My favourite chant in the World Cup so far is definitely “Aussie boys are on a bender / Donald Trump is a sex offender” being sung over and over and over again
Note: The surreal giant cats in today’s post are the work of Matt McCarthy.
As I was reading Dakinikat’s post yesterday, I realized how discouraged I have become lately. Everything is just awful. And it doesn’t help that my chronic sciatica has been acting up lately.
Rick Wilson was so right way back in Trump’s first term when he wrote his book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.” We’re approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It should be a special time for the country, but Trump has taken over the anniversary and made it all about himself. We’ve had to watch him wreck the East Wing of the White House, pave over the rose garden, and hang ugly gold decorations all over the Oval Office. He destroyed the south lawn of the White House for a cage fight that was could only be seen with expensive tickets or on paid TV. On the Fourth of July Trump plans to mark the anniversary itself with a MAGA rally. I just want to cry.
Right now, Trump has something called the Great American State Fair going on. That link goes to a MAGA website. Trump wasn’t satisfied with a bipartisan celebration, so he set up his own organization, Freedom 250. Some commentary on the not-so-great fair:
The spectacle on the National Mall in Washington D.C. is ready to receive thousands of visitors. Instead, it is virtually deserted.
Not that there is much to see. Amid the sprawling stretches of open space, there is a 110-foot Freedom 250 ferris wheel and a tacky plywood “Triumph Arch” dominating the center of the grounds, a replica of the monument Trump wants to build near D.C.’s sacred Arlington Cemetery.
There are no corn dogs or funnel cakes. No roller coasters or merry go rounds. And by Friday morning, Pennsylvania became the latest of several Democratic states to declare it was not taking part.
The plan was to have representation from all 50 states. But some had opted out due to the high cost to taxpayers or not being able to secure any businesses to sponsor a booth. Others had chosen not to attend after the supposedly nonpartisan event suddenly seemed political, with Trump himself kicking off the fair with a MAGA rally earlier this week.
The Daily Beast was at the fair in the late afternoon and early evening, hoping to see a flood of people arrive after school and work.
As temperatures climbed, a clump of fairgoers waited under the hot DC sun for a ride on the Freedom 250 Ferris wheel—the festival’s marquee attraction —even as much of the surrounding fairgrounds remained conspicuously quiet.
Elsewhere, a jazz band played to an audience of about 10 people. (Don’t ask about the food: On its first full day, a power shortage hit the food pavilion, resulting in melted ice cream and concerns about spoiled goods.)
The most energetic vibe wasn’t at the Ferris wheel or the live rodeo; it was packed into an evangelical Christian tent, singing and dancing to a worship band, present despite some rather famous lines in the Constitution about church and state.
You can check out the photos at the link. I was going to put some in this post, but I decided to stick with cats, because at least they don’t make me feel sad and hopeless.
The U.S. capital has been outfitted of late with visual trappings that many associate with authoritarianism, such as banners depicting Donald Trump’s face and featuring his slogans. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the president erected his own Potemkin village: the Great American State Fair, where almost nothing is what it pretends to be.
Stretching across a large swath of the National Mall, the fair has dozens of pavilions for 56 states and territories and numerous executive-branch departments, in addition to a Ferris wheel, a rodeo, and other displays from companies and organizations, many of them Trump-aligned. It’s advertised by Freedom 250, the White House–created group behind many semiquincentennial events, as a “world-class exposition and modern-day World’s Fair.”
By Matt McCarthy
For a president enamored with the gilded and the grand, the exterior of this fair is surprisingly austere. Trompe l’oeil sheets cover slapdash structures lining both sides of the Mall with an illustration of architecture that is supposed to be beaux arts but is so stripped down that it makes the nearby brutalist buildings look practically baroque. A boxy model of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch in the center of the Mall appears as if it could have been designed in Minecraft and ordered from CVS for same-day pickup.
Perhaps because of this aesthetic of illusions, the earnest state pride evident in some of the pavilions turns out to feel especially delightful. Consider: the Science Museum Oklahoma’s president going on about how hers is “the most surprising state you’ll ever experience,” or the Ohioan dispensing with midwestern cheer state-shaped tattoos and tokens for free Frosties through the end of the year. Here and there, the big, proud personalities of the states shine through (see: Idaho’s potato-sack dress). Together, they nearly instill an appreciation for this eclectic batch of states that have united into a country. But like any sense of patriotism these days, it’s complicated just as quickly. Right as I was about to crack open a bag of potato chips from Michigan, with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” stuck in my head from a karaoke video game in the West Virginia booth, I wandered into the State Department pavilion, where I was offered a paper replica of the limited-edition Trump passport.
In a certain sense, the Great American State Fair bottles the central tension of federalism: a push and pull between irrepressible state personalities and the federal government. But it’s also not that academic. Put simply, the president is bringing down the mood.
Boy, you can say that again. “The president is bringing down the mood.” He ruins everything.
Down the lush green grass of the National Mall, past the 110-foot Ferris wheel and the scaled-down reproduction of President Trump’s proposed Triumphal Arch, the Massachusetts booth at the Great American State Fair was essentially a do-it-yourself project.
Itssingular attraction?Maple syrup.
That was one of the oddities of the 16-day extravaganza, which began on Thursday, to mark the nation’s 250th birthday. Perhaps fittingly for America in 2026, it opened with a mix of the wholesome, the partisan, and the just plain bizarre.
The event, Trump’s brainchild, assigns each of the 56 US states and territories a booth among more than 150 exhibits that “showcase the very best of America.” He kicked it off with a rally Wednesday night. And as people began visiting the Greco-Roman-style pavilions, the sprawling exposition reflected America’s Tilt-A-Whirl politics as it celebrates a milestone anniversary.
Despite the region’s pivotal role in the American Revolution, New England was largely a fair draft-dodger. Five of the six state governments declined to participate in what Democrats dismissed as a Trump-centric carnival. Nationwide, a few other states also skipped it.
After Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey balked at the price tag — she estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund it — a 72-year-old Trump supporter from Greenfield, Mass., took matters into her own hands.
“I was upset about it,” the woman, who declined to give her name out of fear of political repercussions, told the Globe as she manned the Massachusetts booth Thursday morning. “Why have an empty spot when they come in? They see nobody, nothing.”
Instead, they saw maple syrup.
It might not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Massachusetts, but the state has more than 300 producers, so she reached out to some near her town. Winston’s Sugar House in Shelburne Falls answered the call, donating tiny bottles.
As fairgoers started trickling in Thursday morning, the bottles were arranged on two tables along with brochures about the state’s maple syrup industry and otherother Massachusetts pamphlets in front of the unique backdrop the fair organizers created for every state and territory.
Within minutes, the bottles started disappearing as fairgoers grabbed for the freebies.
But at least Massachusetts had a display — a fact many visitors noted. A few doors down, empty chairs, potted plants, and collage-style backdrops were all that greeted visitors eager to see the offerings of Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, or Connecticut.
Nobody who has been paying attention to the Trump administration’s handling of America’s 250th anniversary should be surprised that a Confederate flag turned up at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. It was discovered at the North Carolina booth and in its own small way tells you everything you need to know about this whole production.
By Matt McCarthy
The controversy erupted after footage circulated showing the North Carolina exhibit featuring altered versions of the state flag with the Confederate battle emblem superimposed over the design. Governor Josh Stein’s office condemned the display, calling it a misrepresentation of North Carolina and demanding that organizers remove it.
The flag was pulled. Problem solved, in the narrowest possible sense.
But the details here matter. North Carolina’s official state flag has never included the Confederate battle symbol in any version of its design. Not in 1861, not in 1885, not ever.
Whoever put together that video display didn’t just stumble into Lost Cause territory by accident. They had to go out of their way to attach a symbol that the state itself had never chosen to fly.
As historian Stephen Jackson noted, unlike former flags from Georgia and Mississippi, the official flag of North Carolina has never incorporated the Confederate battle flag in its design. The alteration wasn’t heritage. It was invention.
Corporate sponsor Mt. Olive Pickle Company withdrew from the exhibit after learning about the display, saying the company stands on values of human dignity, opportunity, and freedom.
They’d better watch out. Trump doesn’t like anything that smacks of “DEI.” Remember, it’s white people who discriminated against in Trump world. A bit more:
The episode is a concentrated version of the sloppiness that has defined this event from the start. At least ten states declined to send official delegations. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s office was explicit about why her state withdrew, citing the cost of participating and growing concerns that the event was shaping up to be a more partisan affair than originally presented.
When you’re trying to celebrate the birth of the nation and you can’t get half the nation’s states to show up, something has gone wrong at the planning stage.
America’s 250th might have been celebrated with a genuine festival of state fairs, or a 21st century version of the national and international expositions of art and science that were popular in the 19th century. The Trump administration could have let the Smithsonian stage a giant festival of American folkways, music, dance, art, craft and food. It could have defaulted to something like a theme park, which would at least have produced a seamless illusionism and a facsimile of the same folkways that are absent in the Trump show.
And it might have given the states the time, funding and freedom to create their own pavilions, representative of the magnificent diversity of this country’s architecture and design. Instead, everything is stuffed into a fake agora with Doric columns and arched niches painted onto cheap theatrical flats, which look like someone scaled up the photo murals found in a tatty Greek diner that sells gyros, moussaka and heart-bomb platters of pastitsio.
Growing up in Atlantic City in the 1980s, I watched Donald Trump build his casinos into monuments of gaudy spectacle, none more so than the Taj Mahal. The man has always had a gift for making expensive things look tacky and tacky things look expensive, sometimes simultaneously.
Read the rest at the link.
Dakinikat wrote yesterday about the horrible Supreme Court decision to allow Trump to end temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians in the US. This is a disaster for these immigrants and for the economy. It will expose as many as a million asylum-seekers to arrest and deportation. Most of these people have established homes, jobs, and lives here; and if they are sent back home, they could even be killed.
The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for the Trump administration to remove legal protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States, meaning they could be subject to deportation.
The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, ruled in favor of the administration, which asked to continue with its plan to strip Temporary Protected Status from about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The ruling could also boost the administration’s efforts to remove similar protections from people from other countries as part of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy.
Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito said that judges overstepped their authority in second-guessing the administration’s decisions. The court also rejected a claim that the decision to remove protections for Haitians was discriminatory.
By Matt McCarthy
The law in question “expressly restricts” courts from reviewing determinations made by the Department of Homeland Security on whether to terminate or extend TPS protections, he added.
As for the claims of discrimination against Haitians, Alito said the statements cited by plaintiffs were not “overtly racial” and were “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
In dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan accused the majority of soft-pedaling Trump’s comments about Haitians.
“The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” she wrote.
Kagan extensively quoted Trump himself, including his 2018 statement that Haiti is a “shithole country” and comments he made during the 2024 election baselessly claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets.
Without protected status, affected people are subject to deportation via the normal legal process. But they can seek other avenues to remain in the U.S. by, for example, claiming asylum.
Thousands of immigrants in Massachusetts will likely be at risk of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following a Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for the Trump administration to revoke the legal status of approximately 330,000 Haitians and Syrians across the country.
“A lot of people are going to be in an extremely vulnerable position as a result of this,” said Kerry Doyle, a former legal adviser for ICE under the Biden administration who now practices immigration law in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts politicians and activists this week promised to fight to pass federal legislation extending the TPS program, and legal advocates said they would work to help those who lose their status find ways through the immigration court system to remain here legally.
“We will continue to use every tool, every legal tool to protect and defend the immigrant communities in Massachusetts and across the Greater Boston area,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, at a demonstration outside the State House Thursday.
For those affected by the decision, however, the immediate situation looked grim. Geralde Gabeau, the executive director of the Mattapan-based Immigrant Family Services Institute, perhaps the most prominent group serving Haitians in Massachusetts, was somber when she spoke to advocates and reporters at the State House. She recounted a story from a local teacher whose student asked if she would take the child home in case their parents were deported.
“This is not acceptable,” Gabeau said. “We have seen a lot of bad, terrible news coming from the Supreme Court. This is going too far.”
By Matt McCarthy
Remember Springfield, Ohio, the town where JD Vance claimed immigrants were eating cats and dogs? The town had deliberately invited Haitian immigrant to come there to live and work. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is not happy.
The governor said changing the immigration status of Haitian immigrants under TPS is not in the best interest of the United States or Ohio.
Gov. Mike DeWine, an outspoken supporter of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, called the policy to remove them a mistake after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end legal protection for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria.
DeWine said Thursday’s ruling means that the over 10,000 Haitians legally living in Ohio, mostly in the Springfield area, will now be in the country illegally. They will be subjected to immediate deportation. He added that it will now be illegal to employ them.
“The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles,” DeWine said.
In his statement, DeWine pointed to the federal government’s own advisory against traveling to Haiti.
“Our Federal Aviation Administration prohibits U.S. carriers from flying there because of the danger to planes of being shot at by the gangs,” DeWine said. “But, more importantly, changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”
Read more at the link. Trump and his handpicked justices are ruining our country.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that he and his family in Michigan were targeted by a “false report” to state authorities claiming he was a danger to his 4-year-old twins.
By Matt McCarthy
Michigan State Police confirmed in a statement that they had received an anonymous report regarding Buttigieg. State police and Child Protective Services then responded and “determined the report was false,” the statement said.
Buttigieg, a Cabinet official in the Biden administration and a potential 2028 presidential candidate, wrote in a Substack post that a police officer and Child Protective Services worker appeared at his home “a few days ago” following an allegation that had been made against him involving his children.
He said his children were removed from the home he shares with his husband, Chasten, before the twins went through separate forensic interviews the next morning. Buttigieg said he was then interviewed as part of the investigation.
During that interview, Buttigieg said, an officer told him that an anonymous caller had reported him to CPS, with the caller saying “that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”
Buttigieg said he told the officer he had never been to the town in Alabama.
“Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. “Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.”
Buttigieg said he was apart from his children for 24 hours.
That is horrible. I can’t believe those poor kids had to go through forensic interviews.
Sorry this post is so depressing, but that’s the state of our country today. If you have something positive to share, please do so in the comment thread. I’d be very grateful.
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“Should have just went with this in the first place. Honest Don reflects on his achievements.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Every time we think about Orange Caligula, we have to think about what comes after him if he doesn’t make it through his second term. It’s not likely that someone reasonable will take his place in a party that no longer goes by reason. For all intents and purposes, we still have to put the Shillbilly at the top of that list. I’m not really feeling good about that at all.
This is a headline from the New York Times this morning. “Vance Downplays Watergate and Compares Himself to Nixon. The vice president said that the scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency would be “like a 12-hour news story” if it happened today and that the “deep state” had taken down Nixon.” Be afraid. Be very afraid. Emily Davies has the story.
Vice President JD Vance downplayed the significance of the Watergate scandal during a speech on Thursday, saying that the controversy that toppled President Richard M. Nixon would be “like a 12-hour news story” if it happened today.
“The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Mr. Vance added, saying he had been joking backstage about the scandal before his appearance at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif.
Mr. Vance, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender, compared himself to Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after his administration tried to cover up its involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
“Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” Mr. Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”
Mr. Vance also conspiratorially compared the political forces that pushed Nixon out of office to President Trump’s opponents.
“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Mr. Vance said, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions, tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”
Mr. Vance’s remarks were notable in part because of how Mr. Trump and his administration have pushed to expand presidential power and test the boundaries of the law. Mr. Vance, a critic of Mr. Trump’s during his first presidential bid in 2016, has become a fierce loyalist and stood by the president through many controversies, casting him as the victim of an unjust political system.
The vice president’s defense of Nixon followed a similar playbook, seeking to rewrite the historical narrative of a scandal-scarred president so that he becomes the target of a witch hunt instead of the perpetrator of wrongdoing.
A spokesman for Mr. Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Vance was in California in part to promote his new memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” and in part to raise money for the Republican Party.
I never thought I’d see the day when a candidate desperately seeking the presidency would give an all hail to Nixon. Those of us that remember all findingof those Senate hearings know that finding any one that supported him, especially once the cover-up became clear, were clearly few and far between.
This headline from the AP headline has me shaking my head that I may need a neck brace. “Vance says Watergate would be a ’12-hour news story’ today. Vice President JD Vance said the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon would have been a 12-hour blip in today’s news cycle, and he drew parallels between Nixon and President Donald Trump — arguing both were targeted by “deep state” forces.”
Yup, Arlen Specter was about as deep state as you could get. Excuse me while I choke on laughter.
It’s obvious that these people have no respect for our Republic or it’s rule of Constitutional Law. This is democracy backsliding at its jaded worst. This is the analysis by the Washington Post. “Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon. The vice president said he admired Nixon and drew parallels between the past president, who resigned amid pressure in 1974, and Trump today.” This is fascist level over-reach.
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.
… Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”
“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”
Again, I’m just gobsmacked. How do you even get through university or high school, let alone law school and come up with this shit of an interpretation of Nixon? Speaking of Orange Caligula and his tendency to pick lying bags of scum who are only interested in power and grifting, here’s an NBC headline to bring back some memories of his last ugly term. “Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton pleads guilty to mishandling classified information. Bolton served as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term.”
Former national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to mishandling classified information related to his work during the first Trump administration.
Bolton, who served as White House national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term and has since been a frequent critic of the president, appeared Friday morning for a re-arraignment in Greenbelt, Maryland, before Judge Theodore D. Chuang, an appointee of then-President Barack Obama.
Bolton pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information out of the 18 with which he was initially charged. He faces a prison sentence of up to 60 months and has agreed to pay $2.25 million, prosecutors said. He is set to be sentenced Oct. 28.
Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s attorney, said in a statement Friday that the former national security adviser and U.N. ambassador “did what real leaders do. He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information.”
Hayden O’Byrne, acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s national security division, said in a statement that the plea agreement “ought to send a message to other public officials whom the public has entrusted with classified, national defense information. If you willfully mishandle these state secrets, the Department of Justice, led by the National Security Division, will investigate and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
Bolton was originally indicted in October 2025, charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.
Sigh, “special release.” Why to punish this truly evil people courts! Then there’s this guy. This is from PBS News. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says ‘America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers’ after Supreme Court rulings.”
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security can now end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
The Supreme Court also voted 6-3 to clear the way for the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The court overturned a lower court order blocking the practice that limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day.
EThis crap doesn’t reflect the American Values I grew up with. This makes the Guilded Age look like a Socialist Picnic. “Elon Musk’s zero accountability life. Elon Musk goes berserk if you talk about USAID.” This is from the magazine The Argument. Kobe Yank-Jacobs provides the news and analysis.
Elon Musk really doesn’t want you to say he’s responsible for the deaths of millions.
Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for charging him with destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and putting millions of lives at risk around the world:
“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna said. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”
In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison.
But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5.
This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline.
In other words, the toll from USAID cuts by seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually1; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.
If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.
There are a couple of interlocking issues worth separating here: one is the factual question of what actually happened to USAID, where Musk is now downplaying his actions. A second question is what is likely to happen out in the real world to real people without USAID. And the final issue is whether Musk should be subject to basic Congressional oversight for wrecking whole government agencies as an outside adviser to the president.
So, I’m cutting it short today because frankly, I can’t read any more of this myself, and I’m still working on the house. I just hope the election is as clean as possible and that people come out in droves. I’ve really had enough of this.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Just about one hour ago, double Mw7.2-Mw7.5 #earthquake at the Boconó Fault, near San Felipe, Venezuela. Only 45 seconds apart. Very dangerous!earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/…Near the place of the destructive 1812 EQ doublet👇bsky.app/profile/jose…
Devastation in the city of La Guaira (approximately 190 km from the epicentres), caused by the seismic accelerations resulting from the consecutive occurrence of the two earthquakes and amplified by the soft subsoil in the area.#earthquake #terremoto #Venezuela
Just about one hour ago, double Mw7.2-Mw7.5 #earthquake at the Boconó Fault, near San Felipe, Venezuela. Only 45 seconds apart. Very dangerous!earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/…Near the place of the destructive 1812 EQ doublet👇bsky.app/profile/jose…
I just sent this out to Democracy Docket premium members, but in light of the Postmasters comments this morning threatening voting by mail, I felt it is urgent to post it online for everyone.Please read and share. http://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/mail…
If this doesn't make your blood boil, you don't believe in liberty. Border Patrol agents smashed down a business's locked doors and arrested two employees, and when the owner demanded to see a warrant, they smugly said, "We don't need one." Absolutely criminal. Straight to jail
Stephen Miller was reportedly the driving force behind the DOJ's recent memo authorizing states to institutionalize people with disabilities rather than fund community-based care
There is big news on the Iran war front today, as the Senate joins the House in passing a war powers resolution. In other top stories, Pete Hegseth forced out another top general, and the flu epidemic in the military forced a return to required flu vaccinations. Several states held primaries or runoff elections yesterday, with some interesting results. Finally, there’s a disturbing story out of Texas about extreme sentences handed down to so-called Antifa protesters.
The Senate on Tuesday adopted a resolution instructing President Trump to end the war in Iran or seek congressional authorization to continue it, delivering the most significant bipartisan rebuke yet of the conflict.
The resolution does not have the force of law and is therefore unlikely to compel an immediate change in policy. But the 50-to-48 vote — in which four Republicans joined Democrats in favor — marked a striking break by the G.O.P.-led Congress with a president who has faced little resistance from his party on any topic, particularly matters of war and national security.
The four Republican senators, clockwise from top left Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Kentucky). (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)
It came as Republicans in Congress have expressed skepticism and alarm about the cease-fire agreement Mr. Trump struck with the Iranians, as the conflict approaches its fifth month. The measure underscored G.O.P. impatience about continuing to defer to the president, who has never sought approval from Congress for the war, as further negotiations over its end appear precarious and Mr. Trump has threatened more military action.
The vote was also the latest evidence of tension over the war inside the Republican Party, which faces a punishing political environment ahead of midterm elections in which G.O.P. control of Congress is at stake. With polls showing the conflict deeply unpopular, some lawmakers in the party have voiced concerns about its economic toll, uncertain objectives and the risk of a broader regional escalation.
Tuesday’s vote marked the first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution directing a president to end a military conflict. The House passed the measure this month after Republican leaders who had tried to block it were unable to keep the party unified in opposition.
In the Senate on Tuesday, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the lone Democrat to vote against the resolution. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana broke with fellow Republicans and supported the measure. Their backing and the absence of two Republicans who have opposed such measures in the past, including Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who was recently hospitalized, allowed the resolution to prevail. The law was born out of a clash between Congress and President Richard Nixon over the Vietnam War, with lawmakers overriding his veto in an effort to reclaim authority over decisions of war.
President Donald Trump lashed out at the four Republican senators who voted to block him from resuming the war with Iran, in a resolution that marks one of the biggest schisms between the Republican-controlled Senate and the White House during Trump’s second term.
“These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday night, accusing the “four Republican Losers” of helping Iran when he had the country “on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall.”
Another two Republicans, Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania), missed the vote, which passed 50-48. Democrat Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against it.
The measure, which passed the House this month, is based on the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a law designed to ensure congressional oversight of U.S. involvement in military conflicts. The White House has argued that the law is unconstitutional and also is irrelevant now because the war has ended.
The Senate measure cannot be vetoed, but Democrats and Republicans disagree on whether it can be enforced.
I hate to think what would happen if this gets to the Supreme Court.
President Trump was eager on Tuesday morning to announce the latest concession that he says his negotiators extracted from Iran, writing on social media that the country had agreed to allow the “highest level Nuclear Inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!).”
But he omitted the fact that as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is required to allow in international inspectors. And his statement came after the Iranians had insisted that there were no plans to allow inspectors into the three major nuclear sites the United States bombed a year ago — and where just about all the nation’s enriched uranium is stored.
America’s sad Iran negotiating team: Jared Kushner, his golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, and VP JD Vance.
The previous day, Vice President JD Vance, leaving the negotiating site at a Swiss resort, said Iran had agreed that if Iranian assets were unfrozen, the United States and Qatari officials would oversee the process and the money would be used to buy American farm products. The Iranians denied that, too, saying that the 14-point memorandum of understanding they had signed with the Americans did not require them to do so.
Negotiating with Iran has always been an extraordinary challenge. But until recently, one rule of diplomatic bargaining has usually held: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” That is how the United States and Iran traditionally have left themselves some trading space, and fine-tuned wording to satisfy the many critics at home who will have to be sold on any agreement. In 2015, when details of the inner-sanctum negotiations leaked, American officials complained bitterly, saying that the news reports were making it harder to get to a final deal.
But in this negotiation the leaks are replaced by official, if fragmentary, announcements — usually from the American side. Mr. Trump’s style is often to describe his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians into each element of any eventual agreement.
But in this negotiation the leaks are replaced by official, if fragmentary, announcements — usually from the American side. Mr. Trump’s style is often to describe his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians into each element of any eventual agreement.
The Iranians have Trump’s number, alright. A bit more from the article:
Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran and the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s leading think tanks, said that both “Washington and Tehran are engaged in a public battle to shape the narrative and advance their preferred outcome on specific elements of the negotiations.”
The public divergence, she added, “highlights how little has actually been agreed upon yet and what an enormous gap has to be addressed in a short period of time.”
In fact, there were elements of truth in both what Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance were arguing, and in the Iranian rebuttal. And dissecting the differences helps explain why this negotiation is likely to be painful — and long.
If only they had just bitten the bullet and released the Epstein files. But Trump was desperate to distract from them, and now we are up shit creek in a stupid war. You can use the gift link to read the rest if you wish.
More military news: Pete Hegseth has fired another distinguished general, and his decision to make the flu vaccine voluntary has backfired bigtime.
General Chris “C. D.” Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal. As the head of Army forces in Europe and Africa, he has helped bolster Ukraine in its fight to repel the Russian invasion. Now Donahue has become the latest casualty in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of the military’s senior ranks.
Donahue’s abrupt departure, after just 18 months in his role, is another sign of the upheaval. He was widely seen as one of the Army’s rising stars—a legendary Delta Force leader who was considered a top candidate for Army chief of staff or even chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—having distinguished himself in wars of the past two decades. But Hegseth has sought to oust anyone who doesn’t fit his idea of a military leader, including those involved in the calamitous American exit from Kabul under President Biden—no matter how well they performed there. Donahue is expected to announce as soon as tomorrow that he will be relinquishing his post later this summer, two people familiar with the matter told us.
Gen. Christopher Donahue in 2025. Lucy North PA via Getty Images file
A career Ranger and Special Operations commander, Donahue served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, climbing through the ranks during two decades of counterterrorism wars. As the U.S. military shifted its focus from hunting terrorist networks to preparing for conflicts against technologically sophisticated adversaries, Donahue did as well. In recent years, he took on a top role in Europe as the Pentagon adapted lessons from Ukraine and other modern battlefields. His departure continues the exit of a generation of combat-tested leaders at a time when Hegseth is reshaping the military’s senior ranks under a banner of “less generals, more GIs.” Once Donahue leaves, the military is also expected to downgrade U.S. Army Europe and Africa from a four-star command to three, as part of the military’s effort to consolidate commands. Whether Donahue’s departure would coincide with the downgrading wasn’t immediately clear. President Trump and Hegseth are reviewing the military’s footprint in Europe, pressing governments there to take on a greater defense burden and amid friction over other NATO members’ reluctance to join the war in Iran. Hegseth’s spokesman referred questions to the Army, which declined to comment….
Donahue was positioned to help reshape the way that the Army wages war. He had been leading the service’s effort to take lessons from Ukraine and apply them to future conflicts. His departure follows that of General Randy George, the Army chief of staff whom Hegseth forced out this spring. George had been tasked with restocking key air-defense munitions, which have been seriously depleted by the Iran war.
Donahue would be at least the sixth three- or four-star Army general to depart unexpectedly, out of the roughly 60 generals in the service who hold those ranks. They include the well-regarded General James Mingus, a former Army vice chief of staff. “It’s interesting that the guy who says he wants to bring back the warrior culture is expunging the biggest warriors in the Army ranks,” one retired Army officer told us. “This is not a war on woke. This is a war on warriors.”
Donahue, who is 56, is a Pennsylvania native and a West Point graduate. He was on Capitol Hill on 9/11 with Richard Myers, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He went on to command the 82nd Airborne Division, among other senior posts.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
The U.S. military has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s flu vaccine rules after an outbreak at a U.S. Air Force base spread to affect at least 222 recruits.
Hegseth, 45, made the annual flu shot optional for troops in April, tearing up a requirement that had stood since 1945 in a move that broke with decades of public health guidance. Only about 40 percent of new trainees at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas had been jabbed when the outbreak took hold in early June, down from a previous rate of nearly 100 percent.
Now the Army, Navy, and Air Force have all quietly performed a U-turn, once again requiring flu shots for basic trainees, officials told ABC News, which first reported the worsening crisis. The Pentagon has granted the services formal exceptions to Hegseth’s own policy.
The numbers are getting worse by the day. As of Tuesday, at least 222 recruits at Lackland Air Force Base had been diagnosed with flu, and four had been hospitalized, two sources familiar with the matter told the network. That is up from 159 cases and two hospitalizations a week earlier.
One recruit has died. Keon McDaniel was in his sixth week of basic training when he suffered a medical emergency on June 12 and was rushed to Brooke Army Medical Center, where he died on June 16, according to the Air Force. The cause remains under investigation. It is not yet clear whether the death is linked to the outbreak.
Recruits are at particular risk. They live in tightly packed bays, shower communally and spend their days within arm’s reach of one another through drills and inspections—exhausted, stressed and crammed together in exactly the conditions where a respiratory virus can thrive.
Some results from yesterday’s elections. The biggest news is from New York, where Mayor Mamdani had a powerful influence.
Democratic socialist candidates swept key primary races in New York Tuesday, accelerating their rise within the Democratic Party while more traditional center-left candidates and moderates backed by corporate interests prevailed in other contests.
Results of primaries across four states Tuesday cemented the growing influence of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s brand of progressive populism while demonstrating its potential limits outside of large East Coast cities.
New York City voters nominated three left-wing U.S. House candidates endorsed by Mamdani, boosting his clout as a political kingmaker and ousting two incumbents in the process. Comparatively moderate Democrats prevailed in other primaries, including in Maryland and Utah….
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrates with Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of three Democratic House candidates to win Tuesday primaries with his endorsement. Seth Wenig,AP
Less than six months into his term as mayor, Mamdani put his political capital on the line by endorsing three insurgent candidates over two sitting members of Congress and a retiring incumbent’s chosen successor. All three of his picks won, in a signal of strength for Mamdani’s political brand and the democratic socialist movement that powered his rise to City Hall….
The Democratic Socialists of America formally endorsed two of Mamdani’s choices: activist and PhD student Darializa Avila Chevalier, who beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and state Assembly member Claire Valdez, who was nominated to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez. Brad Lander, Mamdani’s third pick, was not officially backed by the group but received significant support from its members and allied organizations on his path to unseating Rep. Dan Goldman.
I think it’s a real shame that Goldman lost. I hope he’ll run again for something in the future.
The group has seen major momentum recently with a win in the D.C. mayor’s race earlier this month. A congressional race in Denver next week will test DSA appeal outside an East Coast city as Melat Kiros challenges Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado).
In New York, DSA-backed challengers had also ousted at least three more moderate members of the state Assembly….
The Democratic Party’s old guard came out on top in New York’s 12th Congressional District. State Assembly member Micah Lasher, a longtime fixture of the city’s Democratic Party, defeated a star-studded cast to succeed retiringRep. Jerry Nadler….
Nadler, a 17-term incumbent, had endorsed Lasher to represent the rich and highly educated district that includes much of Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East and Upper West sides. Lasher also had the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul and former mayor Mike Bloomberg, who invested millions of dollars in a super PAC to support Lasher. Mamdani, who lives and votes in the district, stayed neutral in the race.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
There’s one more interesting outcome in South Carolina.
Nancy Lacore, a former Navy admiral who was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, won the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District of South Carolina, according to The Associated Press.
Nancy Lacore, a 35-year veteran of the Navy, was an admiral when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired her last year. She said she was not given a reason.Credit…Nancy Lacore for Congress
Ms. Lacore defeated Mac Deford, a Coast Guard veteran who was previously the general counsel for the town of Hilton Head Island.
Now, Ms. Lacore faces a difficult task: flipping a seat currently held by a Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, who ran unsuccessfully for governor instead of seeking re-election. The coastal district was redrawn in 2021 to be more reliably Republican. Ms. Mace won re-election by double-digit percentages in each of her past two elections.
But Democrats, who view Ms. Lacore’s military biography as a potentially game-changing asset, are still eyeing the seat despite how difficult it may be to flip. House Majority PAC, the main House Democratic super PAC, has reserved $2.1 million in the district for the fall, according to AdImpact, a media tracking platform.
Ms. Lacore has a higher-than-average profile for a political newcomer. Last August, Mr. Hegseth fired her after 35 years in the Navy. She has said she was given no cause for the firing, which came at a time when Mr. Hegseth was removing military officials who had delivered intelligence assessments that angered President Trump.
There’s a concerning story out of Texas today. I hadn’t heard about it before. A group of so-called Antifa activists have been sentenced to startlingly long sentences in a case about demonstrations outside a customs enforcement detention center. The e was violence involved, but the sentences still seem troubling.
Federal judges in Fort Worth handed down maximum sentences to eight people charged in connection with a July 2025 demonstration outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center that devolved into vandalism and the shooting of a police officer.
Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison and Maricela Rueda to 70. Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Meaghan Morris, Autumn Hill, and Zachary Evetts each received sentences of 50 years. Daniel Sanchez Estrada, who was not at the demonstration, was sentenced to 30 years on charges relating to concealing documents in the investigation. Judges in the Northern District of Texas ruled that each defendant will serve their sentence on each charge consecutively, dramatically lengthening their time in prison.
The case has been seen as a barometer for how far the Trump administration can go in its campaign to crack down on political opponents, in part by using broad conspiracy statutes to sweep people accused of very different conduct into one single alleged terrorism plot.
Officials at DOJ and DHS have held the case up as a prime example of their fight against the broad cohort of anti-administration activism that they deem “Antifa.” After the defendants were convicted in March, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the verdict would “not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”
The prosecution focused on events that took place at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility on July 4 of last year. There, demonstrators arrived dressed in black to hold a “noise demonstration” involving fireworks to show support for those detained in the facility. A group of demonstrators broke off from the group; they began to vandalize cars and surveillance infrastructure outside the facility. After a police officer arrived, Song picked up a rifle and shot the responding officer, wounding him.
Federal prosecutors initially charged the group with attempted murder of a federal officer and use of a firearm. But after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the White House issued sweeping directives to stage a crackdown on Trump’s political opponents, and federal prosecutors in Dallas-Fort Worth ramped up the charges. They framed the group as the “North Texas Antifa Cell,” and brought charges of material support of terrorism against the activists….
The Prairieland case was the first in what’s becoming a nationwide trend of broad conspiracy cases brought against protestors. In Alabama, prosecutors brought material support for terrorism charges against a pair of people who allegedly set a shopping cart on fire in a Walmart after a Black Lives Matter protest. In Minneapolis this month, prosecutors charged a group of ICE protestors in a conspiracy indictment that centered on their supposed involvement in “Antifa.”
In Prairieland, prosecutors folded defendants who were not alleged to have committed any act of violence into a case that centered on allegations around the attempted murder of a responding police officer. Savanna Batten and Elizabeth Soto, two area activists, were not alleged to have belonged to discussion groups where the demonstration was planned. In Batten’s case, prosecutors relied on her black garb as a means to tie her to the conspiracy; in Soto’s, prosecutors argued that her black clothing and her operation of a small printing press that produced anarchist “zines” tied her to the conspiracy. Both received sentences of 50 years on Tuesday.
Read more at the link.
That’s all I have for today. What’s on your mind?
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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.
I never thought I’d see the day when a candidate desperately seeking the presidency would give an all hail to Nixon. Those of us that remember all findingof those Senate hearings know that finding any one that supported him, especially once the cover-up became clear, were clearly few and far between.
Again, I’m just gobsmacked. How do you even get through university or high school, let alone law school and come up with this shit of an interpretation of Nixon? Speaking of Orange Caligula and his tendency to pick lying bags of scum who are only interested in power and grifting, here’s an 
Sigh, “special release.” Why to punish this truly evil people courts! Then there’s this guy. This is from 
EThis crap doesn’t reflect the American Values I grew up with. This makes the Guilded Age look like a Socialist Picnic. “Elon Musk’s zero accountability life. Elon Musk goes berserk if you talk about USAID.” This is from the magazine 
Now the Army, Navy, and Air Force have all quietly performed a U-turn, once again requiring flu shots for basic trainees, officials told ABC News, which first reported the worsening crisis. The Pentagon has granted the services formal exceptions to Hegseth’s own policy.
The prosecution focused on events that took place at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility on July 4 of last year. There, demonstrators arrived dressed in black to hold a “noise demonstration” involving fireworks to show support for those detained in the facility. A group of demonstrators broke off from the group; they began to vandalize cars and surveillance infrastructure outside the facility. After a police officer arrived, Song picked up a rifle and shot the responding officer, wounding him.
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