has worked in Republican politics.
Still, others warned that he’s a loose cannon and there’s no predicting what other information about his past will spill into public view. What has already come to light, they argued, might already be enough to sink his candidacy, not to mention undermine the party’s core values.
Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, moved to quell mounting Democratic anxieties about his candidacy on Friday, telling supporters in a defiant speech that his past behavior was being “weaponized” by his political opponents.
A day after The New York Times reported that three women — a conservative and two Democrats — who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner described volatile and “toxic” relationships, Mr. Platner addressed a crowd at a theater in Bar Harbor, expressing confidence that Maine voters would stick by him.
“When politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me, Maine, you have my back,” Mr. Platner said. “The state of Maine raised me, and the state of Maine saved me, and to all of you out there, Maine, I will always have your back.”
Mr. Platner’s appearance came at a tense moment in one of the year’s premier Senate races. With just days left before Maine’s primary on Tuesday, revelations about Mr. Platner’s personal history have caused escalating discomfort within his party, while drawing intensifying attacks from Republicans.
The rally also took place less than a week after The Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had sought to warn his campaign last year that her husband had been exchanging sexual messages with multiple other women.
Onstage, Mr. Platner referred to Ms. Gertner by name, drawing chants of “Amy!” It was one of the strongest responses from a supportive but relatively sedate crowd that included attendees who said they were anxious about Mr. Platner’s candidacy and still getting to know the candidate.
Mr. Platner said from the stage that he had gone through a period of “darkness” after his military service.
“Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated and weaponized, you have my back,” he said.
When Platner first threw his hat in the ring last year, there was a reasonable argument for his candidacy — here was a political outsider with a fresh perspective who represented a new generation of political talent for Democrats.
But everything we have learned about Platner over the past several months suggests that he is a moral and political trainwreck, with enough skeletons in his closet to fill a graveyard.
Indeed, since Platner announced his candidacy last year, there has been an unceasing drumbeat of scandals about him. He filled a Reddit message board with sexist, racist and off-color comments. He has exaggerated his working-class background and appears to have spent most of his life living off handouts from his parents. But above all, there was the revelation last fall that he had gotten a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo on his chest two decades ago — and by his account only realized it was a Nazi tattoo in the fall of 2025, as he began his campaign for the U.S. Senate.
In recent days, the stories about Platner have taken on a darker, more troubling hue. Last week, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times revealed that soon after his marriage in 2023, Platner was caught by his wife sexting as many as a dozen women. His profile page on Kik, an anonymous social media site often used for dating, was still active.
“I have an urge to stockpile toilet paper.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m going to start with something a little different. This is Heather Cox Richardson’s conversation today. The Historian’s headline caught my eye. She was asked a question and provided her answer. “What would have to happen for me to concede that the United States is beyond hope?” Her answer was simple. “The end of the world.” She explained that we have the ability to try to make the world a better place. I agree.
She’s right to argue that democracy and humankind have always been deeply flawed. And yet, we persist. In the long term, from a historical perspective, our ancestors have persisted. I always feel that I would fail the six direct relatives of mine who signed the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington, whose stepson is also a direct relative of mine. The Custis family has always been a group of fighters, and they were right there in the movement and the war to free slaves. I think about them a lot these days. Perhaps it is because of my age. More likely, it’s because I need to remind myself that it’s my turn to protect the family. I do not want to leave this shit to my grandchildren or anyone else’s.
In fact, I wonder what the world would be like if all these however great-grandfathers of mine had just shrugged it off. Or the farthest back, however, great-grandfather MacDuff had not killed Macbeth. For that matter, I have my father who bombed NAZIs out of France and Belgium to help liberate Europe from Fascism, or the great-great-grandfathers and uncles that fought for the Union during the Civil War. What about all the women who fought the war by doing everything their sons and husbands couldn’t help with anymore? And yet, they all persisted. So, I can and must too.
I hope her words give you the motivation to carry on.
“What would have to happen for me to concede that the United States is beyond hope?”
This is from the Washington Post. Meryl Kornfield has this essential read today. “Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower claims. A former Social Security executive said the plan, which was not carried out, would have used a death database to pressure immigrants to leave the country.”
The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.
The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.
Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.
Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of howofficials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.
Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.
In a written statement, a Social Security spokesperson who did not provide their name said the agency “did not add a list of 2.7 million names to the Death Master File. SSA maintains the highest level of internal controls. This includes having all appropriate policies and procedures in place to maintain the integrity and accuracy of agency records.”
Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.
“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield told The Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Before he was announced as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community, Bill Pulte did not have a security clearance granting him access to highly-classified information – meaning he lacked what has long been considered a basic prerequisite for the job he will soon occupy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, days after Trump’s announcement that Pulte would serve as acting director of national intelligence, the office he is expected to lead – at least temporarily – initiated the vetting process for his security clearance by requesting a background investigation, one of the sources told CNN.
Pulte — a wealthy businessman who was confirmed as Federal Housing Finance Agency director last year— already appeared to be an unusual choice for acting DNI given his lack of demonstrated experience in national security matters. A staunch Trump loyalist, Pulte played an extraordinary role in pushing the Justice Department to pursue some of its most eye-popping cases against the president’s personal foes.
Evidence that Pulte did not have access to classified material before he was announced as Trump’s top intelligence official this week underscores just how atypical his credentials are compared to nearly every other DNI that came before him.
“The director of national intelligence has access to all of our most classified intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, told CNN.
There is no evidence that Pulte “would respect those classifications,” Warner said.
Sources told CNN there is no evidence that Pulte previously maintained even the lowest form of security clearance before he was tapped as acting DNI.
Incompetence and lack of basic knowledge of your job are not even part of the vetting process for Orange Caligula. Wicked amounts of blind loyalty and eye-popping stupidity appear to be.
And of course, it wouldn’t be Trump if he wasn’t out to destroy every American monument, institution, and historical and nature-based asset of the country. This is from Torrence Banks writing at NOTUS. “Trump Is Eyeing Control of Smithsonian’s Budget. The administration is creating a conflict with how Congress intended its money be spent.” He can’t stand anything that’s not saturated by his presence. He also has no respect for the separation of powers. Feeding his narcissism and insecurity is the basis of all decisions.
A directive from the Office of Management and Budget could force the Smithsonian Institution to change its spending plans to match President Donald Trump’s priorities — or risk not getting some of the money Congress appropriated for its operations.
An apportionment — documents that direct federal agencies on how to spend congressionally approved money — approved by OMB in May is aimed at compelling the Smithsonian to spend congressionally appropriated funding in a way that’s “consistent with the FY 2026 President’s Budget” in order to receive it. The president’s budget differed widely from what Congress ultimately chose to fund.
OMB also instructed the Smithsonian to submit a request “specifying each activity and the associated estimated federal obligation amount.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to reshape the Smithsonian, insisting its prior offerings were too “woke” and insufficiently patriotic. The May directive puts the Smithsonian in a major bind, creating hurdles to access congressional funding, experts said.
“The budget guys at the Smithsonian, it puts them in a ridiculous position,” a former Hill staffer and appropriations expert who would only talk on the condition of anonymity told NOTUS. “If they spend money that OMB tells them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which dates back to the Civil War. It involves an agency or a person spending money that’s not been appropriated, and it has criminal fucking penalties, man.”
“And if they don’t spend money Congress told them to spend, then they’re in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which does not have criminal penalties. But it’s a pretty good constitutional crisis.”
Speaking of Constitutional amendments, check this one out. This is from The ReligiousNews Service. “Defense Department to drop atheists, pagans, 175 others from list of military faiths. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, most of them Christian denominations.” Weird cultural indoctrination, anyone? Adelle M. Banks and Yonat Shimron share the lede.
The Department of Defense is substantially reducing the number of religions it officially recognizes, reportedly excluding atheists, pagans, humanists and New Age faiths, an independent military-focused news website reports.
The reduction of recognized faith groups represents the first time the military has revised the list since 2017, when it vastly expanded the list of recognized faith groups to about 211. The new list includes 31 recognized faiths, as first reported by Military.com on Thursday (June 4).
The outlet said its report was based on a May 20 memorandum it obtained after it was issued by the undersecretary of defense.
The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request from RNS for additional information, including the specifics of who was included on the list and how such decisions would affect military members of other faiths who might desire assistance from a chaplain.
But the report seems to reflect developments previously announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In a March video, he introduced upcoming Pentagon plans relating to reforms of the chaplain corps and recognition of religions.
“The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes,” Hegseth said. “It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all.”
“Our internal review committee recommended that going forward the department use 31 religious affiliation codes,” he added.
Molly Jong-Fast put a smile on my face with this Op Ed at the New York Times. “It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers.” Now there’s our sweet freedom of speech value.
Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.
I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.
Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.
When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”
Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.
Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.
Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)
I highly recommend reading this thought-provoking Op-Ed. The link is gifted. I also proffer this. The only expendable thing in this country that matters right now is Orange Caligula.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
This video performance features Keith Richards and my dear friend and neighbor, Washboard Chaz. His dog and Temple are bestest of buddies, too.
“Get Up, Stand Up! Stand up for your Rights! Get up, Stand up! Don’t give up the Fight!
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
So this is 
There’s more at the link. Coupled with the following headline, I worry about this country. I really do. 
Meanwhile, it’s confirmed once again that it’s not the Press or the People leaving our democratic voting processes in the wind. This is from Jose Pagliery writing for 
Does that mean we simply watch everything melt into fascism as our 250th birthday as a nation stands before us? I certainly hope not. Stories like these give me hope. Madiba K. Dennie writes this analysis for 
There is also this information reported by Camilo Montoya-Galvez at
Kahn said he was set to present a poster, give a talk and chair a session at the ADA Scientific Sessions meeting, which runs from Friday until Monday — but has since been informed by the scientific society’s leaders that he has been relieved of those duties.
On what could happen next:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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